Now I wanted to know more about Chris’s final interaction with Bill, and the only way to verify that was to speak to the sole survivor of that verbal exchange. I picked up my phone, located Bill’s phone number, and called him. Fortunately, it was Saturday and not all that late, so I doubted I was risking waking someone.
“Hey, Bill,” I said when he answered. “It’s J. P. Beaumont calling again. I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I need a little more information.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Happy to help.”
“By the way, I had lunch at Zig’s Place today—the Ziggy Special. It was great. I also met your uncle. He seems like a hell of a nice guy.”
“He is that,” Bill agreed. “What do you need?”
“I believe you told me Chris came in toward the end of his shift to say he was leaving early.”
“That’s right.”
“About what time was that?”
“Eight thirty or so. He was due to get off at nine.”
“You said that he was taking the trash out when he was approached by a woman saying she had a flat tire.”
“That’s correct,” Bill answered.
“Do you happen to remember how Chris was dressed at the time?”
“Dressed? He was wearing his uniform. That’s one of the things about working at Zig’s. Everybody wears uniforms. Uncle Sig says that’s how you build an effective team, by having everybody dress the same way.”
“But when Chris came back from taking out the trash, was he dressed for going outdoors?”
“Sure,” Bill said easily. “I didn’t see his uniform, but he was probably still wearing it. He also had on his jacket and a pair of boots. I remember there was snow in his hair and on his jacket. It snowed like crazy that night—ten inches at least—and it was windy, too,” Bill added. “I ended up running off the road and landing in a snowdrift on my way home. Had to call a tow truck to pull me loose.”
Danitza had been out walking that night, too. I could have asked her the same question, and she could have told me about the snow and wind, too, although for this phase of my investigation I needed to leave Danitza Miller in the dark.
But if it had snowed heavily that night, visibility from any motorists passing the scene most likely would have been limited. And if the car had been parked on the shoulder of the road, any crime-scene evidence to be found there would have vanished the moment the snowplows came by the next morning. Ditto for any remaining blood spatter. Later in the spring, when the piles of accumulated snow finally melted into the earth, the blood evidence would have disappeared into the ground along with it.
“Anything else?” Bill wanted to know.
“One other thing,” I said. “How big was Chris back then?” The last time I’d seen Chris Danielson, he was a little kid.
“Taller than I was by at least three inches, maybe more,” Bill said. “He was always teasing me and calling me Shorty.”
“Do you remember how tall you were back then?”
“I was only five-eleven when we ordered our caps and gowns for graduation. Everyone else claimed they were six feet, even guys who were shorter than me.”
“And how was Chris built?” I asked.
“Tall but really skinny,” Bill replied. “So I’d say he weighed about one-forty, give or take. Anything else?”
“That’s all for the time being,” I told him. “Thanks.”
I ended the call and sat there thinking some more, trying to imagine how a smart killer might have come up with a plan to get away with murder. Wanting to lay hands on the money, Shelley would have thought all of this out in advance, and she would have been careful about the location. To avoid eyewitnesses, she would have chosen a place off the main drag, one that wasn’t well traveled.
I tried to reconstruct the exact chronology of events. The scene would have to have been close enough to Zig’s Place that Chris and his killer could walk to the stranded vehicle together. I had seen streetlights on most of the major thoroughfares in town, but off the beaten path I suspected they were few and far between. Once the two of them reached the woman’s vehicle, Chris would have knelt beside it to examine the tire with his killer standing directly behind him. But if it was dark that night—really dark—wouldn’t Chris have needed some kind of illumination to see what he was doing? And suddenly a picture of the scene formed in my brain. Chris was next to the vehicle on his knees As for the woman? She was standing slightly to one side with a flashlight in her hand—maybe one of those high-powered Maglites that cops carry on patrol, something powerful enough to provide plenty of illumination in the darkness but heavy enough to function as a weapon as well.