Blood Games (10 page)

The detectives turned the conversation to a touchier subject: the Von Steins’ finances. Bonnie showed no reluctance to talk about it.

She acknowledged that Lieth had inherited a little more than a million dollars from the deaths of his parents the year before. Most of the inheritance was in a trust fund at a large bank in Winston-Salem, but Lieth thought that the bank was getting a poor return on the investments. He was sure he could do better himself, she said, and he recently had taken about $150,000 out of the account to play the stock market. They had been dealing in “dividend captures,” buying stocks that were about to pay dividends, then selling them after the dividend was paid. Lieth had made about $20,000 in recent weeks doing that, she said. They’d done so well, she said, that Lieth was planning to take all of the money out of the trust and invest it himself, putting the bulk of it in treasury notes. Indeed, they’d talked about it at dinner at Caroline’s the night he was killed.

Did anybody in Washington know about their financial status? Lewis Young asked.

Nobody, she said. Not even their children.

After getting the names of the bank trust officer and the family attorney who had handled Lieth’s parents’ estates, the officers asked about the trailer Lieth had been planning to buy.

He was going to put computers in it and use it as an office for trading stocks and managing his money, she said. He was planning to quit his job after Christmas, and he wanted a place to go to every day. He didn’t want to work at home. Also it would be a place for her family to stay when they came to visit.

The officers wanted to know about service people who came regularly to the Von Stein house, and Bonnie told them about the housekeeper who came every Monday, two high school boys who mowed the grass every Thursday, a pet-sitter who had a key to the house and came when they were out of town. She gave the name of the school maintenance man who had painted the house recently with a couple of helpers. They had painted it on weekends over a two-month period.

Had any of the painters been inside the house? Only one, the man in charge, and he’d come in only once, about a week earlier. He stepped into the kitchen to pick up some shrimp she had offered him to take home.

Young now brought up another delicate matter. Life insurance. Had Lieth bought any recently? Not recently, she said, but she volunteered without hesitation that he was heavily insured and she was the sole beneficiary. How heavily insured? the detectives inquired.

Probably between $800,000 and $1 million, she said.

Why did he have so much insurance?

Well, he was a fairly heavy drinker, about a six-pack every night, plus occasional vodka and wine. He also had a job that entailed a lot of stress. He thought it inevitable that his health would fail before he got old. It was a sound investment in his view. “He just had a feeling that he wouldn’t live very long,” she said.

Bonnie could think of no reason why she and her husband had been attacked. She only knew that the shadow who had done it had seemed big and strong and had been methodical in his work.

Asked about the man she had testified against in court for attacking police officers after he had struck Lieth’s car at the dentist’s office, Bonnie’s voice broke and rose and she appeared to become excited as she related the frightening and violent incident. But Lieth had not been present, was not a witness, and didn’t even go to court when she had to testify, she said. If that man were seeking revenge, wouldn’t it be only against her. Why kill Lieth?

The officers ended their interview with no more idea of who the killer might be than when they had arrived. But Chief Stokes had come to one conclusion. He didn’t think that Bonnie was in any danger of further attack, and he was going to remove the around-the-clock guard at the door of her hospital room.

Young and Hope spent much of the afternoon talking with neighbors of the Von Steins. They asked more questions of Peggy and David Smith, talked with other neighbors who had seen suspicious cars or strangers in the area over the weekend. They also went to the junior high school and questioned the school maintenance man, Louis Moore, who had painted the Von Stein house. He described the Von Steins as “kinda quiet” and said he couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to hurt them. “No nicer people in the world to work for,” he said.

Tuesday night, Young and Hope gathered with other detectives in the small, cluttered detective squad room at the Washington Police Department. They wanted to assess what they had learned so far about the case and as they bandied theories and talked about leads, one detective mentioned a call he’d received the night before. A farmer in Pitt County had called about a fire he’d discovered alongside a country road early Monday morning. Thought it might have something to do with the murder. The call had come just as the detective was getting ready to leave for the day, and it had slipped his mind until now. But he had taken the farmer’s name and number and he still had it. The farmer’s name was Noel Lee.

“We need to check that,” Young said, trying not to show his irritation that he and Hope hadn’t heard about this earlier. “We can’t afford not to follow any leads.”

Young called Lee’s number, but discovered that he was at a rescue squad meeting. Probably wouldn’t be home until after eleven. Shortly after eleven, Young called back. Lee told him what he had seen the morning before and how he had thought it very strange, even before he had heard about the murder in Smallwood. He didn’t know whether it might be connected or not, he said, but he thought he ought to let somebody know. Young asked if he would mind going tonight to point out the spot where he’d seen the fire.

“Not at all,” said Lee.

“We’re on our way,” said Young.

Lee’s farm was just across the Pitt County line from Beaufort County, a nine-mile drive from the Washington Police Department. Young and Hope arrived about eleven-thirty and talked briefly to Lee in his front yard. He told them about loading out hogs the previous morning, about spotting the fire as he was heading home. All three climbed into Young’s SBI Ford and drove back out Grimesland Bridge Road toward U.S. 264.

Lee pointed out the spot where the fire had been, and Young pulled his cruiser across the opposite lane and onto the narrow shoulder, his headlights shining onto the blackened circle left by the fire. A tree-trimming and brush-cutting crew had been along the road earlier that day clearing power-line right-of-way and had run a heavy mower called a bushhog over the fire debris, scattering some of it for several feet around. A few pieces had been thrown onto the pavement and struck by passing vehicles.

“Smells like they used kerosene or diesel fuel,” Hope noted.

Young took a pen from his pocket and used it to sort through what was left of the debris in the burned circle.

“What have we got here?” he said, coming up with a socket for an extension wrench. “A blunt object.”

“Could that tie into it?” Hope said, taking the cigar from his mouth.

“We don’t have anything else. If I could only find a knife,” Young said, squatting again to stir the ashes. “Well, looky here.”

Lee and Hope came closer, being careful not to block the light from the headlights. There in the debris was a large hunting knife, the handle melted, the six-inch blade blackened.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said Hope.

“Is your crime lab operable?” Young asked.

“I could call,” said Hope.

“Use my radio,” Young said.

The three men waited on the roadside for Detective Arnold Cox to get there with the crime scene van. After Cox arrived, the officers set up floodlights, collected all the fire debris, and scoured the roadside for hundreds of feet with flashlights, searching for any other possible evidence. When they finally called off the hunt about 2:00 A.M., they had gathered what appeared to be the burned remnants of blue jeans, melded hunks of a sweater of some sort, the charred bottom of a black Reebok sneaker, the wrench socket and knife, and a couple of wadded sheets of paper, one of them partially burned, that had been lying only a couple of feet from the fire.

Young and Hope were exhausted from a second extraordinarily long day, but they were excited about the night’s find. They were almost certain that they had the knife that had been used to kill Lieth Von Stein, and if that proved to be the case, they knew that this evidence would be invaluable. After dropping Noel Lee off at his house, they returned to the Washington Police Department and parted for a few hours’ sleep before they would meet again and try to determine if they could indeed link these charred remnants to the murder.

10

Early Wednesday morning, July 27, the second day after the murder of Lieth Von Stein, a group of detectives drove to the fire site on Grimesland Bridge Road to photograph it and to search it more thoroughly in daylight. They prowled the roadsides for half a mile in each direction, turning up nothing more of significance.

Afterward, Melvin Hope left for Greenville with the knife that had been found in the fire debris the night before. He wanted to show it to Page Hudson, the medical examiner who had performed the autopsy on Lieth, to find out if it was consistent in length and shape to the stab wounds Lieth had suffered.

Lewis Young returned to the Washington Police Department with the other detectives to sort, catalog, and bag the rest of the material that had been picked up along the roadside. It was messy and tedious work, the material fragile and charred, and the detectives’ hands were black with oily soot.

In that material were two wadded sheets of paper, one singed by flames and partially burned. Young unfolded the one free of burns and discovered it to be a blank worksheet from the company that had done the brush clearing and tree trimming along the road the day before. The second sheet was white with blue rules, and Young was especially careful with it because of the burns. When he finally got it spread out, he stared at it with disbelief.

“Look at this,” he said.

“What is it?” asked John Taylor, who had photographed the fire site that morning.

“It’s a damn map of Smallwood,” Young said incredulously.

“Are you kidding?” asked Taylor as the other detectives huddled around the sheet.

“No, it’s a map of Smallwood.”

Clearly it was, crudely drawn in ballpoint pen. One word had been handprinted on the sheet: “Lawson.” Clearly Lawson Road. Several blocks were drawn in, obviously to represent dwellings, but one house was clearly marked: number 110. The Von Stein house.

Melvin Hope was jubilant. Dr. Hudson had told him that the charred knife that had been found in the roadside fire debris was consistent with Lieth’s stab wounds. Hope couldn’t wait to get back to Washington and tell the other detectives that they might indeed have the murder weapon. He walked into the detective squad room and found the detectives smiling impishly.

Something was afoot, he knew. A practical joke?

“You won’t believe this, Melvin,” Young said.

“What?” Hope asked warily.

“Guess what,” said Taylor.

Hope wasn’t about to try.

Instead somebody handed him the burned sheet of paper. Hope stared at it for a few moments before realizing what it was. Then the word “Lawson” hit him.

“Well, what the fuck,” he said. “Goddamn, this shit is just getting weirder and weirder.”

The map told the detectives several things. Clearly, the murder was no random burglary gone wrong. It had been planned. And the murderer they were seeking probably wouldn’t be found in Washington. He apparently hadn’t been to the Von Stein house before, and may not have been familiar with Washington at all. Could it be a professional hit man? It seemed improbable. A pro would have been unlikely to kill in such a fashion and probably wouldn’t have been so careless as to dispose of the murder weapon in a way that might attract attention and cause it to be found.

Noel Lee had spotted the fire a little after four, no more than twenty minutes before Bonnie called the dispatcher’s office. The trip from the Von Stein house to the fire site was only about a fifteen-minute drive, so the attack on the Von Steins probably had occurred sometime between three-thirty and three-forty-five. Whoever killed Lieth and set the fire probably was headed west on U.S. 264, and had turned onto Grimesland Bridge Road looking for an isolated spot to get rid of incriminating evidence. That he hadn’t made sure that the map burned and that he put the knife into the fire indicated that he was in a hurry and not thinking clearly. After setting the fire, the killer, or killers, probably had turned around, gone back to U.S. 264, and continued west. That road led to Raleigh and N.C. State University, two hours away. There, less than an hour after the fire was spotted, Chris Pritchard supposedly was awakened by a telephone call from his sister, telling him that his mother and stepfather had been beaten and stabbed.

Nothing that the detectives had discovered so far proved that Chris was involved, but the map and the location of the fire fueled the suspicions they already harbored about him and his sister. They wanted to make sure that neither he nor anybody else knew that they had found the map and the murder weapon, and they vowed one another to secrecy. Nobody outside of the investigative team and the district attorney’s office was to know anything about the fire, the map or the knife.

One item that the detectives had searched for in vain at the fire site was the baseball bat or club that had been used to beat the Von Steins. Surely, if the killer had abandoned the knife in the fire, he also would have gotten rid of the club. But if it had been put in the fire, portions of it surely would have been found in the debris, for as Bonnie described it, it was too long to fit in the small circle of the blaze. If it had been tossed into the woods or a ditch near the fire site, their search should have turned it up.