Without Warning (10 page)

The story up on the website represented the former. And his appearance the next day before the nation would be the first step toward stardom.

As a general rule, small-town police chiefs stick together. It’s not just because we face the same challenges and pressures, although that is certainly a part of it. It’s also that, in the event of an emergency, we often need to call on each other for help. Our departments are not that large, and we have to be there for our neighboring towns, and we need them to be there for us.

Union Hills, about fifteen miles away, is slightly smaller than Wilton. The police chief there, Tony Brus, has become a good friend over the years, and we’ve helped each other out on a bunch of occasions.

One of those times was three years ago when they had a major fire; a garden apartment complex burned to the ground on Twenty-third Street in Union Hills, killing eleven people.

Volunteer fire departments from every town within thirty miles, including ours, responded to the scene. Substantial police resources came in as well, and I went with six of my officers.

The blaze was overwhelming, and the entire complex burned to the ground, quickly and totally. Because of the size of the disaster, and the terrible loss of life, state fire investigators essentially took over the investigation of the fire itself. According to what I read, their verdict was quick and certain; it was arson.

I had no role to play after the fact, and I didn’t follow it very closely, but I didn’t think it had ever been solved. Certainly if it had, it would have been major news. Tragedies like that do not happen every day in Maine.

The 23rd Street Fire was one of the predictions in the capsule, which gave me an obvious interest in finding out the details of the investigation conducted by the Union Hills Police Department. I was sure my people were getting into it, but I felt that with my relationship with Tony Brus, it would be easier for me to get answers, plus whatever insight he had to offer personally.

I called him and told him I wanted to talk to him about the fire.

“That’s interesting; you’re the second person from the Wilton Police Department to call about the fire in the last twenty-four hours. I think I’m sensing a pattern.”

“Can’t put one over on you,” I said, and told him I’d be there right away.

He was waiting for me when I got there, with binders full of information about the case, and also a question. “Is this about that capsule thing?”

I nodded.”It was one of the predictions.”

“Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “I never would have guessed it in a million years.”

“Guessed what?”

“That the fire was planned well ahead of time. I was sure it was a spur of the moment thing, or close to it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because there was no upside to it. It was in a poor area, nobody had any money. These weren’t the kind of people you would plot for two years to kill, know what I mean? I figured somebody was pissed off at somebody else, and they set the fire for some kind of revenge.”

“And you didn’t find any candidates for that?”

He shrugged. “Some. But we could never tie it down. That’s why it’s still an open case.” He handed me the binders. “Close the case, will you? Eleven people died screaming.”

“I’m trying,” I said.

“You need any help, we’re here.”

I got my nightly pizza, went home and opened the files that Tony had given me. My expectation level was not high; Tony is a good cop and the strong chance was that the case would have been investigated thoroughly and professionally.

My hope didn’t lie in my bringing a more competent approach, but I did have an advantage that he didn’t have. I now knew other murders that the perpetrator had committed, which gave me other connections that I could make. With just the fire, Tony had no chance to establish a pattern. I might well have that chance.

My main focus in going through the files was going to be on the victims, to see if one or more might have been the target, and the others just collateral damage.

It turned out that I didn’t know the victims, except for one.

But that one I knew really well.

Charlie Price murdered Elaine Cozart. I had known that within twenty-four hours of the day it happened, which was just under six years ago. Knowing it was one thing; proving it was another.

Cozart had been Price’s girlfriend for almost six years, and they had a daughter together, who they named Anna. It was never a particularly stable relationship, and he had grown increasingly abusive. It took a while, but fearful for herself and her daughter, Cozart finally summoned the courage to break it off. It could not have been an easy thing to do.

It was also something that Price would not accept. He kept harassing and threatening Cozart, until she finally sought and received a restraining order against him.

And for about three months it worked; he didn’t come around, and the threatening phone calls stopped as well. He took an apartment in Union Hills, on Twenty-third Street.

And then one night, Elaine Cozart was murdered in her bed, skull fractured with a blunt object, while Anna slept soundly in the room next door.

There were no signs of a break in, no physical evidence of any consequence at all. Price’s DNA was all over the house, but that was not legally significant, since he had lived there for so long.

I had no doubt that Price was guilty. I had significant dealings with him on the occasions that Cozart had called 9-1-1, and had arrested him myself. Each time Cozart had fearfully refused to press charges, and Price had walked away, laughing. I despised him, and wanted nothing more than to make charges stick against him.

But even though I was certain he was guilty, I had no way to prove it. There was simply nothing to tie him to the murder; he wasn’t seen there that night, there was no blood on his clothing, no murder weapon was found, and he had a group of friends in Union Hills who swore that he was with them at the time of the murder.

I made the arrest anyway, but the prosecutor refused to go forward with it, probably with good reason. I knew I was right, and he knew I was right, but he didn’t have nearly enough to convince a jury of it, certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt.

So Price walked, and when he did he sought me out and laughed in my face. I almost killed him then, but I didn’t. Instead I punched him in the chest and broke three of his ribs.

He was not happy with the result of our encounter, but I thought I showed considerable restraint, since what I actually wanted was to pound his skull into the cement four or five hundred times. So he brought charges against me, but I denied that I had done it, and he ironically had no evidence to prove his claims.

It was small consolation.

Because of the prior abuse, and some minor drug offenses, Price was denied custody of Anna, and he didn’t seem too upset about it. She was placed in foster care and ultimately adopted. I monitored her progress, until I was satisfied that her new family was a loving one, and that she would be well taken care of.

Suffice it to say that when I learned that Price was killed in the fire, I was not overcome with sadness. But I had never really considered him the target of the fire. If the kind of people that Price hung around with wanted him dead, they would have been much more likely to put a bullet in his head than to torch an entire building.

Looking through the file, I could see that Tony Brus had focused on Price as the victim most likely to have been the target. Or, put more accurately, the least likely to have been an innocent victim. But there was simply no evidence to dig his teeth into.

Elaine Cozart didn’t even have any family, so there was nobody in the picture that would have been seeking revenge for her death. And while Price might have been one of the least likeable people on the planet, the investigation didn’t turn up anybody who had the motive and opportunity to have set the fire.

The odds were certainly against us being able to tie Price to the other victims of the “Capsule” murderer. I could actually see a motive for him killing Jenny, since that would have served as revenge against me. I didn’t think it likely, but it was at least within the realm of possibility.

But I doubted very strongly I could link Price in any fashion to Samuel Votto, and it wouldn’t have mattered, because he wasn’t around to have killed George Myerson. He also couldn’t have tried to kill Matt Higgins, and having read through Matt’s stories, I already knew that he had never written anything about the Elaine Cozart murder.

Price was a loser, and a small-time one at that. The idea that he would plan and commit all these murders, for no apparent financial gain, seemed highly unlikely. The idea that he would have gone to the trouble to predict all of the killings, in a capsule not to be opened for fifty years, seemed too absurd to seriously consider.

But somebody did, and that somebody set fire to the house on Twenty-third Street. Maybe it was because Price was there, or maybe because one of the other victims was there. Or maybe the person we were looking for just had a weird dislike for the number twenty-three.

Once again, we simply wouldn’t know until we knew.

And that day might never come.

Mary Sullivan was the only civilian employed by the Wilton Police Department. And when people asked what she did there, she answered, truthfully, “Everything.”

She did the typing, labored over the many reports demanded by the state, got coffee, handled the schedule for Chief Robbins and some of the other detectives, and did pretty much whatever anyone needed. It wasn’t a high-paying job, but it included health insurance for Mary and her son, and she knew she was lucky to have it.

It’s fair to say that Mary had not had an easy time of it in life. Her mother abandoned her three children when Mary was three, leaving them with an alcoholic, abusive father. She had no recollection of her mother, but while she hated her for leaving, she came to understand why she did.

The bad news was that Mary married a guy not much better than her father. The good news was that he left two weeks after their son Kyle was born, never to be seen again.

So Mary did what she had to do in order to survive, sometimes working three jobs at a time. It was not easy, but she pulled it off, and when Kyle went off to Bowdoin, it was without question the happiest day of her life.

Mary had absolutely no interest in marrying again, though she was not without opportunity. She was attractive and funny, and, as Kyle got older, she dated with more frequency. But she always kept her men at arm’s length; the most important thing in her life, other than her son, was her independence.

Then she met Matt Higgins, and there was a very brief crack in the armor. They dated for about three months, but neither of them took it too seriously. Matt was different in some ways from other men she had dated, and one of the major differences was economic.

He took her places, a few times to New York, once to Boston, and one memorable trip to the Caribbean. He had money, and he was willing to spend it, and thought nothing about buying her nice gifts. It was seductive, and she enjoyed and appreciated the finer things.

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she began to tell him things, things about the department. She was a source, she eventually came to realize, and that continued after they split up. She would give him tips about department business, nothing that she believed could cause any damage, and he would use that information to get stories for the paper.

He was good at it, doing it in such a way that it could never get back to her. But with their romantic relationship long over, there was no pretense anymore. She had become a paid source, and she came to rely on that money. It let her live just a little more nicely than she otherwise would have been able to, and she didn’t want to give that up.

And she didn’t. It had been almost three years, during which she and Matt had almost no public contact. It wasn’t likely that anyone in town even remembered that they had once dated. Wilton was a small town, so the information she gave him was never earth-shattering, and his stories that followed did not attract significant attention.

But the capsule story was different, and Matt called to make that clear to her. It frightened her, and she was stunned when the attempt was made on his life. She felt she owed him whatever information she could provide, not just because he was paying her, but because it might help him protect himself.

Pretty much everything the department handled came through her at one stage or another, and though she would never tell him anything that she felt might damage the department, there was plenty that she could share.

So she knew the call from Matt was coming, and she had made her judgments about what she would tell him, and what she wouldn’t. Her goal would be to say only what could be learned through his own investigation, even if he hadn’t yet done so.

“Hello, Mary.”

“Matt…”

“We need to talk.”

“When?”

“Now would be a good time.”

So they talked. Or rather, Mary talked, and Matt listened.

“Police Investigating Charlie Price Death in Connection to Capsule Murders.” That was the headline to Matt’s story the next morning, and my guess is that every citizen of Wilton had read it by eight o’clock. I know I had.

The story went on to relate the facts about Charlie’s history, my arresting him for murder, and the dropping of the charges. It also said that Charlie had filed suit against me for breaking his ribs, but that the evidence wasn’t there to substantiate his claims. Then it accurately reported that he was a victim in the 23rd Street Fire, which connected him to the capsule killings.

The fact that Charlie Price was therefore thrust into the consciousness of the public, at least as it related to the current investigation, was not in itself damaging. Price was not a focal point for us, at least not yet, and I didn’t see how making his connection public caused any harm. It might even have been helpful, in the unlikely event it sparked any tips.