Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (2 page)

His digital call was to the county’s on-duty medical examiner, Dr. Wilys Mueller. He gave him permission to move the body. When the techies and police photographer were finished, the body would be transported to the county morgue. He also called Sergeant Ives Potrafka of his department and requested he come to the crime scene as soon as possible. Then it was a quick call to the on-duty county prosecutor, David Newblatt, who authorized the autopsy for the following morning at 11:00.

Next up was a check of missing person reports. Shanlian called the Flint Police and Central Dispatch and requested a search of all recent missing W/F reports that matched the victim’s description.

That brought negative results quickly: he could find no one missing who fit the dead woman’s description. Shanlian responded with a Statewide Administrative message, what used to be known as an All Points Bulletin (APB), requesting information on any recent missing person reports. Trying to match those to the victim also proved a negative result.

Sometimes, bad guys are captured on videotape before they commit the murder. There was one case in Tampa, Florida, where a serial killer named Sam Smithers walked into a convenience store with his victim, bought some stuff, and less than a half hour later killed her. The tape allowed the prosecutors to put him together with the victim before the murder took place. Shanlian requested that detectives retrieve any video surveillance from area gas stations.

A few minutes later, Sergeant Ives Potrafka of the sheriff’s office arrived on the scene to assist Shanlian.

“Ives, I want you to maintain the crime scene in order to free up other detectives for further investigation.”

It was a boring but important job; Potrafka had to maintain the integrity of the scene, not allow anyone to contaminate it and make sure that any evidence gathered by the Michigan Police Crime Lab found its way to Shanlian immediately. Most importantly, Potrafka would be in charge of making sure the body got transported to the morgue after the crime scene was completely processed.

Looking down at the victim’s T-shirt, Shanlian knew he didn’t have to be a Ph.D. to figure out what was next. He asked a female deputy to call all the local area codes and see if she could locate a restaurant called South Boulevard Station. She came back a few minutes later with the answer. There was a restaurant by that name in Auburn Hills.

Auburn hills. That was only an hour’s drive south. Shanlian hypothesized that maybe she was killed down there and dumped in his bailiwick. He wouldn’t know for sure until he went down there.

Two

Seated beside Shanlian’s desk at headquarters was Bobby Lee Locke. Twenty-three years old, he worked for a local cable company. Like most people, he had never been involved with violence, let alone murder. That all changed when he and his friends Del Crane, Alex Sexton and Dee Ryan had taken time off from work to go ice fishing at a county park set beside the Flint River in Flint, Michigan.

They got there a little before 1:00
P.M.
, he told Shanlian. As they got out of their van, their breath plumed out like smoke. The temperature was hovering just above freezing. The park was beautiful in the spring, summer and early fall. But by late fall, it was a dead place. Brown leaves that had not been covered by the white stuff lay lifeless on the snow-encrusted ground. Their boots crunched beneath them. They trekked east into the park, going toward the river, which was stocked with that delicious fish that would make an excellent dinner.

The pathway ran east from the parking lot, eventually terminating at the river. Trees bordered the trail, their naked branches hibernating against the coming winter. Across from them, running in the opposite direction, was a bicycle path, deserted and forlorn in the late-fall sun.

There was a slight wind. It made them pull their collars up and huddle down inside their coats. Over their shoulders they carried their poles, the party looking like some late-twentieth-century version of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher out for a little fishing and partying. And just like Mark Twain’s heroes, they ran into trouble.

Fifty feet in front of them was something wrapped up in a blanket. They stopped. Del thought it looked like a body. Dee thought it was a deer or a dog. They continued hiking but stopped when they got to it.

Bobby kicked out and struck it with his foot. His face turned a ghostly pallor when he realized he had kicked someone’s leg. They all freaked and ran back to the van. When they got there, they discussed what to do. Bobby and Del decided to go back and check to make sure they weren’t crazy.

They weren’t. They wound up gazing down at a body. They ran back, found a phone, and dialed 911.

“And that’s all I know,” Bobby concluded.

That all jibed with what Shanlian knew.

“Thanks for your statement,” Shanlian said. “If we need you, we’ll call you.”

He watched as the dazed young man wound his way through the room, tightly packed with desks and chairs and detectives on phones, and disappeared down the stairs at the far end.

“Kevin.”

Shanlian looked up. It was Melki. While Shanlian had been conducting the interview with Locke, Melki had called the restaurant South Boulevard Station in Auburn Hills. He discovered that a waitress named Nancy Billiter had not shown up for work the previous night. She was usually a punctual person, so the restaurant manager was worried.

The manager supplied a description of Nancy Billiter. It matched that of the “Jane Doe” discovered in the park in Flint.

Shanlian and Melki felt a bit cocky. Who could blame them? They’d just beaten the odds. It wasn’t very often you could establish the identity in a body dump case with a few phone calls, but it looked like they had. But as quickly as he’d gone up, Shanlian came down.

He knew that the body was only the beginning. Its discovery was just the end of a long set of circumstances that led to murder. Where it really got interesting was the discovery of the killer and, hopefully, the motive. Motive isn’t necessary to convict, but it sure helps the jury convict the bad guy if they can understand why the crime was committed.

There was, of course, no guarantee there would be a trial. Or, an accused. District attorneys don’t like to talk about it, lest the voting populace kicks them out of office, but the fact is that every day in America, the perfect crime is committed. Many killers are never identified and are free to kill again.

Shanlian and his partner, Melki, knew all this. No cop likes to admit that a bad guy can outwit him or her and get away with murder, but they all know it happens. Shanlian just hoped that this wouldn’t be one of those times.

Shanlian and Melki bundled into their topcoats. They got into their unmarked Ford Taurus and headed south on Interstate 75. Their destination was the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills. Shanlian gazed out into the night that had seemed to fall so fast in late afternoon.

He wasn’t thinking that someplace out there in the towns where lights were just coming on to illuminate the encroaching darkness there was a bullet with his name on it. Sure, once in a while there was that mortal chance of encountering a murderer who was packing and who decided he didn’t want to be taken in to face a trial and a life sentence, who pulls that weapon and fires. Like anytime he went into the field, Shanlian just hoped that no one would be firing any weapons.

No, what he was really concerned about, what he was really thinking about, was the case itself.

The biggest danger to a homicide cop was that the job would seep through that barrier he’d built up in his brain between his professional and personal life. What was to be feared on a regular basis was not the murderer’s bullets but the grief of the loved ones the victim left behind; it was not the knife of the murderer but the rage behind the blade, the anger that propelled the crime and caused a human being to abandon all civilized behavior and instead resort to deadly force.

Grief, rage, anger. It was only so long, only so many years of visiting crime scenes, before the brain went toxic from it all.

Kevin Shanlian and Chuck Melki got to the Auburn Hills Police Department at 6:50
P.M.
They had called earlier to say they were coming down and working a murder case. Since it was still not clear who would have venue in the case—because no one yet knew where the suspected victim Nancy Billiter had died—Detective Scott Edwards of the Auburn Hills Police Department had been assigned to the case.

“Look, I have a contact at South Boulevard Station,” he told Shanlian and Melki. “I already called over there.”

Edwards had gone ahead and questioned the people over at the restaurant and found out Billiter’s last-known address and her physical description.

“She matches the victim,” he said simply.

He had also gotten a list of her relatives.

“Okay, let’s go over to the restaurant,” said Shanlian. “We still need a positive ID.”

They drove through the wind and cold, through the air filled with moisture coming off Lake Michigan. The car’s heater wasn’t the greatest in the world; the cold air seemed to go right through them, chilling their bones. But when they got to South Boulevard Station a few minutes later, they found it warm and comfortable inside.

Edwards flashed the tin and asked the bartender where the manager was. The bartender motioned to a back office, where they found Eddie Grant.

“Yes, I’m the manager. How can I help you?” said Grant.

“You have an employee named Nancy Billiter,” asked Edwards.

“Yes. She’s been out the last two nights.”

“What does she look like?”

“Well, she’s about forty-five, about five three, one hundred thirty pounds or so.”

“Hair and eyes?”

“Sort of reddish blond and blue eyes. Hey, you the cops who called?”

None of the cops answered yet. They needed more.

“What about her work uniform? Could you describe it, please?” Shanlian asked easily.

“Uh, it’s a pullover shirt that comes in three colors—green, tan or burgundy.”

“Pants?”

“Black jeans.”

“And the last time you saw her?” said Melki.

According to Grant, Billiter had volunteered to come into work on her day off, Wednesday, but she did not show up. He called her house several times to see what was going on but got no response. When he thought about it, Grant realized he actually hadn’t seen her since she left work on Tuesday night. Shanlian asked if he had her time card handy. Grant quickly came up with it and handed it over.

Gazing at the machine-printed notations, Shanlian saw that Billiter had punched out of work on Tuesday, November 11, at 9:09
P.M.
, after working the second shift.

“Actually, the time clock is off by an hour,” Grant added, “so Nancy actually worked until nine after ten.”

Shanlian knew that sometime after that and before this afternoon, someone killed her. The detective reached inside the breast pocket of his sport jacket and came out with a picture.

“Mr. Grant, that’s a death scene photograph of a victim in our county we are trying to identify.”

He handed it over.

“Would you look at it, please?”

Grant took a deep breath and held it in his hands like some valuable relic. He gazed at the picture of the bloody face wrapped up in the flowered blanket and then looked up. He had a confused, shocked expression on his face.

“That’s Nancy,” he said simply.

“Nancy Billiter?” Shanlian asked.

“Yes.”

Had anyone been calling and asking for her recently? Shanlian wondered.

“Nancy’s friend, Carol, had called a little while ago. She said she hadn’t seen Nancy since Tuesday and she was worried,” Grant replied.

“You have Carol’s address?”

“Yeah.”

He looked in a filing cabinet and came out with Billiter’s file, which had her phone number and her address. She had lived only a few miles from the restaurant. He copied it onto a sheet of white paper that he gave to Shanlian.

“She lived with her mother. Look, I should also tell you,” Grant said reluctantly, “that Nancy was using cocaine. She was a good waitress and everything, but she had a problem with the drug.”

“Anyone else here who Nancy knew or was close with?”

“Yeah, she was friends with Kip Selbach, one of the waiters. I’ll get him for you.”

A few minutes later, Grant came back with Selbach, a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties. He said that he’d known Billiter for a few years and they’d become friends. Shanlian showed him the crime scene photograph and Selbach identified Billiter immediately.

Shanlian asked him what was she wearing the last time he saw her. He was trying to determine if she had time to go home and change. Or, did the murder take place before she got home?

Selbach was certain that the last time he saw her, Billiter was wearing her burgundy work shirt, black jeans, jeans jacket and black tennis shoes. That was an exact match to the clothing the “Jane Doe” had been found in.

“Nancy had waited at the restaurant for about an hour after punching out on Tuesday. Four of the regulars had offered her a ride home, but she turned them all down.”

“Who drove her then?” chimed in Edwards.

“I don’t know.”

“What time did she finally leave?” asked Edwards again.

“Around eleven
P.M.
”

They had just cut two hours off the time frame, from 9:00 to 11:00
P.M.
Two hours less to figure out what had happened before Nancy Billiter died. But they needed to get even more specific.

Shanlian wondered if there was anyone else she was friendly with, and Selbach recalled she was friendly with Yvonne Craig, the receptionist. A few minutes later, Grant brought in a petite blonde with a knockout figure.

“I only knew Nancy a couple of months. I met her here at work,” said Yvonne somewhat defensively.

“She used cocaine?” Shanlian asked.

“Yeah, I guess; yeah, she had a cocaine problem.”

“When’d you see her last?”

“Around ten o’clock on Tuesday, when Bill Bernhard drove her home.” Bernhard was a regular at the restaurant. “I loaned him my car to drive her home. He came back around eleven and gave me the keys and then Bill stayed until closing time.”