Tuesday, late morning, June 17th, 2014
My wait for the victim to be autopsied wasn’t long. In my mind, I knew it was Terri anyway. Where she’d been hunting me over the weekend, I’d spent the past 24 hours hunting her. While I waited to hear from the OSHP, I made several calls to past contacts trying to get a line on Terri. I’d come up with nothing, even after calling a couple of ghosts from my past that I would rather have remained forgotten.
Lieutenant Nichols met me at the Muskingum County Medical Examiner’s Office. I felt slightly uncomfortable as he looked me up and down when I hobbled in on crutches. I caught his eye and put on my best official law enforcement expression.
“Lieutenant Nichols, I presume?”
“Yes ma’am.” He finally looked me in the eye, “Are you Agent Rossi?”
“Dana Rossi, yes. If the body I’m here to view is whom I expect that it is, it’s someone I’ve known personally, in the past and not someone I was dealing with in my official capacity.”
“I see Ms. Rossi. I need to ask, have you ever done this before?”
“ID’d a body? Fortunately, no. Deaths and murders don’t normally fall under the jurisdiction of Customs.”
“Then I have to warn you, what you’re about to see will not be what you see at an open casket funeral.”
“Point taken. Lead on Lieutenant.”
The Coroner himself pulled out a drawer and lowered the sheet from the head of the victim. Even distorted, I only had to glance at the face to know that it was Terri.
“It’s her. It’s Terri Sweeting.” I made a half turn away from the head with a skull that was obviously crushed in the back.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” I didn’t turn back to her.
“I’m going to need you to come over to the Patrol Post and make a formal statement.”
“No problem. I can do that now if you like.”
The Coroner spoke up, “Lieutenant, I need a word with you first.” The LT nodded.
“I’ll just wait outside.” I showed myself out the door as fast as a pair of crutches could carry me. I didn’t want to spend any more time in the chamber of death than I had to.
###
Tuesday, early afternoon, June 17th, 2014
“Thanks for coming in Ms. Rossi.”
“Dana is fine Lieutenant.” He didn’t respond.
I’ve never really been on this side of the desk... I started talking nervously like I had no idea how a police interview is supposed to work. “I’ll tell you everything I know but I’m not sure how much help it will be.” He remained silent but met my eyes. It was unnerving. I began to get the impression this wasn’t an interview at all but an interrogation.
“Look Lieutenant Nichols, I’m going to level with you right up front, Terri and I weren’t on the best of terms. I’m not sure exactly why she came to Ohio or what her real problem was and I really didn’t care to know.”
Nichols put up a hand to stop me and he finally spoke, “How about we start at the beginning?”
“That’s fine.” I was relieved to have him jump into the driver’s seat.
“How did you know Ms. Sweeting?”
I grinned nervously. “Once you get going, you cut right to the chase don’t you?” He didn’t answer again; he just watched me with a blank expression.
“Okay well, to be completely frank, we were romantic partners at one time.” I watched his face for a reaction or even a slight change in his expression. There was none.
“We broke up, badly I’ll admit, about three and a half years ago. We’d been living together at the time but I worked a private security and investigations job that had me on the road a lot. I moved out one day in between assignments, while she was at work. She didn’t take it well. To make a long story short, she stalked me and hounded my employer over me. I ended up getting fired because she was out of hand and my employer had a reputation to uphold.”
“Did you confront Terri?”
“No. I avoided her. I just wanted to be completely free of her. After I lost my job, I didn’t have any reason to stay in the Chicago area. I had no ties there. I went home to stay with my folks in Pennsylvania for a while to lick my wounds and put everything behind me. In the end I changed my phone number and my life.”
“I got an investigative position with Customs a little over three years ago. I never saw or heard from Terri after I left for Pennsylvania or even after Customs assigned me to the Chicago Field Office until this past Saturday when she called me out of the blue and when she started texting me, as I said.”
“If you changed everything and you hadn’t heard from her, how did she get your number?”
“I asked Terri the same question. She said she got it through a mutual friend. I haven’t kept in contact with any of the people we associated with at the time that we were together so I don’t know who she would have actually gotten it from.”
He leaned back in his chair and gave me a skeptical look, “Did you ask her to come to Ohio to see you?”
“No, I didn’t.” I tried to sound matter of fact and not defensive. “She was already here when she started calling me and texting me asking me to meet with her. Here, let me show you.” I took out my phone and showed him the call log and the texts from her.
He made some notes. “We’ll pull her phone records. Would you be willing to let us download a transcript of the texts now? It will save us time.”
“Of course. No problem.” I laid my phone on the desk. He didn’t pick it up.
“So, when did you first meet with Terri?”
“The only time I met with her was on Friday afternoon at Putnam Hill Park in Zanesville.”
“Why did you agree to the meeting?”
“At first, she said she just wanted to talk to me. When I wouldn’t take her calls, she started texting. I ignored those too until she told me via text that she was in Zanesville. You’ll see it there,” I pointed at the phone.
“So, because she was in Zanesville, you agreed to meet with her?”
“Not exactly; I only agreed to meet with her after she said the reason she wanted to talk to me was because someone was trying to kill her and she needed my help.”
“Kill her?” This time his face actually showed a little emotion.
“Yes. It’s there in the texts.”
“Who did she think was trying to kill her?”
“That’s not in the texts. It came out in our meeting.” I told him the story that Terri told me. When I finished, he was quiet for more than a minute while he scribbled notes.
I felt more at ease after getting everything about our meeting out and I thought I sensed a change in Nichols. I sat back in my chair and relaxed a little while I waited for his next question. I figured we’d move on to the events of Saturday. When his actual question came, it took me completely by surprise.
“How long have you been on crutches?”
I held my hands up to him in confusion. “Um, I was shot in the line of duty in April. I was laid up for a few weeks but I’ve been on them since.” He raised one eyebrow in the biggest show of expression I’d seen from him since the interview started. “I have severe muscle and nerve damage to my left leg. It was exacerbated a little over a week ago by an unrelated incident.”
“So you’re on convalescent leave right now?”
“Sort of. I’m in the process of being medically retired.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Why the questions about my status?”
He changed direction, “Do you carry off duty?”
“Usually, a small 9mm. Don’t you carry out of uniform?”
“Were you carrying Friday or Saturday?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What does whether I carry a weapon off duty or not have to do with anything?”
He ignored my question and continued, “Are you carrying now?”
“Do you want to frisk me and see?” I was beginning to get annoyed with his interrogative line of questioning but then in my brewing anger a thought suddenly occurred to me, “Was Terri shot?”
“You tell me.”
“You’ve answered my question. Obviously she was. It occurs to me that, that’s what the Coroner probably held you back to tell you.”
He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye again. I returned the favor. I wasn’t going to let this guy get the better of me.
“Terri Sweeting was hit with an aluminum crutch that was found in the wooded area not far from the shoreline area where she was found floating. According to the Coroner, the blow didn’t kill her, at least not immediately. She was killed by a small caliber round fired into her chest at close range, probably after she fell. She was then drug into Lake Dillon.”
“And you think I killed her?”
“Whose fingerprints do you suppose we’ll find on the crutch?”
“Mine, no doubt. One of my crutches was taken from my car on Saturday while I was looking around the boat ramp parking lot for Terri.”
“That’s awfully convenient don’t you think?”
“Did you listen to a word I said?” I raised my voice in my own defense. “Terri came to me with a problem she seemed to think I could help her with. I haven’t had anything to do with her in years. Why would I kill her even if I were physically able to? What’s my motive?”
I stood up and gathered my cell phone and my crutches. “If you’re not arresting me, we’re done here. I didn’t kill Terri Sweeting. Pull the phone logs and check them. Talk to my doctor. Talk to the authorities in Joliet and Chicago. Figure out who was really after her. Conduct an actual investigation and quit trying to take the easy route.” I walked out of the interview room. Nichols didn’t stop me.