The Maude Rogers Murder Collection

by Linda L. Dunlap

  “I didn’t know how bad the crowbar hurt him. We should have called the police, but I was afraid Willy would go to jail because he’s homeless. I didn’t know Earl was going to die, I swear, I thought my brother had just gone away.”

  Betty Ann stopped for a minute before continuing. Finally, she took a deep breath and went on. “Willy stayed with me for the rest of the night in case Earl tried anything else, but he never came back. He must have died during the night.”

  The woman finally ran out of words.

  Maude had been very still, not saying anything during Betty Ann’s monologue. Finally she cleared her throat and asked “Is that how Willy lost his handkerchief. Wiping your prints off the crowbar?”

  Betty Ann nodded. “Yes, I had touched the crowbar, and Willy was once again protecting me.”

  “Where is Willy now, Betty Ann?”

  “He’s at the park, afraid to come back here. I miss him so much,” the old lady said tearfully.

  Maude looked at Joe and nodded. “We need to pick him up.”

  “What will happen to Willy?” the woman asked.

  Maude took her time answering. “I can’t say, Betty Ann. We’ll talk to the district attorney. If the facts prove out the way you say, after the autopsy, he may get off on a self-defense plea. You should have called the police when it happened--then Earl might still be alive. For now, you must come to the station and make a formal statement. I can get a van to pick you up.”

  “Okay,” Betty Ann acknowledged, once again concentrating on Joe. “I’ll get ready to go.”

  When the woman left the room, Maude called downtown and requested a van for handicapped persons be sent to Betty Ann’s house. She called her lieutenant and reported to him before stepping outside to light a cigarette. Breathing the smoke in, she thought about the woman in the motorized chair, her life fractured by a brother she didn’t ask for who had been dumped on her. She thought about the man with no home who slept on newspapers and cardboard, his only joy a gray-haired, crippled lady who needed his help, and lived for his companionship. Then comes the brother, oblivious to reality, wanting his own piece of attention, he runs outside and gets a freaking crowbar to break up the two love birds.

  Jeez, Maude thought as she inhaled her last puff, a crowbar in the back. I get em, don’t I?

  Chapter 6

  The trip back downtown was quiet, with Joe driving and Maude looking out the window, neither of them happy about the circumstances of the Earl Davis incident. More than likely, charges of murder one, or at least manslaughter, would be filed against Willy and Betty Ann because they let the old man die in the yard. No matter what happened, the fall-out was going to be disastrous for them both.

  “So, how did you know?” Joe asked her. ”Was it something I missed?”

  “Not really,” Maude replied. “I had a feeling about her after reading the responding officer’s report. Her crying seemed timed, not real. She knew we were coming.”

  “The thing is,” she mused, “I know what it is to have a close relative who holds the family hostage with his behavior. That poor woman couldn’t get away from her brother. Everywhere she looked, there he was.”

  Back at the station, congratulations came for solving the case, but Maude and Joe were quiet in return, both glad to see the puzzle together, but each disturbed by the final image. Few deaths were pretty in the final analysis.

  The new little notebook in Maude’s pocket had its first few pages already filled with notes ready to transcribe, but she had one more follow- up to do. Alice was busy entering data into the computer as Maude walked into the clerical office. There were others that worked at similar jobs, but Alice was the one Maude sought out each time.

  “Got a minute Alice?” She asked. Pulling up the extra chair from against the wall she continued, “I need to run a check on a white male, approximately forty years old, five feet ten, brown hair, name is Chris Cole, Christopher Cole, to be exact. Madison resident. See what you find in local and national. If you don’t mind, I’ll sit and wait.”

  “No problem. Shouldn’t take long, we aren’t busy today.” Alice said, her fingers clicking keys as she talked.

  About five minutes passed before Maude heard the telex machine returning information from law enforcement agencies around the country. The paper showed five Chris Coles; two females and three white males. Each had minor offenses. One local male had a minor in possession charge from three years earlier. Christopher Douglas Cole: black male, current age 25 years and three months--6 feet tall, 180 pounds. Charge was minor in possession of marihuana, six months earlier. Last known address: 2231 Bradley Street, Madison, Texas.

  Maude sat frozen as Alice read the address off the machine, 2231 Bradley--her address, Mary Ellen’s address. The moment was etched in her brain: the door opening, the sleepy-eyed man with disarrayed hair, the edge in his voice, a sound of indignity at being questioned. It was all so modulated, so planned. His intimate knowledge of the local school, of sweet Mary Ellen was unclean, a smear of filth on delicate porcelain.

  How easily Maude had been pulled into the intricate weave of his trap, a trip back into time. Ten years ago the murderer had left his mark in a terrible way.

  Maude had been a veteran cop, ten years on a beat, then the test for detective at Chicago PD. She aced it, once again the model student, always at the top of her class. The years she spent as a street cop had taught her about the evil that strangers do to one another, bar fights that ended with guns or knives taking lives, like little boys comparing the size of their penises to decide who was the biggest. The family violence cases were the sad ones; a husband who slew his wife for looking past him at another. Dead, she looked at no one, not even the kids who sat crying for their mama.

  On the day of her fourth anniversary as a detective with Chicago PD, Maude and her senior partner Mason Aldridge, a long time veteran with the PD were sent on a welfare check. Dispatch had been called by a frantic mother who said her daughter was missing--the last time she had been seen was two weeks earlier. Mother thought daughter had been upset with her and had not returned her calls. Just being snippy, as young women were wont to be. Mother said at first, she didn’t think much about it, but after two weeks and no contact, Mother’s gut told her something had gone wrong with her child.

  When Detective Aldridge, along with Maude, arrived at the address, they noticed signs of neglect. The grass had grown tall and mail overflowed in the in-coming box. A sad-looking cat sat on the front stoop crying for her mistress. Both detectives pulled their weapons and approached the door, staying out of the line of fire from windows. Mason knocked on the door, politely at first, and then harder, sure to be heard by anyone inside.

  Mason signaled to Maude that he was going in if the door was unlocked. They had worked together for three of the four years since Maude had been promoted to detective. They had also known each other earlier, when she was a beat cop, and he was in homicide. She knew his wife and kids.

  Mason turned the knob and pushed it open as he flattened himself against the brick wall siding. A bullet coming from inside the door would probably miss him. Maude understood the tactic, and waited patiently with her weapon braced should a shot come at any time.

  All was quiet, and both detectives knew there was a very serious problem--call it instinct, call it whatever you like--but they knew. Mason entered the house first, approaching cautiously, keeping the walls and heavy furniture between him and a possible shooter. Maude went through the door and made her way opposite Mason, a maneuver well-practiced by both of them. Still there was nothing.

  Just as both the detectives were about to holster their weapons, a shot rang out from the back yard, the sound coming through the kitchen window. A micro-moment before the hit the red dot of a laser sight centered on Mason’s temple. She saw the dot focusing, but time messed with her. Things happened as in slow motion, and even as she called his name, it was too late. Her partner took the shot and was dead on his feet, the bullet-proof ves
t unable to save his life.

  Maude fell to the floor beside Mason and searched him for a pulse that was no longer there. She eased her radio out of its pouch, watching the window all the while, and called the radio code for “Officer down”, giving the address. She further advised, “Caution, man with a gun”. Even though she knew Mason was dead, Maude requested an ambulance. She had seen enough dead bodies to know her partner was gone, but it was procedure.

  She stayed low to the floor knowing the danger wasn’t over, and made her way in the shadows, putting the furnishings of the house between her and the shooter. The grief for her partner would wait. Her survival depended upon her ability to make it until help arrived. It seemed to take hours for the sirens to sound, and car doors to slam as men in uniform filled the street like a horde of locusts covering a field of grain.

  Cops were everywhere, but the shooter was gone, his shell casings gone, the ground with his shoe prints intentionally stirred, erasing any solid piece of evidence. The ambulance came and took Mason away as cops lined up, waiting for the stretcher to pass. Many eyes were wet.

  The crime lab techs showed up bursting with energy, determined to find any piece of evidence that would help make it right, but of course no one could make it right. A veteran cop was gone in the blink of an eye. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.

  Maude related the incident to her captain, who showed up before Mason was removed from the premises.

  His jaw was set as he stated to all listening, “We’ll get this guy, whoever he is, we’ll find him,” he said. “I’ll put my best men on it.”

  And that’s what he did, leaving Maude out of the loop.

  The original welfare check had so far proven fruitless; there was no one in the house. Maude searched all the rooms after she was dismissed by the captain to carry on her duties. A patrol officer accompanied her throughout the house, searching for any sign of distress that might have made the resident leave.

  Everything was spotless, even more than it should have been, considering the neglect outside. Both bedrooms had been stripped of bedding. Rugs were vacuumed, some freshly shampooed. The bathroom was disinfected, spotless also, all hairs removed from the drains with nothing left to give any leads.

  The kitchen was the last to be searched; the orderly cabinets and sterilized sink were devoid of stains or evidence. Nothing was out of place. Once again everything was spotless, too clean. Something was terribly wrong. She crept to the small laundry room and found it crowded with a washer, dryer, and a large stand-up freezer. Why would a single woman need a large freezer? Maude reached for the door and opened it all the way.

  The next thing she did was look at her watch to determine the exact time. She glanced at the officer who stood beside her with his mouth open and nodded that he should go get the boss. She took a minute to observe, puzzled by the scene before her. It was important that she preserve the image in her mind.

  A youngish woman was frozen in an upright position, crowded into the largest part of the appliance. All shelving had been removed to accommodate her. Her arms were folded against her chest, her head bowed, her knees slightly bent. All was overcome by frost. The body was naked, and the ice that covered her was old, at least by several days. As the fluids in the woman’s body had frozen, a heavy coating of rime had covered her from head to foot. Across her chest, a long row of careful stitches repairing a long and deep incision could be faintly discerned through the frost. It would only be later, when the pathologist opened the body for autopsy that he would discover the victim’s heart was missing.

  From the very first Maude had been saddened by the waste of life, the terrible theft of the young woman’s future. Her belly tied itself in knots when she considered the sick pervert who killed both the woman and Mason Aldridge. In Maude’s mind, there was no doubt the killer was one and the same. The shooting of her partner was territorial, the red dot of the sensor a mark of ownership, the piss of a predator who knows he rules that part of the jungle. Maude had raged inside with the desire to slash the sick pervert asunder, a primal wish to devastate the evil in him before it seeped out again into her city.

  It happened three more times within three months, the killing, the plotting, and the gleeful set-ups of law enforcement officers. From each woman he killed, he took her heart, and sewed her chest back together afterwards. With each victim, the incisions and closures became less precise, as though his human desire for perfection was growing thinner and the animal part of him more savage. He had noticed Maude from the very first, sending her notes written with a soft lead pencil on elementary school paper. No smudges at first, then later his writing became slanted and erratic, but never careless. The notes were childlike, appealing to her for approval rather than condemnation. They made her shudder with revulsion. The newspapers never found out, or her life would have been on display. That was one good thing her chief did, he kept the notes under wraps. Finally they stopped coming. She never knew why he chose her, but she was glad when he stopped writing.

  They had no real evidence; no one ever came forward with information that might have helped. It was as though the man did not exist on the same plane as the rest of the world. Maude became obsessed with finding him. She began contacting the victim’s families by phone, encouraging them, telling them that any day a break could come. And it did, but it was Maude who broke. Her supervisor had a phone call from the father of the first victim, asking him to stop Maude from calling. The man said it was too painful to go through it again and again. The FBI had already taken the case from Chicago PD, and the detectives in homicide had been told to let the feds do their jobs. Her supervisor insisted that she go to the department counselor and get over her preoccupation with the man the local media had named the Heartless Killer.

  After the grisly delivery of the frozen hearts to the Chicago restaurant, Maude put in her letter, packed her bags and moved back to Madison, the place where her mother lived, the place where she and her mother and grandmother were born.

  Chapter 7

  When Maude left the clerical section, she quickly made her way back to homicide and burst through the door of the lieutenant’s office, explaining what she had discovered about Chris Cole. She told him the man who had met her at the door of her rent house was a white male, and the real Chris Cole was black. She also explained her concern for her renter’s welfare.

  “Boss, it was him last night playing a game, pretending to be someone he’s not. It was all set up to show what a genius he is and what fools we are. And I fell for it, took him at his word, and all the time he was laughing at me, at us. We need to get some officers over there and call the crime lab to print the front door where the suspect stood holding the door knob trying to get rid of me. We have to find out if he has hurt Mary Ellen.”

  “Get a warrant Maude. Even though you own the house, we need to have everything legal.”

  “No warrant necessary, boss, it’s in my rent contract, I can go in anytime to check on the house if I believe my property’s been damaged.”

  The trip to Mary Ellen’s was fast and rough, the old beat-up car bouncing Joe off the seat cushion at every pothole, its worn springs loose and useless. The ride had been silent except for radio traffic. When they reached the house, Joe jumped out of the car and went around to Maude’s side, supporting whatever role she decided to take. She was grateful to have him nearby.

  Three patrol cars, the van from the crime lab, and Maude’s unmarked car arrived at 2231 Bradley within fifteen minutes, and immediately officers surrounded the house with weapons drawn. A bullhorn in Maude’s hand amplified her command to ‘come out with your hands up’, but he wasn’t there.

  The officers stationed around the house waited for her to make a move. She felt the pressure to end the standoff, to enter the house and answer her own questions. The door waited unopened, and in her need to get into the house she rushed forward placing herself out of the line of fire from inside. The knob turned easily opening the latch.
She touched the side of the door and pushed, waiting while the gentle pressure from her touch swung the door inside. Joe had made it to the opposite side of the door ready to rush inside whenever she gave the word.

  Caution was the name of the game because Maude remembered Mason Aldridge and the bullet that took him down so many years ago. The killer was twisted and enjoyed the shock value of his work, dismissing human life as unimportant except as a means to his own ends. He would maim and kill as it pleased him with no remorse.

  They entered the house as a team, while the officers outside covered the back door and the windows, ever watchful for any sign of the man they sought. He was nowhere in sight. The forensics team was next in the door once the all clear sign went out. No one was allowed in, except the homicide detectives, and the lab techs. Maude wished she could be anywhere else other than among Mary Ellen’s possessions, about to enter the rooms where the young woman spent her most intimate hours. She felt like praying, like asking Divine intervention in Mary Ellen’s life but in her gut she knew her request to God had come too late.

  The silence in the house was broken by Joe and Maude as they entered the bedroom doors. The spare bedroom was an office setup to accommodate Mary Ellen’s school work. Her desk contained her computer, and on the opposite side of the room, an easy chair had been added as an afterthought. The room appeared to be untouched by intruders other than a small note on the laptop’s power button that said, “Push Me”. Maude stared for a moment then motioned one of the techs toward the computer, indicating the need to print and photograph all of it, the note, the machine, and the desk. She moved on around the room, postponing the terror and the fear that her sweet renter, her friend, was the latest casualty of the diabolical fiend who took the lives of women and humiliated them long after they were dead.

  The next bedroom waited but Maude balked at entering it at first, then steeled herself to whatever lay ahead. At first glance the room seemed in order. The bedcovers straightened, the floor clean just as Mary Ellen would have left it. Her housekeeping skills were always appreciated by Maude who was somewhat of a slob. Nothing seemed amiss until she glanced toward the bathroom.