Blood Games (7 page)

John Taylor’s real first name was Haskell, but nobody ever called him by it. The song “Big Bad John” had been popular when he was a bruising toddler, and his daddy had started calling him that. The nickname soon got shortened to plain John and nobody had called him anything else since. At twenty-seven, he was the youngest detective in the Washington Police Department and one of its most promising officers. One of his fields of training was photography, and he took most crime scene photographs for his department. After Michelle Sparrow called him, he drove his pickup truck to the police department, loaded his photo equipment into the police evidence van, and went to 110 Lawson Road. He arrived as Melvin Hope was looking over Lieth Von Stein’s body.

David Sparrow and Ed Cherry were on the porch, and Taylor told them to seal off the yard with the yellow crime-scene tape he had brought in the van. Nobody was to pass beyond the tape without an official reason for being there.

Taylor joined his sergeant and captain in the bloody bedroom and got a brief rundown on what had happened before the three detectives took a quick walk-through of the house to begin scouting for evidence.

It was apparent that the intruder had entered and departed the house by the back porch door, but the broken window by the door was a mystery. It had been broken from the outside, because the glass shards were scattered on the beige linoleum of the porch floor. But why had the window been broken when the wooden door itself had nine panes of glass? A person would need long arms and have to stand on tiptoes to reach through the broken window and unlock the door. Also the cuts on the screen didn’t seem to match the breaks in the glass. Could somebody have entered with a key and broken the window as an afterthought to try to make it seem like a break-in?

Another odd thing on the back porch was a faded, torn military knapsack lying on the floor by a plastic garbage can. It was obviously out of place. Had it been abandoned by the intruder?

Two cabinets in the kitchen stood open, along with two drawers. Two purses lay on a countertop, and the contents of another purse, this one white, had been spilled across the range top in the kitchen island. A wallet, a fat folder of credit cards, and a small aspirin bottle were spread over stove eye covers decorated with fox hunt scenes. The wallet and purses appeared to have been rifled, but the detectives weren’t convinced that robbery had been the motive for this crime.

Too many things that a robber might take had been left behind: televisions, stereos, tape players, a VCR, computers. A twenty-dollar bill and a handful of change lay in clear view on a dressing table in the Von Stein bedroom. Lieth Von Stein’s wallet and watch lay untouched in a letter box. His wife’s wedding rings were in a small bowl. Other valuable jewelry was in an unlocked box atop a chest.

Could Lieth have awakened and startled a burglar before the thief had a chance to find all these things? If so, why didn’t the burglar just flee? And why would a burglar creep into an occupied bedroom in the middle of the night carrying a baseball bat or club and a large knife unless he had come with an intention to murder?

While the detectives were doing their walk-through, others had been arriving at the house: Chief Harry Stokes, Captain Zane Osnoe, two technicians dispatched from the hospital to remove Lieth Von Stein’s body, a news crew from the local TV station.

“Take a number and get in line,” David Sparrow told the news crew, who were not allowed inside the crime scene tape. No one would be talking to them for a while yet, not until things had been sorted out.

One young man was allowed behind the tape. Andrew Arnold once had dated Angela briefly, and they had remained close friends. She had called him after telephoning her brother. He identified himself to Sergeant Tetterton, and Tetterton told him that Angela was inside and it was okay to go on in. Bonnie, Tetterton told him, was still alive, but Lieth was dead, although Angela didn’t know it yet. Angela was sitting in the living room when he came in. She had little to say, and Arnold didn’t know what to say to her. The two sat quietly until Tetterton came to tell Angela that her stepfather was dead. When he did, Tetterton said later, he saw what he thought was a tear beginning to well in the corner of one eye. Shortly afterward, Sergeant Hope came to suggest that Angela ride downtown to the police department with him so that he could take a statement from her. Her friend, Hope said, could follow in his own car.

In the emergency room at Beaufort County Hospital, only a half-mile from the swarming scene on Lawson Road, Dr. Elizabeth Cook was determining the extent of Bonnie Von Stein’s injuries. Her patient was alert but acting “bizarre,” as Dr. Cook later described it.

“Is he dead?” Bonnie asked as the doctor worked over her. “I’m glad he’s dead. He’s not suffering. He’s out of his misery.”

Dr. Cook had found that her patient had three ragged lacerations on her head: two near the hairline at the center of her forehead, each about an inch long; another over her right eyebrow, this one larger, C-shaped. Bonnie’s left thumb was swollen and bruised, perhaps broken, although she still could move it.

Her most serious injury was to her chest. Above her right breast was a bruise the size of a grapefruit. Just to the right of her sternum was a two-inch stab wound, deeper on the right than on the left. The blade had apparently glanced off the bone and cut into the chest wall. The lung had not been penetrated, but it had partially collapsed.

Dr. Cook ordered a transfusion, started an IV, and began inserting a catheter into the chest to allow the wound to drain and the lung to re-inflate.

“Can’t you put me to sleep?” Bonnie asked as the doctor worked.

“No, darling, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Bonnie’s breathing improved almost immediately, and Dr. Cook went on to suture all her wounds and order a second unit of blood before admitting her to the hospital’s intensive care facility.

At the Public Safety Building at North Carolina State University, Patrolman Michael Allen and Lieutenant Theresa Crocker had managed to get the agitated young man they’d picked up at emergency call box EO8 calmed enough to learn that his name was Christopher Pritchard. His sister had called him in his dorm room a little before five to tell him that their parents had been beaten and stabbed and that he’d “better get his butt home.” He couldn’t find his car keys. And he had been so upset that he had left his dorm not knowing what to do until he saw the call box and asked for help.

Allen and Crocker told him that they would try to find out for certain what had happened and asked if he would like something to eat or drink while they did it. He declined and perched in a chair hugging his knees.

Melvin Hope had just radioed Michelle Sparrow that he was leaving 110 Lawson Road to bring Angela Pritchard to the police station when Michelle got a call from Patrolman Allen at N.C. State. She gave him the number for the direct line to the Washington Police Department and told him to wait five minutes and call Sergeant Hope for details.

Lieutenant Crocker notified her supervisor of the situation, and after she called Hope and confirmed the young man’s story, he authorized two officers to drive him to Washington in a public safety car. Crocker and Allen were about to go off duty, but they volunteered to take him.

“How long does it take to get to Washington?” Allen asked him.

“An hour and a half if I drive,” Chris Pritchard said.

Traveling at the speed limit, the trip normally took about two and a quarter hours.

The three left Raleigh about six. Allen was driving, Chris Pritchard riding in the front seat with him.

Chris said little as they began the trip, and after fifteen minutes, Allen asked him if he’d like to get into the backseat and try to sleep. Chris said yes, and Allen pulled off the road so that Chris and Crocker could exchange places. Soon after Allen pulled back onto the highway, his backseat passenger was curled up, fast asleep.

Melvin Hope did not understand how the young woman before him could be so unemotional. Angela Pritchard answered his questions as if she had been not at all distressed by the terrible events of the morning.

She had just graduated from Washington High and would be going to Greensboro College, a prestigious private school, in the fall, she said. She told Hope about going out riding with her friend Donna Brady the night before. Donna had let her out in front of the house a little before eleven. Her stepfather had been in bed but her mother had been up watching TV. They’d talked briefly and she’d gone on up to her room. She went to sleep about twelve-thirty, and the next thing she knew, Danny Edwards was waking her. She hadn’t seen or heard anything. Melvin was incredulous that she’d heard nothing, but he tried not to show it when he pressed her on it. Well, she explained, she was a heavy sleeper. And her door was closed, and her fan was blowing on her. She’d slept with a fan blowing on her since she was a baby.

The young woman seemed so detached that Melvin finally said, “Look, do you realize what’s happened here?”

“Yes,” she said. “My mother and stepfather have been stabbed and my stepfather’s dead.”

Only when she mentioned that her stepfather was dead did her voice crack and she display the first sign of distress to Hope.

A little before six, Francis Brady, an executive with an area TV station, answered his doorbell in Smallwood to find Angela Pritchard and Andrew Arnold at his door.

“Is Donna up?” Angela asked.

“Should she be?” Brady asked, thinking perhaps his daughter had made plans that she had forgotten.

“My stepfather’s been stabbed and Mother’s in the hospital,” Angela told him.

Shocked, Brady invited the young pair into his den, and when his wife, Lillian, came to see who was calling, Brady told her what had happened and she went immediately to wake Donna.

Donna came into the den shortly and went straight to hug Angela. Later, she said that she thought Angela was almost about to cry.

Melvin Hope returned to 110 Lawson Road, and he and Captain Danny Boyd decided to go to the hospital to see if they might be able to talk to Bonnie Von Stein. The detectives hoped to get some description of her attacker so that they could put out an alert.

Dr. Cook gave permission for them to ask a few questions, but they found Bonnie “befuddled and kind of whacked out,” unable even to tell them whether the intruder was black or white.

“It was dark,” she kept saying.

Chris Pritchard did not stir in the backseat of the N.C. State Safety Patrol car until Allen and Crocker had found their way to the Beaufort County Law Enforcement Center, only to discover that they had come to the wrong place. Chris directed them instead to the Washington Police Department a few blocks away. They arrived about eight-thirty, and Sergeant Hope was not there. He had gone home to shower and change clothes. While they awaited his return, Chris nervously paced.

Hope arrived shortly, shaved and wearing a suit. He told Chris that he had left the hospital only a short time earlier and his mother was going to be all right. But he was sorry to report that his stepfather was dead. All the while, he watched Chris closely for a reaction, and later he described it this way: “Chris was really trying to appear grief-stricken, but he wasn’t quite making it. It was almost like he was going for an Emmy.”

“Look, I’m going to need to talk to you,” Hope said. “Do you want to talk now, or would you rather go to the hospital first and see your mother?”

“I want to go to the hospital,” Chris said, his voice cracking.

“It was almost like he had one eye on the exit and the other on me when he left,” Hope recalled later.

At the hospital, Chris was allowed into the intensive care section for a short visit. He stood holding his mother’s hand and crying as she told him what had happened.

8

Nelson Sheppard, a tall, amiable man, had been in law enforcement for twenty-six years. During that time he had become as skilled a politician as he was a law enforcement officer, a combination of abilities that had allowed him to serve for seven years so far as sheriff of Beaufort County, a job he hoped to hold for some time to come. He was Michelle Sparrow’s boss, and she made sure that she kept him fully informed. Early on the morning of July 25, she called to tell him about the murder in Smallwood. The case was not in his jurisdiction, but he liked to keep up with what was going on in the county. On his way to work, he stopped by the house at 110 Lawson Road.

He spotted John Taylor and went over to talk to him. Taylor had worked for Sheppard as a deputy before joining the police department, and Sheppard liked him and respected him. Taylor showed his former boss through the house and told him what little was known about the situation.

“Something stinks about this one, John,” said Sheppard, who had been a detective himself for five years.

Sheppard noticed that Lewis Young was not at the scene and was not surprised. Young was the resident agent of the State Bureau of Investigation in Beaufort County. His primary duty was to assist local law enforcement agencies with difficult cases, but local officials had to first request his help. Sheppard knew that there were problems in the Washington Police Department, and that in recent years an unspoken animosity had grown between the department and the SBI.

Young was perhaps the best educated and most widely trained law enforcement officer in the county. A native of Louisburg, in the central part of the state, he was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and had been a teacher and parole officer before joining the SBI more than twelve years earlier. He had been the first full-time SBI agent assigned to Beaufort County, his first and only duty station. A soft-spoken man with an easygoing disposition, Young had quickly earned a reputation as an honest, dedicated and thorough officer. He and Sheppard had become close friends, and had made many cases together.