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Dartmouth, June 14
1:49 a.m.
“Mr. Eric Clark?” Allan said.
A deep, raspy voice spoke from the other side of the door. “Yeah?”
“Police. Can I speak with you a second?”
“Poh-leece?” The door opened the length of a safety chain, and an eye peered out the crack. “What can I do for you?”
Allan flipped his badge case open, held it up. “You called 9-1-1 about the incident out back, right?”
“Yes. I already gave a statement to your officers outside.”
“I know you did, but I have some additional questions.”
“Like?”
“Constable Dale told me you had witnessed part of the incident.”
“I did.”
“Good. That’s what I want to talk about.”
Eric paused, then he closed the door, and Allan heard the chain drag across the metal track. The door opened again to reveal a skinny man in his forties, dressed in jeans and a white tank top, with a blue towel draped over his shoulders. He had a shaved head, a white goatee, and faded stick ’n’ poke tattoos all over his arms, like the ones you’d have done at a friend’s house after an evening of drinking.
Allan noted the smoldering cigarette shaking in Eric’s hand, the way he kept looking at the floor and randomly touching his face. He wondered if the man might be too rattled to effectively remember details.
“Everything all right, Mr. Clark?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” He sucked wetly on the cigarette, and the long curl of ash looked ready to fall off. “It’s not everyday you see something like that.”
Allan took out a pen and notebook, flipped to a fresh page. “I’d like to start from the beginning. Slowly.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just a sec.”
He stepped into an open living room off to the left, bent over the coffee table, and ground out the cigarette in an overstuffed ashtray.
“I was in bed,” he said, coming back. “Not quite asleep. Just drifting off when I heard this loud boom. I thought someone had slammed the Dumpster lid out back. They do that here all the time. Only this boom sounded four times louder. Then almost immediately came gut-wrenching screams.”
Allan scratched his pen across the page. “So what’d you do?”
“I jumped out of bed and went to the window. That’s when I saw them. This guy was on top of Blake, holding him by the back of the head, and he stabbed him in the face with a knife. Then he got off him and ran. He picked up a gun off the ground...”
Allan held up his hand. “Slow it down, please.”
“Sure,” he agreed.
“First. How many shots did you hear?”
“Just one.”
“What time was it?”
“Twelve fifty-seven. I remember looking over at the alarm clock when it happened.”
Allan wrote 00:57 on the page. The time was about right. The 9-1-1 call had come in at 1:01 a.m.
“Did you get a look at the guy on top of Mr. Kaufman?” Allan asked.
Eric puffed his cheeks. “Not really. It was dark, man. I mean, there is some light out there from the back entryway, but not enough. Plus I was looking down on them, and he never looked up.”
“That dark, but you could see a knife in his hand?”
Eric looked at him, his mouth half open. “Well, yeah.” He frowned. “I’m pretty sure I saw it. I mean, it’s there, right?”
That bothered Allan. He wondered if seeing the knife when Eric had gone outside distorted his real memory of the incident.
“What type of clothing did he have on?”
“Black jacket. Black pants.”
“Did the jacket have a hood?”
“Yes.”
“Like a rain jacket?”
“Yeah. Now that you mention it.”
“Did you see if he had gloves on?”
“No.” Eric paused. “I mean, it happened so fast. Like maybe ten seconds. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“What about his height? His weight?”
“He...ah.” Eric rolled his gaze up and down Allan. “He looked to be about your height.”
“Five-ten?”
“About that.”
“Weight?”
Eric twisted his face. “One-seventy or so. Little smaller than you. Definitely smaller than Blake.”
Allan pictured the faceless man on the security video. He became more convinced this was not the work of rival gang members or drug dealers. One man, alone, in the dark and rain, undertook these murders. One man with bloodlust dripping from his pores. And he was smart too. Smart enough to carefully plan each murder, to use the element of surprise. Smart enough to pick weather conditions people wouldn’t be out in.
The only dumb thing Allan saw was using the shotgun. Neighbors had heard the blast. They had seen him. They had called the police, which increased his risk of being caught leaving the scene.
“How well did you know Mr. Kaufman?” Allan asked.
“Not very.” Eric jerked his thumb toward the ceiling. “He lives with his girlfriend in the apartment above us.”
Allan paused, trying to remember the name he’d read in Audra’s notes. Natalie? Nikki? Nicole?
“Do you know her name?” he asked.
Eric shook his head. “Only know her to see her. She moved in last month.”
“Nikki,” a woman called out from the back bedroom. “Her name is Nikki.”
Eric rolled his eyes and tilted his head back in the direction of the voice. “Thanks, hon.” He looked at Allan. “My wife. The eavesdropper.”
Allan cracked a smile. He heard clopping footsteps in the hallway, then a woman emerged wearing a red bathrobe and clog slippers. Her dark hair was curled up in rollers. She gave Allan a limp wave.
Allan acknowledged her with a nod. “Ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Rachel.”
“Did you see what happened?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. I was fast asleep when Eric started shaking me. ‘Wake up. Wake up. Holy shit. Someone got shot.’”
Allan glanced at Eric, who crossed his arms and began tapping his foot on the floor.
Rachel asked, “How long are you guys going to be here?”
“The rest of the night and probably most of the day.”
“Wow.”
Allan nodded. “Yeah.”
Rachel went into the kitchen and lifted a steel kettle off the stove, ran it under the faucet. Then she placed it on the front burner.
“Someone got shot?” Allan raised his eyebrows at Eric. “You didn’t know at the time who it was, did you?”
Eric hesitated. “No. I thought it was Blake.”
“But you didn’t establish his identity until you went outside, right?”
“Right.”
“Was anyone out there with you?”
“No. A couple guys from over in building 30 came out their back door. But nobody from this building.”
“Do you know their names?”
Eric said, “No, I don’t. Sorry. I think they might be brothers. I’m not sure. One drives that black Sierra out there.”
“Did they go over to the body?”
“They never left the steps, man. And they went inside once your cops got here.”
“Did they say if they saw what happened?”
“Just told me they thought they heard a gunshot and came down to see what was going on.”
“Did you tell them what you saw?”
Eric uncrossed his arms, and his Adam’s apple bobbed once. “I did. Yeah.”
Inwardly, Allan cringed. If either of these other men had witnessed anything, their memories risked being tainted by Eric’s story.
The kettle began to make loud steamy, popping sounds, and Rachel took a mug down from the cupboard, dropped a teabag inside it.
Allan asked, “Did you touch the body?”
“I checked for a pulse,” Eric said. “You know, the two-finger thing to the neck.”
“When you saw the suspect stab Mr. Kaufman, what hand did he use?”
“Right, I think.”
“After he got up from Mr. Kaufman, you said he picked up a gun?”
“Yes.”
“You could see it?”
“I could barely see him at that point. I saw the shape of a rifle or shotgun barrel. Well, part of it anyway. The guy had his back to me. The gun was in front of him.”
“Where did he pick it up?”
“From the edge of the parking lot.”
“By the Dumpster?”
A nod. “Right beside it actually.”
In his mind, Allan calculated the approximate distance from the Dumpster to the body. A good twelve to fourteen feet anyway. Seemed about right.
“Tell me what happened next,” he said.
“He pulled a long bag out from behind the Dumpster and put the gun in it. Then he took off up back.”
“Up back through the trees?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have a flashlight with him?”
“Didn’t see one.”
Allan paused a moment to read over his notes. Everything Eric had told him correlated with the information he had gathered from the first officer and the crime scene itself.
Satisfied, Allan dug out his business card, gave it to Eric. “Thank you, Mr. Clark. If you think of anything else, please call me. I might stop by in a day or two.”
“Sure.” Eric nodded. “Anytime.”
Allan stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. In his notebook, he wrote:
1. Same man.
2. Relationship?
3. Bridge cameras.
Allan closed his notebook and tucked it inside a jacket pocket. He headed down the stairs to the first floor, pulled the hood over his head, and went outside again.
