Like Father Like Daughter (21 page)
After driving by to make certain Mike wasn’t home, I parked my Sorento two streets down in front of an abandoned house with a For Sale sign in the front yard. I opened the car door, slid out onto the easement, and shut the door as quietly as I could. I walked down the street, took a left, and then another left, until I was on Wichita Drive. Mike’s duplex was the third one down on the right side of the street. I walked very slowly across the grass until I came to his front porch. I looked around nervously to make sure no one was watching me, and then reached out and slowly turned the knob of the front door. Not surprisingly, it was locked. No matter how slovenly Mike was, drug dealers never forgot to lock their doors. Shit.
I took a few steps to the side and tried the window. It was locked too. I was growing even more nervous that someone was looking out their window and would see me trying to break in, so I crept around the side of the house. There was another window—the kitchen window—but it was narrow and too high off the ground. My last hope was that there was an unlocked window in the back of the house. I snuck around to the back and to my great relief, there was a window in the back that was only a couple feet from the ground.
I prayed, even though I clearly recognized the ridiculousness in asking God to help you break in someone’s house, that it would be unlocked. I tugged on the bottom sash of the white wooden window and sure enough, it began to slide upward. Mike had not thought to lock his back window. Quickly, I slid the window all the way open. Without hesitating, I poked my head in the open window. It appeared to be Mike’s bedroom. Knowing this was my only option, I climbed in through the window one leg at a time until my knees hit the Berber carpet.
The lights were off, but I could tell, even in the darkness, that Mike’s room was just as disgusting as the living room I had seen on my last visit. I had no idea what I was kneeling on, so I stood up as quickly as I could. The light from the half-moon filtered in through the window, allowing me to at least see where I was walking. I saw the bedroom door before me and it was cracked open. I slipped through the opening and tiptoed down the hallway. No one lived with Mike that I knew of, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t be crashing on his sofa. But I had gone there for a reason and I wasn’t going to leave until I had searched the entire duplex.
First on my right was the bathroom. I felt along the wall until my hand hit the light switch. I flipped it and the room was illuminated. It was disgusting, just like the rest of the house. The toilet lid was open and the bowl was filled with someone’s dark yellow urine. Men’s clothes and underwear were strewn about the dirty tile floor. There was no outer shower curtain, only one of those filmy, clear inner curtains, and even it was hanging by only three or four curtain rings. I wondered how often Mike even took a shower.
I turned toward the sink, which was covered in crusty toothpaste splatters, and opened the medicine cabinet. On the shelves, next to a stick of deodorant and a toothbrush were several orange prescription bottles. I looked at each one. Only two of them were in Mike’s name. The others were written in the names of several different people. All of them were for some form of opiate—Lortab, Methadone, and Oxycodone. No big surprise there. There was nothing else in the cabinet of any interest, so I closed the door and looked in the mirror.
I’m committing a felony
, I thought as I looked at my own reflection. So this is what my life has come to? Breaking into a drug dealer’s house, hoping to find some sort of evidence to implicate him in Ryan’s murder and in doing so, clear my name. But what other choice did I have? The police were never going to consider anyone but me. They had made that painfully clear already. And this was my last chance to prove my innocence before confessing to a crime I didn’t commit. So it was on me to find Ryan’s killer and exonerate myself. Freshly reminded of why I was in Mike’s house, I shook off my anxiety and decided to focus on the task at hand.
I left the bathroom and crept down the hallway and into the living room. The same smell which had accosted me on my last visit with Mike nearly bowled me over this time. It was worse than before. I pulled my cell phone out of my back pocket and used the screen as a flashlight as I scanned the entire room. Once again, there was nothing but trash and mildewing laundry strewn about the couch, armchair, and floor. I saw nothing at all that I could use to prove Mike was the one who killed my husband.
I twisted my phone around and shined it into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room only by a small l-shaped countertop. More filth. Empty pizza boxes, cups of curdled milk, dishes stacked sky high in the sink. I saw a roach scuttle across one of the dishes and I nearly vomited right then and there. I realized the kitchen was not a likely hiding spot for any damning evidence and I wasn’t about to stick around with roaches crawling around everywhere, so I turned off my phone screen and headed back down the hallway. Luckily, the light from the half-moon outside allowed me to see at least a few feet in front of me.
Damn it
, I thought. I had been certain Mike would be too stupid or too stoned to get rid of any evidence, but either there was none to begin with, or he had disposed of whatever he might have had that would incriminate him. I tiptoed back into Mike’s bedroom so I could exit the way I had entered—through his bedroom window—but just as I was about to climb out, I realized I hadn’t really looked through his bedroom.
Again I slid my phone out of my back pocket, turned on the screen, and shined it around the room. Same things I had seen on the way into the house. Clothes everywhere. And women’s underwear, of all things. I stood there for a second wondering if they held any significance until I remembered him telling me about his girlfriend Angie. Angie liked to wear really tiny thongs, apparently.
I gave the room one last look and just as I was about to give up and turn for the window, I noticed the edge of some kind of grey box sticking out from underneath Mike’s disheveled bed. When I bent down to inspect the box, I noticed as soon as my fingers touched the corner that it was a fireproof safe. I pulled it out and looked at it with bemusement. What on earth could someone like Mike possess that was valuable enough to keep in an expensive fireproof case? My first guess was money. But what if that wasn’t it? What if the evidence I had been searching for was inside that box? I had no choice. I had to take it with me.
I tossed it out the back window, climbed out of the window, landed on the grass, then picked up the box and ran swiftly to my car. I threw the box in the passenger side, then climbed into the driver’s side and took off slowly so as not to draw any attention to my car. I kept my headlights off until I reached the end of the street and turned onto Short Shun Drive.
My heart was racing and my hands were trembling. I couldn’t believe I had not only broken into someone’s house, but I had stolen their safe, as well. Besides the tube of lipstick I had stolen when I was eighteen, I had never committed any crimes, let alone felonies. I felt sick to my stomach and ashamed of myself. At the same time, I told myself there was no other way to prove my innocence. And who wouldn’t go to such extremes to find their loved one’s real killer? Then I thought about what Mike would do when he discovered the safe was missing. At first, I thought he’d naturally call the police. But then, I realized that Mike hated the police and that he lived outside the law. He couldn’t have the cops examining his house with all the drugs and paraphernalia lying about. It depended on what was inside the safe, I finally decided.
When I arrived home, I lugged the fireproof case into the house, carried it through the kitchen, and laid it on the coffee table. It was eerily quiet in the house, so I turned on the television and sat down on the sofa with my elbows on my knees. Now what? I had managed to break into Mike’s house. I had managed to search it without being caught. And I was able to steal something without anyone noticing. Now the damn thing was sitting inches from my face and I had no idea what to do next. I couldn’t break it open, could I?
Why the hell not? What was one more crime on top of all the others I had committed that night? Besides, what good was the box going to do me if I didn’t know what was inside? Why steal it if I wasn’t going to look inside?
I pulled out my laptop and opened a new Google page. My fingers hesitated above the keys. My years of working as a paralegal had taught me that a person’s search history was not only discoverable during an investigation, but was admissible in court. There had been many cases in which the suspect was done in by the internet searches they had conducted within the days prior to the murder of their spouse.
I shrugged my shoulders and continued on with my search, figuring if I was ever actually suspected of breaking into Mike’s house and stealing the box, I’d dispose of my computer entirely. I typed “how to break into a fireproof safe” in the search engine. Amazingly, there were sixty-eight thousand results. I clicked on the first article below all the video how-to’s and up came a page that laid it out step-by-step. Apparently, I would need a flathead screwdriver, a paper clip, and tweezers. I quickly gathered up the needed items and sat back down in front of my laptop and the box.
I inserted the screwdriver where the key would normally go then turned it counter-clockwise until I heard a “click.” Next, I straightened out the paper clip and slipped the end of it into the upper part of the lock, above the screwdriver. I then slid the tweezers in underneath the paperclip. Finally, I turned both the tweezers and the paperclip until I heard the lock disengage. I had done it! Little ol’ me had actually picked a lock on a safe! I couldn’t believe it actually worked.
Slowly, I lifted the lid to the safe and when I saw what was stored inside, I almost passed out. There, in the bottom of the fireproof safe I had stolen from Mike Thompson’s house, was a large, black and silver handgun. The barrel was silver, as was the trigger, but the butt of the gun had a hard, black grip. I knew absolutely nothing about guns, so I knew I’d have to use the internet again to search what type of gun I was looking at. I didn’t want to pick it up and get my fingerprints on it, but I wouldn’t be able to see it well if I didn’t.
I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a hand towel from the handle of the stove and ran back to the couch. I slowly picked up the gun using the hand towel so I could see it better. The only distinguishing marks were the words
‘Smith & Wesson’
and
‘caution—capable of firing with magazine removed’
etched on the side of the barrel.
I entered those words into a new search bar and found out that the gun was a Smith & Wesson, .45 caliber handgun. A large caliber gun! Ryan had been killed by a large caliber handgun, according to the police. I was sure it was probably stolen or bought on the black market and was almost certainly untraceable. I flipped the gun gently over to the other side and, sure enough, the serial numbers had been filed off. This proved it. Mike Thompson had definitely been the one who murdered Ryan. Why else was he hiding this gun?
But then it occurred to me. What could I possibly do about it? I couldn’t very well take the gun to the police and say, “Hey, look what I stole from Mike Thompson’s house.” I racked and racked my brain for any way I could get the gun to the police without implicating myself in felony robbery. If I just dropped it off anonymously at the police station, they would have no way of knowing it belonged to Mike Thompson. They would, however, likely run fingerprints on the weapon and I doubted very highly Mike was smart enough to wipe it down or wear gloves. But it was still too risky.
The only conclusion I could come to was that I had to return the gun to Mike’s house before he got home and then call the police with an anonymous tip to search Mike’s duplex. That way, they would find all the drugs he had in his possession, which would be enough to hold him for a few days while they processed the gun for fingerprints and DNA.
I looked at the clock on the wall—two twenty-five. If I hurried, I could probably sneak it back in before he returned home in the morning from his night shift job. It was very risky. I had lucked out the first time, not being seen by any neighbors or passersby. I was increasing the odds by returning for a second trip. But it had to be done. I had no other choice.
After gently returning the gun to the fireproof safe, closing the lid and relocking it, I climbed back into my car and headed toward Wichita.
***
Just as I had the first time, I parked a couple of blocks down and walked up his street. When I approached the house, I was relieved to see there was still no one home. I walked stealthily around the side of the duplex and opened the back window. I climbed in through the opening, pulled the safe in after me, and slid it back under the bed, exactly as I had found it. Quickly, I climbed out the window and ran down the street to my waiting vehicle. With my headlights still turned off, I drove until I was back on Short Shun again. I turned my headlights back on and drove back to my house.
When I pulled into the driveway, I parked the car and sat there breathing deeply, relieved that I pulled it off. I had never done anything like that before and I was lucky beyond all measure that I wasn’t caught in the act. Then my thoughts turned to the gun I had discovered in Mike’s fireproof safe. What were the odds that Ryan’s dope dealer, the man I already suspected of killing him, was in possession of a large caliber handgun, similar to the one used to kill him? The odds were astronomical. Yes, Mike definitely killed Ryan. Now…how to prove it?