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Ron (Ron & Julie on Egret Street) Tuesday, 3:00 p.m.
While she made burgers for me to cook on the grill, Julie told me about O’Connor’s visit. “Your friend the cop wants us to ferret out a guy who’s been on the run for fifty years?” I asked.
“He isn’t my friend,” she responded. “He’s a police detective who came to us for help.”
“Snooping into the lives of the people we know.”
A grimace revealed that part bothered her a little. “Do you want me to tell him no?”
“I didn’t say that.” To be honest, I was as pleased as she was to hear that O’Connor trusted us with the job. How many people over seventy get invited to conduct an undercover investigation for the cops? Though I didn’t relish the idea of snooping among people we knew, this guy was a double murderer.
Doubt cropped up again. “It would be weird, sticking our noses in everybody’s business.”
“We helped them zero in on the Knitting Needle Killer. That wasn’t weird.”
“No, it was dangerous. You almost got murdered.”
She nodded, accepting the truth of that, and her nails clicked briefly on the countertop. “What should I tell the detective?”
An idea came into my head. “Tell him a job like this is too big for two people.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that in order to canvass three hundred residences, we should get some help.” I ticked off my points on my fingers. “We’ll get done faster, more people means a wider base of information, and best of all, you and I won’t have to lie to the couples we’re closest to.”
Julie rested her chin on her hand. “I don’t know if O’Connor will agree to that.”
“If he wants us to do this, he will.”
“They’d have be people who can keep a secret. And we’d need to be sure the men can’t possibly be Greg Miles.”
“Tommy was in Vietnam during the summer of 1967,” I replied. “I’ve seen the pictures. Al Dobson never left the state of Pennsylvania until he retired from his factory job. And I’m pretty sure Earl was on a ship in the Pacific that whole year.”
“And except for Tommy, they’ve all been married to the same woman forever,” Julie added. “It isn’t likely any of them was spending weekends with a woman named Kelly in Nashville.” Biting her lip, Julie mulled it over. “I wish Cheri hadn’t gone to that wedding back in Canada. She’d be good help.”
“She probably wishes she hadn’t gone too. I hear the weather up there is wild right now.”
“I could pitch the idea of a group project and see what O’Connor thinks.”
“It might be fun, all of us investigating a cold case together.”
Julie chuckled. “Yeah. The Silver Sleuths of B-Bird RV Park.”
Sensing she was nervous about asking O’Connor if we could change the plan around, I asked, “Do you want me to call him?”
“That would be great,” she said. “If he doesn’t go for it, you and I can discuss whether we want to proceed or opt out.”
I called right away, since it was almost five. O’Connor answered, and after listening carefully to my arguments said, “That sounds workable, Mr. Rogers, as long as you vouch for the other three men.” When I explained what I knew of their backgrounds he said, “Let me okay it with the boss. I’ll get back to you in the morning.”
“If it’s a go, can we get more details on the case?”
“We can do that now if you like. I asked Nashville P.D. to scan the murder book and email it to me, and I was reading through it when you called.” I heard his computer mouse click as he perused the pages. “The original detective assigned to the case, Dean Marshall, left lots of notes, which is good, since he died in ’88. The girlfriend, Kelly Ames, thought she was in love with Miles, but when she realized he was a killer, she did a one-eighty and helped the cops all she could.”
He went on, pausing briefly at times to read before filling me in. “Ames lived upstairs in an old house that was divided into four apartments. The landlord had a rule that single female tenants couldn’t have men in their apartments. Since he lived on the ground floor, he got his way.” O’Connor seemed struck by that. “Landlords could dictate their tenants’ behavior like that back then?”
“You should have met Julie’s house mother at college,” I told him. “Try a goodnight kiss of more than ten seconds, and she’d be rapping on the window and pointing the Finger of Death at you.”
“Huh. Anyway, the guy’s rule meant the police couldn’t get a sample of Miles’ prints.”
“What’s the scenario? Why was this couple murdered?”
“Marshall’s theory was that Miles broke in planning to rape the wife. He wasn’t aware the husband had stayed home from work due to illness. The man was in the bedroom when he broke in, probably asleep. Hearing the struggle, he got up and came out. Miles had already stabbed the woman. She died instantly. The husband went after Miles, and they struggled. Miles stabbed the husband and ran, taking the knife with him. The report says the guy didn’t live long, maybe a couple of minutes.”
“Who called it in?”
“Anonymous.”
“Huh. Who’d have known what was happening?”
There was another pause as O’Connor looked for a particular spot in the report. “The detective suspected it was the boyfriend of the tenant in the other upstairs apartment, Jill Carr. She’s the one who wrote to Ames claiming Miles lives in your park. The women worked at the same place, so she knew him from times he came to the restaurant to see Kelly.”
“And she recognized him all these years later?”
“Not by sight. It was his voice she recognized. Looks change, voices not so much.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “I’ve had the experience of hearing a voice from my past and knowing right away who it was.”
“Me too.” O’Connor went on. “Anyway, Marshall figured Jill’s boyfriend was staying in her apartment, heard the commotion, and called the police. Later he didn’t admit it was him because the nasty landlord would have kicked Carr out if he knew she had a man there.”
“Could he have been the killer?”
“The guy was thoroughly checked out. No stains on his clothing, and Marshall says the stabbings would definitely have resulted in blood on the killer.”
The image that brought to mind, a man and his wife bleeding out inside their own home, made the old crime real to me. This wasn’t simply a puzzle for a bunch of old farts to work on. It was a search for the man who’d violently murdered two innocent people. I wanted to help the cops find him and lock him up for whatever remained of his miserable life.
Unaware of my thoughts, O’Connor went on. “By the time the police arrived, the landlord had called in the incident as well. He’d gone to a movie, and he was coming up the walk when a guy barreled out of the apartment, ran into him, almost knocking him down, and took off. Seeing the door to his tenants’ apartment had been kicked in, the landlord went inside and found the bodies.
O’Connor paused to read. “Sounds like he was an emotional mess. Anyway, Kelly arrived a few minutes after the police did. She’d talked to Miles and was still shaken from his appearance and behavior. When she heard what had happened, she told them everything she could, including where he usually parked his truck. They found it in the parking lot of an empty building, wiped clean of prints. He did an excellent job on that, but he missed a muddy boot print he’d left on the accelerator pedal. It was a partial, but it matched the one left on the apartment door when he kicked it in.”
“Julie said there was another eyewitness?”
“A woman waiting for the bus saw Miles arrive on foot around ten. She assumd he was waiting for a ride, but he didn’t get on when the bus came.”
“He was waiting for Kelly.”
“Seems so. The description she gave matched what they had for Miles.”
“Why would he break into the other apartment and attack a woman he didn’t know?”
“Sex crimes are often spontaneous, the result of overwhelming emotions that normal people don’t understand. He might have seen her through a window and got ideas. Or he might have heard from Kelly that the husband worked nights and took his chance.”
“You’d think he’d have made sure the man was gone before trying anything, don’t you think?”
“Like I said, it’s often hard to explain sex crimes.”
“Thanks for the information, Detective. Give us a call when your boss says we can start.”
