No Place to Die (11 page)

Martin nodded. “Okay. But take enough backup to surround the place and make sure he has absolutely no chance to escape.”

The place where Petrovich worked was in a light industrial area in the southeast corner of the city. While the uniforms and the Crime Scene Response team waited in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box a quarter of a mile away, Maggie and I made a reconnaissance loop around the block where the shop was located.

It was a stand-alone operation doing business in a white cinder-block building that desperately needed a fresh coat of paint. The place was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence that was topped by concertina wire, and the lot outside of the building was littered with refuse. Off to one side of the yard, a number of pallets stood sealed in plastic and stacked ten or twelve feet high. There was no way of telling if the pallets held raw materials or finished product.

The other side of the yard was apparently the employee parking lot, and half a dozen aging vehicles were lined up haphazardly, butting up against a driveway that led to a garage door on the north side of the
building. There was no black van among them. A door marked
OFFICE
in faded red letters stood squarely in the middle of the building, facing the street.

I turned the corner and drove down the street along the east side of the building. About ten feet of space separated the shop from the fence behind it. Most of the space was filled with junk that looked like it might have been abandoned and left rusting there for years. As was the case in front, all of the windows in the building were open, and as I drove slowly down the street, the whine of a high-pressure drill and the loud rapid thudding of an air hammer assaulted our ears.

After circling the block, we drove back up the street and rejoined the uniforms and the techs. I propped a legal pad on the hood of my car and drew a rough sketch of the building. Looking to Jon Beers, the ranking patrolman, I said, “Unless he tries to go over the fence, the only way out is through the open gate in front of the place. You can put a couple of guys along the fence at the rear of the building to make sure he doesn’t try to get out the back. Then you and the other two guys can take the front. Maggie and I will drive right up to the office door and bring him out that way.”

Beers nodded and we took a couple of minutes to check our equipment. Everybody took one last good look at Petrovich’s mug shot. Then Maggie and I got into my Chevy and led the uniforms back down the street while the techs waited for our call.

Beers dropped two of his men at the fence at the back of the building. Then I drove up to the front of the building, pulled into the yard, and stopped in front of the office door. Beers pulled his squad across the entrance, effectively sealing the gate, then he and the other two members of his squad got out and took up their positions. Maggie and I waited a moment at the door, then opened it and walked into the building.

The door opened into a small, cluttered office. Two
metal desks had been pushed together, facing each other in the center of the room, and at one of them a heavy bleached blonde sat smoking a cigarette and sorting through what looked like a stack of invoices.

The door to the shop was closed, and the office must have been heavily insulated. The racket of the industrial equipment, which was so loud outside of the building, was considerably muffled in here. The blonde was wearing an Arizona Cardinals T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans. She looked up at our entrance and said in a raspy voice, “Can I help you?”

Maggie and I walked over to the woman’s desk and gave her a look at our shields and IDs. “Phoenix PD, ma’am,” I said. “We need to have a word with Richard Petrovich.”

The woman seemed unfazed by the request, as if it were a fairly routine experience. She set her cigarette down in an ashtray next to a bottle of Mountain Dew, got up from the desk, and said, “Wait just a minute. I’ll get Fred.”

Maggie touched the woman on the arm and said, “No, ma’am. Please just take us back into the shop and show us where we can find Mr. Petrovich.”

For a moment, the blonde hesitated. Then she looked from Maggie to me, sighed, and said, “Follow me.”

She led us out into the shop, closing the office door behind us. I counted five men working at various tasks, one of whom was a welder. He had his mask down over his face and his torch in his hand and was kneeling in front of the project he was working on. As we stepped through the door, everyone except the welder stopped working and turned to stare at us.

Every man in the place looked like a hardened con. All of them sported what appeared to be jailhouse tats, and several of them wore earrings. Out here the temperature was at least twenty degrees hotter than it had been in the office, and the uniform of the day consisted
of ripped jeans and muscle shirts. Most of the men were perspiring, and the testosterone level in the room was doubtless somewhere off the scale.

While the welder remained oblivious, four sets of decidedly hostile eyes followed our approach across the floor. Most of them were focused tightly on Maggie, mentally undressing her without even attempting to disguise their interest. Then a sixth man appeared from the far corner of the shop, older, heavier, and obviously the boss. Wiping his hands on a red rag, he interrupted our progress halfway across the floor and said, “Help you?”

The welder finally realized that something unusual was under way. He turned off his torch, set it on the floor beside him, and raised his mask. I showed my hands to the heavyset man and said, “Mr. Bourquin?”

He nodded his head. Maggie pointed in the direction of the welder and said, “No problem, sir. We just need to have a few words with Mr. Petrovich here.”

Yielding no ground, Bourquin said, “About what?”

“About nothing that’s any concern of yours,” I replied. “We’re not here to cause problems for you or for anyone else, but we do need to talk with Mr. Petrovich out front. Please step out of the way, sir.”

Bourquin glared at me for a long moment, then stepped aside, saying nothing more. While Maggie kept an eye on him and on the other four men, who had gathered behind him, I stepped over to Petrovich.

He was easily the smallest man in the room, perhaps five-eight and a hundred and fifty pounds. His dark hair was plastered to the top and sides of his head, and he stood holding the welding helmet at his side with a mixture of what seemed to be confusion and fear written all over his face. I touched him lightly on the arm and said, “Mr. Petrovich, would you please step out front with us?”

He nodded and together we walked across the room.
Suddenly remembering the welding helmet, he handed it to his boss. Bourquin took it, nodded at him, and said, “Let me know if you need anything, Richard.”

Maggie led us through the office and out into the yard, closing the office door behind us. We took Petrovich over to the car and I told him to assume the position. He did so, and I patted him down, finding nothing in his pockets other than a set of keys, some loose change, and a worn, thin wallet that held a driver’s license, a Social Security card, a yellowed snapshot of a small girl, and twenty-seven dollars. “He’s clean,” I said.

Turning back to Petrovich, I said, “Okay, Mr. Petrovich, we have some questions for you downtown.” I read him his rights, and then, nodding in the direction of the uniforms, I said, “Let’s not make this any harder on each other than we have to.”

He shook his head. “I’m not gonna resist, but I haven’t done anything. Why do you wanna talk to me?”

“That can wait until we get downtown,” I replied. Gesturing in the direction of the parked vehicles, I said, “Does one of these belong to you?”

“That one,” he replied, pointing at an aging Chrysler sedan.

I held his key ring out in front of him. “These are the keys?”

“Yeah. The round one is the ignition.”

“All right. We’ll take good care of it. But what now I need is for you to put your hands behind your back.”

He did as instructed, and I cuffed him and put him into the backseat of the Chevy. Then Maggie and I got into the car and I backed out into the yard. A patrolman pulled the squad away from the exit and as I reached it, I rolled down the window and handed Petrovich’s keys to Jon Beers. “It’s the green beater Chrysler,” I said. “Have the techs load it up and get it over to the garage.”

After taking the weekend off to watch his daughter play in a softball tournament, Carl McClain was back on the job at midmorning on Monday with five days left to wrap up his business in Phoenix. A few minutes after ten, he watched Judge Walter Beckman leave his condominium and head north up Seventy-sixth Street.

McClain assumed that Beckman was leading him back to the country club again, and thus was surprised when only a couple of minutes later, the judge signaled a right turn into a complex of medical offices just off of Thompson Peak Parkway. McClain made the turn behind him and watched as Beckman carefully parked the Buick in a spot at the back of one of the buildings. The old man locked the car and then shuffled off toward the rear entrance of the building.

McClain slowly drove a circuit around the perimeter of the complex. While the parking lot on the south side of the buildings was virtually full, only a handful of cars were parked on the east side near Beckman’s Buick. McClain pulled into the spot on the left of the judge’s car and shut off the van’s ignition.

Hunching down in the seat, he used the large rearview mirrors on both sides of the van to scan the building behind him. It looked like the blinds were closed on virtually all of the windows on this side of the building, shielding the offices against the glare and the heat of the midmorning sun.

Patience
is
a virtue, McClain thought, smiling to himself.

He cranked down the windows on the driver’s and passenger’s doors in the hope of getting some air to circulate through the van while he waited. Then he slipped on a lightweight blue nylon jacket and retrieved the Baby Glock from its hidey-hole under the dash. He checked the gun and slipped it into the pocket of the jacket. He then adjusted the rearview mirror on the driver’s side so that it was focused on the door leading out of the building, and settled in to wait.

Over the next hour, five more cars parked in the rear lot and their occupants disappeared into the building. Finally, the door to the building opened and McClain watched Beckman come out and make his way slowly in the direction of the Buick. McClain waited until the old man was about twenty feet away, then opened the door and got out of the van.

He walked around behind the van, letting Beckman squeeze in between the van and the driver’s side of the Buick. Once the judge was effectively corralled there, McClain slipped in behind him and said, “Excuse me, sir?”

The old man turned back to look at him. McClain slipped the Glock out of his jacket pocket, holding it low so that no one but the two of them could see it. The judge’s eyes widened and in a quiet voice, McClain said, “Don’t do anything stupid, buddy. Just do exactly what I tell you to do, and you’ll be home safe and sound in time for lunch.”

Beckman reached toward his hip pocket, apparently going for his wallet. “I’m sorry. I only have a few dollars on me,” he said in a frightened voice.

“Don’t worry about that for now,” McClain responded.

With his left hand, McClain reached out and slid back the side door of the van. Gesturing with the pistol, he said, “Get in.”

The old man, clearly confused, took a tentative step
in the direction of the van, then paused, apparently pondering the high step up into the vehicle.

“That’s right, sir,” McClain said, patiently.

He transferred the gun to his left hand. With his right hand, he reached out, took the judge’s elbow, and guided him into the van. “Up we go, Your Honor.”

As the judge disappeared into the van, McClain took a quick look around and saw no one else in the parking lot. He scanned the windows in the building behind him, but the blinds in virtually all of the windows remained closed, and he saw no one looking out. He stepped up into the van behind Beckman and slid the door shut.

The old man crouched, stooped over in the middle of the van, and McClain waved the gun at him again. In a distinctly harsher voice, he said, “Lie down on the floor.”

Beckman shook his head in confusion. “What do you want?”

McClain slapped the old man sharply across the face. “Shut the fuck up and lie down.”

The judge did as instructed, slowly sinking to the floor of the van and lying on his back.

“Roll over,” McClain said.

Again, Beckman followed the order, and McClain squatted down, straddling Beckman’s back. He stuck the Glock in his pocket, reached under the passenger’s seat, and came out with a roll of duct tape. He unrolled a piece of the tape and tore it off. Then he roughly grabbed Beckman’s arms and taped them together behind his back.

McClain tore off another piece of the tape, leaned forward, and slapped it over the judge’s mouth. As the old man began struggling helplessly beneath him, McClain ripped off a third strip of tape, turned around, and bound Beckman’s ankles together. Then he got up off the old man’s back.

“You just lie still now for a while, Your Honor. We’re going for a little ride.”

McClain unfolded his painter’s tarp and draped it over the judge. Then he slipped into the driver’s seat and cranked the ignition. Less than three minutes after he had first walked up behind Beckman, McClain drove slowly and carefully out of the parking lot and turned west onto Thompson Peak Parkway. Two blocks later, he headed south down Scottsdale Road.

In the small interview room, Richard Petrovich smelled of a man who’d been working hard in the heat of the day—and of fear.

I took off the handcuffs and pointed him in the direction of a chair. He sat nervously, his brown eyes darting from Maggie to me and then back to Maggie again before finally focusing at a spot on the table between us. His nose looked as if it had been broken at some point and not reset quite properly, and his skin seemed exceptionally pale for someone who’d lived in Arizona all his life. But I chalked that up to the fact that the guy was doubtless scared shitless.

Unlike the interview rooms on the sets of most TV cop shows, there was no one-way mirror that would allow people to watch our exchange directly, but video cameras would capture the interview and send it to a recorder and a monitor in a control room nearby. The lieutenant, Pierce, and Chickris would be watching us there.

Maggie and I took chairs on the opposite side of the table and I began by identifying for the record the
three of us present in the interview room. I noted the date and time and formally advised Petrovich that the interview was being recorded on audio and video.

He displayed no macho, tough-guy bravado; rather he looked genuinely scared and confused. I leaned forward in my chair and said, “Mr. Petrovich, we apologize for dragging you in here like this, but as I said, we’ve got a few questions for you.”

He nodded, saying nothing.

“Can you tell us how you spent last Wednesday night?” I asked.

He looked away, apparently thinking about it. Then he turned back to me. “I got home from work about six. I made myself some dinner and then watched television for a while. I went to bed a little after ten.”

“Can anybody verify that?” Maggie asked.

“No. I live alone, and I didn’t see or talk to anyone that night after I got home.”

“What did you watch on television?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I dunno. Nothing for very long, I guess. I was channel-flipping the way you do. I watched the Suns game for a while, but otherwise I was just bouncing around the channels until I got tired and went to bed.”

“How about Thursday night?” Maggie asked.

“About the same. The job leaves me pretty well exhausted, and by the end of the day, I don’t have energy enough to do anything besides go home and collapse in front of the tube. I’m trying to stay sober, and so I don’t go out to the bars. I sometimes go to a movie on the weekends, but except for that I stay pretty much to home. Why do you want to know what I was doing on Wednesday and Thursday nights?”

Ignoring the question, I leaned in closer and said, “How well did you know Karen Collins?”

Vigorously shaking his head, he said, “I don’t. I never heard the name before.”

“How about Beverly Thompson?” Maggie asked.

Again he shook his head. Then, looking completely astonished, he said, “Wait a minute! You mean the woman who’s been in the news—the one who was kidnapped?”

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “That woman.”

Petrovich jumped up out of the chair, looked at Maggie, and said, “Jesus Christ, you can’t be serious! You think I had something to do with that?”

“Didn’t you?” I asked.

“No! Absolutely not! No fucking way! Who the hell says I did?”

“Sit down, Mr. Petrovich,” I said.

Reluctantly, he took his chair again and clasped his hands together on the table in front of him. Trembling in anger or fear, or perhaps a combination of both, he said in a desperate voice, “Please, you’ve got to believe me. I
was
home all night both Wednesday and Thursday. I never heard either of those names, except for hearing the Thompson woman’s name on the news. And I had nothing to do with her going missing.”

“You did six years for robbery and attempted rape, is that right?” Maggie asked.

Petrovich nodded. In a distinctly less animated tone, he said, “Yes I did. And I paid the price.”

“How did that happen?” I asked.

He sighed heavily. Speaking slowly in a defeated voice, he said, “Seven years ago, I was a drunk and out of work because of it. I was out drinking one night and ran through what little money I had. I was stumbling home around midnight and I walked past this house. It was a hot night and I could see that a window on the side of the house was open.

“I don’t know how in the hell I could have been so stupid, except for the fact that I was drunk. But I figured I might find a few bucks so that I could go back to the bar and do some more drinking. Anyway, I pulled
the screen off and climbed in the window. A woman was in bed and I woke her up. She jumped out of bed and started screaming. I went after her and grabbed her.”

Shaking his head, he continued, “I wasn’t trying to rape her. I just wanted to shut her up so that I could get back out the window and get away. But we were tussling and her nightgown got torn partway off. The noise woke up the woman’s sister and brother-in-law, who were sleeping down the hall. He ran in and pulled me off of her. Then he punched my lights out and called the cops.”

Petrovich paused for a few seconds, then looked at us earnestly and said, “I’m not a violent man, not even when I was drunk. Up until that night, my closest brush with the law was a couple of traffic tickets. I terrified that poor woman. I shamed myself and lost my family as a result. But I took my medicine and promised myself that I’d never touch a drink again. Since I got out of Lewis, I’ve been straight down the line.”

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Petrovich?” Maggie asked.

“No, of course not! That would violate my parole.”

“And you don’t know Beverly Thompson?” I said.

“No.”

“You were never in her car?”

“No!”

“You don’t know Karen Collins?”

“No!”

“You were never in her home?”

“No!”

“Well, then, Mr. Petrovich,” Maggie said, “how do you account for the fact that hair taken from Ms. Thompson’s car and from Ms. Collins’s home matches up to your DNA?”

Looking totally confused, he shook his head. “I can’t…It doesn’t…I was never there!”

His eyes finally settled on mine, and I said, “Six
years ago, while you were at Lewis, you were required to submit a DNA sample for the state’s criminal database?”

“Yes.”

I threw up my hands. “Well, our forensics team found hair samples at both crime scenes. And when the lab analyzed them and checked them against the database, they matched up to the sample you gave.”

Petrovich’s eyes widened, and for a moment he looked like a man who’d just received the shock of his life. Then he began vigorously shaking his head again. In an anguished voice, he said, “No way. It’s got to be some sort of mistake. Please…I
wasn’t
there. I don’t know anything about either woman.”

He held my eyes with his, as if begging me to believe his denials. I gave him a few seconds, then leaned across the table and sighed. “Look, Mr. Petrovich. This isn’t a stupid television program you’re in here. We’re not going to play some lame good cop/bad cop routine with you, and I’m not going to go ballistic and beat the hell out of you to make you tell us what you know. The truth is that we don’t need to do any of that crap. We’ve got you dead to rights with the DNA evidence, and believe me when I say that you’ll be a lot better off cooperating with us, rather than giving us these bullshit answers that plainly contradict the evidence.”

I closed the distance between us and said in a quiet voice, “You can still help yourself here, Richard. At least tell us what you did with Beverly Thompson. If she’s still alive and if you help us save her, you can go a long way toward saving yourself. But if you stonewall us here, you’re gonna to go down hard.

“Right now your car’s in our garage and our technicians will be going through it with a fine-tooth comb. While they’re doing that, my partner and I will be searching every square inch of your apartment. And if
there’s anything in your car or in your apartment to connect you to either of these women—and I do mean
anything
—we’re going to find it. And by then it’ll be way too late for you to do yourself any good. You need to believe me when I say that things will go a lot easier for you if you’re straight with us now.”

“But I
am
being straight with you,” he pleaded. “I didn’t do
anything
.”

We kept at it for another twenty minutes or so, but Petrovich continued to insist that he did not know either Beverly Thompson or Karen Collins, or Alma Fletcher for that matter. He continued to claim that he was home at the time Thompson was kidnapped and again when Collins was shot. He told us that he’d been at work the morning that Fletcher was shot. That alibi we would check, of course, but the DNA evidence had not put Petrovich at the scene of Fletcher’s murder. The only thing tying that crime to the other two was the ballistics evidence.

I left the interview room feeling totally conflicted. There was no question about the fact that the physical evidence put Petrovich at two of our three crime scenes. But the guy had seemed genuinely confused by our questions and by the DNA evidence against him. He had also appeared sincere in protesting his innocence. Either he was an outstanding actor or something was totally out of whack here. We put him in a holding cell and went to search his apartment for the weapon that had been used in the three killings and for any other evidence that might tie him to any of the victims.