The May Day Murders (7 page)

“
Well, here we are,” Roger
announced, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Where would you
like to begin?”

Sam nodded toward the stairs. “Up
there. I want to see the closet where Tommy was locked
up.”

“
This way, sir,” Roger said
as if he were the butler. Sam followed him up the stairway and
halfway up, Roger called over his shoulder, “Want to hear my
theories, thus far?”

“
Shoot,” Sam
replied.

“
After weighing all the
evidence, which is minimal as you know, and taking into
consideration all the clues we have to go on, which are about nil,
here’s what I think may have happened: The murderer got into the
house, either by stealth through a door or window, or perhaps by a
reluctant and/or coerced invitation from Marsha Bradley herself.
How he got in isn’t that relevant at this point—he got in somehow.
It’s quite evident that once he was inside, he quickly took control
of the situation by the use of force—immediately threatening Marsha
in some way—most likely with a weapon of some kind, probably a gun.
Otherwise, Marsha would have had time to call 911, flee the house,
or at least do something. Are you with me so far?”

“
Yeah, I’m with you,” Sam
replied.

They reached the upstairs hallway and
Roger led them past the master bedroom and bathroom to Tommy’s
bedroom. It was large by any standard, especially taking into
account that Tommy was only a five-year-old child. Sam followed
Roger across the room, past the twin beds, through the array of
toys, Nintendo video games, and every conceivable type of sports
gear known to the western world that were scattered everywhere on
the floor.

“
Did your men make this
mess?” Sam asked in utter amazement.

“
Nope, we just rearranged
the shit. Tommy obviously has a problem with putting his toys
away,” Roger replied. “Anyway, the murderer forced Marsha and Tommy
into this bedroom. Or, it’s possible that Tommy had already been in
here taking a nap or whatever. Either way, the suspect threw the
little tyke into this closet and locked the door.” Roger went
through the motions of opening the door, throwing an imaginary
person into the closet then closing and locking the door as he
spoke.

Sam stared questioningly at the
button-type lock on the doorknob and said, “I wonder why the hell
this door even has a lock on it? Not much sense in that, any way
you look at it. I mean, who in the fuck would want to lock their
belongings inside a closet? It’s not like the shit is going to go
anywhere!”

Roger grinned expectantly at him. “I
wondered the exact same thing, myself. So I mentioned it to Dave
and he told me that the closet and bedroom doors were accidentally
switched when the workers were painting the interior of the house.
He said that he’d meant to switch them back, but had never gotten
around to it. That’s why the closet has a lock on it.”

Sam opened the door and peered inside.
The closet was very small and very cluttered. He pictured a
terrified Tommy Bradley stuffed inside this dark, cramped space,
unable to escape, while his mother was being raped and murdered,
and suddenly understood why the child was traumatized beyond
speech. He closed the door and asked, “Why didn’t the bastard
simply kill Tommy, too? Instead of letting him live, and possibly
risk being identified by him?”

Roger replied, “There’s several
possible options. One is, maybe the creep didn’t have the heart to
murder an innocent, defenseless little kid. After all, Marsha is
who he wanted, so he might have figured why needlessly kill a
child? Furthermore, we still don’t know if Tommy even saw the guy;
and even if he had seen him, it’s possible that the murderer could
have been wearing a ski mask or something to hide his face. There’s
also the possibility that he intended to kill Tommy after doing
Marsha in, but had gotten scared off by something or someone—maybe
even Dave—before he could follow through with it. Who
knows?”

“
Anyway,” Roger continued,
“The crux of my theory is the fact that the murderer used Tommy as
his leverage—his ace in the hole. He simply told Marsha that if she
didn’t do as he said, he would kill her son. That would explain why
she hadn’t put up a struggle. Her son’s life was at stake, and what
mother wouldn’t do everything in her power to prevent her kid from
being harmed? It also suggests that Marsha didn’t necessarily have
to know her assailant, thus squelching the notion that she might
have been having an extra-marital affair. What do you
think?”

Sam took a flash attachment out of his
coat pocket and slid it onto the camera’s hot shoe. “I think it’s a
hell of a lot of speculation,” was his reply. He made his way back
to the doorway, looked through the viewfinder then zoomed the lens
out to its widest angle and snapped the shutter. “Let’s go back
downstairs.”

“
Don’t you want to check out
any of the other rooms up here?” Roger asked.

“
Not particularly.
Everything else happened downstairs, didn’t it?”

“
That, we’re pretty sure of.
Don’t you think it’s a little strange that Marsha Bradley’s
assailant chose the kitchen to rape her in, instead of one of the
bedrooms?” Roger said as he led the way out of Tommy’s
bedroom.

“
I think all of this is a
little strange, to be quite honest,” Sam replied. “I’m still having
trouble with the murderer locking Tommy up in that closet. Think
about it, Rog. What are the odds of this bastard making a ‘lucky
guess’ that Tommy’s closet is the only room in the house that can
be locked and unlocked only from the outside? I’ve been through
this house before, and I’m pretty sure that all the doors,
including the bedrooms and bathrooms, lock only from the inside,
just as they are intended to. Yet the killer seemed to miraculously
know right where to put little Tommy to keep him out of the
way.”

Roger paused at the top of the stairs
and glanced back at Sam. “What are you driving at?”

“
I’m not sure, really.
Except that it’s starting to look more and more like the murderer
knew the layout of this house pretty damn well, and in fact seemed
to know a whole hell of a lot about everything. I think he might
have not only planned this whole thing out carefully in advance,
but that he also thoroughly cased the house out prior to the night
of the murder … from the inside. It’s got to be either that, or
he’s been a guest here at some point in time—and most likely more
than just once.”

Hagstrom shrugged his shoulders and
started down the stairs. “Could be. You’re right about the
locks—even the door to the basement has a two-way lock, which I
thought was a little odd, I might add. But it wouldn’t have been
very hard for the perp to notice the lock on Tommy’s closet door
when …”

“
C’mon, Roger!” Sam
interrupted. “I don’t care how calm and cool this asshole might
have been – the odds of him ‘just happening’ to notice that there
was a lock on that door are slim to nil. Imagine the scenario
you’ve just presented: he’s got a weapon of some kind, a gun,
pointed at Marsha and a kid he has to get out of the
way—quickly—because Tommy is probably already screaming and
carrying on when he sees a stranger threatening his mom’s life.
Let’s even suppose that the three of them are in Tommy’s room, with
a fucking light on, no less. That closet door is in the far corner
of the room with a little button on the doorknob facing away from
the entrance, and is completely obscured from view by a dresser
standing against the wall adjacent to it. The only way the killer
could possibly have seen that little lock button would be for him
to stand directly in front of the closet. Do you really think that
he would sashay all the way across the room, through all that shit
scattered around on the floor, just to see if the closet door, by
chance, had a goddamn lock on it? Why would he even bother to?
Nobody locks their shit up in a closet!”

Roger grinned at him, visibly
impressed. “Okay, Sherlock … or is it Watson? You’ve just made
an interesting observation—something I’ve overlooked, I must admit.
It must be that photographic eye of yours, I reckon. But what does
this all mean, may I ask, if you’re right?”

Sam reached the foot of the stairs and
watched Roger as he took another sip of Jack Daniels. “Well, I
think it’s pretty obvious that the whole thing was premeditated to
the letter ‘T.’ And I don’t think Marsha’s murderer was a stranger.
I think he was a local man.”

Sam could tell by the way Roger was
eying him that he wasn’t buying the last part. “Hmmm,” was all he
said before turning and making his way into the living
room.

Sam followed him over to where Marsha’s
body had been found lying on the living room floor near the sofa.
The police had removed the black tape outline of her body, but he
could still see the exact location and her body position clearly in
his mind from viewing the police photos. Her nude body had been
lying spread-eagle on the carpet just to the left side of the sofa,
her head not far from the end table. Sam stood where he was and
surveyed the living room, which was enormous like every other room
in the house. There were two doorways besides the one leading to
the foyer—one to his left in the corner, which led into the
kitchen, and one to the right of the sofa, which led into the
study. Roger had already gone into the kitchen and awaited him in
the doorway. “Do you want to see where the rape took place?” he
asked Sam.

Sam nodded. “Okay.”

He strode over and entered the kitchen.
Roger led him over to the island in the center and pointed to a
spot on the floor. “This is where he did the deed. Marsha’s clothes
were placed neatly on this counter—yet another indication that
she’d been quite cooperative with this bastard. None of her clothes
were torn or even wrinkled—just placed on the counter here in a
tidy little pile. We suspect that her assailant told her to remove
them since there wasn’t any evidence that he’d done it for
her.”

“
How do you know he raped
her here?” Sam asked.

“
We found pubic hair and
small traces of semen right here on the floor and nowhere else in
the house. The housekeeper had just cleaned and put fresh sheets on
the beds earlier that day, which made our work a lot easier,” he
added.

Sam looked around the kitchen, stared
down at the cold linoleum floor and wondered the same thing Roger
had: why here, of all places?

Roger resumed. “My guess is that he
ordered Marsha to face the counter, place her hands on it like so,
then proceeded to enter her from the rear. We found fresh
fingerprints, Marsha’s, where she’d grasped the overhang of the
counter, so that pretty much corroborates that theory.”

Sam found it hard to conceive that
Marsha Bradley could allow this to happen without putting up some
resistance. Either she was the most iron-willed woman imaginable,
or there was more to all of this than met the eye … As a matter
of fact, none of this was making much sense the more he thought
about it.

“
After he was done in here,”
Roger resumed, “Marsha’s assailant apparently ordered her to go
into the living room—why the living room is anyone’s guess. At any
rate, not long afterwards, he strangled her to death. Again, from
behind.”

“
How do you know she was
strangled from behind?”

“
The coroner’s report. He
determined from the angle and size of the wound on her neck along
with all that other technical shit that the murder weapon had been
a fairly thin cord of some kind—about the same gauge as ordinary
lamp cord—that had been pulled around her neck from
behind.”

“
Suggesting that she was
unaware of what the killer was doing—like she was taken by
surprise,” Sam said.

“
Exactly. You’re really
catching on to all this police work, Watson. I’m proud of you,”
Roger chuckled.

Sam forced a weak smile, but for the
moment had lost his sense of humor. There was one thing about Roger
Hagstrom that he found annoying at times, and it was one of the
reasons he was there right now with him at the Bradley house. He
didn’t know if it was the effects of alcoholism or just plain
lethargy, but his friend had a real problem with following through
on things. He’d seen it happen on a few occasions before when he
had tagged along with Roger during an investigation. If a crime
wasn’t solved quickly and easily, he tended to just give it up, or
simply let it get away from him. It wasn’t intentional, of course.
It just seemed to sort of happen that way sometimes.

But this wasn’t an auto theft or a
burglary. This was a murder case—and the victim just happened to be
a very close friend of his and Ann’s. He was going to lean on Roger
Hagstrom all the way through this investigation until the murderer
was caught and convicted—even if it strained their friendship in
the process.

“
How long was the murderer
in this house?” Sam asked.

Roger sipped and replied, “It’s hard to
say exactly. Dave left at six-thirty to go to Matt Timmonds’ and
returned at about nine-fifty. The autopsy indicates that the time
of death was between eight and eight-thirty. My guess is that he
didn’t stay long—just long enough to get Tommy out of the way, rape
Marsha and strangle her; all of which could have taken between
fifteen minutes and half and hour—depending on how quickly he
worked, if you know what I mean. Tack that time onto her
approximate time of death and that would put him in the house
somewhere between the hours of seven-forty-five and
eight-thirty.”