Teach Me to Kill

by Stephen Sawicki

  The Derry cops knew that with Twomey and Sisti anything could happen in court. If the investigators were going to make charges against Pam Smart stick, they were going to have to do better than the Nashua cops had done with Barnaby. In other words, even a confession was not rock solid.

  The detectives kicked around some ideas, but Cecelia Pierce remained the detectives’ ace in the hole. Smart, however, clearly was uncomfortable talking freely with the girl on the telephone. They needed a situation in which Pam felt safe.

  Finally, the investigators decided on what the AG’s office referred to as a “face-to face one-party intercept.” In other words, Cecelia was going to wear a body wire.

  The teenager had not proven to be a master of deception when she originally lied to the Derry police. During the telephone taps, though, she had seemed fairly at ease, particularly when she got rolling and had to ad-lib. Truth be told, Cecelia seemed to enjoy center stage.

  State approval for the body wire granted, the detectives wanted Cecelia to go to Pam’s office at SAU 21. The two could be secluded, but it was still a public place where Cecelia would be safe.

  Basically, the girl was to say that the authorities wanted to interview her yet again and that she might have to take a lie detector test. The cops, of course, wanted to see how Pam would respond. With any luck, she would implicate herself.

  On Thursday, July 12, Cecelia showed up around noon at the Seabrook Police Department. To the puzzlement of everyone, the girl brought along her fifteen-year-old cousin, who was visiting from the Midwest with her family. The girl had pleaded to come along, so Cecelia relented. And why not? It was only a first-degree murder case.

  It was close to noon and Pam was at lunch. So the cops had someone run out to McDonald’s and bring in Big Macs and fries, which the kids devoured.

  Then Detective Pelletier and Sergeant Bryon sat with Cecelia for a few minutes and went over the subject areas they wanted raised with Pam. Next, Seabrook’s Carlene Thompson, who had been there the day Vance Lattime brought in the murder weapon, helped put the body wire on Cecelia.

  The equipment had been borrowed from the Salem Police Department. Essentially, Cecelia was outfitted with a cloth shoulder holster that carried a small transmitter. The device was taped to her side beneath her right arm. The microphone was at her shoulder. And attached to another strap was an antenna that transmitted the conversation to the detectives, who would be in the parking lot. Cecelia pulled her blue Winnacunnet High School sweatshirt over the apparatus.

  It was a cloudy day. In her mother’s 1987 Ford Tempo, Cecelia and her cousin drove to the high school parking lot. An unmarked police car and a surveillance van followed.

  Everyone got into place. Pelletier and Byron sat in the undercover car. Barry Charewicz and Michael Raymond, who until now had been busy with undercover drug work, manned the recording equipment in the van, a tan vehicle with blacked out, one-way windows, which had been borrowed from a consortium of regional police departments.

  Byron, who had once tracked a murderer on foot through twelves miles of snowy woods, was a dogged cop whose mantra may well have been “cover your ass.”

  The sergeant, who resembled professional football coach Mike Ditka, had an obsession with possible equipment failure. Whenever he worked a case, he always insisted that multiple simultaneous recordings be made of everything that was taped. Extra cassettes cost relatively nothing, especially in comparison to what could be lost.

  On this day, Charewicz and Raymond had two recorders running in the van—one hooked directly into the receiver and one near the speaker. Pelletier, meanwhile, held one of the Panasonic recorders next to his car scanner.

  Just before one o’clock, Cecelia Pierce left her cousin in the car, entered SAU 21, and went down to Pam’s office.

  Smart had been anxious to see her former intern. An older kid, named Billy, an ex-boyfriend of Cecelia’s, had seen Pam and her friend Tracy Collins recently and told Smart that Cecelia was spreading rumors about the murder.

  SMART: He told me that you’re going around telling everybody I killed Greg.

  PIERCE: He did?

  SMART: Yeah, I’ve been like fucking, I almost got hospitalized last night.

  PIERCE: Why?

  SMART: I couldn’t believe it that you would say that, that I, that I actually killed him, that I shot him. Billy told me that.

  PIERCE: I did not say that.

  SMART: I thought Billy had the story fucked up.

  PIERCE: He did. He told me that you came looking for me and that you said you were leaving for Florida. This was like a month ago.

  SMART: For Florida?

  PIERCE: He said it….Where’s Patty? [Pam’s secretary]

  SMART: She’s out today.

  PIERCE: Oh, good. But anyways, right, he, um…

  SMART: I was just talking about you.

  PIERCE: You were?

  SMART: Yeah, I was just saying I wanted to…Hug me, I haven’t seen you in so long. I missed you.

  With that, Pam jumped up from her seat and the two embraced. Worried that Pam would detect the body wire, the teenager leaned forward so that Smart would not put her hands on it. As it was, Pam’s fingers ended up only a skinny inch from one of the straps.

  They chatted. Obviously, Pam had been worried about losing Cecelia. Besides the remarks from Pierce’s old boyfriend that were playing in her mind, Smart had been having difficulty reaching the girl on the telephone. The last time Pam tried, Cecelia’s little sister unconvincingly said she was not home.

  Now, as the conversation went on, Pam began speaking faster and faster, obviously relieved to have someone with whom to discuss all that was happening.

  SMART: I’m like, why would you even say that I murdered Greg? And Tracy heard the whole thing. Tracy’s like, “Why would Cecelia do that?” She’s like, “What the fucking hell is going on?”

  PIERCE: (Laughs) Meanwhile, you’re thinking, “Yeah, she knows everything,” you know…

  SMART: Oh, I know, but I don’t want to tell, tell Tracy that, you know? So I’m like, O-o-o-oh, God, because I’m like “What the fuck.” All I can say is I’m so glad you’re here, because I want to talk to you, but I was thinking totally—the police, not the police but my lawyer told me that someday that they're probably gonna bug you and that you’d come down to talk to me.

  PIERCE: I haven’t even talked to the police.

  Cecelia quickly moved on to other topics One person who they both knew was talking to the police was Ralph Welch. He had also been interviewed by the press and, apparently, had repeated what he learned about the murder to others as well.

  PIERCE: Ralph is telling the whole town everything.

  SMART: Yeah. But Ralph doesn’t know anything. That’s what I mean.

  PIERCE: Ralph knows what he heard.

  SMART: Right. And Ralph heard, uh, ’cause—’cause Ralph, the reporter told me Ralph said that he heard that I was having an affair with Bill, but it’s not enough to arrest me because Ralph heard.

  PIERCE: Right.

  SMART: And for all anybody knows, Bill could have been totally in love with me and told the whole Winnacunnet that…

  PIERCE: I know.

  SMART: …he was having an affair with me, that Bill, um, Ralph’s telling the truth that he did hear that. But that doesn’t mean it is the truth. But if the police believed that, I’d be arrested right now, so obviously they don’t believe it.

  PIERCE: Obviously they don’t think you’d kill Greg.

  SMART: Right. No shit.

  PIERCE: (laughs)

  SMART: But what they're waiting for is either Ralph, I mean JR or Bill or Pete to say that I had something to do with it.

  PIERCE: Right. And you know they said they won’t tell. Bill--Bill would not tell on you.

  SMART: I know. Even if they did say that—right?—they won’t, they don’t have evidence 'cause there is no evidence.

  Next, Pam and Cecelia complained about Franci Richard
son, the reporter from the Derry News, who by now was asking questions about Flynn’s having slept over at Pam’s the week before Greg’s death. The reporter was an irritant, to be sure, but she was not Pam’s main concern.

  SMART: I’m not worried about anything except the police. I think Ralph, I mean, if Pete or JR or Bill says that I did it—

  PIERCE: Right.

  SMART: Right. Then they can arrest me—

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: I want you to know that if I’m in jail there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to say anything about you ever.

  PIERCE: All right.

  SMART: 'Cause why would I?

  PIERCE: Right.

  SMART: You didn’t have anything to do with anything. And even if, say they have a note from Jenny or [inaudible] one phone conversation or something…

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: ... with me and Bill, then I’d have to admit that yes, I was having an affair with Bill; I am never going to admit the fact that I asked, that I told him, that I hired them, 'cause I never paid them money. I never hired anybody.

  They digressed for a bit, talking about Raymond Fowler, then moving on to Pam’s concerns about her phone being tapped and her uncertainty about what Ralph Welch might know about the murder. She also kept returning to what people around Seabrook were saying and thinking about her involvement in Greg’s death.

  SMART: Does your mother think that I hired them to do it?

  PIERCE: She—she just doesn’t want me having anything to do with you. She hasn’t—she hasn’t told me.

  SMART: Why? Because she thinks like I’m a murderer?

  PIERCE: She—she just doesn’t, she doesn’t want the police to keep harassing me.

  SMART: I think that’s right, Cecelia, you know, I think that when school starts again you can start, you know, working here if you want.

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: I don’t know if your mother will let you or not. But, uh, when everything blows over, you know…But I just want you to know—

  PIERCE: Are you gonna teach your course?

  SMART: No.

  PIERCE: No, you’re not? All right. I just want to know 'cause I want to call and change it to physiology and anatomy.

  SMART: All right. I’m not going to now. I may have, it matters what happens.

  PIECE: Yeah.

  SMART: You know, if they got certified as juveniles, then no one will ever know anything, and they’ll all be out in a year, you know, when they turn eighteen. I don’t know, you know. If they get certified as adults it matters, but right now none, I know none of them have confessed. None of them have. My lawyer talked to Bill’s lawyer yesterday.

  Pam would again ask Cecelia what different people thought about her. And she wondered about possible evidence the police might have, such as the love note that Jenny Charles supposedly gave to the police, which of course was a fabrication.

  SMART: I wonder if everybody hates me at Winnacunnet or if they just feel sorry for me. Like, could be everybody thinks I’m guilty?

  PIERCE: I don’t think anybody knows what to think.

  SMART: Because, like, has, does anybody feel sorry for me? Like, is anybody—like how could they have killed her husband or everybody thinks I had something to do with it? Everybody thinks I had something to do with it.

  PIERCE: Yeah (laughs).

  SMART: Well, see, that’s OK. You know? I mean, I’d rather know the truth, you know. I mean, like, there’s nothing I can do, but I guess people, ’cause people keep thinking that I’m getting arrested, people will come…

  PIERCE: I’ve been told five times already that you were, that you were arrested.

  SMART: I, so have I. My boss was told the other day that I was arrested, but obviously I’m not, you know. The police haven’t even questioned me…but I’m just like, what the hell? I’ve already got best lawyers friggin’ anywhere.

  PIERCE: You do?

  SMART: Yeah. They’re fucking wicked expensive, but what could I do?

  PIERCE: Obviously you can afford it.

  SMART: No. Goddamn fucking. Didn’t I need them? But right now they don’t have to do anything unless I’m arrested, and if I get arrested, then they have to do shit. But if I get arrested the only way I would ever confess to the, um, affair would be if they had a note from Jenny.

  Then Cecelia dropped a small bomb. Bill Lyons from the attorney general’s office had called, she said, and wanted to see Pierce the next day. Lyons had told her, in fact, that they had Pam’s love note, a revelation that seemed to cause Smart distress. It was, after all, a piece of evidence. Her voice became quiet and she grew irritated at Cecelia’s picayune concerns about not being able to pick up a copy of the orange juice video because the police had it.

  SMART: All I can say is that no matter what they try and make you talk about, if I were you I didn’t know a damn thing.

  PIERCE: Well, all I know is that I had to come and talk to you because I—I mean, I don’t know what to do. I have to go talk to the attorney general. I’m just sick of lying, you know.

  SMART: Well, you know, I’m just telling you that if you tell the truth, you’re gonna be an accessory to murder.

  PIERCE: Right.

  SMART: So that’s your choice. And not only that, but what is your family gonna think? I mean, they’re like, “Cecelia, you knew about this?” You know?

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: Everybody in town is gonna be like fucking, you know, Cecelia. So if I were you, once you say no they leave you alone.

  PIERCE: Uh, huh.

  SMART: Once you say yes, they never leave you alone, you know?

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: And that’s the thing. It’s too, I know, it’s too late now, though, you know.

  PIERCE: Did you now, seeing what had happened, wouldn’t you rather have had just divorced Greg?

  SMART: Well, I don’t know, you know. Nothing was going wrong until fucking they told Ralph.

  PIERCE: No shit.

  SMART: It’s their stupid-ass fault that they told Ralph, you know.

  PIERCE: I can’t even believe that they told him. Now they're in jail and like every time I hear Motley Crue I think of Bill.

  SMART: Yeah, so do I. Tell me about it.

  As the conversation moved along, Pam steered it toward the possibility that Cecelia would be given a lie detector test. Pam suggested that she refuse to take it.

  SMART: I don’t know anything about lie detector tests, but I know every lawyer I talked to told me no matter fucking what, don’t ever in your whole entire life take a lie detector test because they can’t be introduced as evidence. They can only be used against you for further questioning. Like if it shows up as you’re lying, they’re gonna fucking bludgeon you to death before, you know, they’re gonna question you for ninety hours.

  PIERCE: I know. I’ll have a nervous breakdown.

  SMART: Right, exactly like Anthony Barnaby did in his fucking trial the other day. They questioned him for murder for seventeen hours straight and at the end he fucking confessed.

  PIERCE: The guy that just had three trials?

  SMART: Yeah.

  PIERCE: I can’t believe he had three trials.

  SMART: And got off. My lawyers represented him.

  PIERCE: They did? And he’s off?

  SMART: Yeap.

  PIERCE: After confessing he’s off?

  SMART: Yeap. [Inaudible.]

  PIERCE: Jesus Christ.

  SMART: I know. Good lawyer, huh?

  PIERCE: Well, maybe if you confess you’ll get off anyways.

  SMART: Yeah.

  With Flynn, Randall, and JR remaining closemouthed, Cecelia was the one person who could bring Pam down, and Smart knew it. Now Pam would begin to play on her friendship with Cecelia in an effort to keep the girl in her camp.

  SMART: I think I’ve been a very good friend to you and that’s the thing, even if you send me to the fucking slammer or you don’t, or if anybody se
nds me it’s gonna be you, and that’s the big thing, and that’s what it comes down to….But what good is it gonna do if you send me to the fucking slammer? Because if you think that’s going to be the end of your problems…

  PIERCE: I’ll be out a pair of sneakers on my next birthday (laughs).

  SMART: Don’t think it’s the end of your problems if you confess. No, because it’s gonna be your whole family’s gonna be like, “Fucking well, you knew about a murder, how could you have lived like that?” And the newspapers are gonna be all over you: “How could you have known about that?” You know? And you’re gonna be on the witness stand a million times, you know.

  Cecelia was a worry for Pam, but she no doubt figured the girl could be controlled. What was more frightening was what went on out of Smart’s sphere of influence, namely behind the walls of the juvenile holding facility. JR Lattime, in Pam’s mind, was the weak link of the three boys.

  SMART: Well, the only thing that I think is gonna happen is that sooner or later JR is gonna turn on everybody too.

  PIERCE: JR?

  SMART: Yeah.

  PIERCE: I feel bad for him because he really didn’t do anything.

  SMART: You have to remember through this whole thing that he did….they’re fucking old enough. You’re old enough to make your own decisions.

  PIERCE: Yeah.

  SMART: They did this all. I did not force anybody to do anything. They made their own decisions.

  PIERCE: At least you didn’t pay ’em.

  SMART: Yes. No, I didn’t pay them. They made their own decisions, you know. Remember that throughout the whole thing. Don’t feel bad even though I do too. I know it’s hard not to. But remember, they made up their own minds and they would…I don’t even know what happened in my house. I don’t know who was there or who was waiting in the car.

  The conversation went on for a few minutes more, mainly covering old ground. Pam told the girl to visit her after going to the attorney general’s office. Smart, in the meantime, had an appointment with her newly hired psychiatrist.

  Pam and Cecelia stepped outside. The teenager drove off and was to meet the detectives in the parking lot not far away. The plan fell apart, though, when Pam pulled out of the parking lot and on to the street right behind the girl.