The Cold Case that Turned Hot

"I've seen pictures of cars that caught on fire before, and none of them looked like the pictures in the file. Those cars were burned, but not so bad that everything inside was burned down to the bare metal from bumper to bumper. Usually the fire is concentrated just above the gas tank, because that's where the gas is.

"It's also suspicious that the fire department couldn't put out the fire. According to the report from the fire department, they tried until their water tanks were down to half full and then just tried to keep the surrounding trees and brush from catching fire. The only thing I can think of that would cause a fire that big and that hot was if there was a lot of some flammable substance inside the car. The easiest thing to get would be gas, but if Victor ran a lawn care service he'd have carried his gas cans on his trailer, not in the Suburban. He'd know that gas cans inside a vehicle are a recipe for a disaster.

I smiled at Rochelle then.

"That's why I need your help on this one, and you might even get another novel out of it. I imagine Harry was just as covered up with cases as I am now, so he was relieved when he could stop officially working this one. He still kept it open, unofficially, but he probably didn't have time to do much with it, and like he told me, since the case was officially closed, he couldn't use his official time and resources.

"Like you, after reading he file, I think Harry was right. What I need is a reason to reopen the case. If you can get us that, I'll be able to use my position and all the resources I have to solve it one way or the other."

Rochelle grinned then.

"I need to get paid for doing your job for you. How about if you do a couple jobs for me in return, one now and another after dinner?"

Well, the first job wasn't really work though I did have to work at controlling myself, but it's always that way with Rochelle. Usually, it's my fingers and my tongue because that's a favorite of us both. Once she'd arched up into my face and then cried out quietly, Rochelle gently pushed my head from between her thighs and then pulled me up on top of her.

"If this is what getting paid to be a detective means, I want a lot more cases to work on."

My after dinner job wasn't really work either. Rochelle rode me which is always fun. Rochelle gave my cock one last pump that sort of bent it double before it slipped out, and then eased her breasts down on my chest.

"Did I ever tell you I love feeling this way?"

"Yeah, about every time we do it."

Rochelle nibbled my earlobe and then whispered, "I don't want to ever stop."

The next morning, I was back at my desk and looking over the patrol officer's reports about an attempted murder that had happened the morning before. This one was going to be easy to figure out, but hard to solve. The area was known to be gang territory, with one gang claiming the six blocks on the south side of Tenth Avenue and another claiming the eight blocks on the north side.

Other than the fact that each gang terrorized the people living in the blocks they claimed as theirs because they were also the local drug dealers for the area, that wouldn't have been a problem that involved the homicide detectives. It would fall to Drug Enforcement. The problem was the both gangs were young and stupid and thought they could take over some territory from the other side.

Usually that meant one gang would try to start selling drugs to users on the other side of Tenth. Usually that meant the intruding gang had to pay the price. Usually that payment was one or more nine-millimeter bullets, though lately, they seem to have graduated to a.40. Usually, none were fatal because gang members don't seem to believe in target practice, but it did send the message they wanted to send and it was still attempted murder.

Those cases happened every couple of months and it was easy to figure out who was responsible because it was almost always the opposing gang. What was hard was finding out which gang member had pulled the trigger. Everybody in the neighborhood was scared shitless that if they said anything, they'd be the next person found dead in a stairwell or in an alley beside a dumpster.

It always took a lot of talking to people who had committed crimes before and had volunteered to be confidential informants in exchange for a reduced sentence. Even then, depending upon how close to the gang members they happened to be, they wouldn't talk.

We'd eventually arrest one again, and offer them a deal. If they gave us a name, we'd talk to the DA about reducing the charges. Until that happened, we detectives would continue to interview everybody in the area of the shooting. Some of these investigations went on for months before we had a name, and then we still had to prove our suspect was the actual shooter.

That's what had happened at about seven that Wednesday morning. A boy of fourteen was walking down Tenth on his way to school when somebody shot him in the right leg from across the street.

While I was walking the streets and asking people if they'd seen or heard anything that morning, Rochelle started doing what she's always done.

Her first step was to make up what she calls her fact board. It's about the same as I use for my cases. It's just a matrix used to sort information. Across the top of Rochelle's are columns that are the same as mine, that being means, motive, and opportunity. She also adds a last column for "Other". That column is for things she might want to add to the novel she's writing at the time. In rows down the side are the names of people involved in the case.

When I got home Rochelle had put all the information she'd gotten from Harry's file onto her board. The names down the side were Victor McCabe, Rhonda McCabe, Samantha McCabe, and William McCabe. The four names at the bottom stumped me. They were "Victor's father", "Victor's mother", "Rhonda's mother", and "Rhonda's father".

When I asked Rochelle why she'd put those names there, she smiled.

"Well, if Victor shot Rhonda and then shot himself, somebody had to know they were having problems. Their kids probably wouldn't know, or at least neither would probably have told their kids. They might have told their parents though. If my mother was still alive and we were having trouble, I'd tell her and ask her what I should do.

She'd also filled out the columns with what she knew on sticky notes. For Victor and Rhonda, she'd written "Possible marital problems" under "motive". For means for Victor, she'd written, "gun?". Under opportunity, she'd written, "drive on Delrose Drive". In the Extra column, she wrote, "where is the gun?".

For Samantha, she'd put a sticky note that said "insurance" under motive. For William she'd put a sticky note under motive that said, "didn't like father". For each of Victor's and Rhonda's parents, she had the note in her "other" column, "where are they".

I asked Rochelle about her theory that both Victor and Rhonda had been shot since Morgan hadn't been able to find a bullet. Rochelle handed me two pictures Morgan had taken during his autopsy.

"See these two holes in the skull? They're on the other side of the woman's head. Morgan first thought they were from a.22 or a.25 caliber bullet, but when he measured them, they were bigger and kind of square looking. That's why he ruled out it being a murder/suicide.

"I think Morgan might have been right the first time. The fire might have made the holes look bigger and changed the shape. Look at these pictures. They're pictures from the other side of the woman's skull. What if the bullet went all the way through her skull? A.22 long rifle might not have, but a.22 magnum might have and there are pistols made for.22 magnum cartridges.

"Morgan wouldn't have seen the bullet on an x-ray because it wasn't there. It was somewhere inside the car and it would have been just a blob of metal because it would have melted. The techs would have thought it was just some metal dash part that had melted. The pictures of the dash show that most of the metal did just that. It got so hot anything that wasn't made of steel or brass, or gold like the jewelry, just melted and dripped onto the roof of the Suburban."

"OK, I'll grant you that, but what happened to the gun?"

Rochelle got a quizzical look on her face then.

"I think there are two possibilities. What if it was a gun that doesn't look like a gun? I looked it up and you can buy a gun that looks like a fountain pen but shoots.22 Magnum cartridges. It can only shoot once before being reloaded, but if you just want to kill somebody and then kill yourself, taking time to reload wouldn't be an issue. After it burned up it might just look like a burned up fountain pen. A metal detector would have found it, but the techs were looking for a gun, not a fountain pen.

"The other possibility is that somebody else shot them both and then left and took the gun with them. I don't like that scenario though. If both Victor and Rhonda were alive when they got to that blind curve, at least one of them would have tried to get out and run, probably after the first one was shot, so whoever shot them wouldn't have done it on that curve. They'd have done it somewhere else, probably when they weren't together.

"If they were both dead and somebody else drove them up there and then left, somebody else would have seen the killer get out and walk away after he put Mister McCabe back in the driver's seat. Mister McCabe wasn't a really big man, but dead bodies are hard to move by one person. That would have taken time, time when at least one more car would have come around that curve. If another car had come along, they'd have seen that happening."

I shrugged.

"From what the truck driver told Harry, I don't think there would have been much traffic on the road that late at night. Any ideas about who a third person might be?"

Rochelle shook her head.

"Not so far. I mean, the daughter had a motive with the insurance. Half a million in 1992 would be about a million today so it would have been a lot of money. The only thing wrong with her being the killer is the statistics say it's rare for a girl to kill her mother and according to William, the dad thought she walked on water. I can't see her killing either of them even with the insurance. Most women wouldn't be strong enough to put a dead man back into the driver's seat either."

"What about the son? Maybe he got tired of his dad pushing him around and decided to kill him. He didn't seem to have much in the way of feelings for his mother either."

Rochelle nodded.

"That's a possibility, but why would he kill his own mother? You guys aren't very good at expressing your emotions. Maybe William liked her but didn't think he should admit that. If his dad was a control freak like he said, some of it probably rubbed off on William and he'd have thought saying he liked his mother was being weak."

I grinned.

"I thought I was pretty good at expressing my emotions yesterday."

Rochelle grinned back at me.

"That was yesterday. Are you going to express your emotions again tonight?"

Well, I did, and Rochelle seemed to like what I expressed. Afterwards, while Rochelle was snuggled up to me and stroking my chest, I was thinking that the sex was great, Rochelle was greater, and that I couldn't have found a better partner to help solve cases.

Rochelle was doing her detective work the opposite way I'd been taught. Any detective worth his salt will investigate the murder until he has enough facts to develop a theory or theories that can be explained by those facts. Then he starts trying to disprove all his theories except the one that fits everything he knows.

What Rochelle was doing was developing her theories and then looking for facts to support them. For a detective to try that approach usually leads to a blind end at best, and a lot of wasted time at worst because he'll stop looking for or ignore facts that don't prove his theory. For Rochelle, doing it that way gives her several different possible plots for her novel.

I think our opposite approaches are why we work so well together. I'll question her theories and she'll question mine and together we'll figure out which theory fits and which doesn't.

Rochelle kissed me on the cheek then.

"I think tomorrow, I'll drive up to where that accident happened and look around. Maybe there's a way a third person could shoot them both and then just walk away without any other cars or trucks seeing him. After that, I think I'll drive by the house where they lived and see if William is still living there. If he is, I'll talk with him and see if he remembers anything that he didn't tell Harry.

"If he isn't and sold the house, there should be a record of that at the Recorder's office. I can check the Recorder's records to see if he bought another house and that'll give me his address. Either way, I want to talk with him."

When I got home that night, Rochelle was looking at her fact board. I asked her what she'd found out that day. She frowned.

"Not much. That curve is still there. I drove it from the direction the truck driver said he was taking and it really is a blind curve. According to Harry's report, the Suburban was a dark blue, so I could see how the truck driver might have not seen it sitting there with no lights on and not moving in the dark. I parked on the shoulder and then walked over to where the Suburban probably went through the guardrail.

"It's no wonder it took so long to get the Suburban back on the highway. I think Harry must have underestimated the distance from the road down to the only place the car could have stopped. It has to be at least forty feet if not fifty. The ground levels out enough there and there are some big trees that even back then would probably have stopped the car from going any further.

"I thought about walking down there, but it's so steep I'd never have made it back up without a rope to help me. I don't know how the coroner's techs managed to search the embankment unless they were let down on ropes. I suppose if I could prove Victor and Rhonda were shot, it might be worth taking another look for the gun, but it's probably buried under dirt after all these years even if it was there in the first place.

"After that, I drove to the house and knocked on the door. A woman answered and I asked her if this was the McCabe residence. She said it was and asked me what I wanted.

"I introduced myself and said I was a writer and was working on a novel about an accident that had happened on a blind curve. I said it was a made-up accident in a made-up place, but I'd researched the accidents that had happened on the curve on Delrose and I needed to talk to William since his parents were killed there to see if he remembered anything else.

"She said William had to go to Chattanooga for his job but that he'd be back on Friday. He's a mechanic for a Caterpillar dealership in Knoxville that sells bulldozers and heavy equipment like that and is evidently on call to repair construction equipment on construction sites on the East Side of Tennessee. She said he has to go to Chattanooga about twice a month and stay over at least one night. I laughed and said I knew the feeling because my husband did the same thing for his company. I said I'd come back on Friday if that was all right with her. She said it was, so Friday afternoon, I'm going back to talk with William.

"As I was driving back, I was wondering why some bulldozer in Chattanooga breaks down every two weeks or so. I thought they were made to work for a long time before they needed repairs."

I shrugged.

"Well, they are, or at least that's what I understand, but there's always a lot of construction going on in Chattanooga so maybe it's equipment on different sites. Why else would he be going there every two weeks?"

Rochelle smiled.

"You drove from Nashville to Knoxville every week to see me."

"You think he has a girlfriend in Chattanooga?"

"That's a better explanation than him having to go there to fix equipment that's supposed to last a long time. The house looked clean inside and his wife seemed to be a nice woman, but she wasn't very pretty and she'd let herself go. I could fit two of me in her jeans and she probably can't find bras off the shelf anywhere in Knoxville. It's not a stretch to believe William has found some other woman. He wouldn't be the first man in the world who decided he'd rather have thin and sexy instead of chubby and frumpy.

"You wouldn't ever find a girlfriend besides me, would you?"

I chuckled.

"Not in a million years. One woman is enough to put up with."

Rochelle grinned.

"You don't seem to mind putting up with me. I think you even like it. Wanna put up with me again tonight?"

Well, I didn't put up with Rochelle that night. I didn't have to. As soon as we got in bed, she raised up, straddled me, and after she kissed me until I had to stop to breathe, she whispered, "I'm going to make sure you never look for another woman."

By the time we went to sleep, I figured if I ever found another woman and she was anything like Rochelle, I'd probably end up having a heart attack or just die from exhaustion.

I got a break in my case of the gang shooting the next night. I knew Jennifer wouldn't be on her street corner much before seven, so before I left home, I told Rochelle I'd be late and she should just eat and go to bed. At seven thirty, I drove to the corner of Second and Johnson and there Jennifer was in front of the resale shop. I was in my personal car for two reasons. She'd be in big trouble with her pimp if he found out she'd gotten into a police car and hadn't been arrested. The other reason was she knew my car and would know I wanted to talk with her.

When she saw me, she pointed down Johnson. I knew where she wanted me to go. At the other end of the block was an empty warehouse. In the back was the area where the loading docks were. Jennifer used that empty lot to service the johns who were a little bashful about asking her to get into their car. That's how she'd gotten herself arrested the first time.

Vice was running a sting to try to get the hookers off the streets and the plain-clothes officer had pulled up to the curb where she was standing and rolled down his side window. Jennifer walked up to the window, raised up her top to show him her bare breasts and then smiled.

"I bet you like these. Wanna see some more of me?"

The officer just grinned and said, "Sure, but not here and not in my car. Can we go someplace?"

The officer did that for a reason. If Jennifer was seen getting into his car and then ended up being arrested, every hooker and pimp within a three-block radius would know the description of the car in less than an hour. That would have ended the sting before it even got started. Having her go someplace else where nobody was watching let the department keep using that plain car for at least that night.

Jennifer told him to go down Johnson to the warehouse and to drive around to the back and she'd meet him there. She also said she needed ten bucks to make sure she didn't walk all the way there for nothing. The officer handed her a ten and then drove off down Johnson.

Once Jennifer met him behind the warehouse and got in his car, she listed off what she could do for him and how much it would cost. From what I heard, she was more pissed at being arrested than sad, and she stayed that way until the officer told her she had another way out. That's how Jennifer became a confidential informant. I'd used her several times when investigating a crime in that area.

The gangs all have their own women they fuck for free so they don't use the hookers, but just by being on the street, the girls hear things, things they don't mind sharing if the price is right. Jennifer was a hooker but she wasn't dumb. Jennifer's price was five tens so it would just look to her pimp like she'd done a couple blowjobs during the night. She'd give him forty and keep the ten for herself.