by C S Davis
I leaned in and watched Raymond intently. I felt like he was being truthful. That or he had been practicing his answers like a monologue.
Wagner asked, “What had Becky planned?”
Raymond shook his head and wiped his eyes. “She just said we were going to scare her. She said she would have some drinks with Becky and get her drunk. We’d tie her up and I’d tell her if she ever did that shit again to someone, I’d kill her.”
“Is that what happened?” asked Wagner.
Raymond looked downward. “No.” He said nothing more. Wagner and I looked at each other.
“What happened, Raymond?” Wagner pressed.
He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “When I got there, Becky had been trying to get Stephanie to drink but I guess she didn’t want to drink as much as Becky wanted her to, but she still seemed kind of out of it. I had the rope with me. When I walked in with the rope on my shoulder, Stephanie saw me and recognized me and just started crying. She fell to her knees and said how sorry she was and asked me to forgive her.”
“What did you do?” asked Wagner.
“I started crying too. I kind of patted her on the back and said I was going to go,” said Raymond. “Then Becky got all crazy. She said, ‘No, this isn’t ending, we’re doing this.’ I said, ‘No, I’m done.’ I got all I needed out of it. So, I left.”
Tina handed Raymond a box of tissues which he gladly accepted. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes.
“What happened with Becky after that?” I asked.
Raymond asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, did you have any further contact with her? Any more calls or messages on Facebook or anything else?”
Raymond shook his head. “No, I left Billings and went back to Bozeman, never looked back.”
“What happened to the rope?” I asked.
Raymond shrugged. “I think I dropped it and left it.”
I pulled out a picture of Stephanie’s lifeless body hanging from a rope in the house.
“Is that the one?” I asked.
Raymond slid his chair back a couple of inches and covered his face. “Oh shit,” he said. He looked like he was about to vomit.
“Is that really necessary?” asked Tina.
“Is that the rope?” I asked again.
Raymond nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
We gave him a minute to collect himself. “What were you trying to get rid of by torching the house?” asked Wagner.
Raymond shook his head. “I don't know, fingerprints, computer messages, but I didn’t see a computer. I thought maybe Becky or someone else had grabbed it. After this guy interviewed me,” he said, indicating me, “I got scared and couldn’t shake the fear of someone thinking I killed her since I was there that night.”
“Did you kill her?” I asked.
Raymond looked me in the eye and almost growled when he said, “No.”
I had believed him before in Bozeman and I still believed him.
“Anything else about this you want to tell us?” asked Wagner.
Raymond shook his head no.
We ended the interview and Raymond and his attorney left. Grimes closed the conference room door after they left and sat back down.
“Well that was interesting,” he said.
“Enough to charge the girl, Becky?” asked Wagner.
Grimes shook his head. “No, anything could’ve happened after he left. Maybe they had a fight and she decided to hang herself out of guilt. Anyway, the coroner’s already declared her death a suicide.”
I was the one who felt like vomiting now. I should not have been surprised though, I had seen similar situations played out time and time again with prosecutors. Federal prosecutors feared losing because there were repercussions to their career if they did and county attorneys were overworked. It was not lost on me that Grimes probably handled several hundred cases a year. He would not want to go looking for a hard to prove murder case. One thing he was right about, and it was the question in the front of my mind: what happened in that house after Raymond left?
I thanked the guys and headed out. Wagner caught up to me while I was waiting for the elevator. “Hey, sorry we didn’t get more that would be useful for you,” he said.
“It is what it is,” I said with a shrug. “At least he admitted to the fire. He going to do time?” I asked.
Wagner shook his head. “Probably probation. Jail’s full.”
I chuckled. “I’ve heard that.”
“Mason’s a good guy,” he explained. “He’s just overworked like the rest of us. Wants to get things dealt with quickly and move on to the next one.”
“You guys should raise taxes and hire some extra help,” I said sarcastically.
Wagner caught my eye and laughed. “Yeah, that’ll fucking happen in Billings.”
I shook his hand as we got off the elevator and we parted ways. Now, I would have to go explain to Eve what had happened, and I was not looking forward to her reaction. She had become as convinced as I was that her sister’s death was no accident. Eve was not used to seeing the justice system fail as I had become accustomed to, so I was worried about her coping with the whole thing.
When I arrived at her apartment, the mattress had just been delivered. The delivery guys were getting in the truck and leaving as I went up the stairs to her place on the second floor. When she answered the door, Eve gave me a big hug and made me come inside and lay on the bed before doing anything else.
“Isn’t it awesome?” she asked, lying next to me with a big smile on her face.
I looked at her and forced a smile. “Yeah, it is.”
She regarded me and asked, “It didn’t go well did it?”
I told her what had happened during the interview with Raymond and then we both stared at the ceiling in silence for what seemed like an eternity.
“I’m sorry, Eve. I know it’s not fair,” I said.
“Nothing in my life has seemed fair, so why should this be any different?”
I looked over and saw she was still staring at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. I didn’t have the words to comfort her. I didn’t have the words to let her know that I was angry and sad and disgusted all at the same time. I hadn’t lost a sister like she had. I had no way of knowing that kind of anguish. Their relationship did not sound perfect, but there was some kind of bond between them.
The next move was a little lost to me. What would I do next? What would I do if it had been my sister hanging from that rope?
Chapter 14
Becky Rand became a ghost. When I showed up asking questions, she got worried, so she threw up a smoke screen in the form of tossing her employer under the bus. Better to be a co-operator in a fraud investigation than a suspect in a murder investigation. When Raymond burnt down the house, she must have panicked and hit the road. There was no doubt she had read about his arrest in the paper. It was big news that a wide receiver for the MSU Bobcats was arrested for arson.
It was spring before she popped up again on the radar. I had a contact with the state who I had previously used for employment data who would occasionally help me out for a fee. I was not above bribery, but I liked to look at it as investing in information.
Becky was in the Kalispell area working at another clinic. She was back to using her maiden name, Miller. I spent a few weeks living out of a hotel with a rental car, following her, putting a tracker on a car, examining her routine and every move she made. She liked to go to bars, she liked to eat crappy fast food at home, and she liked to go hiking. All things I could relate to. The primary place she liked to hike was a trail near Glacier National Park.
It was early May with still a lot of snow on the ground, but the trail was hikeable with normal boots. I had taken to wearing a fake black goatee and wig with black hair. It was a stark change from my normal reddish blonde. I also added glasses because it wouldn’t be a proper disguise without glasses, right? I also developed a keen interest in drone photography which must hav
e been obnoxious for Becky when she was hiking. I only used that a couple of times to try to see if there was anywhere she stopped along the trail. I didn’t find any place in particular she stopped for breaks, but I did manage to find quite a bit of wildlife.
Becky was a creature of habit like most of us are. She had fallen into a routine. Saturdays she would go for a hike, have a turkey sandwich she bought at a gas station and then hit the bars. She would stay in Sunday, probably too hungover to move, and then would go back to work on Monday.
It was Saturday evening and the sun was setting when Becky had just returned to her car in the parking lot at the trailhead. Her dirty Ford Explorer was the only vehicle there except for a new Hyundai Sonata with California plates. She got in the SUV and shut the door. As she did, she felt a needle in her neck and something being injected.
“What the fuck?” she shouted as she looked behind her.
I had been waiting a while for her to come back and had almost decided not to try my hand at hiding in the SUV since there had been another car there not too long before.
“That’s the rest of that paralytic crap you tried to throw away. I guess you didn’t think it would be as suspicious to toss it out in the clinic garbage, but no one has surgery there so there’s no reason for it to be there either,” I said.
“You fucker,” she said.
I continued, “I figure you have about two minutes before everything goes limp and your SUV goes off a cliff with you in it, so maybe we can have a quick conversation about how you killed Stephanie York.”
“I didn’t fucking kill her, she killed herself,” said Becky.
I waved a hand. “Nah, we’re past that. I know you did it. I just want to know why. If you’re a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy, then well, I’m going to have to make sure you stop. But if you were overcome with grief and anger over your brother Logan killing himself, then well, I could probably understand that.”
Her eyes widened. “You know about Logan?”
I nodded. “He was being played. He fell in love and got obsessed. His heart got broke and the poor guy couldn’t take it. Probably never had a real relationship before and some lying bitch on the internet took advantage of him. I could understand that, Becky.”
Becky’s eyes began to tear up. She didn’t say a word though.
“Losing a younger brother is hard. I know if something happened to my sister, I wouldn’t stop until the person responsible was brought to justice. That’s just what you wanted, isn’t that right? You just wanted her to get what was coming to her, nothing more. Isn’t that what anyone can ask for? Just for life to be fair?”
Becky said in almost a whisper, “It’s not fair.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not. If life was fair, dogs would outlive humans. But it’s up to us to take matters into our own hands and make things fair, isn’t it? We have to level the playing field whenever we can. Is that just what you wanted? You wanted it to be fair for Logan?”
Becky started crying. “He was so young and sweet. He didn’t deserve to die like that, all because of that lying bitch.”
I leaned closer and patted her shoulder. “It’s alright, tell me what you did. Tell me what you did for Logan.”
Becky stared out the window for what seemed like an eternity before her eyes fell on me. “I stuck her in the neck when she wasn’t looking with the suxamethonium. She was already kind of fucked up from drinking and I had been putting ketamine in her drinks too, but she wasn’t drinking as much as I had hoped. That fucker Raymond was supposed to be pissed off and strangle her, but he was too much of a pussy.”
“Did he leave?” I asked.
She nodded. “He left and I took care of it. I took care of it for Logan.”
“So, she went down like a sack of potatoes from all the drugs in her,” I said.
Becky nodded.
“Then what?”
“I knew I had to make it look like she did it herself since Raymond had let me down. I opened her mouth and poured in the rest of the bottle of her meds.”
“And the rope?” I asked.
Becky smirked. “I had to fucking Google how to tie a noose. I couldn’t figure out where to anchor it to, so I threw it over the beam in her house and hoisted her up. I had to put all my weight on it and pull hard since we’re about the same weight. I had a chair to stand on to help throw the other end of the rope over, I had her hoisted all the way to the beam but knew the slack would come out some while trying to tie the rope off. I guess I did a good enough job.”
“Almost,” I said.
She regarded me in a quizzical manner.
“The chair you put under her was too short. It was close, but it would have been too short for her to have stepped off of to hang herself.”
“So why didn’t anyone else mention that? Why am I not in handcuffs?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Shitty police work.”
“So, what now?” asked Becky. “Is this the part where you tell me you actually stuck me with saline and you’ve been recording our conversation the whole time?”
I said nothing. I just sat and watched. She looked at me curiously and then became frustrated.
“Well?” she asked. As she did, she blinked hard and wobbled and eventually fell over.
“No, this is where we go for a little drive.”
I pushed Becky into the passenger seat of her Explorer, she was leaning up against the door motionless, but eyes open. She sounded like she was attempting to yell, but it came out as more of a wheezing sound. We drove up a forest service road near the trail for about half a mile.
It was getting dark, but there was probably another hour or so of daylight. I stopped the Explorer and dragged Becky out of the passenger side. She was probably about 160 pounds and would do a number on my knees. I threw her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hiked downhill about another quarter mile. I kept tripping over sticks and almost dropped her once. She was wearing a light jacket and some cargo shorts, so I should not have had that much trouble maneuvering her. My hands were getting sweaty from the latex gloves I wore. When we got to where I wanted to be, I was out of breath and sweating under my wig. I sat Becky upright against a tree. There was a stream nearby with cold water rushing that had freshly melted off the side of a mountain. Her eyes had a mix of hatred and confusion in them. I squatted in front of her.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not going to send you off a cliff in an SUV,” I said. I walked over to the stream and threw the syringe I had stuck her with into the water. The needle quickly floated away. I walked back over to Becky and stood over her. “I’ve been hiking these woods for a couple of weeks now and have grown to appreciate the wildlife here. I also learned a lot about their habits. You see, they get into routines just like we do.”
Becky did not seem impressed with my knowledge of nature.
I pointed to the ground next to her. “As you can see by those tracks next to you, a mama grizzly bear and her two cubs will probably be by soon to go back to their den which is right over there,” I said, pointing at some rocks on a hillside. There was a dark opening between them big enough for a person if they were on their hands and knees.
Her eyes darted towards the rocks and then back at me. Her anger turned to fear.
“Now, I believe like you that life should be fair and that we should level the playing field when possible. That’s why I’m giving you something to defend yourself,” I said, pulling out a canister of bear spray. “You’re always supposed to test these things to make sure they work.”
I aimed the spray at her face and shot it briefly. A large cloud of pepper appeared, and her eyes immediately slammed shut. I waited for the cloud to dissipate and then put the canister in her hand. Her face was red, and eyes were watering, though still shut.
“Now, we let nature take its course,” I said. “And you’ll be fully aware of anything that happens. Just like Stephanie was fully aware of what was happening to her whi
le you hoisted her up with that rope around her neck where she hung until everything went black.” I started to turn to head back and then remembered one more thing. “I almost forgot,” I said, taking a Ziplock bag out of my coat pocket. It had a calf liver inside I had bought from the store a few days earlier. I dumped it out on Becky’s stomach. “Sometimes nature and fairness need a little motivation,” I explained.
A long, strained wheezing sound in the back of Becky’s throat was all I heard as I turned away and headed back the way I came. I kicked dirt and bits of snow here and there trying to cover my tracks. When I reached Becky’s Explorer, I drove it back to the parking lot. It was still only my car there. I wiped it down with a sanitizing towelette and stuffed it in my pocket. After locking the doors, I left the keys on the top of her front tire. With any luck, someone would think she had gone hiking and left the keys there, so she didn’t have to keep up with them.
I drove the rental car back into Kalispell for my last night, stopping at a dumpster behind an apartment building to discard my gloves and shitty disguise I had been wearing when I went out. I laid in bed and thought over the day’s events. At some point in my life I would have probably felt guilty about what I had done, but I was beyond that. It did not take long before sleep took hold of me and I did not wake until the morning.
