HIGHWAY HOMICIDE Read online

  He’d certainly gotten himself riled up all right! He’d walked into a completely innocent man’s house and had shot him through the head. He’d shot him in cold blood, and why? Because his own stupid wife had lied to him to make him jealous. As she’d flounced out of their house, she’d told him she was going off to California with Jack Finlay. She preferred Jack Finlay, the dirtiest old bum in the whole of New England probably, to him; she’d spat back at him as she’d stalked out

  At least he’d shot Finlay with Jack’s own hunting rifle. And he’d made certain that he’d wiped the rifle and anything else he may have touched clean of his own prints. When Jack was found dead, he knew he would naturally be the prime suspect. But being suspected of something and being proven guilty of it were two different things entirely, weren’t they? As far as his dead wife was concerned, accidental death or not, they’d still have to find her first.

  His house and garden were far enough away from his closest neighbors that any activity of his would probably either go unnoticed or would appear to be perfectly normal to them.

  He started off by digging as deep a hole in the middle of his vegetable patch as he could manage. When it was finished to his satisfaction, he dragged his wife’s body over to the edge and rolled her over into it. She ended up face down in the bottom of the hole. He was glad of that because he didn’t want to have to see her face as he covered her with earth.

  Once that gruesome task was completed, he rested on a bench at the side of the vegetable garden for a few minutes. But his job was far from finished. When he felt sufficiently rested, he went over to his garden shed, took out his gasoline powered rototiller and tilled the entire vegetable garden, including right over the spot in the middle where he’d just buried his wife.

  His neighbors, had they heard him, apart from it being rather early in the morning, would have thought nothing at all of it. After all, he did the same thing around this time every year. The very next day, he planted the entire plot with seed potatoes.

  That same evening, he went to one of the local bars, and over a few drinks, he put out the story that his wife had run off to California with her fancy man. Just to add reality to his story as he got progressively more drunk, he swore he’d kill them both if he ever saw them again. His sad story received sympathetic nods from many of the other patrons of the bar. One or two of them had found themselves in much the same situation in their own marriages or relationships. But he’d made damned sure that he hadn’t named Finlay at the time. He knew very well, from experience, that the Cooper’s Corners gossip mill would take care of all the details for him.

  And it did, in its usual very thorough way. It’d been noticed that Jack Finlay’s house was now deserted, and the local gossipers put their twos and twos together. It was then considered to be an undisputed fact that Dolly Cook had run off with Jack Finlay, though Lord knows why. Once the gossip had decided those were the facts of the situation, it was as concrete a decision as any of those handed down in the courthouses of Burlington or Montpelier. The pair was guilty of philandering and that was a fact until it could be proved otherwise, and who was ever going to bother?

  If any old house had been left empty and deserted like that in a larger community, someone would have checked it out for anything of value, vandals would have wrecked it and most probably the local police would have taken a look as well.

  But this was Cooper’s Corners, and anyone who’d had the misfortune to ever go inside Jack Finlay’s place, knew it contained absolutely nothing but filth and junk. There just wasn’t anything worth taking. The place wasn’t even worth vandalizing and it always smelled so bloody awful as well, as Jack himself did.

  That was why the wife of the man who’d shot him would goad her husband with threats of running off with Finlay. She was suggesting in no uncertain terms, that she preferred the town’s filthy old bum to him. It was actually very, very far from the truth. Like almost everyone else in Cooper’s Corners, she had absolutely no time for the filthy bum at all. But her words had been enough to get the poor man killed.

  The house itself had remained untouched until it has been invaded in the middle of a blizzard by David Gates, the mystery man from the highway. It was a house that contained nothing but dirt, junk, vermin and just one murdered skeleton!

  Back down in Rutland another man was doing some hard and serious thinking as well. He’d been standing over the bludgeoned body of Maria Caspar, improvised weapon in his hand, when David Gates had burst into the room. To the man’s utter astonishment, David had looked down at Maria’s body and his mouth had dropped open. The man watched as David’s eyes rolled up in his head and he’d slumped heavily to the floor.

  The man frowned. He could have sworn, in just that split second, that David hadn’t even noticed him. If he had, then it hadn’t registered in his brain. He’d just passed out when he’d seen the bloodied body of his former lover lying there on his living room carpet.

  The man thought for a moment and then reached into his parka pocket. He pulled out a plastic pill container. It contained the date rape pills that he’d planned to use on Maria but it hadn’t got that far. She’d realized his intentions and had started to scream her head off. He’d panicked and had slapped her hard across the face but she’d continued to scream.

  In desperation, he’d grabbed up a bronze figurine from one of the end tables and had hit her with it. She’d already turned away from him and the blow had hit her across the back of the head. She fell to her knees but had still kept screaming. He hit her several more times until she fell sideways and was silent. She’d rolled partly as she fell and now laid face up, eyes wide open in shock, on the carpet in front of him. He was just straightening up when David had burst into the room.

  Now both of them were lying there at his feet, one quite obviously dead and the other one unconscious.

  He really wasn’t quite sure what had made him take his next course of action. Reaching down he turned David’s limp form over so he was face up also. Then, opening up the container of pills, he pulled David’s head back and forced his mouth open. He tipped some of the pills into David’s mouth and then held his hand over David’s mouth and nose. Even unconscious, unable to breath David gave an involuntary gulp as the man removed his hand again. Pulling David’s mouth open again, the man saw a couple of the pills were still on his tongue. He repeated the process until he was satisfied that, conscious or not, David had swallowed them all.

  That should delay his return to consciousness for some time, the man thought, or it might just kill him. It didn’t matter too much either way, did it?

  Fortunately for the killer, David’s small house had access to his garage through a door in the front hallway. David had parked his Chevy station wagon in the garage not more than a few minutes ago and he’d left his keys on a small table beside the door. The man picked up the keys, put them in his pocket and opened up the door to the garage.

  Then, after returning to the living room, he dragged David out to the garage. He opened up the Chevy’s rear doors and maneuvered David headfirst into the cargo space. Next, he rushed back in and wrapped Maria’s body in a comforter he’d taken from David’s bedroom. Then he dragged her out to the garage as well. With Maria’s body being so much lighter than David’s, he was also able to get her into the wagon much easier as well. He put her into the car head first as well but as he pulled her in, the comforter parted, revealing the massive head wounds he’d inflicted on her.

  But, as he’d worked, a plan had been forming in his head. He thought for a moment more and then returned to the inside of the house. When he got back, he was carrying a small hand towel from the bathroom. His stomach heaved a little as he first wiped the towel over Maria’s bloodied head and then wiped the blood covered towel over David’s boots. When he was finished, he threw the towel into the back corner of the garage.

  Finally, he closed the Chevy’s rear doors and climbed into the driver’s seat. Taking David’s keys from his pocket, he st
arted the car up and immediately, using the garage’s remote control to put the door up, drove on out. His own car was parked a short distance away from David’s house on a side street.

  At this point in time, although he had a vague plan in his mind, he really had no firm idea of what to do next. When he’d gone back inside, he’d wiped every surface he’d touched with the towel, including the bronze statuette. Wiping Maria’s blood on to David’s boots had been an afterthought. As he drove out of David’s driveway he headed for U.S. 7, as a short way to get out of Rutland, and then he would cut over on to U.S. 4 and then northwards on Highway 100. The Chevy had plenty of gas in it and he wanted to get his cargo as far away, and as soon as possible, from Rutland. Periodically, as he drove, he glanced back to make sure David Gates hadn’t stirred at all.

  David still hadn’t moved as a plan finalized in the killer’s mind. He kept going over it as he drove. He’d already traveled over eighty miles and had crossed over Interstate 89 some time back. But as he crossed over Highway 15, still heading north, it began to snow very heavily. Shortly, he drove through a small community called Cooper’s Corners, one of the many small towns around this part of the state. A few miles further on, he looked over and saw he was passing a highway diner on the southbound side.

  He knew, from past trips on this road, he was now about twenty miles from Newport, which was up near the Canadian border at Quebec.

  There’d only been a few vehicles he’d seen on the southbound highway. Now it was snowing so heavily he couldn’t see across to the other side of the highway anyway. He looked in his mirror and couldn’t see anything coming up behind him either.

  This would have to do, he thought, as he pulled the Chevy over to the shoulder of the road. He got out and opened up the wagon’s rear doors.

  First he dragged Maria’s body out and off the road about five feet. He pulled the comforter out from under her, rolling her over on to her face in the process. Next, he dragged David out so he was lying in the snow beside her. Still no other vehicle had come up the highway behind him.

  He grinned with satisfaction as he bundled up the blood stained comforter and threw it into the back of the Chevy. Then he closed the doors and got back inside. The snow was falling even heavier now, huge, fat and wet flakes. Before he pulled back onto the highway, he looked once more in his mirror, and seeing nothing there yet but snow, he quickly glanced at the two figures he’d just dumped. The snow was already starting to cover them.

  David was still alive, but what the hell, the killer thought, he’d probably die of exposure out here anyway. And even if he did survive, just how was he going to explain the girl’s dead body there next to him?

  Giving a wolfish grin, he put the Chevy in gear and pulled back onto the highway. He drove a little further north and quickly checking his mirror for any signs of traffic, he turned back on to the southbound lane. He was sure that his activities of the last few minutes hadn’t been observed but he needed to head back the way he’d come if he was to outrun the snowstorm. It appeared to be coming down from the north. But he wasn’t to know that David Gates had recovered consciousness just moments after the Chevy had pulled back on to the highway.

  Now the killer was heading back in the southbound lane, away from his dumped cargo, he started to relax a little. He felt safe enough from the connection to his crime but he was having trouble outrunning the storm, which had become a regular blizzard now.

  He finally reached Highway 89, got into the right exit lane to join the highway and headed for Burlington. Because the snow on the way was just as heavy, so was the traffic and due to an accident involving a truck and a minivan, it had slowed to a bumper to bumper crawl. His gas gauge showed less than a quarter of a tank and he hoped to hell he’d make it all the way into Burlington.

  Soon he passed the cause of the tie up and the traffic began to speed up again. He gave a sigh of relief as he entered the city, but neither his plan nor the Chevy’s gas was quite finished yet. He drove until he came to the courthouse where he abandoned the station wagon on the street right outside it. Before he left it, he wiped everything he’d touched over carefully. The steering wheel, gear shift, mirror, turn signals, headlight buttons, door handle and outside, the front and rear outside door handles.

  Once he’d locked up the car securely, he walked over towards a nearby hotel. On the way, he casually dropped the Chevy’s keys into a snow bank beside the road. Unlike David, who hadn’t thought he’d be going anywhere once he’d arrived home, both Maria and her killer were dressed for the winter. The killer had been when he had arrived at David Gates’ house with Maria Caspar. She’d asked him to help her move out some of the things she’d left behind when she and David had parted company. She hadn’t realized what kind of payment he would demand in exchange for helping her.

  When he entered the hotel, he explained to the reception clerk that his car had broken down in the storm and he needed to stay overnight. The desk clerk had received several similar requests already and thought nothing of it.

  The man went on up to his room, stripped off his outdoor clothes and his boots, and threw himself thankfully down on to the bed. After a few minutes of relaxation, he reached for the phone and called room service. All this activity had made him very hungry.

  In the morning, when the roads were clear, he’d take a bus back down to Rutland. He could fly, of course, but tomorrow, if the storm was over and the roads were clear again, the airport would be busy. Since 9/11, security was tight now at all the airports and he had no wish to be carefully scrutinized anywhere.

  If he boarded a bus in Burlington though, and the road conditions were clear, he could be back in Rutland tomorrow in no more than a few hours. Unfortunately for the killer, the weather didn’t cooperate and he was left cooling his heels for another day in Burlington.

  He’d parked his own car on a side street quite near to David Gates’ house since neither he nor Maria had wanted to actually park in David’s driveway. Maria still had her key and wanted to slip in and out with her few things. But she’d had no idea of her helper’s intentions towards her once he’d gotten her inside the house.

  Now, with this blizzard, he was hoping fervently his car hadn’t been blocked in by snow plows.

  He didn’t have much luck with that either.

  Chapter Twelve

  “So, good people, what do we all have this morning?” Carl said cheerfully.

  The three of them, Carl, Almost and Judy were sitting in the office drinking coffee and eating the donuts Almost had brought in. It was 8 a.m. and they were about to start their daily update session.

  It was also two days now since the girl’s body had been found. The members of Cooper’s Corners Police Department were certainly not big city cops though and they tended to be a lot more casual about their policing practices.

  “You first, Jude,” Carl said.

  “Well, Carl, a couple of things have come in overnight. The first is from the State boys over in Burlington. If David Gates is the guy we’re looking for, then they’ve found his car,” Judy said.

  “No, Jude, I’m sorry, but they couldn’t have,” Almost interjected quickly, “I found his car.”

  “No, Almost, you found Lisa’s car. The one he stole. They found his car, a 1992 Chevy wagon.”

  “Where?” Carl asked. “Where’d they find it?”

  Judy gave a big grin.

  “What’s so funny?” Carl demanded.

  Trying to keep a straight face, she said, “In Burlington, on Pine Street, outside the courthouse, right down the block from their own offices, that’s where.”

  She paused for a moment to let that sink in and then added, “Seems like it had been left there overnight and had been blocking the snow plowing. They ticketed it several times and then they had it towed and impounded. When they checked, they found it was registered to a David Gates of…”

  “Rutland, right?” Carl finished her sentence for her.

  “Got it in one th
ere, Chief,” she said, “But wait, there’s more, and you’ll just love this bit, Carl. Once they’d got his name and address from his registration, they got themselves a warrant and went to his house.”

  Judy paused.

  “Go on, woman, for God’s sake,” Carl said impatiently, “Get on with it.”

  “You’re taking all the fun out of it, Boss,” she said, “but anyway, when they got there, they found the garage door was wide open and they went on in. And guess what they found?”

  “David Gates?” Almost suggested.

  “I said what, not who,” Judy replied.

  “Okay, Jude, what then?” Carl said even more impatiently.

  “They found a whole mess of blood on the living room carpet, a bloodied bronze statuette and an equally bloodied towel thrown into a back corner of the garage. And just for good measure, there was blood and a blood soaked quilt in the back of the Chevy as well.”

  “Have Forensics had anything to say about all of it yet then, Jude?” Almost asked.

  “According to them, it was all Maria Caspar’s blood, but the statuette had been wiped clean of prints, except for a partial. So, funnily enough, had the garage door handle and both the inside and outside door handles of the Chevy. Nothing on the steering wheel, light switches, nothing. You would have to wonder why David Gates would wipe his own prints off of his own car and his own house door handles, wouldn’t you? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  Carl took a sip of his coffee and said thoughtfully, “That’s not the only thing that doesn’t make any sense, Jude. Try this one on for size. The guy lives in Rutland, right? Yet he’s able to leave his car outside the courthouse in Burlington, a car which, incidentally, he’s just transported Maria Caspar’s body over here in. And then he miraculously appears, on the run and without transportation, back in Cooper’s Corners. A pretty neat trick, that, if you can do it. Now add to that the fact the coroner said the girl had only been dead a couple of hours when we found her.”