Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (13 page)

“Let’s go,” he said, and they were back in the car driving through snowdrifts. “I want to see if the body burned,” he said, and they drove to the park.

There were no flames, no fire, and no parked cars investigating a homicide, no nothing. Tim pulled in the lot across the street. They parked and got out. Tim wanted to see the condition of the body. Carol shoved her hands down deep in her pockets to keep them warm. She zipped her coat so far up, she didn’t have any neck exposed to the bitter wind that was whipping off the river.

Tim stuck his arm through her arm, and stuck his hands in his pockets, saying, “C’mon, let’s go this way.” And like two lovers out for a middle-of-the-night stroll, instead of two murderers returning to the scene of the crime, they crossed the street, entered the park, and jogged down the snow-covered path.

The idea, he explained, was to walk past Nancy’s body to see if any of it had burned. He didn’t know if anybody was out there looking for them, but if she saw somebody, Carol should pretend she was scared.

Carol didn’t have to pretend.

From a few yards away, they walked past Nancy’s body, but they were too far away to tell if any of it had been damaged by fire. It looked like it had been. However, being that it was so dark, and it had started to snow again, she couldn’t see what part of it had burned, or if it was just the blanket or nothing at all.

What she wanted more than anything was to get the hell out of there. They continued walking, down to the river. The water gurgled in the darkness. Tim said he wanted to hug her.

She let him hug her, but what he was really doing while they embraced was looking around to see if anyone was in the area watching them. After a few minutes of simulated necking, he grabbed her arm and led her along the river, through the dense undergrowth.

Tim followed a serpentine course around the river and back up the street. They found themselves on a road that bent around to some public housing projects. They trotted now, around the back of the projects, cut in front of an empty field, then walked beside a fence.

“Don’t walk too fast,” Tim warned.

She was taller; he had trouble keeping up. Carol just wanted to get the hell home to her kids.

“Don’t look so scared. Don’t walk fast. Slow down.”

Tim grabbed her arm. He pulled at her to slow down. Soon they were at the car. Relieved to be inside, Tim shot the engine to life, threw the heater on full blast, and tooled over to Uncle Sammy’s again. While Tim and his uncle and the girls smoked some, Carol went into the bathroom. When she got out, Uncle Sammy asked her what time it was.

Carol looked at her watch. It was 4:25
A.M.
She had been away from her kids, with no one to take care of them, for 4 1/2 hours. She reminded Tim that the kids were home alone.

By the time they left, it was a quarter to five. But Tim still didn’t hurry. He drove nonchalantly around town, past favorite haunts, until he got back on the interstate and headed south.

“Do you feel like you’re being followed?” Tim asked.

The truth was, she didn’t, but she was afraid to disagree with him. Tim seemed so unstable.

“Yeah,” she lied.

Tim got off the highway at the last exit before they left the outskirts of Flint behind. He drove around, figuring he’d lead his pursuers on a wild-goose chase until he spotted them; then he’d lose them.

“Any cars follow us off the freeway?” he asked.

Carol turned and looked. No, there was no one behind. Just empty road. Tim kept driving around and then went into an all-night car wash. They pulled into a washing stall.

“Ain’t this gonna look suspicious, you going to the car wash at five-thirty in the morning?”

Tim didn’t think so. He backed the car up to the vacuum area and stopped. Snaking the pipe inside the car, he began vacuuming. He vacuumed the floor and the mats. He went back and opened the trunk. Nancy’s shoe was still there. Tim threw it in the Dumpster. Then he was gone. Carol didn’t see him. Where had he gone? Carol looked out the window, trying to see where he was, and then she turned around.

It was like he had materialized in front of the car. She didn’t know how long he had been standing there. But he appeared like he was looking to see if somebody was following them. He saw nothing and got back behind the wheel. They were on their way home.

Carol nodded off on the way. Tim woke her up. He asked her what she was thinking. She opened her eyes to snow blowing in sheets. They were still on the interstate. Tim asked her again what she was thinking.

“Nothing. I’m tired, ya know, I’m just tired.”

And then Tim stopped talking to her, questioning her. He was running down. They were just cruising through the night with their problems behind them, left back there in a Flint park, hopefully obscured by flame. Again, Carol drifted off.

Something jerked her awake. Something in her brain was telling her, warning her, not to go to sleep. She sat up and lit a cigarette, smoked for a few minutes and stubbed it out.

Tim got off at the exit for Dixie Highway/Waterford. Despite her best efforts, she fell asleep for a few minutes.

“We’re in the driveway,” said Tim.

Carol looked up. They were home. She looked at her watch—a quarter to seven! She had to get the kids up for school. But Tim had other ideas first.

“Get Nancy’s stuff together. Her bags and all her stuff,” said Tim.

He wanted to get rid of any trace that she’d been there. Carol got Nancy’s purse, coat and all her other stuff. When she had finished, there were three bags sitting on the living room floor. Tim came out of their bedroom carrying a duffel.

“I’m going back to Flint. I’ll get rid of all this stuff there.”

Tim carried it all out to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. He said he’d call her later. Tim pulled out and onto the street, turned the wheel and was soon out of sight.

After he was gone, Carol waited a few minutes and got the kids up. Apparently, they had slept all through the night because they didn’t say anything. She dressed them for school and got them on the bus, as usual, at 7:40
A.M.
And then she went upstairs and fell into a sound sleep.

Carol awoke at 1:30
P.M.
and went to the bathroom. When she finished her business, she looked at the caller ID and didn’t see a number that looked like a Flint number. Kind of hungry, she got some crackers, began eating them, and drifted off to sleep again.

“Hello, is anybody home?”

It was L’il Man’s voice. The kids, they were home. It must have been after three o’clock.

“Mom, we’re home,” said L’il Man, who was suddenly standing in her doorway. Jesseca was standing beside him.

“Mom, Aunt Maddie called. She’s on the way,” said Jesseca.

“Maddie” was Jessie’s sister Madeline.

A few minutes later, Maddie came over to take the kids to the mall. She helped the kids on with their clothes. When they were just out the door, she turned and told Carol, “I forgot My mom was trying to call you. She couldn’t get through. Call her.”

Carol hesitated for a second before saying she would. Then Maddie and the kids left and for the first time in days, Carol was alone. She fell back to sleep.

The phone woke her up. It was Tim. He told her to get up to Pontiac, to meet him at a store there. He sounded anxious.

“And bring my black shoes.”

Carol raced down into the basement where Tim had left his shoes, the ones he’d been wearing when they killed Nancy and dumped the body. She put them in a shoe box and threw them on the front seat of the car and took off. Inside of an hour, they were meeting in a parking lot behind a fast-food restaurant in Pontiac.

Carol got out and sat down in the passenger side of the Caddy. She put the shoes down on the floorboards.

“They found Nancy’s body.”

Carol was startled.

“How do you know?”

Tim said that when he was over at his uncle’s house, something told him to drive by the park. He drove by and saw the yellow crime scene tape and the Oakland County Sheriff’s cars.

Looking at the cops swarming around the crime scene, he realized that the whole time he had been driving around, he had Nancy’s stuff in the car. It was all the stuff Carol had gathered up and thrown in the trunk. And Tim had forgotten to get rid of it. He turned around and drove away from the crime scene as casually as he could. He threw the clothing and other belongings in several Dumpsters along the way back.

Carol wanted to know what they would do now. Tim said they had to get rid of the curtains that matched the bedspread in which they had wrapped Nancy’s body. They didn’t want the cops matching them up.

Carol said she would do so, and Tim said he’d get rid of the shoes. Then he reminded her to get rid of the shoes she was wearing when they killed Nancy.

“I’ll call you later, Carol.”

They separated. Tim drove back up toward Flint to get rid of his shoes and the other evidence; Carol drove home.

Back at the house, Carol pulled the matching curtains off the windows, including the curtain ties, and threw them in a garbage bag along with the white shoes she had on when they killed Nancy. Then she threw the bag in the trunk of her car. She looked at her watch: 6:15
P.M
.

She drove up the street, down the block; she really wasn’t sure where she was going, just looking for a good place. Suddenly she felt queasy. She pulled off to the side of the road, opened her door, and threw up. She wiped her mouth, looked up, and realized where she was.

Kmart. She saw it off on the right. Yeah, that was a good place.

She pulled into the lot. It was a cold November night. Few cars were parked. Business was slow.

She put the stuff in a Dumpster behind the store and then drove straight home. By the time she got back, she had missed Tim’s call. But it was on the machine.

“Meet me at the Orchard Lake Car Wash,” said Tim’s voice.

It was a local car wash. A few minutes later, she was there. Tim was already washing the Caddy. He told her that she needed to get rid of the acid on the shelf. She had to go back to the house as soon as she left and get rid of the acid and the syringes, too.

“But the kids.”

Putting it mildly, it would be difficult to get rid of the murder weapon with her kids around.

“I told Jesseca I’d call around nine.”

She might want to stay with her aunt, which would make things easier. She looked at her watch. It was just nine o’clock. Her cell phone connected her up instantly. Turned out that her daughter wanted to stay the night at Aunt Maddie’s. That was good, but what about L’il Man? And then she had to make sure she could rendezvous with Tim later. It was all so dizzying. Finally she came up with a plan to get rid of the acid while the kids were out with their aunt and then drive back to Flint to be with Tim.

Her luck held. A 9:30
P.M.
call prompted L’il Man to say that he would stay at his aunt’s, too. Carol drove back, observing all the speed limits. She’d get the acid and the syringes, put them in the car, get rid of them, and then meet Tim in Flint.

As she came abreast of her house, it looked like a car was coming out of her driveway, but she wasn’t sure. It turned left and then went down a little ways, and then it turned around and went into the driveway again. Instead of going right into her driveway, she kept going, drove past her house, and soon realized that they had turned into her neighbor’s driveway instead.

That was okay, nothing to worry about.

She turned around, came back, and went into her house. She stuck the needles in her coat pocket and grabbed the acid bottle. She came back upstairs and went to her room, where she grabbed the scale that Jessie used to use to weigh the drugs and the remainder of the crack she’d had on hand.

On her way out, she remembered that she had some Henessey cognac and Pepsi in the fridge, so she grabbed that and put the bottles in a brown paper bag. She checked the caller ID and saw that somebody had called from Nancy’s mom’s house. She called Nancy’s mom back.

Phyllis Burke said that they had found Nancy’s body. She’d been murdered. Carol feigned shocked disbelief. Carol heard the beep of call waiting on Burke’s line.

“You answer the phone and I’ll call you tomorrow,” she told Mrs. Burke.

She hung up the phone. Time to get the hell out.

Outside, she got into the Caddy. She started it up and was ready to back up when a car pulled in behind her. Carol thought that maybe it was someone who was lost. She was going to back up toward their lights so she could see who it was, but then they flipped on their lights to show her it was actually a police car.

She turned off the engine and stepped out of the car. Detective Kevin Shanlian identified himself.

He began searching her pockets. He found the needles and the scale. He wanted to know what the bottle in her hand was. He took it and looked at the label. It was hydrochloric acid. He wanted to know if she had any drugs. Scared, not thinking, she replied, “Yes,” and she handed them over. Another cop had come up behind the first one, also in plainclothes.

“Why don’t we go into the house and talk?” said the second cop.

Together, they went into the house.

They tried coaxing her to talk, but Carol wouldn’t bite. She had nothing to say except she had just finished talking to Nancy’s mother.

Shanlian wanted to know what had happened to Nancy. She said she didn’t know. He asked if he searched her house, would he find evidence of a crime, and Carol answered quickly that he wouldn’t.

She gave him permission to search. He didn’t place her under arrest, just escorted her out to his car to talk while the other officers, a few uniforms included, searched her house. She also cooperated by letting him summon the crime lab to do a sweep of the interior.

Soon after, he took her down to the station for questioning, where she began to write out her first statement.

Ten

It had been four hours in a cramped, hot, stuffy interview room, four hours of a sordid tale that implicated Carol Giles directly in the murder of Nancy Billiter. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out she was no longer a witness but a principal.