Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (4 page)

Edwards pulled the car up onto the driveway. Everything was dark. There was no driveway sensor light to light up the flagstone pathway that led up to the front door.

They tried peering inside the living room windows, but the inside drapes were drawn. They could see nothing, not even the outline of lights around the fabric. Maybe everyone was sleeping. They knocked on the door and tried the doorbell, but no one answered. If anyone was inside, they were certainly sound sleepers.

The next step was calling, but they didn’t have the number.

Edwards went to the next-door neighbor, flashed the tin again, and asked the man who answered the door if he had Giles’s number. The guy came back with it a minute later. Back in the car, Shanlian tried the number on his cell phone. No answer. Just as he pressed a button to disconnect, the cops saw headlights turning into the Giles house.

Slowly a Mercury Sable pulled into the driveway and stopped. The headlights dimmed to nothing. Silence. The car door opened and a long leg came out, following by a body wrapped up in a winter coat. It was a woman. She walked to the front door, put a key in the lock, and disappeared inside. They had a reasonable certainty it was Carol Giles.

“Let’s set up a surveillance,” Shanlian suggested.

They couldn’t very well do so without alienating the local cops; they were now operating in West Bloomfield Township. Edwards called the local cops down the block and explained to the desk sergeant what was going on. Minutes later, a marked unit that the sergeant dispatched pulled up to the curb. Edwards and Melki filled the uniforms in on the case and asked them to stay at the curb and provide any necessary assistance.

“Look!” Shanlian interrupted.

The woman had come out of the house and was getting in her car.

“Let’s go,” Shanlian ordered.

Shanlian got behind the wheel, and Edwards and Melki tumbled in. Shanlian raced the car up the driveway. The woman put her car in gear and looked back. Squealing, the brakes bit and the cop car blocked the Sable from getting out. Startled, the beautiful, bespectacled twenty-something woman got out of her car. Edwards identified himself, Shanlian and Melki.

“Are you Carol Giles?” asked Edwards.

She nodded. Shanlian asked her when she had last seen her roommate Nancy Billiter.

“Uh, on Tuesday,” Carol replied.

That would be Tuesday, November 11. Shanlian remembered that Nancy Billiter had been driven back to Giles’s home at 11:00
P.M.
on November 11. On a hunch, he decided to try something.

“We have witnesses that saw Nancy Billiter here on Wednesday, November twelfth.”

It was a white lie, because Billiter could have left immediately on November 11 and gone someplace else. But Shanlian was betting that after a night on her feet, she had crashed without going anywhere. The idea was to narrow the time frame down, closer and closer to the time of the murder.

Do that and you move closer and closer to the murderer.

Carol Giles said she had seen Nancy Billiter on Wednesday, but that she left about 1:30 in the morning on Thursday and hadn’t seen her since. Shanlian was following his feelings and his gut told him that something about the woman just didn’t sit right.

If Billiter was a heavy drug user, as witnesses had said, wouldn’t this woman Giles know about it? What kind of person lets a heavy drug user into her home?

“Are you carrying any drugs or weapons?” Shanlian asked suddenly.

Carol Giles could have easily answered no and walked away. If she did, there was nothing Shanlian could do. She wasn’t under arrest. And if she wasn’t under arrest, they had no constitutional right to search her. But cops know how to use intimidation to get what they want, and Shanlian had made his question sound very menacing, like “If you lie to me, I’m gonna search you.”

“I have some drugs,” Giles confessed.

Carol Giles pulled a small plastic Baggie with white powder in it from her overcoat pocket. Handing it over, she explained that it was crack.

“Would you empty your pockets for me?” Shanlian requested.

By voluntarily turning over the drugs, Giles had made herself a suspected felon. That made it constitutionally acceptable for Giles to be searched, by force if necessary. On the other hand, she hadn’t yet been advised of her rights, so anything she said could not be used in court against her.

Carol Giles went over to her car. She emptied her right coat pocket. Out came a small electronic scale, the kind that could be used by a dealer to weigh dope. When she reached in her left, out came two syringes still in their protective plastic wrapping. Shanlian had to wonder if she was mainlining.

“I’ve also got a gun in the car,” she added.

“Handgun?” Shanlian asked.

Giles nodded.

Shanlian didn’t search the car. He wasn’t sure of his constitutional grounds on that one. Instead, he asked if they could go in the house and Giles said sure.

Inside, they put the cocaine, the scale and the syringes on a coffee table next to a bong that was already there. Shanlian thought for a minute. If he arrested her on a drug beef, she might clam up. She had been cooperative for some unknown reason. Better to keep her cool.

“Mrs. Giles, you’re not under arrest. Our department has no interest in the cocaine or handgun in your possession at this point. Do you own this house?”

“No, I’m a renter,” she replied. “But my name is on the lease.”

Shanlian looked around. It was plainly furnished with sofa, chairs, dining room set, a little bit in disarray with children’s toys scattered about.

“Is anyone at home besides you?”

“No.”

“And is the car outside yours?”

“Yes.”

“Are you currently under the influence of any drugs or alcohol?” Shanlian asked.

If she was, that stopped his next request. A person under the influence does not have the ability to agree to a search that would be constitutionally acceptable.

“No,” she replied.

Good, he thought.

“We’d like to search your residence and your vehicle,” Shanlian asked. “For evidence of the homicide of Nancy Billiter,” he added.

“Okay,” she said.

She sounded like she had nothing to hide.

Edwards went out and came back with a form he kept in the police car. It was attached to a clipboard. On the top was
CONSENT TO SEARCH.
Giles signed her name on the bottom line and then Shanlian escorted her to his car while Melki and Edwards searched the premises.

After she stepped in, Shanlian got behind the wheel, started it up, and threw the heater on.

“I’d just like to ask you some questions about Nancy Billiter.”

“Sure. Mind if I smoke?”

“No.”

Giles took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out and put it to her lips. Shanlian struck a match and lit it for her.

“Thanks,” she said, exhaling smoke with a sigh.

“You’re welcome. What I was wondering about was how long Nancy had been living with you.”

“Oh, for several weeks,” said Carol.

Shanlian looked up.

“Looks like a small house.”

“She slept on a bed in the basement,” Carol explained.

“Where’d you get the coke?” Shanlian asked.

“I thought you said you weren’t interested in it?”

“I’m not. I was just wondering.”

“I bought it from a guy name of Hoffis Thurman in Rochester for one hundred dollars. I was taking it to my boyfriend, Tim Collier, in Flint.”

Flint, thought Shanlian. Where Billiter was dumped. So there is a connection.

“Where in Flint is Collier staying?”

“Don’t know,” said Carol, exhaling smoke.

It was beginning to feel very warm inside the car.

“I don’t know the area real well. But I could take you there,” she added.

“How’d you know Nancy?” the detective asked.

“I met her through my dead husband, Jessie Giles.”

She looked down for a second and then looked back up.

“He was her cocaine dealer.”

“Carol, why don’t you tell me what happened here?” said Shanlian gently.

Carol thought for a moment and took a long puff on her cigarette.

“Okay. On Wednesday night, Nancy got home, I don’t know, around eleven. Nancy and Tim went down into the basement and were smoking crack. See, Tim was upset at Nancy.”

“About what?”

Shanlian thought he knew the answer.

“A burglary that happened while Tim and me were in California on vacation.”

“What happened then?”

“Nancy and Tim, they weren’t fighting,” Carol answered defensively, “but Tim accused her of stealing a VCR. Nancy got so upset that she called someone on the phone.”

“What time was that?”

“About one-thirty. It was the middle of the night.”

“Who’d she call?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what happened?”

“Some guy picked her up a little while after.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“No.”

“What was Nancy wearing?”

“Her burgundy work shirt, black jeans and black tennis shoes. You know, what I couldn’t figure out is why she didn’t take her coat with her. It was a cold night.”

“Who was in the house with you on Wednesday before she left?”

“The only ones here were Nancy, Tim and my two kids, Jesse and Jesseca.”

“Carol, did you murder Nancy Billiter?”

“No. No, I didn’t,” she answered emphatically.

Even if she did do it, he didn’t expect her to admit it. But he had to ask. He’d actually had one case where someone had answered yes. You just never knew what people would do.

“Did Collier murder Nancy Billiter?”

“I don’t know.”

Now, that was an interesting answer, he thought.

“Carol, would you pass a lie detector test if you were asked the question ‘Do you have knowledge of the murder of Nancy Billiter?’”

Carol hesitated.

“No,” she said finally.

“Would you come to the West Bloomfield Township Police Department to finish this interview?”

Carol hesitated.

“It’s just right down the block.”

That did it. Carol agreed. They stepped outside to the marked squad car.

“Officer, would you take us over to your headquarters, please?”

“Right away, Detective,” said the cop behind the wheel, who started the car up and made a U-turn.

He drove down the block. There was a big illuminated sign that said
WEST BLOOMFIELD ADMINISTRATION COMPLEX.
He turned into the driveway that led up to a big official-looking building sprawl of gray buildings in the middle of what looked like an industrial park but was actually the township’s administrative center.

They parked in front of a one-story building that had a sign in silver block letters on top of the front door:
WEST BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP POLICE DEPARTMENT
.

“Thank you,” Giles said politely to Shanlian, who held the door open for her. Her high heels clicking against the tiled floor in the lobby, Carol Giles stepped inside.

Four

The community’s affluence had given West Bloomfield’s police a state-of-the-art building, which Shanlian noticed was incredibly neat. Nothing was out of place, not a file cabinet nor a paper clip. Everything was in soft shades of white and gray, blue and green, from the cubicles the detectives occupied to the neat offices of the watch commanders. Even the interrogation room he was escorted to was neat, with a gray metal desk and a few comfortable office chairs. Soft, overhead fluorescence provided the lighting.

Carol Giles took the seat closest to the door. Sometimes, cops liked to place the suspect on the far side of the table, near the wall. That was a subtle psychological ploy, intended to make the suspect feel closed in. But Shanlian, who sat opposite her, sensed that Giles would be more talkative if she felt she could leave at any time.

Someone offered to get them drinks. Carol wanted a coffee, but Shanlian never touched the stuff. He preferred the pure caffeinated, sugary jolt of Mountain Dew.

After Carol received her coffee and an ashtray—Shanlian figuring that like many smokers she would do it under stress—the detective got down to business.

“Look, Mrs. Giles, I want to remind you that you’re not a suspect and you’re not under arrest,” Shanlian began.

“I understand,” Carol replied, sipping at her coffee.

The point of the warning was to make it clear that she could walk away anytime she wanted, that she was not under duress. The reason Shanlian didn’t read her her rights, even though she was already a suspect in his mind, was that had he done so, she probably would have clammed up. He was trying to engender her trust. If he could get that, she’d open up and tell him what happened. Then he’d read her her rights; she’d write down her statement; he’d clear the case quickly; and everybody would go home happy. But he had a long way to go.

From previous interviews—cop speak for interrogations—Shanlian knew that 90 percent of what he and the suspect said in the interrogation room wouldn’t even go into his report. It wasn’t that he was hiding anything, far from it. Contrary to TV stereotypes, cops gain statements and confessions from suspects not by violence but by trust. So Shanlian let Carol talk.

She kept going back to her kids and how much she loved them. He lent a sympathetic ear. She relaxed. When Shanlian sensed that she was getting comfortable with him, he asked her a straight question.

“How can I find Tim Collier?”

“You take 1-75 [north] to 1-475, get off on the Carpenter Road exit. Then you cross the railroad tracks and drive on some side streets across from a church. He’s staying someplace over there.”

Right, “over there,” very specific, he thought.

“Okay, what kind of car was he driving?”

“My car. A rose colored ’88 Caddy DeVille.”

“Plate number?”

“BPE, or maybe FMW-10.”

She wasn’t sure, but that was okay. He’d tap into the state’s motor vehicle database and get that information. Once he had it, he could put out a bulletin to law enforcement agencies requesting Collier’s apprehension.

“Mrs. Giles, you mentioned before that your husband had died. I’m sorry for your loss.”