Cruel Doubt (17 page)

That happen a lot? Five or six of you out drinking for hours and suddenly two guys disappear to start studying late Sunday night? No, Chris admitted, it wasn't common. In fact, he said, that night was one of the first times he could ever remember Moog, in particular, saying he had to go off to study by himself. The truth was, Chris said, none of them had paid much attention to schoolwork that summer.

But you had to rush back that Saturday night so you could work on a term paper?
Yes, he said, that term paper had been very important. His grades had been poor and he'd really needed to get it done.

What was the topic?
The topic?
Yeah, the topic. You know, what was the paper about?
Oh, Chris said, it was just one of those English things. Kind of vague. With all that had happened since, he didn't really recall the actual topic.

Never got it done, did you?
No, he said, not after getting the call from Angela. That had kind of been the end of schoolwork for a while.

But all day Sunday. You're not working, you're drinking beer. And Sunday night. You're not working on any paper. You're playing cards and drinking more beer. You're up until at least three o'clock in the morning. If nobody got killed, when were you going to write the fucking paper?

This was a problem, Chris admitted. He had a lot of good intentions when it came to his studies, but he was just such a jumpy, impulsive, scatterbrained guy that he found it hard to apply himself consistently.

They asked him about Dungeons & Dragons. He said he'd played with Daniel, Vince, and Moog. It was a role-playing game, set in medieval times. Once, they'd gotten high and played in the steam tunnels under the campus. He'd used a wooden sword to act out his role, and a couple of the others had brought along sticks or clubs made of rattan, the sort of thing used in Japanese martial arts. He wasn't sure whom they'd belonged to.

So what do you think? Who killed your stepfather?
Chris was ready with an answer. In his opinion, it was someone from the Trust Department at North Carolina National Bank. They'd done it to prevent Lieth from transferring his account.

You think a bank like that—a multibillion-dollar operation—could give such a shit about one lousy little million-dollar trust account that they'd hire somebody to commit murder? You really believe that? Chris just shrugged.

Hey, do me a favor
, one of them said. Chris nodded, eager to please.

Here's a pencil and a piece of paper. Draw me a map. Doesn't have to be fancy. Just a little map of your neighborhood. Just so we can orient ourselves.

Chris complied willingly, sketching the lines quickly, as if without thought.

Newell and Sturgell looked at the map.

One more thing. Your street. Lawson. Why don't you print the name of it, just so we know which one it is
. Sure, no problem, Chris said. And he printed the word LAWSON on the map. In fact, he printed it twice.

Like the housing card from NC State, these, too, appeared a perfect match with the word found on the original map.

After the interview, Bonnie said, Chris did not seem “nervous or out of sorts.” She asked what sorts of questions they had asked him. He said, “Just the usual old crap.”

 

14

Two days later, on Friday, March 24, John Crone and his wife drove to Mooresville, near Charlotte, to visit his in-laws for the weekend. He wasn't very good company. He was preoccupied, lost in thought. Chris Pritchard was much on his mind.

And on the way back to Washington Sunday afternoon, as Crone was driving through Raleigh on I-70, he suddenly exited the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a large shopping center called the North Hills Mall.

Crone went directly to a bookstore. He asked if they had any material about a game called Dungeons & Dragons. A clerk showed him a whole section of the store devoted to the game and its many accessories. There was book after book, manual after manual, a dazzling array.

He gazed at the Player's Manual, Expert Rules, Companion Rules, Master's Set, Dungeon Master's Rulebook, Dungeon Geomorphs, Player Character Record Sheets, Monster & Treasure Assortment, and game scenario after game scenario, with names like “In Search of the Unknown,” “The Keep on the Borderlands,” “Palace of the Silver Princess,” “The Lost City,” “Horror on the Hill,” and on and on, all with covers that showed various sorts of warrior types wielding swords and knives and locked in combat with fearsome dragons or other garishly drawn monsters.

The chief bought what appeared to be an introductory set, returned to his car, and resumed the trip to Little Washington. As he drove, he asked his wife to read aloud from the manual.

“It is another place, another time,” she read. “The world is much like ours was long ago, with knights and castles and no science or technology. . . . Imagine: dragons are real. Werewolves are real. Monsters of all kinds live in caves and ancient ruins. And magic really works! . . . You are a strong hero, a famous but poor fighter. . . . You explore the unknown, looking for monsters and treasure. The more you find, the more powerful and famous you become. . . .

“A ‘dungeon,'” she read, “is a group of rooms and corridors in which monsters and treasures can be found. And
you
will find them, as you play the role of a character in a fantasy world. . . .

“You are carrying a backpack . . . you own a beautiful sword, and have a dagger tucked into one boot, just in case. . . . You will make a map of the dungeon so you don't get lost.”

She explained that there were various types of characters, including “thieves” and “fighters” and “magic-users” and that each time a character or group of characters successfully completed an adventure by successfully mapping out a “dungeon” or darkened cave and killing any monster who tried to stop them from finding treasures, they acquired more power, which was measured in something called “experience points.”

As his wife read on, John Crone found himself driving faster and faster. He found it hard to keep his eyes focused on the road. As she began to describe the first adventure in detail, he felt his palms grow slick with perspiration.

The players were to enter a castle and kill the overlord in his sleep. The only weapons they were allowed were knives and clubs, which were to be carried in a knapsack. A princess named Aleena was sleeping in the castle near her father, the evil overlord. The players could not tell if she was friend or foe, so they allowed her to continue to sleep. If they were successful in killing the overlord and escaping from the castle undetected, they would inherit all his wealth and develop new and greater powers, which could then be used in subsequent adventures. The more times they stabbed the overlord, the more experience points they would receive. . . .

“Oh, my God!” John Crone said. “Oh, my God . . . oh, my God . . . oh, my God.”

Crone paced the floor of his office Monday morning, trying to drink coffee, gesticulate, and read aloud from a Dungeons & Dragons manual all at once.
Listen to this!
he told John Taylor.
And this! . . . And this!

What had happened seemed obvious. These kids had gotten so deep into their Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world that they'd decided to act out an adventure.

“Look, we know Pritchard drew the map,” Crone said. “The question is, who could he get to do the killing? The answer has to be, one of the people he was playing that game with. Which one? I think we can both make a pretty good guess.”

“Upchurch,” Taylor said.

James Upchurch. Moog. The only one with a criminal record. The one with whom Chris had disappeared on July 4. Also, the only one currently missing in action.

“I can't believe it,” Crone said. “I can't believe that for eight months those kids have been sitting up there on that campus and that we haven't been
all over
them.”

“I can change that in a hurry,” Taylor said.

Crone said yes. Get to Raleigh. Get after those kids. Find out all you can about Upchurch and then find the son of a bitch himself.

“Shouldn't be too hard,” Taylor said. “Last thing his probation officer told me was she heard he'd changed his hair color to pink.”

Starting the last week of March, John Taylor, as he put it, began to “burn a lot of rubber” between Little Washington and Raleigh. He spent so much time on the NC State campus he felt entitled to an honorary degree. He met many of Upchurch's and Pritchard's acquaintances, and the more he saw of them, the less he liked what he saw.

Daniel Duyk, for instance. He was one of the Dungeons & Dragons players. He was, in fact, the one who'd been up with Pritchard until three-thirty the morning of the murder.

Taylor knocked on his door at noon and Duyk answered it in his underwear. Why the hell weren't these people in classes? What were they doing in their underwear at noon? Taylor wasn't even sure it was
clean
underwear.

Duyk said he didn't know Pritchard well.
He wasn't really a friend of mine
. Or Moog either. None of them. He'd just seen a notice posted on a bulletin board in a dorm lobby at the start of the first summer session, saying anyone interested in getting up a Dungeons & Dragons game ought to come to a meeting in a certain room at a certain time. Daniel had played D&D since seventh grade. He thought it might be fun to play that summer.

Half a dozen people showed. Pritchard, Moog, two black guys, someone named Vince, someone named Neal, and a couple of other guys. It had been Moog, he thought, who'd posted the notice.

Nervously, Duyk explained how the game worked. They were all at a very advanced level, he said, and their “campaigns” lasted fifty or sixty hours, played in segments, four or five hours at a time. They'd played almost every day. They'd gone down to the steam tunnels to write graffiti, but the tunnels, which he called “hell tunnels,” hadn't really been part of the game. Once, they'd brought torches down to the tunnels, and on other occasions fake samurai swords belonging to Moog. Drunk or high, they'd wave the swords around and pretend to duel.

Chris Pritchard, Duyk said, had once bragged that he'd found a confidential folder in his parents' home which revealed that they were millionaires. This struck Duyk as ironic because Chris was always over the limit on his credit cards. Of course, Chris—whom he described as “a sweetheart . . . a real nice guy,” though “easily led”—
did
spend a lot of money on drugs. Chris had done a lot of acid with Upchurch, who was even more heavily into drugs.

Taylor asked about the weekend of the murder. Duyk said he'd met Chris and Vince Hamrick and Karen and Kirsten at about nine
P
.
M
. Sunday and they'd gone to the girls' room to play cards. Vince had been in the room, trying to study, while they played. At some point he'd gotten mad about something and left. Vince was always getting mad about something. Upchurch? No, he didn't remember seeing Upchurch that night.

At seven or eight the next morning, Vince called to say Chris's parents had been attacked, maybe killed, and that Chris had needed a ride home from the campus police because he hadn't been able to find his car keys.

Then Duyk looked right at John Taylor. He said, “That sounds kind of suspicious, doesn't it?” He said he'd been with Chris several times since the murder and Chris had always seemed upset but had never wanted to talk about what had happened.

As the interview ended, Taylor said, “Keep thinking, Daniel. Keep remembering. This isn't the last time I'll be talking to you. I'm leaving now, but I'll be back.” Duyk didn't seem happy to hear that.

* * *

Next, Taylor visited a friend of both Pritchard and Upchurch's named Matt Schwetz. He'd seen Schwetz's name in several of Lewis Young's reports.

It was raining, but Schwetz would not let Taylor enter his apartment. He stood in the kitchen doorway, keeping Taylor out in the rain.

“Listen,” Taylor said, “I'm not here to bust you for dope. I just want to ask a few questions. But I don't want to stand here and get wet.”

Schwetz shook his head.

“One step,” Taylor said. “I just want to take one step inside your fucking doorway, so I can get out of the rain while we talk.”

Schwetz acted as if he'd heard this kind of story before and didn't like it. He was going to put up a goal-line stand. Finally, he relented enough so Taylor could at least shield his notebook from the rain.

Pritchard, yeah, he knew Pritchard. What an asshole. They used to drink together, but he hadn't seen him since fall. Heard he'd dropped out of school for psychological reasons. Wouldn't be surprising. That kid was really fucked up. He'd told a lot of different stories about the murder. One time he said his father surprised a burglar and was killed. Another time, he said the killer had raped his mother first.

Frankly, Schwetz himself wasn't tracking very well.
This
guy's got a fried mind
, Taylor thought. He was jabbering on now about what a swell guy Pritchard was. Always took care of his friends. Always bought the expensive beer, not the cheap stuff. Guy had a real positive attitude, you know? Always talked about his relatives like he loved them. Once, he'd said his family owned 35 percent of RJR Nabisco. His sister had been around when he'd said that. She'd said no, it was only 32 percent.

Dungeons & Dragons? No, not Schwetz. Steam tunnels? No, didn't know anything about them. Yeah, he knew Vince, he knew Daniel, he knew Moog. He'd even seen Moog recently, but only in passing, didn't know where it might have been. You know, you see a lot of guys, don't always pay attention to who was where.

“Listen,” Taylor said. “I've been told you supplied Upchurch and Pritchard with acid.”

Oh, no. Absolutely not. Acid? Was that the same as LSD? He'd heard of it, but didn't know anything about it. No, no; not acid. Chris, as a matter of fact—now
this
was something he remembered—had never even used acid. Or LSD. Whatever you called it. Whatever it was.

“Stick around town,” Taylor said. “I'll be back. And next time I'll bring an umbrella.”

* * *

Taylor returned to Raleigh on March 29 to talk to Vince Hamrick again. “He gave me one of those ‘Y'all leave me alone,' type looks,” Taylor said, “which always makes me feel a little more like asking questions.”

The night of the murder, Vince said, he'd been studying for a physics test. His best guess was that Chris had come in about midnight.
As best guesses went
, thought Taylor,
that one wasn't very good
. He didn't remember seeing Daniel Duyk or James Upchurch at all on Sunday night. Cards? No, he didn't remember playing cards. No, he didn't remember answering the phone when Angela called. He hadn't woken up until Chris was packing to go home. Car keys? No, he didn't remember anything about Chris not being able to find his car keys. But one thing he did know: Chris loved that car, man, and would
never
let anyone else drive it.

They used to play D&D, he said, but it all kind of petered out after the murder. He hadn't played with Moog or Daniel Duyk since the murder, that was for sure.

“Good luck on the test, Vince,” Taylor said. “But don't graduate too soon. I'll be wanting to talk to you again.”

* * *

Taylor went back to see Karen Barbour and Kirsten Hewitt. Yes, they remembered that Sunday night. They'd been with Chris and Moog and Daniel and Vince at Wildflour Pizza. On the way back to the dorm, they'd bought beer. Karen had bought it because she was the only one of legal age. Yes, they'd thought it unusual that Chris parked the car in the fringe lot, so far from the dorm.

The boys had disappeared for a while, they assumed to play Dungeons & Dragons. The card game hadn't started until late, maybe ten. Daniel got mad because Vince was giving Kirsten advice on how to play. Then Vince got mad at Daniel. By eleven
P
.
M
., he'd stormed out of the room, but they kept on seeing him because they'd left the beer up in Chris and Vince's room because Vince had a refrigerator, and every time one of them went up to get a beer they saw Vince studying. They hadn't seen Upchurch at all.

They clearly recalled that from one or one-thirty on, Kirsten had asked the boys to leave. At three-thirty, she'd said, in her most exasperated tone yet, “Can't we
please
stop the game?” Chris asked what time it was. When they told him three-thirty, he left at once. This had always struck them as strange.

John Taylor—being twenty-six and good-looking and comfortable in blue jeans—had established good rapport with these two girls. They felt comfortable talking to him, not intimidated. He wasn't like a cop you had to be afraid of. So they volunteered some additional information.

Kirsten said that Chris had told her once that he'd entered a plan on his computer disc that outlined how he could “come into a lot of money.” When she'd asked to see it, he said it was secret. She said he seemed to resent Lieth and Lieth's money, which, he said, Lieth used only to take care of Bonnie, not his sister or him. If they were so rich, Chris complained, how come he and Angela couldn't have more clothes or better cars?