Bottle Kill Ch. 03

"Won't I." I said, as a statement. "Oh... you were asking how Mr. McMillan was going to pay for the help he received." I pointed to the one-way glass, and Teresa brought in an evidence bag. Inside it was a thin, flat briefcase.

As I put on latex gloves and took the briefcase out of the evidence bag, I said "We obtained and executed a search warrant for Mr. McMillan's room and vehicle at the University Hotel."

I opened the briefcase and said "As you can see, inside the briefcase are a number of file folders with papers in them, as well as a few jump drives with the electronic versions of the same material. It just so happens that this material... is the exciting new research that SynGen Biosciences has recently begun."

"So what?" said Dexter Epstein, injecting himself at precisely the wrong moment. "He works there. He's the Director... or Assistant Director... of Research there."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." I said, admittedly with more snarkiness than I should have. "Yes, that is what Mr. McMillan is hoping I would see. But he really should not have these materials, which are industrial secrets, on the other side of the State and in a briefcase. I submit that this is what he was going to exchange for the help he received... oh, and this."

I took one of the jump drives, which was unusually large and thick, and pried it open. Inside was a huge diamond engagement ring!

"Like Charlene's ring years before," I said triumphantly, "Tiffany's engagement ring disappeared, though her other jewelry on her person did not. Now everything else is circumstantial, Mr. McMillan, but this ties it all in a neat package with a bow that will get a conviction by any Jury."

Dexter Epstein continued to annoy me by saying "How do you know that's her ring? How can you prove that?"

"Well..." I said in my Ronald-Reagan-imitation voice, "the initials T-A-W and the date of their engagement is inscribed on the inside. And I'm sure the security team will be able to identify it. Also, as we've given statements to the effect, Commander Croyle, Sheriff Griswold, and I all saw the ring on Tiffany's finger at that same time we saw you in the same room. And just look at the size of this rock! We all remarked on it at the time. I'm sure I'll be called to testify about it... and I'll be able to."

Marty McMillan's head had fallen and now his chin was on his chest. "I need to speak with my attorney, privately." he finally said. I put the briefcase back in its evidence bag, put the ring and the pieces of the jump drive shell in another evidence bag, and followed Jerome out the door into the anteroom...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Coming out of the anteroom into the hallway, I relinquished the evidence to Hardy and Drew, who took it under two-man control to the Evidence Rooms. As I did that, Detectives and Police Officers had poured out of the Monitor Room and Classroom 'E', and I was subjected to a sustained round of applause.

"That was a-maize-ing work, Mis-ter Crowbarrrr." said the Chief, extending his hand, which I shook. Then Tasha waddled up and hugged my legs, and I picked her up and held her as everyone chatted.

"Thank you, Chief. Thank you everyone." I said, acknowledging the ovation. "But it's not over yet. I would certainly like to hear him confess and fill in a few gaps, and save us the expense of a capital murder trial."

"What do you want to offer him?" Paulina asked.

"It's not your case to decide that." Miriam Walters said witheringly to Paulina. The tension in the hallway increased palpably. Paulina looked daggers at Miriam, as did I.

"Then what do yooo recommend, Ms. Wal-terzzzz?" drawled the Chief. "And I mean yooo personally."

"Why don't we go into your office or the Conference Room, Chief?" Miriam said. "You too, Commander Troy." The Chief extended his arm. I handed Tasha to her mother, and followed the Chief and the D.A. down the hallway...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"And here we are again." Miriam Walters said as she and the Chief sat down at the table in the Main Conference Room, the Chief in his normal seat at the near end of the table, Miriam to his right with the door behind her. I was standing on the far side, between the table and the windows in the back wall.

"What is it going to take, Chief?" Miriam continued. "I am going to run my Office as I see fit, and that means that Savannah Fineman, not Paulina Patterson, is assigned to this case."

"Even if it means a man who murdered three people walks free?" I fired back.

"He won't walk free if you do your job and help ADA Fineman get a conviction." Miriam said.

"It's not my job to do that lazy-ass idiot's job for her." I replied. "It's not my job to bail her out and make her look good when we both know she can't handle it------"

"I don't tell you what Detectives to put on what cases, and I expect you to abide by my decisions for my ADAs------" Miriam shouted.

"This is start-ingggg to be a circular arrrrgument." drawled the Chief. "You're just talking past each other."

"And one more thing, Chief." I said, though my eyes were boring right through Miriam Walters. "The case is not complete yet. We have not added McMillan's confederates to our bag."

"And who are those confederates?" Miriam demanded to know. "If you're holding something back from the District Attorney's Office------"

*KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!*

The door opened and Lt. Jerome Davis peeked his head into the room. "They're ready for us, sir." he said. "And by the way, your wife Dr. Fredricson is here to pick up Carole and Tasha."

I rushed around the table and into the hallway. Laura was in front of the entrance to my office suite. Carole did not look very pleased that she was being rounded up. Neither did Tasha, for that matter.

"Daddy, can't I stay and finish watching you?" Carole asked as she sulked.

"It's a school night, and you ladies need your sleep." Laura said.

"You got to see a lot tonight, Carole." I said. "And your mom's right; it's a school night. And Bowser's waiting for you to get home so he can get some sleep, too."

"Bowser sleeps all day." Carole said.

"Yeah, it's a dog's life he leads." I replied. "Carole, we're almost done here. Just a few more arrests, but they'll take a while. So you go on with your mom and your sister, and I'll let you know tomorrow what we do here tonight."

"O-kayyyy." Carole said. Then she brightened up and said "But don't we have the Dad Jokes with Dan and Julie Love tomorrow night?"

"Yep. Now get going." I said. As Laura took the girls down the hallway, escorted by Teresa, I turned to see a lot of Detectives looking at me.

"A few more arrests, sir?" Captain Claire Michaels asked...

Part 15 - A Pocketful of Rye

Jerome Davis and I went back into I-1. As we sat down in our chairs again, the lawyer Hunter Harris said "I want to speak to an ADA, to make a plea deal."

I played my ultimate trump card against Miriam and Savannah, and said: "As Police Commander, I'm a principal for the County as well as an Officer of the Court. As such, I can make binding agreements such as plea deals, so you don't need an ADA, you have me."

I could almost feel Miriam's anger from down the hallway as I continued: "But I'm here to tell you now... you ain't getting a plea deal. Your client murdered three people, and I'm ready to show that when he's put on trial; I'll give the D.A.'s Office a case so easy to spoon-feed to a Jury that we'll have that Jury begging to convict you."

"Furthermore, McMillan," I went on, "three victims means you're now classified as a serial killer, and it means 'aggravated circumstances'... and either of those means the death penalty for you."

I knew that it was unlikely a Jury would give a death penalty once they heard his story of his wife dying, but I mentioned it to show him the seriousness of the charge against him.

"Okay." said McMillan. "I'll tell you everything, at least my part of it. And after you hear it, maybe you'll give my proposal some consideration."

"No promises." I said. "And once again, 'anything you say can and will be used against you'. I'm not offering you a hypothetical, nor promising any consideration for whatever you say now."

McMillan did not look defeated, but shrewd, as if he had a plan that was going to somehow save him when he tried it. He began:

"Everything you said was pretty much how it happened." he said. "Twenty years ago, Heather and I got married. Our families booked into the Hyatt, here, and we had the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception here. Her parents put us in the Honeymoon suite, such as it was."

McMillan: "The Poker tournament was going on that same weekend, and they were a pretty rowdy bunch. Our wedding reception was in the late afternoon and evening, while the tournament finals were being played. We were supposed to have the bar area to ourselves, but some of the Poker players began coming in and getting drinks, so we shut down the bar and the reception ended pretty soon after that."

McMillan: "A very few of us were still there when someone came over with some champagne. He was the guy who'd just won the tournament, and he was really 'in his cups', as they say. He congratulated us and poured the magnum of champagne for us and we all drank it. I remember feeling groggy almost right away, and a few minutes later we all left for our rooms."

McMillan: "We were in our suite when there was a knock on the door. It was Boone, and he had the bottle and said we hadn't finished it yet. I don't remember what happened after that, except that he somehow was in our suite and pouring more champagne. The next thing I remember was waking up the next morning, still in my clothes on the sofa.

McMillan: "Heather was in the bed in the bedroom, naked. When I woke her up, she asked me if we'd had sex, because she was sore down there. I said I didn't remember, and she didn't either. But I knew then that something was wrong. And a few weeks later, Heather told me that she'd skipped her period, and she was pregnant."

McMillan: "Now she and I had been using condoms for months, and intended on continuing to do so. So that's when we started talking about it, and Heather admitted that on our wedding night she had woken up with Boone on top of her, fucking her. She said she thought it was just a bad dream and it was really me, and she blacked out again."

McMillan: "We weren't ready to start a family yet, so we decided to take a lot of the money people had given us as gifts, and for her to get an abortion. We went to the Planned Parenthood clinic. Three hours later she had not come out, and I asked about her. I asked again nearly one more hour later, and I wasn't getting any answers. And that's when the Police Lieutenant came out and talked to me."

McMillan: "He told me that something had gone wrong, that Heather had hemorrhaged and died. Of course I was in shock, which turned to grief. That cop, his name was 'Malone', said that he was going to take care of the investigation personally, but that I shouldn't talk to anyone about this just yet, not even our families."

McMillan: "That night a preacher came to see me. I don't remember his name... 'West'-something-or-other... but I remember he had this 'beak' nose. He told me that I would receive a settlement in the seven figures, but had to sign a non-disclosure-agreement. He also said he would spare our families pain by arranging it to look like a vehicle accident instead of an abortion."

McMillan: "I don't know why, but I went along with it. He took my car keys, and two hours later the car was found smashed up just across the State line with Heather's body in it. The preacher notified our families, we had a funeral for Heather, whose body had been cremated, and that was that."

McMillan: "I moved away. My company let me transfer to Iowa, and I worked up there several years. It was miserable up there, and of course I'd never gotten over Heather's death. My grief turned to deep, bitter hatred of Tex Boone. I began having thoughts of getting revenge for what he'd done to us, and I followed the Poker circuit to see where he was. I saw that he was getting into trouble from time to time, over married women."

McMillan: "Then I got an offer to help start up SynGen Biosciences. I put a lot of the money from the Planned Parenthood settlement into it, and went to work for them doing research. I couldn't be the Director of Research, because I'd not gotten my Ph.D., so I eventually became Assistant Research Director."

McMillan: "About nine years ago, that same preacher came to visit me at my home in Villa Nueva. He'd changed a lot... he looked a lot more sinister than I'd remembered him, and I could just feel this... evil, I guess is what it was... it seemed to just emanate from him."

I took out my Police iPhone and brought up the photo of Pastor Raymond Kyle Westboro. "Was this him?" I asked. I then exhibited the iPhone to the camera recording the interrogation.

"Why... yes! That's him! How did you know?" McMillan asked.

"I'll tell you later." I said. "I've interrupted you. Please continue. What did he say to you?"

McMillan: "He had brought a bottle of sherry... a rare and expensive brand, he said... and poured us both a drink from it. I watched him drink first before I drank, and then I had some. It was really good, and I drank more than I should have. As we drank, he told me that Boone was going to be in Westphalia, and that he was engaged to be married."

McMillan: "This preacher also said that his own wife had died, and he understood the pain I felt. From then on, he had me getting further and further riled up until, by the end of the night, I was agreeing to kill Boone's fiancée as revenge for Heather. The preacher got the information on how to get around the cameras, and told me all I needed to do was bring him the woman's engagement ring."

"And I did it." McMillan said. "The woman came to the hotel room I'd been told to bring her to. I shot a tranquilizer dart into her neck, then got her into the trunk of my rental car, drove her to Pottsville, to a hotel room there. I woke her up enough so that when I began punching her she could feel it, and then I slowly strangled her to death. I swear I could hear Heather calling me out to do it, to keep hitting her, to choke the life out of her..."

After a moment of silence, McMillan recovered, then said "I thought that would be revenge enough, and I never saw that preacher again. And then a few weeks ago, I learned that there was a Poker tournament weekend here, at the same time the Molecular Biology Conference was going on, that I was scheduled to attend... and that Boone was going to be here, as well, with another fiancée. All the memories came flooding back, and all the pain. And I resolved to kill his fiancée again, and make him feel the pain that he'd made me feel for all those years."

McMillan: "I came into your Town a week before the events, scouting things out. I hadn't been here in years, and the memories just kept hitting me over and over. And then I was contacted. It was a woman, and she said she represented a man who'd taken over that preacher's work, who was working for another man that had been cruelly wronged by Boone the same way I had been. She said the new man would help me kill Boone's fiancee and would also pay me a lot of money for the engagement ring as well as some of my company's research data."

McMillan: "I knew Dr. Chapman wanted to sell our company, so I thought I'd make this windfall profit and retire to someplace quiet. So I did it. Boone didn't even recognize me when I went to scout out the hotel again, and he even put me up in that same room where he raped my wife. I didn't stay there long, and I came back later that night. After the woman was left alone, I went right into her room with the spare key I had and began strangling her."

McMillan: "But then I heard people talking in the hallway, and I realized Boone was about to come in. I grabbed a bottle of whiskey on the table and ran into the bathroom. Boone came in, and when he walked past the bathroom door and into the bed area, I came out of the bathroom and hit him on the back of the head as hard as I could with the bottle. The bottle actually shattered, and I could feel his head cave in under my blow. He dropped like a stone. Then I went and snapped the woman's neck and got on out of there. I went back to my room at University Hotel, showered down, and slept like a baby the rest of the night."

For a couple of long moments, it was silent in the room. Then, having heard McMillan confess, Hunter Harris played what he thought was his trump card, saying "My client is willing to offer information about the people he helped, and that helped him. In exchange, he gets twenty year sentences with no parole at the end, served concurrently... and with opportunities while incarcerated to continue doing the research he's been doing to help the people of the planet, and end starvation worldwide."

I looked at Jerome and said "He thinks we are stoo-pid."

"Obviously, sir." said Jerome, playing along, though he had no clue why I was saying that.

"It's a fair offer." said Hunter Harris.

"If it were totally the truth, maybe." I said. "But it wasn't. Perhaps, Mr. McMillan, you were approached by the Consultant of Crime years ago. But I suspect you found a way to contact him. You'd been wanting to kill Boone for years, and finally got your chance. But you needed help, and it was you who took the initiative. The Consultant was a brilliantly smart man and figured out how to turn it around on you and make a lot of money for himself, probably before you'd even finished making your proposal."

Your Iron Crowbar: "But no matter what... killing Tiffany and Tex was on you. It was your initiative. You were not going to make a lot of money from selling those research papers to this New Consultant you found. They were your payment in exchange for helping you kill Boone and his fiancée. And yes, you had decided to kill him, but preferably after you murdered his fiancée in front of him. And then you'd try to haggle some money for the material, but that was going to be a dangerous game to play."

McMillan said "I'm offering you the names of my co-conspirators, those who helped me. All I want in return is the chance to continue my research, even if it is in prison."

I just stared at McMillan. "You killed three people!" I said. "And now you sit there and insult my intelligence by saying you were led into it, when it's obvious this was all you, it was your hatred driving your actions?"

I turned and looked up at the camera above the one-way glass, which was effectively looking into the eyes of everyone in the Monitor Room and Classroom 'E'...

Part 16 - Rye Faces Redux

"I say we give him the deal, or most of it." ADA Savannah Fineman said. "We get the rest of the story in exchange for 25-to-life with possibility of parole, served concurrently."

"For three murders, with aggravating circumstances?" ADA Paulina Patterson fired back. "You gotta be kidding!"

They were in the extra office between the Main Conference Room and the Police Chief's suite that was in the back left corner of the building. Savannah and Paulina had begun arguing in the Monitor Room, in front of the Chief, Deputy Chief (Tanya), Operations Commander (Teresa), and other Officers, and D.A. Miriam Walters had all but physically pushed them down the hallway to that office.

"You heard his story." Savannah said. "He puts that in front of a Jury, and he may get a hung jury if not acquitted. He can even go for an insanity defense."

"No way on that." Miriam interjected. "But she has a point, Paulina. They'll make a sympathetic case out of it. Boone was a cad, and that'll be part of it all."