Monster (28 page)

Uh oh
, Richardson thought,
here it comes
. The door was starting to swing shut.

Heylin took one last shot. “If we developed some questions from talkin’ to these other guys, we can approach you again, right? I mean, there’s gonna be follow-up questions after we talk to all the other guys and...”

Luther invoked the magic words that cops have hated since the Miranda warnings became the accused’s bill of rights. “Well, I’m gonna insist that there be an attorney present if that’s the case.”

Heylin shrugged; they couldn’t let on that they were disappointed. “That’s your... that’s your choice.”

“I’ve been burned,” Luther continued. “And you people can’t get me again like that. I think that’s only reasonable that I protect myself as fully as I can.... I do retain full rights ...”

Richardson looked hard at Luther. So the guy wanted an attorney? That pretty much shot any reason to keep the gloves on. In a way, he was relieved to drop the buddy-buddy act. He didn’t like Luther. It went beyond the Cher Elder case, even the Summit County rape. There was something wrong with this guy behind the cool blue eyes. He was passive as hell around other men, but dangerous as a rattlesnake when alone with women. A real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That much was clear.

“Well, you have all the rights in the world, and you aren’t under arrest—” Richardson began.

Luther interrupted. Maybe the detectives were just barking up his tree and that of the Eerebouts’ because they had no place else to turn. Cher could have met with foul play after leaving Byron’s. “You people keep dead-endin’ at Byron’s house. That’s why you keep goin’ back to him.”

Heylin answered for his partner. “We have zip on her gettin’ molested goin’ from Byron’s to the grocery store where her car was found. But we’ve got all these lies that we’ve gotta sort through.”

As he spoke, the men got up from the table and walked toward the door. Outside, Richardson looked over at Luther’s blue Geo Metro, the car that Karen Knott had described from the last time she had seen her friend. “Do you care if we just look in your car?” he asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Luther shrugged.

“Well, I don’t wanna make ya mad,” Richardson said sarcastically as he walked toward the car, still holding his tape recorder in his hand where it could pick up the conversation. “I’ve never seen such a defensive group of people over a missin’ person in my life.”

Luther wasn’t backing down. “Well, you keep shootin’ them little innuendos, you know what I mean, about us bein’ defensive. Well, it could be because we’re not trustin’ of the law. Them boys... their father spent years in the penitentiary. All of their father’s friends spent a lot of years in the penitentiary. They seen how the guards work down there, you know, they’re the most vicious bunch of fuckin’ chicken farmers you ever seen in your life down there running’ that spot.”

“Would Byron hurt a woman?” Richardson interrupted.

“Naw. Maybe another guy. Self-defense.”

“Why is a man your age hanging out with these kids?”

“When I went to the penitentiary I was a kid myself,” Luther replied. He met the Eerebout boys when they were little and came to visit their father in prison. They were good kids, he said, they hadn’t really lied to the detectives. They were just trying to protect a friend. Convict code, honor among thieves and all that.

Richardson waved his hand. “We do this for a livin.’ You aren’t the first convict we ever come across in our careers.”

“But I’m sure that they didn’t come to you with open arms and want to tell you everything they knew, either,” Luther shot back. “Like I say, these boys were raised by a convict. They have somewhat the mentality, you know? You don’t tell on nobody. You don’t give the cops no information. You know what the drill is. I understand you guys gotta job to do, but I think that you guys are spinnin’ your wheels in the wrong section.”

Richardson looked in the driver’s-side window. He could see a large stain on the backseat behind the driver’s side. Immediately, he saw the implications. Luther was trying to feed them a story to explain why a crime lab would find body fluids.

Heylin looked in the window on the other side. They had a report that Byron and his brothers were suspects in a number of burglaries, including one in which some tools were taken from the garage of a man named Thomas Dunn. The detective saw a circular power saw on the backseat with the name Dunn inscribed on the handle. “Is this your saw?” he asked, pointing.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Luther nodded.

“It’s stolen.”

Luther swallowed hard but stayed cool. “I bought it off some guy in a bar down in Lakewood, at Whiskey Bill’s. I gave the guy ten bucks for it. Would you like it?”

Heylin ignored the offer and instead reached in and grabbed the saw. “We’re going to take it. Byron’s been named as a possible suspect in some burglaries and this guy named Dunn is missin’ some saws. Now, you gotta saw with Dunn’s name on it.”

Further inspection revealed tools that had been reported missing from other burglaries in which Byron was a suspect. Again, Luther claimed to have purchased them from the same long-haired “biker type” at the bar.

“You guys aren’t doin’ no burglaries, are you?” Richardson asked.

“Hey, like I said,” Luther said putting up his hands, “I just got out of the fuckin’ penitentiary... and I ain’t gonna bind myself up with a bunch of fuckin’ stolen shit.” He was glaring at the detectives. He accused them of coming to Fort Collins on the pretext of looking for Cher when they just wanted to nail him for some small-time burglaries. “This is all a fuckin’ smokescreen.”

Heylin answered. “Tom, this ain’t no smokescreen and you know it. It’s a legitimate missing person. I happen to glance in the car and look what’s in it. I know what the fuck was taken from a burglary. Don’t pin it back on us.”

But Luther was growing more agitated, pacing up and down by his car. “Worst case scenario is happenin’ right here,” he said pointing a finger at Richardson’s chest.

“I told this girl right here—” now he indicated Debrah Snider who was sitting in her car next to the Geo Metro—“I told her the year before I got out of the penitentiary. It’s the worst thing that I fear. You people are tyin’ my name to any type of fuckin’ shit and then riding me until my fuckin’ chin falls off.”

Richardson had heard enough. In all probability, this asshole killed Cher Elder, and now he was whining like a beat dog. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble here, but I didn’t know you existed until about three hours ago,” he spat. “You’re sittin’ here sayin’ that we’re houndin’ you, and pursuin’ you, and tryin’ to pin you. We didn’t even know you were alive, bud, until you called my office.”

Luther looked stunned. But Richardson wasn’t done with him yet. His eyes darkened beneath his black eyebrows and bored into Luther. It was his turn to point a finger at Luther’s chest. “Don’t give me this crap that we’ve been tryin’ to pin you on crimes.”

Richardson looked like he wanted to rip into Luther on the spot. To diffuse the situation, Heylin noted that it was Luther who said Elder threw up in his car. They were just checking out his story when he spotted the stolen tools.

Luther exploded. “You wanna verify,” he yelled, “you wanna verify that she threw up, man, smell right there.” He pointed his finger to the backseat. “Smell right there! Put your nose down right there, man.”

Heylin raised his hands in mock surrender. “That’s good enough for me.”

As they drove away, Richardson looked back. Luther’s girlfriend had gotten out of her car and was standing next to him, but the ex-con just stood there with his fists clenched, staring after them.

Richardson had drawn first blood, but he knew it was far from over. “This is going to get personal between me and Mr. Luther,” he muttered, “real personal.”

Chapter Twelve

April 20, 1993—Breckenridge, Colorado

As much as Sheriff Morales expected a call, when Detective Richardson asked what he knew about Thomas Edward Luther, it still sent a chill up his spine. “Who’d he kill?” was as much a statement as a question.

Over the past ten years, Morales had kept track of Luther. Every time that the convict appeared in court or at a parole board hearing, he was there to recount what had happened to Mary Brown. “It was a sudden, vicious, unprovoked attack,” he’d say. “I believe he will always be a threat to women.”

There was no question the two men hated each other. They glared at each other from across every room they shared over those ten years, Morales’ soft brown eyes holding their own against the intense blue stare of Luther.

Tom Luther was 180 degrees from everything Morales believed in. He wasn’t just a rapist, he was a chameleon who could appear to be the sensitive listener, any girl’s friend—until she said the wrong thing or didn’t go for his “ladies’ man” approach. Luther was a predator and a true sociopath. His troubles were always someone else’s fault, and he’d never expressed a moment’s remorse for what he had done to Mary. In fact, he’d tried to have her killed so that he wouldn’t have to pay for his crime.

Ten years passed. The town of Breckenridge changed and not always for the better, Morales sometimes thought. New ski trails had been opened on the mountains next to the original ski hill; million-dollar winter homes for the jet-setters were becoming more common; crime had grown along with the population.

Neighbors no longer knew their neighbors, and no one left their doors open anymore. Few in the community had lived there when Bobby Jo Oberholtzer and Annette Schnee were murdered or when Luther was arrested for the attack on Mary Brown a month later.

For Morales, 1982 was the year he and his town lost their innocence. Now he was a little heavier, although still built like the Marine tanks he once commanded. He’d earned respect in the community and they had elected him sheriff. His strong Latin features and wide smile were a hit with women, but he was always the gentleman. Their protector.

As such, he never forgot the blood-splattered interior of Luther’s truck or the rusty-red imprint of Mary Brown’s hand pressed desperately against the rear window. When his enemy was released in January, Morales called to warn Mary, who had since married, changed her name, and moved. The fear in her voice was palpable as she thanked him and hung up.

Then he made copies of Luther’s most recent mugshot and distributed them throughout Summit County. “If you see him, call us,” his officers requested as they handed out the fliers.

The receptionist at the sheriff’s office taped one below the counter and facing her so that she could compare it to any man who walked through the doors requesting to see Morales. He didn’t think Luther would have the balls to come gunning for him, or any man for that matter, but he wanted a warning just in case.

Shortly after the fliers were distributed, Morales got a call from Sandy, the woman who was staying with Luther and his girlfriend, Sue Potter, at the trailer on the night of his 1982 arrest. Luther had shown up at her home, she said, and after a little polite talk, he asked where Potter was now living.

Sandy knew that Potter was married and living in another state. She also knew that her friend was terrified of her former lover.

With good reason, Morales thought, recalling the reports that Luther tried to pay fellow inmates with drugs and money to have her face “blown off.” And only because he couldn’t get out of jail to kill “Lips” himself.

“I said I didn’t know where she was,” Sandy told Morales. He nodded. Potter was safe, but knew in his heart that it wouldn’t be long before he heard about Luther attacking some other woman. And so it was only natural for Morales to ask Richardson when he called, “Who’d he kill?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “We have a missing girl.” the Lakewood detective replied.

“Was he the last one seen with her?” Morales interrupted. He knew the answer. Feared the answer. But still he had to ask.

“Yep. We got them together on a videotape from a casino up in Central City.”

Morales sighed, then added, “I’m sorry. But she’s toast.”

After his short conversation with Richardson, Morales asked Det. Richard Eaton to come into his office to discuss the possibility of the Oberholtzer and Schnee murders being tied to Luther. He could hear as if it were yesterday, Luther’s comment, “Why do I do these things?” and recalled his suspicions about Luther and the murdered women.

Like Eaton, Morales believed that the detectives working on the Oberholtzer/Schnee cases in 1982 had done their jobs. Still, Luther’s name came up again from tips telephoned in after the
Unsolved Mysteries
segment aired two years earlier. He was only one of several possible suspects mentioned, but Richardson’s case reinforced what Morales already knew—wherever Tom Luther went, young women were in danger.

“Maybe we ought to look at Luther again,” Morales suggested and told him about the conversation with Richardson.

When his boss finished, Eaton agreed that they should reopen that area of the investigation. Despite the passage of time, he was just as determined to catch the killer of Bobby Jo and Annette and fulfill his promise to their families. Every year he received Christmas cards from Annette’s family to go with the letters of encouragement and thanks; occasionally he saw Jeff Oberholtzer and could only shake his head when the young man asked if there was any news of his wife’s killer.

Other cases came and went. Some went unsolved. Some were worse than others—such as the woman who gave birth, then drowned the infant in a bathtub and disposed of the tiny body by placing it in a paper bag along with an empty oil can and a half-eaten McDonald’s fish sandwich. It brought tears to his eyes whenever he thought of the child who was thrown out with the trash, and he openly rejoiced in the courtroom when the jury convicted her. But there were all kinds of monsters, and the one he wanted most was still out there. The killer of Bobby Jo and Annette.

The case consumed him awake or asleep. He couldn’t drive over Hoosier Pass without pulling into the parking lot at the summit to retrace Oberholtzer’s flight toward the trees. If he was near Fairplay, he’d go check on the small cross he erected at the spot where Schnee died and assure the restless spirit who rustled the willows along the bank that he was still on the case.