Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (11 page)

Nancy loaded up her crack pipe and came over to sit at the foot of the bed, where she began smoking. Tim sat on a chair in front of her with his elbows back, lounging. Carol pulled out a cigarette from a pack and lit up. Periodically she took a swig from a one-liter Pepsi she had brought down with her.

The conversation went back and forth breezily, about California and about Nancy’s work, until Carol asked Tim what time it was. He looked at his watch.

“One o’clock,” he answered.

Nancy made a phone call about 1:20
A.M.
to see if her friend Bill, who had dropped her off, had made it home safely. He had and she felt relieved. Carol put the phone on the bed so she could see it ring, because the ringer was broken but an incoming call would light up the dial.

“So, Nancy, tell me about the break-in again,” Tim asked.

He wanted to know how she knew where the safe was.

“What safe? Tim, I didn’t break into the house; I wouldn’t, you know. I wouldn’t steal anything from Carol.”

Carol explained that the stuff that was stolen was her deceased husband’s jewelry.

“It’s wrong to steal from a dead man,” Carol said.

Nancy readily agreed.

“I think you’re lying,” Tim said, looking her dead in the eye. “I think you know where the stuff is. What do you think, Carol?”

Carol told her erstwhile “friend” that she thought she had done it, because “… I found the bank.” And then Carol picked up the bank to show her that it wasn’t in the trunk of the car anymore.

Nancy hastily explained that she had found it at the end of the driveway and put it in the trunk of the car. But Tim was tired of the bullshit.

“I think you’re lying,” Tim said quietly.

Carol thought Tim had left his gun upstairs, which was why she was surprised when he flashed across the room and pointed the muzzle of the automatic close to Nancy’s face. If Tim twitched, Nancy was hamburger.

Nancy didn’t take him seriously.

“Stop playing,” she said.

Tim swung. Cold steel bit into soft flesh. At that same moment, Carol heard a noise from upstairs. Fearful the kids were up, Carol ran up the stairs, glancing back long enough to see blood seeping from Nancy’s face.

After checking on the kids—they were all right, still asleep—Carol went to go back down. Descending the steps, she heard moaning coming from the basement.

When she got back, she saw Nancy sprawled on the bed, spread-eagled. Her wrists were tied to the bed frame with pantyhose. Nancy still had her uniform on from work, but she had one leg out of her pants.

Carol couldn’t figure that one out: how had her leg gotten out of her pants? And she wasn’t wearing any panties or pantyhose. Looking closer, she saw that the pantyhose binding her wrists to the bed were one color and the pair binding her legs was another. Then there was the washcloth.

Tim had stuffed it in her mouth to stop her from screaming. The gag was secured with another pair of hose tied around her head.

Tim hit Nancy in the stomach. He hit her again and again and again, his rage crashing down like a pile driver into her saggy middle.

Nancy kept moaning.

“Shut up, shut up,” Tim yelled, hitting her harder and harder. “If you don’t, I’ll kill ya right here in the basement.”

Carol heard Nancy making noises; that’s how she knew she was conscious. Then Tim pointed the gun at Nancy. He handed Carol a syringe and said, “Shoot her.”

Carol looked at it. She had no idea what it was loaded with, but she knew it was full. Tim ordered her to inject Nancy with the mystery liquid. But Carol didn’t want to. Hell, she had no idea what was in the syringe. She tried to stall, but Tim insisted.

Carol looked down the barrel of the gun. She was convinced that if she didn’t do it, he would kill her. So she did, sticking the needle in Nancy’s ankle. Carefully, quickly, she pushed the plunger and watched the fluid drain into her leg. Nancy moaned.

Tim hit her in the face again and ordered her to shut up.

“Okay,” said Carol, standing up, “it’s done. I injected her.”

“Fill it up again,” Tim ordered in a cold voice.

He pointed at the shelf near the foot of the bed. For the first time since they’d come downstairs, Carol saw the clear plastic jug filled with hydrochloric acid Tim had placed there. She knew what the stuff was. Jessie had used it to fill up the lawn mower’s battery.

Tim had decided to kill Nancy by injecting her with the deadly acid.

With no choice, Carol plunged the needle into the jug and pulled the plunger back. She tried taking her time filling it up, but he kept hurrying her. She explained that she had to make sure she got the air out of it—otherwise, Nancy would die from an embolism.

The clear white fluid filled up the hollow cylinder to the halfway point. She brought it up to the light and squeezed a bit out of the tip. Carol’s fright-filled eyes followed the path of the needle toward Nancy’s arm. It was like somebody else doing it. Finally, when she could delay no longer, Carol delivered the injection into Nancy’s arm and watched as the sharp needle penetrated the skin and the acid burned her.

“I saw that,” Tim said.

He’d been watching her like a hawk.

“You only had it half full. Fill it up. All the way.”

Carol couldn’t bluff anymore. She had to fill the syringe to the top, or Tim would kill her for not doing what he wanted. She went through the same procedure, going slower, trying to think.

When she could delay no longer, she shot the liquid subcutaneously, hoping it wouldn’t get into any veins or do anything too damaging. But despite her best efforts, Nancy moaned in pain.

Tim watched with a relentless eye, smoking intensely, covering both of them with the automatic. Whenever Nancy moaned, he ordered her to be quiet.

Six times, Tim told her to inject Nancy; six times, Carol filled the syringe with the hydrochloric acid and plunged the needle into Nancy’s skin. Carol gave injections in Nancy’s leg, arm and stomach; then Tim told her, “The neck”; and she plunged the needle into her neck.

Nancy kept moaning and moaning. Then, suddenly, the moaning stopped. Her eyes stayed open, but there was nothing there; the light had gone out.

Nancy Billiter was dead. Just as well. By that time, the needle was spent.

Suddenly, Nancy jerked up. She hadn’t been dead after all. Maybe she was playing possum or maybe she had just gone out for a minute. Whatever. She rose up and began struggling against her bonds.

Tim whacked at her face with the barrel of the gun. The metal slammed into flesh. She bled heavily, but the force of the blow drove her back down to the mattress.

“Lay down and be quiet,” Tim commanded.

Carol thought she heard her kids waking up and ran upstairs to check on them. They were fine. When she came down again, Tim was back to punching Nancy in the stomach. Carol stood by the foot of the bed. When he moved back, Carol stared at Nancy in horror.

Nancy’s skin was exposed. Her blouse was open. There was extensive bluish and yellowish bruising around her midsection, like she’d just spent an hour with Muhammad Ali pounding her gut.

Tim told Carol to get a wet towel. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this, but she wouldn’t dare ask Tim—not now, not when he was so mad. She figured to herself that maybe Nancy’s face was so bloody, she was to wipe it off.

Carol wrung it out and handed it to Tim. He went over to the laundry machine and poured bleach on it. He used the bleach-soaked cloth to wipe off Nancy’s blood that had spattered the wall. Then he wiped his hands with the towel. When she heard another noise from upstairs, Carol left to check on the kids again. She came back down a few minutes later. That’s when she saw Tim holding the towel over Nancy’s face.

Tim was smothering her.

Gasping for air, Nancy squirmed and kicked; then, suddenly, she wasn’t fighting any longer. She just lay there, limp. Hesitantly, Carol came closer and sat on the bed next to her friend. Tim got up and walked away, leaving the towel over her face.

Carol thought she could hear her breathing. Maybe she was still alive. Carol pulled the towel down and freed up her air and sinus passages. Carol heard noise again from upstairs. Her kids. She looked at her watch. It was six o’clock. She had to get them up at seven in time for school.

Leaving Nancy the way she was, they left the basement and went upstairs together. Behind them, they closed the basement door and put a knife in the jamb so the kids couldn’t get in; the door didn’t have a regular lock.

Nine

Tim wondered what it would be like to have sex with a dead body. Carol thought that was repugnant and told him so. Instead, Tim seemed to be satiated when they rutted like pigs on the sofa.

Afterward, Carol looked at her watch. It was 6:00
A.M.
, November 13.

Tim gazed through the blinds. He was convinced that the phone call Nancy made had not been to the guy who dropped her off but to the cops, who were now staking the house out waiting for them. Carol figured his paranoia came from the stuff he kept smoking.

She tried to reason with him. It was the crack talking, not him. Tim’s response?

He was across the room in a flash and pulled Carol to the door, opened it and, still holding her arm, pulled her down the long driveway to see if there was a police car at the curb.

“Tim, there’s nothing,” Carol urged.

Tim kept looking, at the curb, across the street at the church, at the parking lot next door. There was nothing, save another dreary November morning beginning with a gray overcast sky and a sharp chill in the air.

Before they got to the curb, Tim ordered, “Go back in the house.”

Carol went back in and started to walk toward the bedroom. She planned on calling 911 because Nancy was still breathing when they left her, and Carol was concerned. She figured that if she dialed 911 but said nothing into the receiver, instead leaving it off the hook, they would trace the call. But then Tim came in from outside, so she couldn’t reach the bedroom; he’d be suspicious if she went in alone. Instead, she went to the bathroom.

When she came out, he went into their bedroom and was gazing intently out the window. He still thought the cops were out there. Then he turned and quickly ran into the kids’ rooms. Anxious, lest he do something insane, Carol followed him.

Tim did the same thing; he looked out L’il Man’s window, then Jesseca’s, surprised there were no cops. Then it was into the bathroom and looking out the bathroom window and closing the shower curtain so no one from outside could look in. He went back out to the kitchen and he looked out the dining room window and the kitchen window again. Finally he went downstairs to the basement.

He was down there only a few seconds, but he heard the floorboards above him creaking, so he shot up the stairs to find Carol walking toward the bedroom. His eyes tracked her as she got the kids up and quickly dressed them for school.

“Mama, I don’t want to go to school. I’m sick,” complained her daughter.

No way would Carol let her child stay home, not with Nancy trussed up like a turkey in the basement, and Lord knew if she was still breathing.

Carol insisted: her daughter had to go to school. Jesseca wasn’t very happy, but she acquiesced. She knew her mom always acted in her best interests.

Carol saw both of them off and onto the bus. She went back inside.

“We have to get rid of her,” Tim said. “We have to get rid of Nancy.”

Carol remembered Nancy’s bloody face and shivered at the thought. No matter how she’d tried to help her, someplace, deep down, she knew now that she was dead.

“And then there’s the blood on the mattress, so we have to get rid of the mattress, too,” Tim added.

Carol was afraid she would show her fear, that her voice would crack. She didn’t want to show him she was scared. The whole time they had been talking, he had been walking around the house, looking out the windows, and somehow he had gotten the gun in his hand. She was afraid anything would set him off, anything, especially her fear of discovery.

“How can we just get rid of her?” she said out loud.

“Well, I can take her to Rouge Park or someplace in Detroit. Just leave her in the park or wherever.”

“Well, you can’t do that in daylight.”

“Then we’ll have to wait for tonight,” Tim said.

He mumbled something about making Nancy look like the victim of a drug deal gone bad. Tim pulled the knife out of the door to the basement. Carol followed him downstairs, where he immediately checked to make sure that no one had come through the basement windows.

Carol looked over at the bloody, unmoving heap on the bed. She didn’t dare step closer, for fear she would find out for sure that Nancy was dead. By staying back, there was still a small sliver of hope.

They went back upstairs and Tim said, “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where to?” asked Carol, putting her coat on.

Tim wanted to go to Flint to get a pickup truck. The idea he had was to use the truck to transport the body to a place where they could dump it.

On the way, Tim explained that they were in this together. Carol didn’t reply.

Tim said if they got caught, the cops would use one against the other. They needed to stay strong. But if they got arrested, for whatever reason, “just look in their eyes and don’t act fidgety. Because that’s what they look for. If you use your hands or you move your legs when you talk, they know you’re lying.”

Carol talked with her hands. It made Carol more nervous to sit motionless.

“If you look in their eyes and ya tell them, they’ll believe you,” Tim stated.

Carol didn’t think she could do it; Tim though, seemed able to do it. He could lie to someone by looking him or her right in the eye and be totally convincing. Tim always talked about cops like they used this psychology to get you to confess and to do what they wanted you to do. And then Tim said what he’d been saying since the day that she met him back at the hospital:

“You never leave witnesses to a crime.”

Carol did her best to look him in the eye and not look scared.

When they got to Flint, they drove up and down unfamiliar streets, at least unfamiliar to Carol, but Tim seemed to know where he was going. Tim was looking for a friend’s place. He had a friend who had a garage. After a while, they found the place and they went in to talk to somebody.