Читать книгу No, Daddy, Don’t!: A Father's Murderous Act Of Revenge - Irene Pence - Страница 9

ONE

“Stop! Please help me!” screamed a hysterical woman as she waved down a passing squad car.

Dallas police officer Dane P. Thornton immediately hit the brakes and flipped on his red-and-blues. Pulling a U-turn, he screeched to a halt directly behind the woman’s sleek black Mercedes.

He opened his door, and she reached out to him, begging and crying. “My babies! My babies!” she sobbed.

Thornton wondered what a woman like this was doing in this older, tattered part of town. Even though her smartly tailored beige linen pants were creased and wrinkled, and her matching silk blouse was tearstained and smudged with makeup, she was clearly from someplace much more refined and affluent. She didn’t fit this bohemia of Deep Ellum, an eclectic mix on the edge of downtown clogged with trendy restaurants and after-hour bars. Within the blocks, hip young singles and black-garbed “Goths” filled neon-splashed sidewalks.

“Slow down, lady,” Thornton instructed. “Just tell me what’s happened.”

“You don’t know?” she screamed, her long brown hair wild around her tear-streaked face. “I’m Mary Jean Pearle! I called 911!” She turned and pointed to the red brick, four-story Adam Hats Lofts that stood ten feet away. “I’ve got two little girls up there. I heard a gun go off. Five times maybe. I was on the phone with them. My babies were shouting, ‘No, no, no,’ and the gun kept firing again and again. That’s when I called police. My little kids . . . ,” she trailed off, breaking into more frenzied sobs. She became incoherent and almost impossible to understand as each syllable came out in a shriek. She gulped for air and tried to talk to the officer. “Aren’t you responding to my call?”

The cop had thirty-two years of experience, but he felt a shiver rush down his spine. Shots? Children? It never got any worse than that. As a traffic officer, he had his radio tuned to accident calls, so he quickly switched his signal to Channel One, which covered the Central Business District where they were now. Thornton repeated the woman’s story to his dispatcher, but no one there had heard anything about the shooting. Regardless, he decided to act. Giving the dispatcher his location, he barked, “Get someone over here right now. I’m going inside, and I’ll need backup.”

He grabbed a twelve-gauge shotgun out of his car, then turned to Mary Jean. “Ma’am, this is my beat. I was just returning to District with a traffic report. No, I didn’t get any 911 call, but I’ll check it out.”

Tears streamed down Mary Jean Pearle’s cheeks. Her voice barely contained her hysteria. “This doesn’t make sense,” she cried. “I called 911 a half hour ago from University Park. I can’t believe I beat the Dallas police down here! Oh my God, please hurry! You’ve got to get to them! Hurry!”

“Lady, I know this is rough, but calm down. Now tell me, who lives here?”

“My ex-husband, John Battaglia. He’s in 316. No, no, 418. He just moved. Only a couple days ago.” Each word she uttered was loud, shrill, and filled with panic.

“Do you have a key?”

“God, no! I have nothing to do with him.”

The officer ran to the loft’s main entrance, where overhead hung a white wood awning supported by heavy chains. Forty lights tucked inside the canopy illuminated the area to daylight brightness despite the setting sun. Officer Thornton neared the door and the overhead lights glistened on his shaved, tan head. He reached the building’s front door and grabbed the handle. It was locked. A man stood nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching the officer jerk on the door.

“Do you live here?” Thornton asked.

“Yeah, do you want in?” The man took a card from his pants pocket and swiped it across a magnetic eye.

The lock beeped and Thornton took hold of the handle, but the sound of another car screeching to the curb made him turn around. Two other policemen, Officers Zane Murray and Ray Rojas, dashed from their vehicle and ran toward him. Thornton grabbed a nearby flowerpot to prop open the door, and went over to the other officers.

“I just got a call that someone heard shots coming from inside one of these lofts,” Officer Murray told Thornton.

“I called,” Mary Jean said, then repeated the story she had told the traffic officer.

Officer Murray snapped on his radio mike. “Get an ambulance over here!” he told the dispatcher, shouting over the traffic noise on Central Expressway, the elevated thoroughfare that divided downtown Dallas from Deep Ellum. “We have reason to believe that kids have been injured.”

The three policemen ran inside, leaving Mary Jean alone on the sidewalk. She crossed her arms over her shaking body and paced back and forth. Everything was playing out in slow motion. This is what you hear about happening to other people, she thought as her stomach continued churning.

The massive downtown buildings towered over her, and their interior lights began to flicker alive as the sky darkened.

Mary Jean grabbed her cell phone and punched in a number for Melissa Lowder, the friend she had been visiting when she last talked with her daughters. Melissa picked up on the first ring.

“Melissa, the police are finally here,” she said in a shaky voice. “They’ve gone inside.”

“I can get someone to take care of my kids,” Melissa said. “Do you want me to come down?”

“Oh yes, please, please. I really need you.”

Mary Jean clicked off her phone and looked around the empty street. The last orange streaks of the sunset had left the sky, darkening her world all the more.

The officers ran into the lobby. Thornton passed an abstract, four-story, yellow-and-orange sculpture in the core of the lobby, and headed for the elevator while the other two officers ran to the stairs. They believed that Battaglia was inside, and they were prepared.

The elevator crawled to the fourth floor, and Thornton’s tension climbed with it. It jolted to a stop and the doors slid open. At the same time, the other two officers reached the fourth floor, panting.

The three hurried along the hall, their rubber soles thudding on the concrete floor. When they arrived at Battaglia’s door, they knocked and stepped to the side. The man could be inside with a gun trained on them. When there was no response, they tried to open the heavy commercial door. They weren’t surprised to find it locked.

They knew what they had to do next and were well aware of the risk they were taking. Because they suspected that someone was injured, they could legally enter the loft without a warrant, but once they kicked the door open, they’d be at risk from whoever was on the other side.

They didn’t hesitate. Murray, who stood six feet tall and weighed 220 pounds, told the other two officers to stand back.

Rojas and Murray drew their service revolvers. Thornton’s pistol was holstered, but he had already switched off the safety of his shotgun.

Murray eyed the place on the door right by the lock, its weakest point. The burly, barrel-chested officer took a couple of steps backward, and with adrenaline pumping, powerfully kicked the door with his black leather boot. The entire wall shook, but the door remained closed. Murray sucked in another breath and rushed at it a second time. As his boot made contact, the wooden doorjamb cracked and splintered around the lock.

The instant the door slammed open, the officers tore inside, hollering, “Police!” with their guns pointed in three different directions. The lights were off in the apartment, but the afterglow from the setting sun glimmered through three huge, multi-paned windows, casting broken shadows across the room.

Their eyes swept the cavernous loft that was still hazy with gunsmoke.

Then they froze.

Even for experienced officers, the sight of a little barefoot girl lying on her stomach only twelve feet from the door was shocking. Her arms were stretched out toward them. She had obviously been trying to reach the door. She had to have known what was happening in the last few moments of her life.

The child’s hair haloed around her head just as she had fallen, and blood puddled on the cold, brown painted concrete in a two-foot-diameter circle. A piece of a copper bullet jacket glinted in the pool of blood. Her light blue shorts were intact but her pink-and-blue floral T-shirt was riddled with bullet holes. One shot had entered and exited her arm. Another had ripped her side, and an additional shot had hit her back. The officers were sickened to see the hair on the back of her head parted by a shot that had been obviously fired at close range, execution style. That bullet had exited through a gaping hole by her nose.

What kind of man could have done this?

Thornton knew that there was no chance that she could be alive, not with such heavy blood loss. From working traffic wrecks, he was used to seeing dead people. He’d come to accept that when someone had already expired, there was nothing you could do for them and you just had to get on with the investigation. But this was different. This was no accident. He’d be seeing that little body again when he shut his eyes tonight and tried to sleep.

He picked up his walkie-talkie and demanded, “Get homicide over here right now!” At this point, his reactions were automatic: shotgun in one hand, radio in the other.

Mary Jean Pearle had said there were two girls. They’d found one. Where was the other?

The officers turned to their right. They saw a closed door, and gripped their guns more tightly. Then Thornton grabbed the door handle, threw it open, and switched on a light. It was a large walk-in closet. Before they did anything else, it had to be secured. They moved methodically, quickly, as they had been taught. Thornton entered the closet, stepped to his right, and kept his back flat to the wall. Murray squatted down and covered him, while Officer Rojas took the left-hand side.

Using their guns, they poked through closely packed, hanging clothes and stacked boxes. They found five long guns leaning against the back wall behind the clothes in addition to a couple of pistols that sat on white, plastic-coated wire shelves.

The next door led to the bathroom, where they found two more rifles. They quickly secured that area and moved to the first bedroom.

The room was small and partially walled off from the rest of the loft. Two stacked metal bunk beds, probably for the children, were pushed against one wall. The beds were neatly made up. A soft pastel coverlet with dainty flowers and ribbons covered the bottom bunk. It contrasted sharply with the top bunk’s spread of bold red and blue, splashed with big white stars. There was little else in the room, except two packing boxes stuffed with toys and children’s books.

Stepping further into the loft, they came upon the master bedroom to their left. A double bed covered with a shiny purple spread sat across from a gun rack that held three rifles in plain view. So far, they had seen at least a dozen long guns. On a nearby nightstand sat a Glock, a semiautomatic handgun similar to police issue. It had probably been used for that last shot to the little girl’s head, because the tip of the muzzle still held a few strands of hair and bits of flesh. They were careful not to touch anything. Headquarters was probably looking for a judge to sign a search warrant right now.

They reluctantly left the loaded Glock where it sat. If Battaglia were hiding in the hall, all he had to do was rush in, pick up the gun, and the officers would be sitting ducks. When they had stormed through the entrance, they had left the loft door open. Right now they didn’t want to waste time to retrace their steps to close it.

The huge number of guns made them apprehensive. If they did encounter Battaglia, what kind of a hell would they face? The two younger officers wore bulletproof vests, but Thornton never did. He found the vests hot and confining; he’d just as soon take his chances.

It was obvious that Battaglia had only recently moved in. Packing boxes were stacked six feet high in the back of the loft. They provided a perfect hiding place for someone watching the officers, waiting for them to get closer, waiting for them to be easy targets. The place was disorganized but not disheveled. The bedroom furniture was arranged in place, and Oriental rugs gave further definition to room areas. The loft’s living room was so large it echoed. The ceilings rose about fourteen feet and were supported by three-foot-thick concrete columns, ribbed in Romanesque style.

The officers’ eyes continuously scanned the packing boxes for movement. They still didn’t know if Battaglia were hiding there or in some other dimly lit corner of the loft.

Tightly clutching their guns, they systematically cleared each area. The officers examined a large black sound system that sat behind two huge speakers. CDs and tapes cluttered the floor, and several spent bullet casings littered the area. Gun drawn, Officer Thornton stood in front of the sound system while Officer Murray checked behind it.

Stacks of books leaned against every wall and crowded each room while bare bookshelves stood ready to house them. The books defined Battaglia. One pile held Hangover Soup, appropriate for a man they later learned had addictions. That lay on top of The Bell Curve, a controversial book with racial overtones suggesting that blacks performed lower on IQ tests. There was Neo-Conservatism balanced above A History of Western Morals, and, under that, a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. What kind of problems had sent Battaglia in search of answers in books like these?

With guns still drawn, the police covered the areas in front of, behind, and inside the boxes. When they had satisfied themselves that those areas were secure, they turned toward the kitchen. Seconds later, they stopped.

A speakerphone and a pistol sat on the countertop. On the floor directly beneath them, an older girl lay on her side. Her left arm was tucked under her chin as if she had fallen asleep, and a tiny gold earring glistened in her lobe. A bow held her ponytail in place, and a blue Band-Aid circled her middle finger. Her red shorts were clean, but her white Highland Park hockey T-shirt was splashed with blood. A stylized cartoon hockey player, stenciled in yellow-and-blue plaid on the back of her shirt, wore a determined look with his hockey stick raised high. Two bullet holes marred her back, and she too had suffered that final execution-style shot to the back of her head. The blackened, powder-burned flesh around the wound indicated that the gun had been shoved into her scalp. That bullet had exited through an open starburst gash in her forehead. There was way too much blood on the floor to hope that any life still clung to that little body.

Officer Thornton needed a flashlight to look under beds and around darker areas. He left Murray and Rojas at the scene. When he entered the hall outside the loft, he noticed a closed door that wasn’t an entrance to any apartment.

He jerked open the door and pointed his revolver into the dark interior. It was a janitor’s closet. Even filled with brooms, mops, and other cleaning equipment, it was definitely large enough to hide a man. He made a mental note to check that closet on each floor. Then he hurried to the elevator and rode down to the lobby on his way to get a flashlight from his squad car.

As he stepped outside on the sidewalk, he almost collided with Mary Jean Pearle. She had been talking on her cell phone. Her face was deathly white and her brown eyes puffy from crying.

“Are they there?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, they are,” he replied gravely.

“Are they . . . ?” she asked, unable to utter the unspeakable word.

“Yes, Ma’am. I’m afraid so.”

Mary Jean screamed, and collapsed in Officer Dane Thornton’s arms. He grabbed her to keep her from falling. As she sagged against him, he said, “Ma’am, I think you better stay here. You just don’t need to be up there.”

She visibly gathered her strength so she could stand alone. Sobbing, shoulders slumped, she turned to a pretty, young brunette. Tears also ran down the cheeks of the other woman, who reached out to hug Mary Jean.

“This is my friend, Melissa Lowder,” Mary Jean told the policeman. “She just got here.”

“Do you know the little girls?” Thornton asked Melissa. “I mean, could you identify them?”

Melissa nodded solemnly, then clutched her wadded Kleenex and mopped her eyes.

“I hate to ask you, but we need to have their identification verified. Why don’t you take Ms. Pearle to the squad car. My officer will stay with her.”

Melissa nodded and ushered Mary Jean to the waiting car.

As her heart pounded, Melissa Lowder accompanied the officer through the lobby and into the elevator.

Once the door slid shut, Thornton asked, “What do you know about this Battaglia guy?”

“He’s a CPA. Had his own business until recently, but he still keeps his office. A few months ago, a small oil exploration company hired him as their chief financial officer. That business is downtown.” Then she cautioned, “He’s been a Marine, and he’s still very fit and strong.”

As the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, Melissa was filled with foreboding. The doors slid open and the two began their way down the long hall. In the distance she could see the opened loft door. Everything looked hazy and smoky inside, but even from this distance she could detect the outline of a small child stretched on the floor. A gasp of horror caught in her throat. She was doing this for her friend, and that thought was the only thing keeping her going.

She entered the loft, careful not to step on spent bullet casings, and then hesitantly headed toward the first body. Tears filled her eyes. It took every bit of resolve for Melissa to look down.

“This is Liberty,” she stammered. “She was only six years old.”

Police escorted Melissa into the kitchen; tears were still rolling down her cheeks. “Faith,” she said somberly. “She was nine.”

She turned to leave the most devastating scene she had ever witnessed in her life, but one of the officers stopped her.

“One more thing, ma’am. We found this picture on the countertop. Can you identify him?”

Melissa glared at the smiling face. “Yes, that’s John Battaglia,” she said bitterly, tapping the photo with her forefinger. “That’s who you need to find.”