The Cold Case that Turned Hot

What I found out from Jennifer was that the shooting wasn't the result of drugs. The young sisters and brothers of the members of both gangs went to the same high school, and for the most part, tolerated each other there. What caused the problem was the young sister of one of the gang members. She was just a freshman and had met a guy from the other gang in her English class. Apparently it was love at first sight, so she started hanging with the guy at lunch.

When her brother found out, he did what any self-respecting gang member would do. He shot the boyfriend and then bragged about it to his gang. Jennifer's information was about fourth-hand, but she did give me a name -- Clarence Jones.

It was almost ten when I got home. I'd requested two officers to go find Clarence Jones and bring him to the station for questioning the next morning. I'd also requested two more officers to bring in the sister. I'd talk to them the next day. Clarence probably wouldn't tell me anything, but it's pretty easy to scare young girls into talking. Once I heard what she had to say, I'd start talking with Clarence. It might take all day, but I'd play one against the other until I got the truth of what really happened.

When I walked in the door, Rochelle was still sitting at her laptop. I asked why she wasn't in bed and she frowned.

"Because I've been sitting here all day going through the archives of the Knoxville Daily Sentinel and the Knoxville Daily Sun looking for anything I could find about Victor and Rhonda McCabe. The first thing I found was their wedding announcement. That article said Rhonda's last name was Stendy before she was married.

"Once I had the wedding announcement, I started looking for birth announcements for both of them. The birth announcement would give me the parent's name. Like I said when you asked me why I put their parents on my fact board, I figured at least one of them might know what was going on with Victor and Rhonda before the accident.

"I found a birth announcement for Victor McCabe that matches the date from his driver's license, and I got his mother's and father's name. Then I started looking for Rhonda, but I haven't found anything yet.

"After that, I started looking at obituaries to see if Victor's parents are still alive or not. His dad isn't. His name was Walter McCabe and he was killed in a construction accident in 1955. His mother, Evelyn, is still alive or at least I haven't found an obituary for her. She'd be ninety-four now, so I'm thinking if she is still alive, she'll be in a nursing home. I know she wasn't at William's house. When I talk to him, I'll ask him where she is.

"I also found some more about Victor and Rhonda. I found an article in the Knoxville Daily Sun listing the local men who'd come back from a tour in Vietnam that month. They came back in December of 1970.

"The wedding announcement for Victor and Rhonda said they were married on March 16, 1971, just three months after Victor got back from Vietnam. That date didn't seem right because according to Harry's report, Rhonda's driver's license said she was born on January 12, 1952 so she'd have been only eighteen when Victor got home from Vietnam and nineteen on her wedding day. She wouldn't have had to have her parent's consent to get married, but nineteen is still pretty young for a girl to get married to a man she'd only known for three months.

"I think I found the reason though. Her daughter, Samantha, was born on September 10, 1971, just six months later. Samantha could have just been one of the lucky preemies who survive being born that early, but I think Rhonda was pregnant and she and Victor had to get married. It was kind of expected back then when a guy got his girlfriend pregnant. Rhonda wouldn't have had any way to support herself and a baby without a husband so she'd have married him if only for his support.

"I knew two girls who married the guy who got her pregnant. Neither marriage lasted. I'm thinking maybe that's why Victor shot her and then killed himself. Once they were married, he found out he couldn't live with her and decided there was only one way out.

"It would be interesting to know if he had any mental problems after Vietnam. Maybe William can tell me that, or maybe his grandmother can if I can find her. There has to be some reason that Victor would have killed Rhonda and then himself that Harry didn't find. Maybe Victor was suffering from PTSD and just snapped that night."

I shrugged.

"Or maybe, Victor was messing around on Rhonda and she shot him and then shot herself."

Rochelle shook her head.

"I doubt it. Most women who kill their spouses don't do it face to face. They don't want to watch a person they know die. Even fewer women shoot themselves and almost never in the head. That's because they want to look nice for the funeral. The most common ways a woman kills or commits suicide are poison or a lethal dose of drugs. If they were shot, it would be the man who did the shooting. You should already know that."

Well, I did know that. I was just testing Rochelle to see if she'd thought things through. As usual for her, she had.

"So what are you going to do next?"

Rochelle grinned.

"Not what you're thinking. I'm pooped from staring at this screen all day long. I'm going to take a shower and then go to bed...to sleep."

"No, I meant tomorrow?"

"Well, I still haven't found Rhonda's parents. If she was pregnant when she married Victor, her mother would know that. I'm going to try to find her and as much about Rhonda as I can."

When I got to my desk the next morning, Clarence's sister, Julie, was sitting with her mother in an interrogation room with a can of soda. The other two patrol officers were on their way in with Clarence. They'd caught him in bed with the woman he was living with.

I introduced myself to Julie, and asked if she knew why she was there. She just shrugged and said two cops told her mother they had to come down to the station with them.

"Well, Julie, you're not being accused of anything. You're here because of the shooting the other morning, the one on Tenth. You heard about that didn't you?"

Julie got a scared look on her face, but she nodded.

"Know anything about what happened?"

Julie shook her head.

"Well, that's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that you and a guy from across Tenth have a thing going. That true?"

Julie shook her head again.

"No, I stopped it."

"Oh, why would you do that? The way I heard it was you were spending every lunch period with him at school, and he walked you home a few times. Seems to be to be pretty serious to just stop. What was his name, by the way...just for my records."

Julie's voice was almost a whisper.

"Jeremy...Jeremy Wilks."

"Well isn't that a coincidence. The boy who got shot was named Jeremy Wilks. Couldn't be the same Jeremy Wilks as your Jeremy Wilks, could it?"

I saw tears in Julie's eyes when she looked up at me.

"Is Jeremy gonna be OK?"

I nodded.

"Yes. He won't be playing football for a while, but he'll be fine. Why? Do you think this Jeremy is your Jeremy?"

Julie looked at her hands.

"He might be."

"Any idea why somebody would take a shot at him?"

"No. Can I leave now?"

I stood up and picked up my notepad.

"Julie, I need to go do something, but after I get done, I'll have an officer take you home. You need another soda or maybe some chips or a candy bar? That's about all we have in the machines in the break room."

Then I turned to Julie's mother.

"Anything I can get for you? Our coffee's pretty bad, but it's coffee."

They both shook their heads and said they didn't need anything, so I left. I saw a patrol officer in the hall by the next interrogation room. When I asked him if Clarence was in the room, he nodded.

"Took us a while because we had to let him get off his girlfriend and then get him dressed. He didn't want to cooperate."

I walked into the interrogation room, slammed my notepad down on the desk, and jerked the chair out from under the table, then sat down and started flipping through the pages of my notepad. They were just the notes from another case I'd worked and I hadn't torn them out yet, but Clarence didn't know that.

"OK, Clarence, you already know why you're here so I won't waste both our time explaining it to you. You have the right to have a lawyer present before we go on. Do you want one?"

Clarence leaned back in his chair and smiled.

"I don't need no fuckin' lawyer 'cause I ain't done nothin'.

I knew the video camera on the wall had just recorded Clarence saying he didn't need a lawyer, so I started pushing him.

"Is that so? You think I had your skinny ass hauled in here just because I wanted to see you? I have a witness who'll testify that you shot Jeremy Wilks Wednesday morning.

"What I heard from my witness is that you shot Jeremy because he was dating your sister and he was from the wrong gang. I have your sister in the next room. She knew Jeremy and she seemed to be worried about him. She didn't tell me anything like that, but I could see it in her face.

"I'd bet if I push her hard enough she'll tell me you shot Jeremy to keep her from seeing him. If I have to, I'll arrest her for obstruction of justice for not telling me as soon as I asked her. She'll only get about six months in Juvenile Detention since it's a first offense and she's just fourteen, but she'll probably learn a lot during those six months.

"Now, I can understand a brother protecting his sister, because that's what my dad taught me, but it sounds to me like she was happy with the relationship. It sure as hell doesn't sound like a reason to murder somebody, but that's what you did. You're only eighteen, but the DA will still try you as an adult. You're young enough you might not get the death penalty, but you'll be an old man before you get out of prison. What will your sister think about that? Think she'll come visit you?"

When Clarence didn't say anything, I stood up.

"OK, Clarence, we can play this the hard way if that's what you want. You sit here and think about what I just said. I'm going to go talk to your sister...Julie was it...yeah, it was Julie. I'm going to go talk some more with Julie and see how hard I have to push to get her to tell me what happened. Young girls usually break pretty easy. When I come back you let me know what you're going to do."

I was almost out the door when Clarence said, "Wait a minute."

I turned around.

"You ready to tell me what happened on Wednesday?"

I suppose Clarence thought he was in a position to bargain, and in reality, he was since most of what I'd told him was bullshit. If he'd killed Jeremy, the DA might have tried him as an adult. Since he'd only wounded Jeremy and I didn't really have a witness, I doubted the DA would risk the publicity of a trial for attempted murder. He'd be happy enough if Clarence confessed, happy enough he'd charge Clarence with felony assault. Clarence would only get a year or so in prison, but at least he'd be off the streets.

Clarence cleared his throat.

"First, I want a lawyer. Second, I don't want you talking to Julie no more. She didn't have nothin' to do with this. Third, Jeremy didn't get killed so you can't arrest me for murder. He just got shot in the leg."

I said I'd get him a lawyer and I wouldn't talk to Julie anymore, but I wanted his confession and I wanted the pistol. I left the room, told the DA that Clarence needed a lawyer, and then had a patrolman take Julie and her mother home.

It took Clarence an hour with the public defender before he wrote out his confession. The only thing he didn't give me was the pistol he'd used. He said he'd borrowed it from somebody and he didn't know the guy's name.

I assumed Clarence told the public defender he was the shooter and the public defender recommended he confess. Public defenders know that if we have enough evidence to haul somebody into the station, we probably already have or will be able to get enough evidence to charge the person. They also know that once we have a name, we'll keep working the case until we find somebody who'll testify in court.

Most of the gang members on both sides of Tenth have prior convictions and they don't seem smart enough to stop. Eventually, we'd arrest one of Clarence's gang for something and just like the confidential informants, they'd agree to testify in exchange for a reduced sentence. The public defender could negotiate a better deal if Clarence confessed than if the case went to trial.

That was a Friday, so unless somebody decided to shoot, stab, or otherwise kill somebody else, I had no cases I'd have to work the weekend on. That would leave Rochelle and I two days to work on the cold case.

When I got home, Rochelle wasn't there, but she'd left a note saying she'd be back by six and thought we might go out to eat since she wouldn't have time to fix anything.

About ten 'til six, Rochelle walked in the door and smiled.

"I did pretty good today. This morning, I read over the newspaper articles I found. I just looked for dates and names when I first found them because it was taking so long. What I found out from the wedding announcement is Rhonda was born in Clarksville. That makes sense since Fort Campbell is there and the article about the soldiers coming home from Vietnam said Victor was in the 101st Airborne and the 101st is based at Fort Campbell. I think he met Rhonda while he was at Fort Campbell. I was able to find her birth announcement in the archives of the Leaf Chronicle as well as the obituaries for her mother and father."

"So there's no way to talk to them like you'd hoped?"

Rochelle grinned.

"No, but I don't have to now. This afternoon, I drove to William's house because he was supposed to be home today. He wasn't there. His wife said he had to work on some machine until almost midnight so he was going to start back about noon. She said he probably wouldn't be back until about six because he was going to stop at the nursing home and talk to his mother. I said maybe I could catch up with him there if she'd tell me which nursing home. His mother is in Blakeville and I drove over there and had a talk with her.

"For as old as she is, she still remembered a lot about Victor and Rhoda. She even showed me the photo album she made of Victor from the time he was born until his and Rhonda's twentieth wedding anniversary.

"She'd show me a picture and then tell me all about it, and she had a lot of pictures. It took almost two hours to learn what I did. What I learned reinforces my theory of what happened that night.

"Her name is Evelyn and she married her husband, Walter, in June of 1945 when they were both eighteen. Walter wanted to enlist in the Army, but by the time he turned eighteen, the war was over over. Instead, he went to work doing construction. Evelyn got a job as a secretary for the same construction company and that's where they met. They had Victor in 1951. The next year, Stanley was killed in some sort of construction accident. Evelyn said after that, she didn't look for a husband because with a boy at home, no man would want her. She kept working as a secretary and raised Victor by herself.

"She said she raised him to be a good man and he was until he went to Vietnam. When he came back, she said he was different. He had a hard time holding down a job because he couldn't get along with people very well.

"What the doctors at Fort Campbell told him was he was suffering from PTSD and they started treating him. She said he seemed to be getting better until he married Rhonda. I asked her how Rhonda had changed that.

"Well, she didn't have many good things to say about Rhonda. According to her, Victor met Rhonda at a restaurant in Clarksville and before he came back to Knoxville, he married Rhonda. She also said that Rhonda was three months pregnant when they got married. She said she'd taught Victor better than that, so it must have been Rhonda's fault.

"Anyway, she said Rhonda was a pretty girl but she always dressed like a prostitute. She said she figured Rhonda liked men looking at her so she dressed so they would. That bothered her because she thought wives should save that for their husbands.

"Victor got fired from two jobs before Samantha was born, and decided the only way to make a living was to work for himself. He started the lawn care business then and Evelyn financed him with money from a life insurance policy her husband had left her.

"She said Victor wasn't making enough money to give Rhonda everything she wanted, so after Samantha was born, Rhonda went to real estate school and then started selling houses. Apparently she was a good saleswoman, because Evelyn said Rhonda always dressed in fancy clothes, though those clothes still made her look like a prostitute so maybe that was why she sold so many houses.

"I guess she was surprised when Rhonda got pregnant with William because Victor had told her he and Rhonda slept in separate bedrooms after Samantha was born. He also told her that he and Rhonda almost never talked because if they talked it always turned into a fight.

"So, what I think is Victor was still suffering from PTSD and also really mad that Rhonda wasn't acting like a wife should act. That night he'd finally had enough and solved his problem with Rhonda and his problem with PTSD.

"Now, I'm starving. Where are you taking me to eat?"

When we got back home, Ronda was undressing for bed in front of the full-length mirror when she turned to me and grinned.

"This top shows more of my boobs than I thought. Does it turn you on?"

Well, there's only one right answer to that question.

"Sure. You turn me on when you wear anything that's even a little sexy. Why?"

"I think I'm changing my theory. Why do you suppose Rhonda would have dressed like she did? I sometimes wear sexy clothes, but that's just so I can get you all horny. Maybe Rhonda did it for the same reason but not for Victor. There's also what the doctor said about Rhonda and birth control. If she and Victor weren't sleeping together, why would she need birth control pills, and if she was taking them, how did she get pregnant with William?

"I know birth control pills aren't a hundred percent, but they're pretty good, especially if you're not sleeping with your husband. If what Evelyn told me is true, Rhonda must have missed some pills while she was sleeping with another man. That would also explain why she wanted an IUD as soon as William was born. She wouldn't have to worry about taking pills with an IUD. An IUD is there all the time and is about as close to a hundred percent effective as you can get.

"If they weren't sleeping together, Rhonda wouldn't have needed anything, but she still got the IUD. The only logical reason she'd have done that is that she was sleeping with some other man and didn't want to get pregnant like she did with William."

"OK, so now your theory is that Victor knew she couldn't have gotten pregnant by him, and decided to eliminate her. That doesn't answer the question of why he killed himself. It's also odd that it took him so long to do it."

Rochelle nodded.

"I know. As for why it took him so long, maybe it just took him that long. I've read about cases where that happened before. The killer keeps getting madder and madder and then one day, just snaps.

"As for why he would kill himself too, from what I've read some people with PTSD sometimes decide life isn't worth it anymore. If he loved Rhonda even after what she did to him and he killed her, maybe he didn't want to go on living either. That seems a little convoluted, but people with mental problems often can't think straight.

"I've done a lot of research for my novels into mental illness because most suicides are committed by people with mental problems. Some people who are suicidal are looking for a way to stop themselves so they'll tell somebody about those feelings. Others, especially men, think those thoughts will make them seem weak or crazy to other people so they'll keep them bottled up. There are signs you'd probably see if you live with the person though.