To Hatred Turned (6 page)

When he got home, though, he discovered he was too restless to sit. A few days before, he had ordered a new bicycle from a local shop, so he decided to pick it up and take it for a test ride. While he was pedaling down a quiet street in his neighborhood, a large car loomed up behind him and bumped him into a ditch. Larry was unable to get a good look at the driver, but he thought it was an elderly woman.

Cursing and bleeding from a number of minor cuts, Larry limped home and doctored himself with Mercurochrome. Then he picked up the phone and tried calling Rozanne again. But it wasn’t Rozanne who answered the phone; it was Little Peter. When the child told Larry that his mother was “sick bad” and a male voice commanded him to hang up the phone, Larry paled. Perhaps influenced by all that Rozanne had told him, Larry believed it was Peter Gailiunas’s voice. He would later admit he could not be sure.

Close to panic, he called the attorney who had filed the divorce proceedings for him and Rozanne. He explained the situation to the lawyer’s aide, a woman named Sandy Miller, and asked her what she thought he should do.

“Sit tight,” she advised him, “and I’ll make a couple of phone calls to see what I can find out.”

5

With everything that had been happening that day, Larry apparently had failed to note the irony in the fact that Little Peter was occupying himself that afternoon at an ice-skating rink, since ice skating is not a common activity in Texas, especially when the weather is still hot. At about the time he began calling Rozanne, the thermometer at the official weather station in Richardson peaked at ninety-six degrees, which tied the record for the day.

While Rozanne was accustomed to crisp, colorful New England autumns, there is no comparable season on the north Texas prairie. Dallas residents, rather, have come to expect uncomfortably warm temperatures and high humidity for roughly half of every year, often beginning as early as April. Typically, the Dallas “summer” ends abruptly sometime in November with the arrival of a cold front from Canada, usually a rolling, rapidly moving mass of clouds that takes on the characteristics of a weather phenomenon called a “blue norther.” It barrels southward across the empty, flat countryside, dyeing the sky a frightening blue-gray and sending the temperature plummeting by thirty degrees or more in less time than it takes to eat a leisurely lunch. To Texans, there is nothing strange or foreboding in this brusque change of seasons. After all, the locals like to say with a certain amount of perverse pride, there is nothing between the North Pole and Texas except a four-strand barbed-wire fence.

But no blue norther was predicted for October 4. The sky that day was a bright, cloudless blue and it emanated a heat that sizzled like a blast from hell.

In the meantime, until Mother Nature did her part, everyone in North Texas would suffer. The lucky ones that evening shut themselves inside their air-conditioned homes, dined in air-conditioned restaurants, or sought relief in an air-conditioned movie house. The unlucky ones had to work out in the elements, unprotected from the heat. Among the latter were Winfred Duggan and Glenn Moore, veteran paramedics for the Richardson Fire Department.

At 6:33
P
.
M
., while others were digging into chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes, washed down with copious amounts of sweet iced tea, Duggan and Moore were in their ambulance, perspiring freely even though the vehicle’s air conditioner was cranked to the max. The radio crackled and a bored-sounding dispatcher called their number.

Duggan acknowledged.

“Proceed to Loganwood Drive,” the disembodied voice commanded.

“What’s the problem?” Duggan asked.

“A sick woman,” the dispatcher responded.

Moore shrugged and swung the vehicle around until it was heading north, where Loganwood Drive cut a three-block-long, tree-lined swath through a peaceful residential neighborhood. The dispatcher gave no indication of an emergency, so Moore laid off on the siren and the accelerator.

As Moore drove, Duggan, who had been riding ambulances in Richardson for nine years, began preparing himself mentally for what the two were likely to find when they reached their destination. Probably a little old lady who had slipped and fallen in her living room, he thought, or someone having trouble catching her breath in the heat.

“What number we looking for again?” Duggan asked as Moore turned onto Loganwood.

“Eight oh four,” Moore replied.

As Moore drove slowly up the street, Duggan called out the addresses. “Seven ninety-four…seven ninety-six…seven ninety-eight…eight hundred…eight oh four…here it is!” he said, prompting Moore to brake in front of a house that did not look materially different from its neighbors.

Number 804 was a white, clapboard structure built in an L, with the garage, the short side of the L, protruding outward toward the street. The living area, which made up the longer side, was set farther back, well away from the curb. A pair of mimosa trees, which at that time of the year still had all their leaves, shaded the neatly clipped front lawn and the well-tended flower beds under the windows of what had to be the living room. If either Duggan or Moore had thought to classify it, they would have called it a typical Dallas-style suburban house.

As he always did when he arrived at a scene, Duggan checked his watch. Squinting in the fading light, he noted the time. Then, lifting the clipboard that held the paperwork paramedics were required to keep, Duggan scratched on the pad: “Arrival 6:36
P
.
M
.”

“Well,” he said to his partner, opening his door and stepping into the furnace, “let’s go see what the trouble is.”

Striding briskly up the front walk, Duggan saw nothing unusual; the scene appeared placid enough. And why shouldn’t it? Richardson was normally sedate despite its close proximity to Dallas, the bustling megalopolis that sprawled to the south and west, threatening to swallow anything within half a hundred miles. Even though the cities were neighbors, the contrast between them was remarkable, particularly as far as statistics on violent crime were concerned. While there might be five hundred murders a year in Dallas, it was unusual to have more than four a year in Richardson. So far, in fact, although 1983 was more than three-fourths done, there had not been a single killing in the smaller city.

As Duggan and Moore reached the front door, they found it slightly ajar. Cautiously nudging it open with his fingertips, Duggan peered inside and blinked in mild surprise. Immediately in his line of sight was a dark-haired boy who seemed to be about four who was sitting on a couch, eating a bowl of cereal and watching television.

Duggan and Moore’s arrival startled the child, who swiveled in their direction when Duggan opened the door. Outrage sprang into his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Get out!” he yelled angrily. “My daddy doesn’t want you here. If he finds you here, he’ll beat you up. He’ll tear your heads off.”

The paramedics paused, momentarily shocked by the unexpected vehemence. Duggan glanced around the room. Everything appeared normal. There was no evident disarray, no overturned furniture, or any other indication that something might be amiss, except for one thing: the absence of an adult. Duggan looked appraisingly at the boy.

“Is there anyone else here?” he asked softly. “Where’s your mommy and daddy?”

The boy did not answer, but his eyes swung involuntarily to the right, to a hallway that Duggan assumed led to the bedroom area.

“You have to leave,” the boy repeated antagonistically. “I want you out of here.”

Duggan and Moore exchanged glances. Ignoring the boy, they moved toward the hallway. They had not taken more than four steps when they heard a noise that stopped them in their tracks. At that point, all thought of the day’s heat was erased from Duggan’s mind. Instead, he felt as if someone had injected ice water into his veins. In an instant, he went as cold as if he had suddenly been thrust into a freezer. What he had heard was a muffled moan, a mixture between a sob and a supplication that sounded like a wet, deep whimper. It was totally unlike anything Duggan had ever heard before and it frightened him to the core. Swallowing the fear that climbed to his throat, Duggan sprinted down the hallway, followed by Moore.

At the door to the master bedroom they reacted in horror to the scene inside. It was one neither would ever forget. A nude young female with long dark hair and an hourglass figure was sprawled on her stomach across a four-poster bed that dominated the room. Her legs and her right arm were tied to three of the bedposts, locking her into a spread-eagled position. A stocking and a piece of cloth were twisted around her throat, and a bloodstained pillow partially covered her head, which dangled over the edge of the bed. On the orange carpet beneath her was a puddle of blood and vomit.

As Duggan stared, momentarily not sure what to do, the woman, trying to draw air into her struggling lungs, emitted a low-pitched, rattling gasp. It was the same blood-curdling sound that Duggan and Moore had heard as they started down the hallway.

Shaking off their astonishment, they leaped into action. Frantically, Duggan grabbed the woman’s free wrist, searching for a pulse.

“Anything?” Moore asked hopefully as he struggled to loosen the ligature around her throat.

“Steady and fairly strong,” Duggan replied, surprised.

Pushing aside the pillow, Duggan gaped at the sight. The woman’s head rested in a large blood stain and her hair was matted into a slick helmet. Gently probing her head, Duggan found two small wounds, one in the rear and one over the temple. He immediately and correctly identified them as bullet entry holes.

“She’s been shot,” he informed Moore.

“And strangled too,” Moore added, grunting as he struggled to unwrap the cord that encircled her neck. The paramedic was puzzled, however, when her breathing did not immediately become less labored once he removed the binding.

“What’s wrong?” asked Duggan.

Moore looked closely and saw for the first time a yellow object hanging from the corner of the woman’s mouth.

“There’s something else,” he said, groping for the object.

Prying open her jaws, he found a sizable wad of yellow facial tissue jammed inside. When he tried to remove the tissue, it tore in his fingers. Part of the wad came out, but much of it remained lodged in the woman’s throat.

“I need my forceps,” he said, reaching for the tool.

Working feverishly, he gripped the tissue and worked it free.

“There,” he mumbled in relief. Immediately, the woman’s breathing improved.

While Moore was trying to extricate the tissue, Duggan moved to cut the ropes and free the woman’s limbs, being careful not to sever the knots, aware that they could be an important piece of evidence in a criminal investigation.

As he worked, a shiny object caught his eye. Lying on the pillow under the woman’s head was a casing from a small-caliber shell. He left it where it was for the police to retrieve.

Moore, encouraged by the change for the better that the removal of the tissue had on the woman’s breathing, inserted an IV in her arm and started a drip to replenish lost fluid.

Once that was done, the paramedics knew they had gone as far as they could in the house. Their job then was to get her to a hospital as quickly as possible.

Working as a smoothly functioning team, they loaded her onto a gurney that Moore had fetched from the ambulance and wheeled it back up the hallway, across the living room, and out the front door. The boy followed them, looking lost.

As they were loading her into the ambulance, a patrol car from the Richardson Police Department screeched to a halt in the driveway and Officer Jonathan May rushed up. Operating on the assumption that their services would be needed as well, it was routine for the police in Richardson to answer all fire department calls. When Officer May steered toward 804 Loganwood, he had no more idea of the conditions he would find there than had Duggan and Moore. However, he took one look at the scene and knew he had a problem.

“What happened?” he breathlessly asked Duggan.

“Woman’s been shot,” the paramedic replied tersely.

At that point, May made a command decision. “I’ll ride with you,” he told Duggan, scrambling into the ambulance.

“What about the kid?” Duggan asked.

“Here comes someone else,” May said as another patrol car arrived. “He’ll take care of the kid,” May said, scrambling into the back of the ambulance. “Let’s go.”

The vehicle was tearing through Richardson’s quiet streets, its siren screaming, when Duggan, who was still trying to administer lifesaving aid to the woman, saw something glowing dully in her hair.

“What’s that?” he asked May, pointing with his chin toward the object.

May gingerly removed it. It was a second shell casing.

6

In a matter of minutes other patrol cars began arriving at 804 Loganwood Drive. Already en route, unaware that there was a violent crime involved, was Sergeant Morris “Mo” McGowan, a drawling, slightly built veteran of the Richardson PD, and his partner, Detective Mike Corley. They had been on their way to the scene of a reported robbery when they monitored the “sick or injured person” call. Without knowing exactly what was involved, McGowan decided to go there before chasing down the robbery report.