It Takes Two to Strangle (17 page)

Damon and Gerry silently sprang from their chairs in unison. Gerry grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled furiously on Anbani’s pad. “Victor McElroy. Lirim’s accountant. We can get him.”

The sheriff read the upside down note and spoke into the air above the speakerphone. “Is that a Victor McElroy?” he asked.

“I don’t remember his last name,” Hannah said. “I’m not sure I ever knew it. But I’m sure I could recognize him if you scanned me his picture.”

Anbani took down her e-mail address and promised to send a photo as soon as he had one.

“And you’ll protect me and my mother from him?” she asked.

“He’ll be behind bars tonight, and we’ll coordinate with the Oakland police to make sure you both stay safe from him,” the sheriff said. He explained that most child abuse offenses in West Virginia didn’t have statutes of limitations. Meanwhile, Gerry jerked a phone from his jacket pocket and left the room.

At Ravi Anbani’s insistence, Hannah agreed to allow him to turn on a recording device to get the details on tape. By the time Anbani had spoken the necessary background information into the recorder for evidentiary support, Gerry returned and slid a note onto the desk—he put in a request for the police in Victor’s hometown of Front Royal to arrest and hold him.

Hannah began her repulsive narrative. “I was in fifth grade when Lirim started seeing my mother. She met him in Fairmont. My mother is a free spirit and had a pretty voracious appetite for sex. I remember when I was in second grade, all of my friends were jealous because I had a television set in my room. Whenever my mother had company, she let me watch a movie with the lights off and the volume turned way up, like I was in a theater. Of course, years later I realized why, but at the time I just enjoyed it. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t selling her body, she just enjoyed the company of men.” Hannah coughed.

“Lirim always came to our house, but he was never interested in me. I was usually doing homework or playing video games in my room. The three of us ate dinner together once in a while, but he didn’t say more than a few words to me. After my mother found out he was married and broke it off with him, I didn’t see him for another six months.”

She paused and the sheriff said, “This is great, Hannah. Thank you. Please take all of the time you need.”

Encouraged, she continued. “By the time I saw Lirim again I had just turned eleven and was in sixth grade. My mother was teaching classes at the rec center in the late afternoons, so I was home alone for about three hours after school every day. It never crossed my mind to lock the front door. That day, I was in my bedroom with the radio on and I never even heard him enter.”

Hannah sniffed. Damon pictured a courageous young woman on her bed in a small apartment struggling to choke back tears. Tears of his own had started to well in his eyes.

“He didn’t hit me or tie me up or anything. But he told me that I had to come with him and showed me a knife. It looked like a hunting knife. He said I would be back in less than two hours, before my mother came home. He didn’t blindfold me or shove me into a trunk or anything like that. I sat beside him in an old junky car, and he drove about fifteen minutes outside of town. I remember thinking he was going to rape me. Even at eleven years old I knew what rape was.” She had been trying to restrain her tears but now she let them out freely, but quietly. Damon assumed she had never told Vicky Roscoph and didn’t want her mother to find out.

“I was crying so hard that I never thought to jump out of the car at a stoplight or to open the window and scream. Of course, we lived pretty close to the edge of town and you know how rural it is, Sheriff. After a couple of minutes, we didn’t pass many other cars. He took me to a mobile home in the parking lot of an abandoned airfield.”

She stopped to blow her nose and Anbani encouraged her to take her time.

Damon heard a distant voice over the other end of the speakerphone. Hannah stopped. “Hold on, Sheriff. I have to get my mother something.”

Anbani pressed the pause button on the recorder and muted the telephone.

“So you know the accomplice?” the sheriff asked Gerry.

“Yes, he’s been working for Lirim’s carnival company. But Lirim’s partner, Jim Riley, fired him a few days ago. Lirim and Victor had been skimming money from the proceeds.”

“Why didn’t Mr. Riley go to the police?” the sheriff asked.

“We’re still not sure,” Gerry admitted. “There’s something Jim isn’t telling us.”

“Interesting. But you can find Victor McElroy?”

“Yes,” Gerry confirmed. “As long as he didn’t run.” He paused in contemplation. “He gave us a home address. So we think we know where he lives.”

“I hope so,” interjected Damon, feeling left out of the conversation. “If not, Jim Riley might have the right address. I’m sure the traveling carnival keeps meticulous records.” All three men broke the tension with nervous laughter, in spite of the terrible joke.

A moment later they heard the bedroom door shut over the speakerphone. After Ravi Anbani restarted the recorder, Hannah resumed her account.

“Victor was waiting for us in the mobile home. He didn’t say much, but Lirim told me his name. I suppose he was trying to make me feel more comfortable. Lirim held out the knife and told me to take off my clothes. Neither he nor Victor ever actually touched me. Thank God for small miracles.”

Hannah began to cry even more liberally. Damon could hear her pulling tissues out of a box and wiping them against her face.

“Lirim said that some of the men he knew on the carnival circuit would pay him for pictures of a naked girl. Not like the ones in Playboy or Penthouse. Those are women, he said. Even the barely legal magazines at the newsstands were mostly girls in their late teens. He had a couple of customers lined up for pictures of a ten- or eleven-year-old girl. And since he knew my schedule and my mother’s schedule, I must have been the perfect candidate. They didn’t make me touch myself or do anything obscene. I don’t think Lirim or Victor had any interest in an eleven-year-old girl sexually. They acted very businesslike—they saw an opportunity to make money and were taking it. I was scared, so I did what they asked. I took off my clothes and laid on a bed and stood and sat in four or five different poses and that was it. Victor took pictures with an instant camera while Lirim read a newspaper.”

“Afterwards, Lirim gave me a can of Coca Cola and drove me home. We didn’t speak during the car ride, but when he dropped me off he said that if I ever told anyone, he’d kill my mother. I know I should have told someone, but I was too scared. I could have given the police information about Lirim, but I didn’t know anything about Victor other than his first name. I was afraid that if the police arrested Lirim, Victor would have gone after me or my mother.”

Sheriff Anbani asked her several more questions and Hannah answered them calmly. He assured her that he would personally make certain that her identity would not be revealed. “Thank you, Sheriff, I’ve been waiting for this day,” she said. “I’ve never told a soul, and I don’t know how I’ll feel about it tomorrow, but it feels good to get it off of my conscience.”

“I’ve been waiting fifteen years to find out the truth,” Anbani said after ending the call. “I may have just put that young woman through hell, but I’m glad we finally have the real story.”

“And I think Hannah will be better off, too,” Gerry proffered. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her to keep that secret bottled up for so many years.”

“Agreed,” Anbani replied. “Based on what we know, I’m pretty certain Hannah was the only victim. Lirim tried selling the photos in Morgantown, so he may not have had too many buyers on the carnival circuit.”

“And within a few years, any clients he did have would have been able to find better quality images on the Internet,” Damon said.

They continued to bat ideas around but collectively decided that Hannah was right. It was a money-making scheme made easy because Lirim knew Hannah’s schedule. But it probably hadn’t been a cash cow, and Lirim and Victor just moved on to their next venture.

Gerry Sloman had reserved a room at the same hotel as Damon, but needed to make phone calls to coordinate a transfer of Victor to West Virginia after he was arrested. Sheriff Anbani would work with his Marion County colleagues to determine which jurisdiction would handle the interrogation and prosecution on charges resulting from his conduct with Hannah Roscoph. But Gerry wanted the Arlington police to be involved in the interviews, too. His suspicion of Victor McElroy as a murderer had only risen.

Later that evening, Damon met Gerry in the hotel lobby. The Hampton Inn didn’t have a bar and the men were too tired to venture outside, so they settled into comfortable lounge chairs in the open entryway. Save for a pair of receptionists who were out of earshot, they were alone.

Gerry had spoken with Margaret, who provided him with two significant pieces of information. The first was that the Front Royal police in western Virginia had picked up Victor McElroy. He was at home and gave up without resistance. The local police were searching his residence but hadn’t uncovered any photographs, instant cameras or evidence that could tie him to Lirim’s murder. Margaret was on her way to double check—the local police didn’t have the same level of intimacy with the details of Lirim’s murder.

Victor was being held in Front Royal and would be transferred to Morgantown in the morning. Gerry anticipated charges of accessory to kidnapping, child abuse and accessory to interstate distribution of child pornography.

The second piece of news was that the preliminary results of the autopsy were back. The medical examiner, Grace Chu, confirmed that Lirim had been the victim of two isolated strangulations. One set of marks was from a clothesline as they expected. The other set was from a bicycle chain.

The chain was rough and had done significant damage to the exterior of Lirim’s throat. But based on the locations and angles of the marks, according to Grace Chu, it was the nylon clothesline that killed him. Coupled with medical evidence from the inner workings of Lirim’s throat, Grace posited that not only had the clothesline killed Lirim, but it killed him prior to use of the chain. She couldn’t say with any certainty how much time had passed between strangulations, but it had been a matter of hours rather than minutes.

“So that eliminates the theory that one person strangled him and left him unconscious and a second person came in later and finished the job,” Gerry said in closing.

“And if hours passed between strangulations, it wasn’t a murderer who started with one weapon, lost control of it and had to move to a second weapon,” Damon said.

“Margaret and I think we’re left with a single scenario, and Grace agrees. Lirim was strangled to death in his sleep with a clothesline. Hours later, a second person came in with the exact same intent, found Lirim in bed in the dark, thought he was asleep and choked him with a bicycle chain.”

“Someone tried to kill a dead man,” Damon said rhetorically. “It still seems pretty coincidental that two people would try to strangle the same man on the same night.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It could be explained if there was a recent event that triggered two people who each had a motive.” Gerry sat forward in his chair. “As for method, I’ve been thinking about that too. In close proximity to the other trailers, a gunshot would make too much noise unless the killer had a silencer. So that would leave suffocation, strangulation and stabbing as the most likely means for murder. Suffocation would be too risky. Lirim was strong. Had he woken up and the murderer been armed with only a pillow, Lirim could have fought off the attacker. Of course that’s possible with a strangulation too, but much less likely if the ligature is already around the person’s neck.”

“So that leaves knifing and strangulation.”

“Exactly. And unlike with a knife, there’s less risk of screaming with strangulation and no risk of getting blood on your clothes.”

“Were any fingerprints found on the body?” Damon asked.

“No. And there was no blood or human tissue under Lirim’s fingernails.”

The men debated whether a prosecutor could pursue a charge for attempted murder after a man was already dead. Gerry was of the opinion that the county could.

Just before eleven, Damon and Gerry retired to their separate rooms. Gerry was meeting Margaret, Ravi Anbani and the Marion County sheriff early in the morning to discuss strategy for Victor’s interrogation. Damon wasn’t invited to join and resigned himself to driving home to Hollydale in the morning.

Chapter 16

Damon lay awake in the overnight hours beneath a thin blanket and stared at the light post outside of his hotel window. He turned over all of the facts of the case. There was a lot of information, and it was good information, but the pieces didn’t all connect.

Tabby’s death still troubled him. She died in a car accident less than two weeks after finding her husband’s photos of an unclothed child. And it wasn’t a straightforward accident. She had been driving in the middle of the night with no known objective. A large black vehicle struck Tabby’s car head on. Did Lirim have one registered in his name or under Big Surf?

Three fourteen. Damon crawled out of the bed and composed an e-mail with his thoughts on vehicle registration to Gerry and Ravi Anbani. Damon woke four hours later and checked his phone. Ravi Anbani had responded with a simple, “Good thought, we’ll look into it.”