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Roscoe, NY
“I’m telling you, Pete, one of them did it. And my money’s on that Winona broad. You should have seen her trying to put the screws to her old man. It was a regular Academy Award performance.”
It was the morning after my visit to Treadwell, and Pete and I were sitting in my office, each staring at the contents of the white board, as I filled him in on the events of the previous day. Pete took a sip from his container of coffee, then inhaled sharply on his filter-tipped cigarette.
“I’m sure you’re right, Matt. You’ve always had great instincts. But what can we prove? That’s the big question. Do we have enough to be absolutely certain?”
“I think there’s enough there to justify getting an arrest warrant. Just the fact that they lied about being in Centralia, for starters. They’re definitely hiding something. If we can get the two of them in here, get them separated, and put some pressure on them, I’ll bet one of them will crack.”
“And what if they lawyer up? What then?”
“That’s just a chance we’ll have to take. I’m afraid if we wait, they’re going to take off and we might not find them again.”
Pete blew a series of perfectly round smoke rings into the air, each one smaller than the previous one so that they settled into a concentric grouping. “Okay,” he said. “So what do we actually have?”
“Well,” I said, “for starters there’s motive. I’m guessing that Billy knew a lot more about his sister’s past than she’s told her husband, and he probably could have made it pretty uncomfortable for her with the preacher. I’ll guarantee that very little of what she’s told Ron about herself is true. Who knows, maybe Billy was trying to blackmail her.”
“Could be,” said Pete. “But we probably can’t prove it.”
“And as for opportunity, I don’t buy that ‘I went to the movies’ crap that she was putting out there for a minute. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to check the newspapers for the movie schedule to see what was playing—or for that matter to buy a ticket. I doubt that either one of them can actually prove where they were that night. And we know Wayne saw the truck, so one of them was almost certainly there.”
“Circumstantial evidence at best,” said Pete between smoke rings.
“And,” I continued. “Both of them have access to the strychnine, so—”
“Objection! Circumstantial, counselor,” said Pete with a smile.
“Damn Philadelphia lawyer! Screw you and your objections. Most of the convictions we get are based on circumstantial evidence, and you know it.”
“Yeah. And so are the cases we lose.”
“Well, I still think we should bring what we have to the DA and let him decide—and the sooner the better.”
“It’s your funeral,” said Pete, grinding his cigarette butt into the ashtray. “When do you want to go?”
“No time like the present.”
* * * *
Forty-five minutes later, we were sitting across from Sullivan County District Attorney Bill Bauer in his Monticello office, laying out the evidence as we saw it, and praying he’d issue an arrest warrant. It took some real effort on my part, but at last the DA agreed to issue the document.
“But, I’m warning you,” shouted Bill, as we hurried from his office, “this better not turn out to be another Casey Anthony—or your ass is mine! I’m up for re-election this fall, and I don’t want anything screwing that up. You understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, as we shot out the door.
The DA’s reference was to the not-guilty verdict rendered in a case in Florida where a mother had been accused of murdering her child. The woman, Casey Anthony, had been acquitted when the jury found the evidence presented by the state to be just a bit too circumstantial to warrant a conviction. The prosecution had been severely battered in the press, and I was certain Bill wanted no part of a similar fiasco—and neither did I. But the thought of a cold-blooded killer getting off scot-free was more than I could bear.
* * * *
I phoned ahead to the Delaware County’s Sheriff’s Department and explained what was going on. Technically, since the arrest was being made in their jurisdiction, I needed them to be there when I served the warrant.
“I know it’s only a preacher and his wife," I explained to the deputy. "But we're talking about a pretty nasty murder, and I wouldn't be surprised by anything these two might do—especially since I’ve already talked to them.”
* * * *
It was raining hard as I drove over Cat Hollow Road to Downsville, and then took the shortcut onto Knox Avenue to County Road 26. From there it was up and down the mountain, past the accumulation of junked cars that adorned a field at its base, and over the West Branch of the Delaware River into Hamden.
I turned east onto Route 10, speeding through Hamden, Delancey, and Frazer in that order, before slowing the Jeep as I rounded the bend by the SUNY campus just before coming into Delhi. Then, it was about a seven-mile run along Route County Road 14 until I reached Treadwell—and the road to the Devoted Church of Jesus With Signs Following.
A white Delaware County Sheriff’s Department cruiser sat waiting for me at the entrance to the dead-end, and I coasted to a stop behind it at the intersection. I pulled on a rain jacket and exited my Jeep, hurrying through the downpour to the shelter of the other police vehicle. As I climbed in through the passenger door, my olfactory senses were immediately assaulted by the aroma of a thick layer of cigarette smoke that hung like a blue cloud in the car’s interior.
After a brief conversation with Deputy Koestner, I handed him the signed warrant and returned to my Jeep to await his departure for the church. A minute or so later, the cruiser pulled out and headed up the dirt road with me following close behind in my Jeep. By now, the heavy rain had turned the road’s surface into a mixture of gravel and mud, so I reached down and threw the lever on the Jeep’s transfer case, putting the vehicle into four-wheel drive.
Evil waited patiently at the end of the road, spinning its wheels.