“Hell, that old thing! My wife, Gertrude, gave me that for my birthday, way back in-”
“Here’s what I’m up for,” Kristine continued in her most hokey tone of voice. “You send me the notes on your case and I’ll send you the notes on mine. That way we both get a chance to compare and contrast. You’re probably right, there’s no there there. But just supposing there
“Hell, Ms. Kjarstad, you should get a piece of the action too.”
Kristine turned on a mildly flirtatious voice.
“Well, in that case let’s get together and work something out.”
Poison laughed richly.
“Be more than my life’s worth, Ms. Kjarstad. Gertrude is one jealous woman. You got fax machines out there on the coast?”
The report on the Kansas City killings arrived on Kristine Kjarstad’s desk while she was typing up her case notes on an alleged sexual assault at a school in a town called Selleck. The first page was signed by the patrolman who had been called to the scene.
Kansas City Police Department
47-94-0076
Homicide
Victim #1: Howard Selby W/M DOB: 03-16-27
Victim #2: Sandra Selby W/F 09-07-49
Victim #3: Unknown B/M unknown
Suspect #1: Unknown W/M
Suspect #2: Unknown W/M
Location: 2930 East 64th Street, #33
Details: Reporting officer arrived at scene at 14.35 hrs., in response to a reported disturbance. Complainant Wanda Neuberger, fifty-seven, resident at 2930 East 64th Street, #35, stated that she had heard cries for help from the neighboring apartment, inhabited by Howard Selby, who was confined to a wheelchair. She went to Selby’s apartment and knocked on the door, which was opened by two young men. One of them was drenched from head to foot in rose pink paint. The men pulled a gun and forced complainant to return with them to her apartment, where they confined her in a windowless bathroom off the kitchen and blocked the door by moving the refrigerator against it. Complainant struggled with the door for some fifteen minutes before succeeding in opening it enough to escape and telephone 911. Having conducted a search for the suspects, R/O proceeded to apt. 33, where he discovered the body of victs. 1 amp; 2 in the living room, and vict. 3 in the kitchen. He called in for assistance and remained at door to secure scene from intruders until arrival of detectives. Case was then turned over to Detective Fred Poison.
The following pages contained Poison’s report:
Kansas City Police Department
47-94-0076
In response to Officer Kimball’s request for detectives to work a reported multiple homicide, I went to 2930 East 64th Street, Apartment 33. Victim #1, identified to me by neighbor Wanda Neuberger as Howard Selby, was in living room sitting in a wheelchair. The chair was facing the north wall, the head slumped forward and the wrists taped to the arms of the chair. Gunshot entry wound visible at back of head. Victim #2, identified to me by same witness as Sandra Selby, daughter of vict. #1, was also in the living room, lying on floor under window in east wall. The body was lying on its right side, facing east, in a fetal crouch. Gunshot entry wound at back of head. Victim #3 was found in kitchen, which was being repainted, lying on back in middle of floor, right arm outstretched above head. Victim was wearing housepainter’s overalls. Three gunshot entry wounds were visible, in the mid-chest, right shoulder and forehead. A large irregular splash of pink paint lay on the floor to the northeast of the body. A series of clear shoe prints in the same paint were visible on the vinyl flooring, and more faintly on the living-room carpet leading to the front door of the apartment. I directed Crime Scene Technician Traci Moore to make a full investigation. I then took a full statement from Wanda Neuberger (see document attached) and put out an urgent call for the two individuals she described to me, including a description of the winter coat and scarf she reported missing from her wardrobe. At that point John Boychuk, the janitor of the apartment block, appeared at the scene and identified victim #3 as Winston Jones, of 4711 East 53rd Street, who did light maintenance work for many tenants in the building.
Kristine Kjarstad read through the neighbor’s statement, which added nothing of any substance to what she had told the patrolman. She then skimmed the lengthy supplemental reports by the CST, the pathologist and the forensic laboratory. Selby and his daughter had been shot at close range, Jones twice from a distance of several feet and once, to the forehead, at close range. The ammunition used was CCI Stinger.22 caliber. Traces of adhesive on the mouths of Howard and Sandra Selby matched that used on the duct tape used to secure Howard’s wrists to the arms of his wheelchair, indicating that they had been gagged. Marks on Sandra Selby’s wrists suggested that she had also been handcuffed.
But the piece of evidence that interested Kristine Kjarstad the most was hidden away in the dry catalog of the CST report. The shoe prints created by the paint on the vinyl flooring of the kitchen were so clear that there had been no problem in matching the make, model and year against the sample books which are supplied to police authorit
ies by leading shoe manufacturers. In this case identification had been simplified still further by the fact that the sole of the Nike model in question featured the silhouetted figure of the basketball star Michael Jordan.
Detective Eileen McCann of the Evanston City Police did not see that particular episode
By this time, there had been a number of developments in the Maple Street case. One related to the murder weapon, which had been traced to a gun shop in Portland, Oregon. It had been sold eight years previously to a certain Willard Sumner, resident in the Errol Heights neighborhood of that city. One evening, Sumner returned home from work to find that his house had been burgled. Amongst the inventory of missing items he gave the police-two VCRs, a brand-new fax machine and a “priceless” collection of country and western CDs-was the.22-caliber Smith amp; Wesson Model 34 revolver which Sumner had bought over the counter at Joe’s Guns following a previous break-in at his house.
After that, there was no further trace of the weapon. Evanston Police circulated its ballistic characteristics to law enforcement agencies in the Northwest, hoping that they might match a set held on record in relation to other crimes, but without result. The burglar who stripped Sumner’s house might have kept the revolver for his own use, or sold it privately to one of the many people whose professional activities require the use of firearms but who prefer to avoid the formalities associated with the mandatory five-day waiting period. That purchaser might then have experienced a temporary cash-flow problem and sold the gun to someone else. There was no way of knowing how many hands the gun had passed through before it turned up in Evanston.
But the major breakthrough concerned the identity of the third victim and presumed perpetrator of the killings. By the time it happened, Eileen McCann had almost given up hope of ever being able to tie a name tag to the anonymous cadaver which was stored, like some artwork of dubious provenance, in the basement of the city morgue. An extensive poster and media blitz immediately following the shootings had induced a flurry of claims to recognize the unknown man, but these had always failed to hold up to sustained scrutiny. Then, when all the furor had died down, along came one that stuck.
The informant was a private investigator named Lou Gelen, with an office in Decatur, Illinois. He had been hired three years earlier by a local couple named Watson to find their son. Gelen had managed to trace Dale Watson as far as Boise, Idaho, where the boy had worked briefly in a lumber yard. There the trail ended, until Gelen visited a police station in South Chicago to look up a friend and happened to see one of the posters featuring a tastefully retouched photograph of the unknown individual in the Evanston killings.
Lou Gelen immediately contacted the Watsons, then the Evanston Police. The next day, Eileen McCann drove
