Next to Die: A gripping serial-killer thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  She was getting good.

  * * *

  Mike pulled over on River Street, parked behind the Subaru sitting in front of the pea-green house. Darlene Bilger, a thirty-five-year-old woman dressed in a skirt and blouse that looked like an ex-hippie’s best guess at corporate casual, was standing on the broken sidewalk out front. He offered his hand. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

  “Of course.” She was chewing gum. “Anything you think will help.”

  “Did you know Harriet Fogarty?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t. But I’ve heard she did a lot of good in the community. And this is a real, real tragedy.” Darlene keyed into the door, which opened with a squeak.

  The empty house had a strange odor, a kind of maple syrup smell, mingling with other musty scents. The front room had been stripped of its carpeting, the floorboards exposed dusty and dark.

  Darlene led him in, apologetic. “This is what you call a real ‘fixer-upper’… There was a family who lived here for years, then the kids all moved away, the woman’s husband died, and she was here alone, right up until the end. Used to get Meals on Wheels, didn’t leave the house for weeks at a time.” She sniffed and grimaced. “We can’t seem to chase that smell out of the house.”

  Mike walked through a doorway in the center of the living room. He passed a bathroom on the right. On the left, stairs went up to the next floor. The back of the house was a kitchen and dining area with plenty of windows to let in the light, dust swirling in the door draft. The view overlooked the woods between the house and the DSS building. He stopped and had a long look.

  “I did some research online,” Darlene said, “and there are all sorts of possible causes for it. Bed bugs, that’s one. Bees in the walls – that’s my favorite.”

  “How long has this been vacant?”

  “Um, a year, just coming up.”

  The land sloped down and away from the back of the house, toward the woods. Mike left the window, refocused on the room, but there wasn’t much to look at. Hardwood flooring had been scratched up from years of use. The linoleum floor on the kitchen side of the room was faded and cracked. Nothing along the baseboard – not a cigarette butt or a snack wrapper. Aside from dust, the place was barren.

  A good spot to hang out, though. To wait for caseworkers to leave their office for the day.

  “Can I see the upstairs?”

  “Of course.”

  Maybe the gum she chewed was to mask the scent of a two-martini lunch, but Darlene seemed perfectly on her game. She took him down a short corridor between rooms. The stair treads groaned as they ascended to the next floor. Straight ahead was a second bathroom right over the downstairs one, and to the left a master bedroom with fake wood-paneled walls and shag carpeting.

  He approached the back windows again. From the higher elevation, he could see over the treetops. A better view: the edge of the DSS parking lot was visible, and the access road.

  “Have you had any break-ins?”

  “No. Not that I know of… You think someone was in here?” She was either excited or worried, maybe both.

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Why would they come in here?”

  Mike stood next to one of the windows, insects buzzing against the glass. He imagined the killer standing, perhaps looking down like he was, watching as the DSS workers left the building at five o’clock, two days ago. After taking hundreds of pictures and getting all their samples, the police had impounded the car and effectively returned the parking lot to the public. But no one was parking in Harriet Fogarty’s space – he could see the blackout tent from here. Two nights ago, the killer could have been right in this spot, watching.

  A third of the parking spaces were earmarked for DSS staff, though unassigned to specific employees. About six staff spots were visible from the top floor of the house. It was still undetermined whether the murderer had targeted Harriet Fogarty or been waiting for any generic social worker to be late, like a stray member of the herd, but Mike was leaning toward Harriet as the target, with Pritchard compelling as a scorned brother upset over inherited property, maybe money.

  But then there was the idea of angry parent who’d lost custody of a child, out for revenge.

  Or even someone on staff – a jealous co-worker, like Rifkin? Or the kind of odd one who seemed nervous – Lennox Palmer?

  Someone else, maybe, not yet on the radar?

  Mike stepped away from the window and walked past Darlene. The upstairs was split into three bedrooms, the floors uneven. He ducked his head in each then backed out and looked above him. The pull-string for an attic door dangled in the air. “May I?”

  “There’s not much up there, it’s just a crawl space…”

  He pulled the door and unfurled the stairs. He gave the bottom step a test, putting a little weight on it, then started up.

  The heat, which had been significant on the first floor, stifling on the second, was positively choking in the attic. It had to be over 100 degrees as he poked his head up into the space. There was maybe four feet between the floor and the peak of the roof. No flooring, just the exposed joists, pink puffy insulation smooshed in between. Mike hauled himself up, breaking a sweat.

  “Please be careful…” Darlene’s voice was muffled.

  He crawled on his hands and knees toward the octagonal window on the woods-side of the attic. The sweat really started to pour, dripping into the insulation. He went joist by joist until he reached the small window, dressed in spider-webs and dead flies. At least ten more parking spaces were visible from here. That meant fifteen, sixteen employees; almost all the spots marked for DSS workers. From this position, the killer could have easily known that Harriet Fogarty had been the last employee of the day.

  Or, if he’d mixed up the cars, assumed it was Bobbi Noelle.

  * * *

  Mike ran the water in the second-floor bathroom and splashed it on his face. Darlene stayed in the hallway, gripping her purse, looking less excited and increasingly anxious. “Did you see something up there?”

  No towel handy, so he wiped his face with his hands, dried them on his pants. His undershirt was soaked with sweat; dark circles beneath the armpits of his suit. “The front door has been locked all this time, correct? No access except for the key?”

  “Right.” She shook her head back and forth. “No access. I’m the only one. I was here, I don’t know, about a month ago, with someone from a cleaning company. It was to get out that smell…”

  Mike left the bathroom, started back down to the first floor, and she followed. “Maybe check the subfloor in the living room,” he said about the odor. “Sometimes unfinished wood like that can give off a sweet smell. You took the carpet out, and that’s why it’s the strongest in there. Can I see the basement?”

  “Yes… You think that’s it? The flooring?”

  “Might be.”

  The basement was accessible off the kitchen. The realtor nudged past Mike, opened the door to reveal a dark set of wooden stairs. “The electric is off.”

  Mike clicked on his flashlight.

  A basement typical of older houses, stone instead of concrete blocks, a dirt floor. An ancient boiler squatted in one corner, a rickety workbench, and a couple of empty crates stacked against one wall. The street-side of the basement was cramped, and the dirt floor sloped down toward a door with a simple slide bolt, withdrawn so that the lock was disengaged.

  Mike stepped out into the overgrown backyard. The tall grass and weeds were trampled, forming that path toward the woods if you looked just the right way.

  He took out his phone and typed a name into his contacts, placed the call. “Hi Brit. I need a team at 117 River Street. Possible prints on the basement doorknob, and up in the attic along the floor joists, maybe the window. Really need to just go through the whole house and comb the backyard.”

  Brit Silas would need elimination prints from the family who’d lived there, which would be tedious, depending on where they were
located and if anyone was already in the system. Mike returned to the main floor and asked Darlene about the family who still owned the house. “Well, one of the boys is overseas,” she said. “There are two other kids, and they’re local. Mary is the daughter, and she’s the one I work with on selling the house. It went to all three kids, but she’s the one who handles it. What’s going on?”

  “Could be nothing,” Mike said.

  Eight

  A passing motorcade of bikers rumbled through downtown Lake Haven like a long roll of thunder. Inside the interrogation room, Pritchard’s eyes were bloodshot, last night’s booze-binge still leaching from his pores.

  Mike opened the conversation. “Do you remember me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You were significantly intoxicated.”

  “So you say; I never submitted to a breathalyzer.”

  “Then you’ll remember speaking about your sister, Harriet, about her death.” Mike glanced at his notepad, though he recalled the line by memory. “You said, ‘Rita had it coming to her.’”

  Pritchard glanced away. Mike thought maybe the man felt shame, but it was tough to tell. Most of Pritchard’s face was buried in a gnarly salt-and-pepper beard. He was deeply tanned, the kind of lizard-look usually reserved for hardcore beachgoers and desert-dwellers.

  “That’s a pretty heavy thing to say,” Mike said. “Unless I mistook your meaning.”

  Finally, Pritchard looked back at Mike with his wet brown eyes. “We all have it coming.”

  Mike glanced at Overton, who rolled her eyes from the corner of the room. Overton liked to stand rather than sit, Mike noticed.

  “I didn’t kill Rita,” Pritchard said. “Karma killed Rita.”

  “Oh. Okay. Why did karma kill Rita?”

  “Karma’s a bitch.” Pritchard cut up laughing, a gravelly, lifelong smoker laugh. He was in his clothes from the night before but still shackled, and the chains rattled as he had his fun.

  “You know,” Mike said, “your brother Joe is on his way here.”

  He settled down and grew serious. “So?”

  “Is Joe going to like what you did? What’s he going to think about all of this?”

  “I don’t give a shit about Joe.”

  “So you’re angry at both your siblings. And this has to do with your family home in Gloversville? That you were cut out of the will?”

  “Yeah, by Rita worm-tonguing our mother. Our weak mother.”

  It felt like the edge of a confession. “Why would she do that?” Mike asked. “Why conspire to get you out of the will?”

  “I don’t fuckin know. Why don’t you ask Joe?”

  “Joe conspired, too?”

  Pritchard sniffed, looked away.

  “So because you were cut out of the will,” Mike said carefully, “you were angry with Rita, and then what did you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, we know for sure you did at least a couple things. You picked a fight with a man at a bar the night after your sister was found murdered. Then you said she had it coming. And you were visibly intoxicated, angry. And you’ve admitted anger, then and here, over her influence to alter your inheritance… I mean, Steve. Come on.”

  “That would be a good reason, wouldn’t it?” Pritchard snapped. “You think I’m stupid? Because I look like this? That’s why, man. You know? I’m not in a flashy suit like you, so you make your judgments. You think I’m going to go around saying she deserved it if I did something? You think I’m gonna off my sister and then blow it, get myself locked up, because some commie piece of shit I had words with at a bar?”

  Mike had seen plenty of guys like Pritchard in his life: drifters, angry at the world. Sometimes it was the youngest in a family, but not always. Steve Pritchard had probably been tolerated, even enabled, to a certain point, but never really grown up. He came to resent the things done for him, and then resented it more when the helping hands were no longer there. His parents and his siblings had grown tired of bailing him out of trouble.

  Or, maybe that was all psychobabble and he was a stone-cold killer.

  “Unless you wanted to get caught,” Mike said. “With a lot of guys,” he shrugged, “that’s how it is. Guys want to get caught, because they need help. That how it went with you? You know you did something horrible, and you want to own up to it? We can help you. This would be a good step for you, Steve. A really good step.”

  Pritchard laughed again. “You’re the same. Rita went around like she was better than everyone, just like you.”

  “That’s not the sense I get about Rita.”

  “Oh no? You’ve known her all of what? Two days? As a dead person?”

  “From everyone I’ve met who knew her – people say she was a wonderful woman.”

  “Yeah, that’s what people say when someone dies.”

  “You think people are going to say that about you?”

  Pritchard fell silent, sulking now. Mike didn’t like stooping to personal insults, but the guy had perturbed him. “Harriet’s son is here, too.”

  “So?”

  “Victor is here in town, and like I said, your brother Joe is on the way.”

  “So what?”

  Mike shrugged, leaned back. He chewed on his pen for a moment, staring at Pritchard. “Why did you show up in town the day after your sister’s death, Mr. Pritchard?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Mike set the pen down. “You didn’t?”

  “No. I been here a week. I told you that already.”

  “You’ve had a place to stay?”

  Pritchard didn’t answer.

  “I’ve seen it,” Mike said. “I just went all through it.”

  “What?”

  “People leave signs of themselves,” Mike bluffed. “So let’s just get past all this; forget the games, forget the whole bit. You turned yourself in, basically, and I’ve seen where you’ve been staying.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on. At this point, you need to be thinking about your future. How you want to spend the remaining years of your life. Do you want to live? Do you want a chance at parole? Because this is what it’s going to come down to, Steve. How you and I talk, right now, you and I, this is going to determine the shape of your life from this point on.”

  Pritchard narrowed his eyes, leaned toward Mike just a little bit. “You don’t know shit.”

  “I know where you’ve been staying. I know where you’ve been watching your sister.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Alright.” Mike rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I understand – you’ve come this far, now you’re having second thoughts. So here’s where we’re at: You were arrested for disorderly conduct. Okay? And in the process of your arrest, you kicked the door of the police car as an officer approached, which hit him. So now you’re going to get hit with Assault 3, a misdemeanor. But that’s just the beginning. The DA is prepared to file additional charges based on what we have: first-degree murder. Do you understand this? If you cooperate, if you follow through with your instinct – and it was the right instinct – to turn yourself in, you have a chance at living some kind of life.”

  “So, file away. I didn’t turn myself in, and I don’t give a shit. This is funny to me, watching all this bullshit.”

  “How familiar are you with New York State law, Steve? You’ve got a record, but never been arrested in this state. Do you know what a buccal swab is?”

  Pritchard’s eyes were cunning. “You can’t take my DNA without a court order.”

  “Not true, Steve. We’re going to get your DNA and we’re going to match it to blood and tissue samples from your sister’s car. Just like we’re going to match your fingerprints to the house where you were staying.”

  “I haven’t been in her car. I don’t even know what she drives. And I don’t know anything about this fuckin house you’re talking ab
out. You’re trying to get me to say something, and it ain’t gonna work.”

  “You’re going to go to jail for these initial offenses. But that can be for a little while or a long while, depending on what we tell the judge. And a year in county is no picnic.”

  “A year? I won’t do a year. That’s crazy. I barely did anything.”

  “No? You assaulted an officer. That’s more than ‘barely anything.’ A lot more. The only sensible thing to do now is to play nice, like I said. Because when we match your prints, it’s all over for you. We know where you’ve been.”

  Pritchard blinked, starting to look angry. “You know where I’ve been then you’ll know I didn’t do this. There’s no way I’d have time to get to Lake Haven from the res.”

  Mike and Overton shared a quick look and Mike said, “The res…”

  “Yeah, officer. You want to know where I been staying? On the res, with Marnie Blackburn.”

  “On the Kahonsie Mohawk Reservation?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you were there Thursday night? Between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., you were with this person?”

  “I was with Marlene, then, yeah.”

  “You just said her name was ‘Marnie.’”

  “She goes by Marnie. I call her Marnie. Other people call her Marlene.” Pritchard grinned. “So there goes your whole fuckin theory about where I been, huh?”

  Mike jotted down the name Marlene Blackburn, closed up his small notebook, and dropped it into the pocket of his sport coat. “Okay, Mr. Pritchard. We’ll talk to Marnie.” He rose from the desk and started for the door, stopped. “But I’m gonna be pretty upset when she tells me you slipped out for a few hours, and she doesn’t know where you went. So why don’t we just clear that up right now?”

  Pritchard wore the same defiant expression; it just seemed to be his face. Resting asshole face. “There’s nothing to clear up,” Pritchard said. “That’s where I was.”

  “Enjoy county,” Mike said. He and Overton left the room together.

  * * *