The End of the Dream (49 page)

There were empty hangers in John English’s closet, and it looked as though half the stuff was missing from his chest of drawers. No kidnapper was going to give his victim time to pack a bag. A terrible suspicion had begun to insinuate itself into the investigators’ minds.

Was it remotely possible that there hadn’t been an intruder at all?

Could John English have killed his own stepmother? Most boys tend to view their stepmothers as nonsexually as they do their natural mothers, but Milt English told them that John had only been living with him and Vera for the last year. And Vera English was or had been an incredible looking woman. Maybe the kid had seen the pretty woman as a desirable female instead of as a mother figure. Judging from what they had found in John’s bedroom, it was clear that his interest in sex and the female body were more than a little precocious. The detectives hoped that their suspicions were wrong, but, either way, it didn’t look as if there would be a good ending to the puzzle, if John English wasn’t the killer, he himself was probably dead.

John English moved up as a probable murder suspect when the investigators found a number of people who could swear to the fact that Milt English had been at his job all evening. He would have had no time to drive to his home and kill his wife. Furthermore, John had seemed to be madly in love with Vera. An update was added to the “want” on the Chevy Nova. Northwest lawmen were now told to approach fourteen-year-old John English with caution.

According to his father, there was a . 22 rifle missing from the family home, and all the money from the family’s piggy banks.

“And some handcuffs, “ he added. “At least one pair of my handcuffs are missing.” Again, Forrester and Grunden didn’t ask why a man who worked at an airplane plant owned handcuffs. But they knew now that the Englishs’ marriage seemed to have leaned heavily toward sexual bondage.
 
If fourteen-year-old John English was the killer, he could be suicidal once the enormity of the crime hit him. The King County police didn’t expect him to get very far, however. He was two years below the legal driving age in Washington, and he should be easy to spot. He would probably run off the road ten miles from home, if he hadn’t already.
 
When neither John English nor the missing bronze Nova had been spotted by dawn the next morning, the dragnet for the missing car was expanded.
 
Information on the murder was released to all news media. It seemed impossible that the car could still be in Washington as the day passed.
 
If it were, someone would have seen it. Rolf Grunden notified the border patrol at Blaine, Washington, and asked that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police be given the description of the bronze Nova in case the driver tried to cross over into British Columbia. Either an unknown killer or John English probably had enough credit cards to pay his way to Europe, if necessary. None of Vera’s cards had been in the jumble of items dumped from her purse. Grunden contacted the security units of Sea first Bank’s Mastercard, Texaco, Arco, and Shell and asked to be notified immediately if there were any “hits” on credit charges to the English accounts. Although they had had no sleep at all, Ted Forrester and Rolf Grunden attended the postmortem examination of Vera English’s body at 11,30 on that interminable Wednesday morning of October 2. Dr. Donald Reay, now Medical Examiner of King County, would perform the autopsy.
 
The five-foot-four-inch woman weighed only 107 pounds, and she had a perfect figure. Vera English had been a gorgeous, if somewhat flamboyant-looking woman. She had flaming red hair, and it looked as though she had just finished putting on makeup when she was attacked.

Skillfully applied green eye shadow colored her eyelids and her orange lipstick was still fresh. She wore her wedding band and a ring in the shape of a flower on her silver-tipped fingers.

She was very tan, with the only pale skin visible in areas that had been covered by a very small bikini bathing suit. From her clothing, it looked as if Vera English had just come home from work when she was attacked, the flowered smock she wore to the gift shop still bore her name tag. Beneath her twisted yellow sweater, her bra, which fastened in the front, was torn apart at the plastic fasteners. Dr. Reay pointed out that the victim’s extremely large breasts were the result of silicone implants.

Someone had done terrible damage to Vera English. There were twenty-three separate wounds on her head, many of the blows had caused depressed fractures and exposed brain tissue. In addition, she had been strangled by ligature, crushing her hyoid bone and causing extensive hemorrhaging into the throat muscles and soft tissue. Vera English had obviously seen her killer, and she had fought for her life.

She had sustained multiple defense wounds, fractures and cuts on her fingers as if she had tried to protect her head from the hammer blows raining down on it. Surprisingly, she had not been raped, but there were some abrasions of the labia minora of the vulva that indicated rape had been attempted. The autopsy results suggested that the killer had been very strong and very, very angry. Rolf Grunden searched out John English’s friends and acquaintances. He quickly heard rumors that John had carried a gun to school, but he was unable to substantiate them.

Both Grunden and Ted Forrester were determined to keep open minds.

They still didn’t know what John English’s part if any had been in his stepmother’s murder. The possibility remained that he, too, was a victim. However, John’s complicity in his stepmother’s death became more suspect when Rolf Grunden talked to Vera English’s employer. He learned that Vera had never arrived at the gift shop on the night of October I.
 
“Her stepson, John, called, “ the woman said. “He told me that Vera had the flu and that she couldn’t come to work.”

“Vera didn’t have the flu, “ Milt English said. “She felt fine when I left for work.” Detective Judy Watson talked to Vera English’s two small daughters and took statements from them about the evening before.

The little girls remembered that everything had been normal the night before. Their mother had eaten with their stepfather and then served an early dinner to them and their stepbrother. “Then we went downstairs with John, “ the older girl said, “and we watched television in the rec room.” The girls remembered that their mother and stepbrother had gotten into a “little fight” over who was going to do the dishes. “They didn’t yell, though, and my mom did them.

“ After the dishes were done, their mom had gotten dressed for work.

“She came downstairs to watch TV with us before she went to work, though.” The time line was essential in this case, and the detectives wondered if two small girls would be able to pinpoint certain events.

They were very smart children, and they knew exactly when their favorite shows were on. They said that they thought their mother had gone to work while they were watching That Girl, which was on from 6:30 to 7,00 P. M.
 
At least, they didn’t see her at all during that time.

Right after that, John had gone upstairs, telling his stepsisters that he was going to do his homework. “While The FBI was on, John came down and told us it was time for bed, “ the older girl recalled. “What time was that on? “

“Right after the one about Ann Marie from 7,00 to 8:00.

“ It was John who put the girls to bed, and they knew he was close by because they could hear him down in the living room. He was listening to the radio. Sometime later, one of the girls said she’d woken up because their pet poodle was barking. “And I heard the car leaving the garage. I went out in the hall and I looked for John, but I couldn’t find him.” She said she didn’t look in his room because she was not allowed to go in there.

Sleepy, she had gone back to bed. Neither of the girls had awakened until the police woke them to move them to a neighbor’s home. Both of the girls said they liked John, and that he was good to them. “He yells at us sometimes, “ one said, “but he would never hit us.”

“Did you hear anything at all during the night that scared you?

Detective Watson asked. “Any sound you never heard before? “

“No.”

“Did you hear anybody yelling or screaming? “

“No. We were just sleeping.” King County patrol cars began to check Texaco, Shell, and Arco service stations in a five-mile radius of the English home. Milt English was sure that the Nova’s gas gauge had been on empty. Whoever had stolen the car whether it was John or a stranger would have had to get gas almost immediately. None of the regular employees contacted recalled having sold gas to someone in a bronze Nova. With any homicide case that gets as much media publicity as the English case did, detectives expect scores of tips, sightings, and offers of help from those involved in the occult “sciences.” This case was no different. One astrologer contacted the King County homicide detectives and told them that the configuration of the planets on October indicated to her that John English was dead.
 
It began to look as if her prediction was right. He was either dead or he had managed to slip through an extremely tight blue line of cops watching for him. And then Rolf Grunden received a call from Detective Don Dashnea of the Renton, Washington, police. Dashnea had received a phone call from the parents of a schoolmate of John English. The boy, Ben Brown, * had information on the English case. Grunden left at once to talk with him.
 
He met a very chastened and shocked teenager. Ben Brown knew exactly what had happened after Vera English was killed. He said that he had met John English during the first week of school in September. On about September 30, they had decided to run away to Oregon together. The plan was for John to get some food together, steal one of his parents’ cars, and meet Ben in the parking lot of a hospital south of Seattle.

“I met John about 9,30 P. M. on Tuesday, October I, “ Ben said. “He had a brown Nova. He was just sitting there relaxing in the car with his hands behind his head. I told him, Hey, man, let’s go.” The two boys had driven south until about 2,00 A. M. , reaching a little town along the Pacific ocean in Oregon. They got out and strolled along the dark beach for a while and then decided to drive farther. “John probably used his gas credit cards about five times, “ Ben said.

The whole trip seemed like a lark to Ben until they got to Gold Beach, Oregon. And then John English had turned to him with a smile, and said casually, “Don’t you wonder how I got the car so early? “
 
“And so I said, Well, how did you get the car so early? “ Ben told Rolf Grunden.

But John’s reply had been a question so shocking that Ben could scarcely believe it. “Do you think if you hit somebody hard enough in the back of the head with a claw hammer you could kill them? “

“I don’t know, “ Ben answered slowly. “What’s that got to do with anything? “

“And then John told me, I got my mom in my room and then I hit her in the back of the head with a hammer once or twice.”

“Do you think you killed her? “ Ben said he’d asked. “Yeah, “ he quoted John’s reply.

Ben Brown had been sick to his stomach with horror as they drove on south toward the California border. He’d barely spoken for about fifty miles, and with each passing mile he was more convinced that he didn’t want to stay with John any longer. Ben said that when they reached Orick in northern California, he got out of the car and said he was going back. He’d called his parents in Washington and told them he was on his way home. As soon as his bus arrived, he told his parents what John had said, and they called the police. Ben seemed bewildered by the turn of events. Under Detective Grunden’s questioning, he said he’d never thought that John had any problems at home or any tendencies toward violence.

He wasn’t into drugs or alcohol, as far as Ben knew. They had just planned that John would wait until his stepmother got home from work Wednesday evening, and then he would load the car very quietly and drive it away. They were going to see California, Reno, and Las Vegas.

But John English had changed their exciting trip into horror. It appeared now that John English was not only alive, he was headed into Nevada with a . 22 rifle in the trunk of his car. He had told Ben Brown that the gun “might come in handy.

“ It was 1974, and homicidal violence by minors was virtually unheard of. Although a “want” for fourteen year-old John English went out over the western half of America, it still seemed impossible that a boy of his age could have committed murder. But investigators now had a witness who had seen John within minutes of Vera English’s brutal murder.
 
Everything pointed to him and they had to stop him before he hurt anyone else. On October 7, Grunden sent an updated teletype throughout Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. He also alerted Arco, Shell, and Texaco to the fact that the fugitive teenager would probably be using their cards in the Nevada area. But it would be more than a week before the first information from the stolen credit cards paid off. Texaco’s computer system registered a “hit” on Milt English’s credit card in Benson, Arizona. Rolf Grunden immediately called the Benson Police Department, the Benson County Sheriff’s Office, the Arizona Highway Patrol, and the U. S. Customs Office on the Mexican border. If John English was still in the state of Arizona, there was virtually no chance that he could escape the notice of authorities.

Further, it seemed impossible that a boy so young and so inexperienced as a driver hadn’t been involved in a traffic violation or an accident.

But days passed with no word of him. Somehow, he had gotten out of Arizona. There was no telling where he could be. Grunden kept in daily contact with the oil companies and Mastercard security, but there were no more “hits.” Texaco voluntarily prepared a special bulletin to all its dealers asking them to watch for a boy in a bronze Nova, but nobody spotted him. If John English had somehow managed to slip across the Mexican border, it was quite possible that he might never be apprehended. And then, on October 17, Milt English received a curious call from his insurance company. The Chevrolet Nova had been recovered, but the company had no information about where it was.