“I’ve been dreaming about him,” Clipper said. “And in the dreams, he always tries to help me save Janice from a sniper.”
“He was your friend,” Wheeler said gently. “Whatever else he may have been or done, you’ll always grieve for the loss of your friend, and you’ll always worry about Janice.”
“Yeah, I guess…but the dreams are so damn real.”
“Tell me about them. Are they the same, repetitive?”
“Pretty much. Always a sniper gunning for Janice and me not able to do anything about it.”
“Do you know who the sniper is?”
Clipper shook his head. “Never see his face.”
“And Doug?”
“I always lose my gun and Doug always shows up and offers me his pistol. And he always mentions that at least Janice wasn’t molested. I can’t figure that out.”
“Well, I’m not much into dream interpretation, but let’s look at the elements. Like I said, with all that you and Janice have been through, you’re always going to be concerned for her safety. I suspect that you have some unresolved issues about the snipings, and perhaps Doug’s role in them, that your subconscious is trying to bring to your attention. Losing your gun, feeling helpless, may simply be an expression of frustration and perhaps a little self-recrimination.”
Clipper nodded glumly. “I’m frustrated, all right. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch. How do I make it go away?”
Wheeler chuckled. “I know it’s easy for me to say, but you just have to wait it out. Don’t agonize over it and it will come to you eventually. As for the dreams, there are some over the counter remedies I can suggest that will help you to sleep a little better.”
“No thanks, Doc. If it comes to that, I’ll take my chances with single malt.”
Clipper got to the station to find Cameron Shibles waiting in his office.
“It’s a little after the fact,” Shibles said, “but I took a few days off, and when I got back this morning, I found a response to our query about similar serial sniping cases on my desk. I figured you’d want it for the file. Here’s the contact info. It’s out of Philadelphia PD.”
Clipper picked up the phone and dialed the contact number, drumming his fingers impatiently on his desk waiting for the call to go through.
“Third Division, Sergeant Norton, can I help you?”
“Sergeant Norton, my name is Lieutenant Thomas Clipper. Bangor, Maine PD. We sent out a query about some drug dealers being picked off by snipers, and I understand you’ve had some similar cases.”
“Oh, yeah. We got dealers going down all the time around here, but there were a few cases a year or so back that were a little different from the normal gang-banging.”
“Snipings?”
“Yeah, maybe. Long range rifle shots, military ball ammo, no witnesses, no suspects, no word on the street. Cases never went anywhere. I think it happened four times over a two- or three-month period.”
Clipper let the thought at the back of his mind out. “Same sort of thing here. Oddly enough, a guy from your department moved up here and ended up the lead on one of our cases. Nelson Miller?”
Clipper could practically hear wheels turning in the short silence that followed.
“Miller worked property crime out of this division.” Norton’s reply was non-committal. “Quit after he lost his wife a couple years ago. I never heard where he went.”
Clipper’s neck prickled. “Lost his wife?”
“Yeah, she got caught in a shootout between a couple of rival dealers.”
Later that afternoon, Clipper stood before Robert Gendron, Max Trimble, John Peters, Cameron Shibles, and Ray Wheeler, all crowded behind the closed door of his office.
“I don’t want to go off half-cocked, here,” he said, “but we’ve got to take a hard look at this.” Ticking the points off on his fingers, he led them through it.
“One, these same kind of drug dealer snipings we’re having happened in Philadelphia when Nelson worked there, and apparently stopped when he left. Two, his wife was killed in a drug-related shootout, but he told us she moved here with him. Has anyone ever seen her?” He shot a look at Gendron who shook his head slowly with a look of utter horror on his face. “Three, according to his personnel package from Philadelphia PD, Nelson claimed to have been a competitive rifle shooter in college. Maybe you could explain any one of these things, but taken all together…”
“But you got the rifle that did Cord and Carpenter out of Doug Holland’s place,” Gendron interjected. “With his suicide and confession to the older shootings, I’d be hard put to change horses now.”
Clipper opened his mouth to reply and froze as the thought blossomed. “John, did we ever check that .32 we found with Doug’s body through NCIC?”
Peters got to his feet. “I don’t think so. I’ll do it right now.”
As Peters left the room, Clipper looked at Ray Wheeler. “That’s what I missed. Doug hated small caliber handguns, told me he never trusted them to get the job done. He’d never have shot himself with a .32.” He stopped as another thought tickled his mind.
Ten minutes later, Peters was back with a computer printout. “That pistol was reported stolen four years ago… in Philadelphia.”
Clipper nodded curtly and raised his finger to make another point, but Peters wasn’t done.
“And dispatch just got a BOLO from Westbrook PD. They’re looking for a small dark-colored car in connection with a double sniping that happened two hours ago.”
Robert Gendron groaned. “Oh, Jesus. Miller drives a dark blue compact, and he’s off today.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Max Trimble scowled. “Okay, it’s a great circumstantial case, and I guess you’re probably right too, but it’s all just theory. You know as well as I do that no judge is going to give us a search warrant without something solid. How in hell do we get it?”
Clipper paced. “For starters, we watch him. Round the clock. Home, work, tracer on his car, the whole nine yards. And in the meantime, we get Philly to dig into him on their end.” He turned to Robert Gendron. “Chief, I think we need to keep your guys out of it. If they even suspect we’re looking at him, he’ll sniff it out. What you could do is find us some stakeout positions around Miller’s house.”
At Gendron’s grim nod, Clipper and Trimble sat down and started drawing up a list of stakeout teams and the equipment they would need.
Cameron Shibles got to his feet. “I’ll get the Philadelphia office to start digging into his background.”
Nelson Miller drove on autopilot, his mind caught up in the satisfying glow of accomplishment. He had forced himself to wait, to lie dormant for more than two weeks, but finally the need had once again driven him to act.
His one concession to the danger was distance; he was on I-95 on his way back from Westbrook, a small city a hundred and forty miles south of Orono, chosen at random.
He had set up in an empty parking lot on the edge of the Presumpscot River that ran through the center of town, and in less than fifteen minutes spotted a drug deal going down in a small park on the opposite shore.
The two-hundred-yard shot on the dealer was easy, so, with a small giggle, he had challenged himself with a second shot at the dealer’s fleeing customer, taking him down at a full gallop.
Getting off the interstate at the first Orono exit, Miller made his way to the house he rented on the town’s north side, triggering the opener, and pulling into the attached garage. Dropping the door, he carried his rifle into the house and into his den where he sat at a small table with his cleaning equipment.
A virtual twin of the weapon he had sacrificed to divert attention onto the old man, the rifle broke down easily under his practiced fingers as his mind replayed the day’s success. As he worked, he could feel the gaze of his wife, looking out of the scores of pictures that covered the walls.
“That’s one more that can’t hurt you,” he said, basking in the warmth of her approval.
&
nbsp; By dusk the first teams were in place, one in an apartment co-opted from an English professor two houses down on the other side of the street, and the second located one street over in a vacant house that had a clear view of the back of Miller’s house.
Two cars were stationed out of sight north and south of the house, ready for a moving tail, and all of the teams were tied together on a state tactical channel.
Satisfied that the stakeout on Miller was tight, Clipper had one more thing to do before quitting for the night. After a quick stop at the station, he drove out Union Street. What he was about to do went against all of his professional instincts, but he couldn’t resist its pull.
There was light in the living room window when he pulled into Otis Conroy’s yard, and a grim-faced Conroy met him at the door.
“Now what? Got another damn warrant to harass me with?”
Clipper looked him in the eye. “I left my police hat at the office,” he said. “I got your guns here, and I wanted a few minutes of your time.”
Conroy returned his gaze for a moment then nodded abruptly. “All right, bring ’em in.”
Clipper carried the guns they had seized into the living room and carefully stood them against the couch. Maddy watched silently from a chair on the other side of the room.
Reaching into his pocket, Clipper pulled out a copy of the original receipt for the weapons and held it out to Conroy. “I’ll need your signature,” he said.
Conroy nodded stiffly and took the receipt. “I read about your shootings,” he said. “Any damn fool could see that they weren’t done with a .22 or a shotgun or even a damn .30-30.”
“And any damn fool knows that a sniper would have the weapons that go with the ammo we found in the barn, but,” Clipper held up his hand, “I’m not here for that. I don’t give a damn about your rifles. I also don’t make a habit of apologizing for doing my job, but I was wrong, and I wanted you to know that we’ve got the real sniper in our sights. We won’t be bothering you again.”
Conroy stood tight lipped and unbending, but as Clipper turned to leave, he saw the glint of tears in Maddy’s eyes and her silent smile of thanks.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Nelson Miller might have dismissed the abbreviated chatter coming from the police scanner that sat by his bed—there was no real indication of what exactly was being discussed, and no reason to assume it concerned him—until he caught Clipper’s voice answering Max Trimble’s request for a status update, and then he knew.
He was not a man much given to panic; understanding that the stakeout meant he still had some time, he pondered his options through a hasty supper of milk and cereal, and by ten o’clock he’d made his preparations and was calmly settling down to sleep.
Auclair’s gym was situated in a large cinder block building that sat against a wooded railroad right of way on Bangor’s outer west side. Miller had left his house at 6 a.m. dressed in sneakers, sweatpants and a fleece jacket, carrying a large gym bag. Two state police detectives in a battered green Volvo picked him up at the end of his street, forming the point of a moving tail that consisted of four nondescript vehicles that played hopscotch following him south onto the interstate and off again in Bangor. They watched him park in Auclair’s lot, lock his car, and disappear into the gym.
Clipper was at his desk at seven-fifteen, when one of the undercover officers reported that Miller had disappeared.
“He went straight through the back door and into the woods.” Max Trimble slammed his hand into the hood of his cruiser. He and Clipper were watching as a Bangor K-9 handler led his burly German Shepherd around the end of the building to pick up the tracks leading from the back door in the dusting of snow. “Son of a bitch’s prob’ly got an hour on us.”
The dog followed Miller’s scent for nearly a mile through the woods before losing it on an arterial industrial park access road.
Even though it was obvious that Miller had gotten a ride and was probably miles away in his flight, every member of the division fanned out on the streets of Bangor while the state police and sheriff’s department moved to seal off the roads leading in and out of the city.
Clipper went back to the station and banged out a quick affidavit for a search warrant; by eleven-thirty, he and Trimble, accompanied by two troopers and an Orono PD detective, were inside Miller’s house.
With two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and a kitchen, living room, den, and half bath/ laundry room on the first floor, the house could have been a neat domestic nest. It wasn’t.
The only rooms that showed any signs of use were the kitchen, downstairs bath, and the small den on the first floor. The rest of the house lay dark behind lowered shades, cold and inert under a heavy layer of dust and disuse.
The grease-slicked kitchen floor was littered with crusted fast food containers, empty cereal boxes, and moldering milk cartons that spilled from an overflowing trash can; the air was dank and heavy with the smell of old food and decay.
The grimy bathroom had the impersonal look and feel of a public restroom, devoid of any personal touches other than the damp towels on the floor.
The small den was the only room that held any clues to the house’s occupant. There was a small couch, which had obviously served as Miller’s bed, one straight-back chair in front of an old wooden roll-top desk piled high with newspapers, and another at a small square table that held gun-cleaning equipment and boxes of .308 and .223 ammunition. There was a programmable police scanner on the desk, and clothing was piled haphazardly on top of an old bureau.
As Clipper followed Max Trimble into the room, he saw the face of a pretty brunette looking down from dozens of photographs that covered all the walls. There were a couple pictures of Miller and the woman together, but most were close-ups and copies of studio portrait shots.
Max Trimble grunted from the desk. “He’s clipped the sniper stories out of these papers,” he said, “and… oh hell, you better take a look at this.”
Clipper walked over and followed Trimble’s gaze to a small, framed picture sitting in one of the desk’s fancy alcoves. He instantly recognized his own rear deck with his workshop in the background as the setting, but it took him a long, confused moment to realize that the woman in the photo was not Miller’s wife.
He tried to keep his voice even when Janice answered her phone.
“Hi, hon. Where are you?”
“I’m at the museum.”
“Good. Is anyone else there?”
“No, I’m alone. Kathy took the day off. Why?”
Clipper’s stomach tightened. Kathy Singer was an Historical Society volunteer who had been murdered in the museum the previous summer. “Oh, ah, I wanted to speak to Kathy. No big deal, I’ll see you later.”
“Uh, I’m not sure how long I’m going to be here.”
“No, you should stay there. Kathy might show up. Have her give me a call if she does, okay?”
“Why, Clip? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain when I see you.”
Clipper hung up and called John Peters.
“Miller’s at the museum. He’s got Janice. Grab whoever you can and seal the place off, but don’t spook him. Do it Code One. I’m leaving Orono now. I’ll meet you there.”
With the calls made, Clipper left Trimble and the Orono detective to complete the search and ran to his truck. He covered the nine miles in just over twelve minutes, sliding to a stop just outside the museum drive behind two unmarked cruisers.
He was approaching the front steps when Ellen Davis stepped into the doorway.
“The door was open, so we went in, Clip. She’s not here.”
They searched the building and the grounds, but the only sign of Janice they found was her car in the driveway and her phone lying on the desk in her office. It was Caleb Cross who noticed that it was still recording.
“Very good, Janice. Now, it’s probably time we left.”
Janice’s voice was calm. “Why, Nelson. Where are we going?”
<
br /> “Where I can keep you safe.
“But, I’m safe here, Nelson. You’re here, and you have a pistol, so we don’t have to leave.”
“Yes, we do. I’ll keep you safe this time. I’ve cleaned out the nest, made a safe place for us. You’ll see.”
“I’ll be safe here, Nelson. We can both be safe here.”
“No.” Miller’s voice hardened. “You didn’t listen before, Helen, but this time you will.”
There was the brief sound of a scuffle, and the recording played on in silence until, six minutes later, Ellen Davis called, “Janice. Janice are you here?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
After sneaking out of the gym that morning, Miller had made his way through the sparse woods to a road and then called for an Uber pickup. Once out of the area, he had called for and taken three more Uber rides before finally getting one with a garrulous, elderly driver who volunteered that he lived alone and drove mostly for something to do. It had been a simple matter to direct the old man to a deserted street and then strangle him from the back seat and stuff his body in the spacious trunk of the late model Chevy.
He’d driven to the museum and armed himself with a Ruger SR9 nine-millimeter pistol from his bag before slipping into the building. Now, slumped low in the front passenger seat, he casually pointed the pistol at Janice’s ribs as he directed her to drive north on the Interstate.
Janice kept her voice even and tried to ignore the pistol. “This is going to make it worse, Nelson. Let’s go see Clipper and work it out. He can help.”
“You need to forget Clipper, Helen. You’ll be safe with me.”
“SP and SO are set up all around the city and north and south on 95, but he’s had plenty of time to get past that.” John Peters was leaning over a map on the table. He and most of the division were with Clipper and Ray Wheeler in the conference room. “It’s too bad Janice left her phone. We coulda maybe tracked it. And who the hell’s Helen, anyway?”
Past Master Page 18
