A Death in Canaan (6 page)

Back in the kitchen, Lieutenant Shay again told Peter to strip, and when Peter had taken off all his clothes—the brown shirt, the Landlubber jeans with the brown braided leather belt, his shoes and socks and underwear and was standing naked in the big, bright, chilly kitchen, Lieutenant Shay searched his body. The officer asked Peter to tell him briefly what had happened; Peter told him what he'd told Bruce McCafferty. Lieutenant Shay asked him about the rear door to the house; Peter told him that the door was generally kept closed. When Shay searched Peter, he found that one of his knuckles was red, but there was nothing else. After the search Peter was taken back to the cruiser.

Jim Mulhern got a call to report early for duty; there'd been a homicide. He had been here before, when Barbara had complained that she was getting harassing phone calls. Shay now gave him the job of visiting all the houses on the south end of Route 63. Mulhern started on his rounds, but first he went over to the cruiser and spoke to Peter. “If there's anything I can do, let me know,” Jim Mulhern said.

Dr. Ernest Izumi, the county's assistant medical examiner, was in bed when he got the call at 11:15, but he dressed quickly and was at the house at 11:40. Dr. Izumi had a habit of blinking often, with a half-smile on his round face. He said hello to Mickey when he saw him. Dr. Izumi said he would prefer to wait for Dr. Gross, the Chief Medical Examiner, who had also been notified, but when the chief didn't arrive, Dr. Izumi decided he ought to go in.

In the bedroom, he stepped carefully. He took off the blanket that was covering Barbara and knelt down. There was no room between her right arm and the bunk bed, so he took her left pulse. He put his hands on Barbara's stomach to feel for body heat. Her stomach was still slightly warm. Her arm was not stiff; rigor mortis had not set in. But the wrist was cold. At 11:45
P.M.
, Dr. Ernest Izumi pronounced Barbara Gibbons DOS—dead on the scene.

Dr. Izumi didn't want to examine Barbara any further, or move her, until pictures had been taken. So he walked back and forth through the house, looking around. He noticed the light shining by the top bunk. He noticed that there was a sleeping bag on each bunk. The sleeping bag on the top bunk had the flap open; on the bottom bunk, that flap was closed.

The room was so cluttered that when Sgt. Richard Chapman, the photographer, arrived, he had a hard time taking pictures from all angles. He was an experienced man, twenty-three years on the force, but it still wasn't easy. The bunk bed was only seven feet from the opposite wall, and Barbara sprawled in most of that space. Sergeant Chapman took pictures of all the dirty laundry strewn around the room, too.

Trooper Walter Anderson, the artist, sketched the rooms quickly, marking what Lieutenant Shay said was a bloody footprint on the bedroom carpet, near Barbara's left foot. Sgt. Gerald Pennington, the fingerprint man from the crime lab at Bethany, dusted for prints with a gray powder. He found a print on the back door, the door that was standing open, and he took a picture of it.

Trooper Don Moran took the old wallet from a drawer in the living room. There was no money in it, or anywhere else in the house, except for sixteen cents that Lieutenant Shay found scattered on the floor. The wallet that Barbara had bought at Bob's Clothing Store that day was not found, and neither was the money from the check she'd cashed.

When Trooper Marius Venclauscas arrived, he began searching the house. He found the pouch of knives in the kitchen, including the knife with the broken tip. He was especially interested in that one, and he carved his initials on the brass part of the knife, in case he needed to identify it later. He found others—throwing knives and hunting knives, and an all-purpose knife that Barbara had seen advertised at the A&P. He found a knife for cutting tar paper and a kitchen knife that Peter used for working with model cars. He found several pairs of scissors and a large pair of clipping shears. Behind the living-room door, on the coat rack, he found a machete and an ice pick.

But it wasn't until much later, long after Peter was gone and Barbara had been taken away, that the police found the razor. It was a straight razor with a black plastic handle and a six-inch blade, the razor that Barbara got at Mario's Barber Shop for Peter to use when he worked with balsa wood. The razor was closed when the police found it. It was lying on the shelf in the living room, where it was always kept, in its usual place.

Mickey was just wandering around, waiting for Peter, when he saw Geoff being taken into a cruiser by Sergeant Salley. Mickey hurried over to the cruiser and got in, too. Salley said he was going to take a statement from Geoff, and Geoff looked at his dad. “They just searched me,” he said.

“What do you mean, searched you?” Mickey demanded.

“They took me into the van and stripped me and searched me,” Geoff said.

“Well, why didn't you call me?” Mickey said angrily, though he wasn't really angry at Geoff.

“Well, I didn't know what was going to happen,” Geoff said.

Mickey got out of the car and went looking for Lieutenant Shay. “What the hell is going on here?” Mickey asked Shay.

“It was just something that had to be done,” Lieutenant Shay said, in a businesslike, yet soothing kind of way.

Mickey looked at him. “Well, were you satisfied?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lieutenant Shay said.

The night grew colder and longer, and still Peter sat in the cruiser. Not many people spoke to him. Eddie Dickinson, his neighbor and good friend, had come running down the road when he heard the news and had said something to him, not long after Peter got in the cruiser. Geoff, too, had something to say. Geoff had noticed that Peter had a blank expression on his face, and he hesitated to speak to him. But there was something he really needed to say, and finally he just went over to Peter and said it. He asked for his coat back.

Bill Dickinson, Ed's dad, approached the cruiser to speak to Peter. McCafferty waved him away. “You aren't allowed to talk to him,” McCafferty said. Bill was surprised to hear it, but he didn't argue.

Bill wasn't worried yet.

Mickey told Marion to go home, that he would wait around and bring Peter back. Marion agreed. She said she'd open the sleep sofa in the den for Peter, and she would leave the porch light on.

Marion wasn't worried yet.

It was nearly two in the morning when Lieutenant Shay told Sergeant Salley to take Peter down to the barracks. By then Peter had been sitting in the cruiser for three hours. Mickey had told Sergeant Salley that he was waiting to take Peter home with him. He had told that to another trooper, too. When he heard that Peter was going down to the barracks, he said he would come along and wait for Peter there. Sergeant Salley said that wouldn't be necessary. “Go on home,” he told Mickey. “We'll bring him back later on.”

Mickey persisted. “As long as I'm here, I'll come down and wait for him,” Mickey said. But the trooper persisted too. “You go on home,” he said again. “We'll run him up when we're through.”

Sergeant Salley got behind the wheel of the cruiser.

“How do you feel?” he asked Peter.

“I feel all right,” Peter said.

The cruiser headed north on Route 7, leaving the murder house behind, with all the lights and bustle. The night closed in again, thick and black. Mickey watched the cruiser disappear down the long straight road, past the dark swamp, then he got into the Toyota and drove home.

Mickey wasn't worried yet.

The Connecticut State Police Barracks, Troop B, is a solid, square, red-brick building about a mile from the center of Canaan, right at the Massachusetts border. The town was very quiet at 2:00
A.M
. when Sergeant Salley and Peter drove through.

Sergeant Salley took Peter into a big room. The room was used as a kitchen and lunchroom by the troopers, and there were a table and chairs in the center and several vending machines along the wall.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” Sergeant Salley asked Peter.

“No thank you,” Peter said. He never drank coffee. He was hungry, though. He hadn't eaten since lunch at school on Friday, more than fourteen hours before. He bought himself a candy bar from a vending machine and ate it, sitting at the table across from Sergeant Salley.

For a while he tried to make conversation. He told him a little about school and who his friends were. He said he was very interested in cars.

But as the morning dragged on, Peter yawned more and more often. He put his head down on the table, and finally he asked Sergeant Salley if he could lie down. “Not yet,” Sergeant Salley said. “Wait a few more minutes. Lieutenant Shay will be here, and then you can get some sleep.”

The lieutenant was still out at Barbara's, where the lights were all on, the scene still busy and hectic. When Sergeant Chapman had taken all his pictures, Dr. Izumi finally had a chance to examine Barbara further. He picked up the clothes near the body, the underpants inside the blue jeans. They were still wet. He took off her T-shirt, which was pushed up around her breasts, and her outer shirt, which was unbuttoned and partly off. He straightened out the fingers of her right hand and saw that something had pierced the palm all the way through. He tied plastic bags around Barbara's hands.

Mickey had just got into the house when the phone rang. It was a Corporal Logan, asking whether Mickey and Marion and Fran would mind coming down to the barracks in the morning to give statements.

“We're still up,” Mickey said. “We might as well come on down now.”

“No, no,” the policeman said. “Tomorrow's soon enough. Get some sleep, and we'll see you in the morning.”

“What about Peter Reilly?” Mickey asked. “Will he be finished soon?”

“In about half an hour, maybe three quarters of an hour,” Corporal Logan said.

“Do you want me to come down and get him?” Mickey asked.

“No,” said Corporal Logan. “We know where you live, Mick. We'll run him up to your house when we're finished.”

Mickey hung up, and soon everybody went to bed. Marion had already opened the sleep sofa in the den; she left the porch light on. It was between 2:30 and 3:00 then, just about the time a policeman was knocking on the door of John Sochocki's house. Peter had driven John home after the Teen Center meeting, and the police wanted to talk to him down at the barracks. John was in bed, but the police didn't want to wait. Tomorrow wasn't soon enough.

It was after four in the morning when they took Barbara away. First they rolled her to the left and put a sheet on the floor under her. Then they rolled her to the right and put the rest of the sheet under her. In this way, four people could carry her out without touching her, simply by holding the four ends of the sheet. When they rolled her over, they saw slashes and puncture marks on her back. But they didn't know her legs were broken until several hours later, at Sharon Hospital, when her body was lifted to the autopsy table and Dr. Izumi heard a sound, the sound of grating bones.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Peter said once more. And again, a trooper went along into the bathroom with him. Back in the lunchroom, he put his head down on the table again, but still he couldn't sleep. He was very, very tired. He had sat in the cruiser out at the house for three hours, and now he sat in the barracks kitchen for four hours more, waiting for Lieutenant Shay.

Sergeant Salley left the room a few times, and when he came back in, after one of his trips out, he had a card in his hand. He told Peter he was going to read him this card, which listed his constitutional rights. “It is my responsibility to give it to you, and it is very much your responsibility to pay attention to it,” Sergeant Salley said.

“Am I being charged with something?” Peter said.

“No,” Sergeant Salley said. But he began to read the rights anyway. He was still reading when Lieutenant Shay walked in. It was about six in the morning.

Lieutenant Shay and Peter went upstairs then, to a small back room on the second floor, away from the street. The officer took out a constitutional rights card, too. The language was similar to the others, except that this form, which Lieutenant Shay asked Peter to sign, included a waiver as well.

“Does this mean I can't have a lawyer?” Peter asked.

“No,” the lieutenant said. “It just means you are willing to talk to me without a lawyer.”

Peter signed the warning form then, waiving his rights. In fact, he signed two of them. Then he began to talk.

He related the day, just as he'd told it to Bruce McCafferty in the cruiser and to Shay himself in the Kruses' kitchen. When he got to the part about Barbara lying on the floor, Lieutenant Shay was surprised that Peter didn't cry.

Peter and Barbara. This is what it kept coming back to. Although Lieutenant Shay asked Peter questions about school, and his cars, and whether he had any relatives in Connecticut or anyplace else, and whether he went out with girls, he talked mostly about Barbara. He asked Peter whether he'd ever had sexual relations with Barbara. Peter said he hadn't. Lieutenant Shay talked in such a probing way that finally Peter asked him some questions.

“Say, how many years of psychology have you had?” Peter asked.

Lieutenant Shay seemed taken aback, but he answered.

“Two years,” he said.

“Am I a suspect?” Peter asked.

“Yes,” Lieutenant Shay said.

“Then could I have a lie detector test?” Peter asked.

“That's a good idea,” Lieutenant Shay told Peter. “I'll arrange it for you. Meantime, I think some sleep is in order.”

They had been in the little room about an hour, maybe a little longer, starting about 6:30 in the morning. It was a quiet room, in the back of the barracks. It was a quiet Saturday morning. The window and the door were closed, only Peter and Lieutenant Shay in the room, ten by twelve feet, facing one another across a table. The entire conversation between the two of them, in this quiet little room, was recorded, but later, when people tried to listen to the tape, and many people did, they found it was far too garbled to make any sense.