The victim’s husband had been questioned. Doctor David Bradley had reportedly been at a friend’s house, Matt Timmonds, helping him install drywall in his garage. David Bradley had left his house at around six-thirty P. M, shortly after dinner, and had remained at the Timmonds’ residence until he had returned home and discovered his wife’s body. Bradley’s alibi was corroborated after an interrogation of Matt Timmonds. David Bradley, at least at this point of the case, was not being considered a suspect in the murder.
Sam glanced down at the right-hand margin near the bottom of the report and saw Roger Hagstrom’s barely legible scrawclass="underline" “No clues, no leads.” He could almost read his friend’s frustration in the bold pen strokes.
Sam had been out of town the night that Marsha had been murdered. He’d driven to Huntington, West Virginia to interview a disc jockey that worked at one of the town’s rock radio stations for an article regarding the recent format change of Smithtown’s only radio station from rock to country music. When he arrived back in Smithtown shortly after midnight, Sam had played back the message Roger had left on his answering machine advising him to get in touch with him ASAP-that something “really big” had happened. Sam had promptly called the police department to learn that Roger was at the Bradley home investigating a murder. Sam had arrived at the Bradley’s just as they were wheeling Marsha’s body out.
Roger Hagstrom had been sober and in rare form when Sam had gotten there. He’d never seen his friend as exasperated and stressed-out over a case in all the time he’d known him. Roger had later confided that he felt particularly uneasy about the murder and that he had a gut feeling that Marsha’s assailant was going to be tough to nab. Besides the fact that the police had so little to go on, his bet was that the murderer wasn’t a local man. He based this on what he already knew about Marsha Bradley. She had been an extraordinarily friendly, easy-going woman who was well-liked by everyone in town who had known her, and odds were that she had no enemies capable of disliking her enough to commit such a heinous assault. Her rape and murder, in fact, appeared to have been premeditated-well thought out in advance and executed without a hitch. Of course, Roger had gone on to say, someone local may have done it-nothing was impossible-but the odds were stacked against this. He conceded that until there was some kind of motive established, the murderer could theoretically have been just about anyone.
There were a couple of other things that had bothered Roger as well. One was the message the assailant had left on her body. ”May Day.” God only knew what it meant, he’d told Sam, but it implied something that he hoped wasn’t the case here. A serial killing. It was often standard M.O. for a serial killer to leave either an object or a message of some kind behind for the police and the rest of the world to try and figure out. It was all part of the “psyche” of a deranged, cold-blooded murderer, Roger explained, to challenge the public, as if to say, “Well, now that I’ve done this, what the fuck are you gonna do about it? I’ll even make it easy for you-all you have to do is figure out this…”
And another thing was bugging Roger. The fact that there had been no signs of forced entry and no signs of a struggle prior to or during Marsha’s rape and murder. No signs of trauma whatsoever were visible on her body other than the welt on her neck. This almost suggested that Marsha Bradley might have known her assailant, perhaps even intimately, and that she’d trusted him enough to allow him into her home. This was the most unsettling aspect of the whole case, Roger had declared. If Marsha Bradley had indeed known her assailant intimately, it posed a number of disturbing and “touchy” questions that needed to be asked and answered.
Sam set the report down and went out to the coffee machine. After pouring himself a mug and adding a shot of milk he returned to his desk. He took a sip of the steaming brew, lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, staring pensively at the blinking cursor on the computer monitor.
Sam was no detective by any stretch of the imagination, but there was one thing that wasn’t quite jibing in Roger’s theory of Marsha Bradley’s murder case. If it indeed turned out to be that Marsha had known her murderer, then why was Roger still so bent on thinking that he hadn’t been a local man? It would seem most likely that he had been, and that Marsha had been having an extramarital affair with him, as unfathomable as that may be. Had the murderer been an absolute stranger who just happened to have blown in from out of town, Marsha would most certainly have given her assailant one hell of a struggle during the rape, one would assume. Unless of course she had been either drugged or unconscious during the act, neither of which being the case. The autopsy had shown no signs of drugs in her system and only a slight trace of alcohol. Dave Bradley had told the police that his wife had drank a glass of white wine with her dinner that evening.
Sam had brought this up to Roger the day before, and Roger had reiterated that his theory was by no means ironclad, and that he wasn’t by any means ruling out the possibility that Marsha Bradley’s assailant had been a local man. But Roger had then countered Sam by asking him what he thought the odds were of Marsha Bradley having an affair in Smithtown, Ohio and not a single person ever having known about it, or even suspecting it. Sam had had to agree that it was nearly impossible to conceive-considering the little town’s penchant for gossip and flinging rumors around like there was no tomorrow. Never once had anyone ever breathed so much as a shred of gossip that Marsha Bradley might be having an affair with anyone, period. Her and David’s marriage had been that seemingly rock-solid.
Roger had gone on to say that there was really only one thing he was absolutely sure of, regarding the murder case. Marsha Bradley’s assailant was as clever as he was demented. He had somehow managed to pull the entire thing off without leaving any trails whatsoever. Not one of the neighbors questioned had seen anyone enter or leave the Bradley house on the night of the murder. Nor had they seen or heard anything unusual that night; no strange cars parked in the vicinity, no dogs barking, nothing. It was becoming more and more apparent that the only person living who might possibly have seen the murderer was little five-year old Tommy Bradley.
Roger told Sam that Tommy Bradley was probably their only hope. He had to have seen or heard something that night. After all, there was little doubt that it was the perp who had locked the youngster up in the closet. The big problem was the fact that nobody could interrogate Tommy until the psychiatrist gave them the green light; and that could be weeks, maybe even months. In the meantime, the murderer’s trail was only going to get colder and colder.
Smithtown Police Chief Thompson had decided it best to keep fairly tight-lipped about the case for the time being as far as the public was concerned. Sam wasn’t permitted to report any of the details concerning the murder, other than the fact that Marsha Bradley had been sexually assaulted prior to being murdered by strangulation. Not a thing was to be mentioned about the message left on her body, the possibility that it might have been a serial killing, nor that the only concrete evidence found so far had been nominal forensic evidence. There was no need to get the entire town in a panic that there might be a serial killer on the prowl, the chief had contended. Thus, until something broke in the case, the Observer was to portray Marsha Bradley’s rape and murder as little more than an “unfortunate loss to the community” and blatant testimony to the “extreme violence in today’s society.”
Sam had vehemently objected to keeping the case so hush-hush. He had argued that the public had a right to know the facts about the murder. Public knowledge, he insisted, may actually help to open things up. Somebody might come forward with some vital evidence who may have otherwise remained silent, for instance. Or, if the killer had been a local man, then there was always a chance that someone local might be able to point a finger at him, having learned the details surrounding the case. Roger was sympathetic to Sam’s argument, but Chief Thompson had refused to budge an inch. He had told Sam, in his infinite wisdom, that it might be a good idea to advise the public to be on their guard and to impose a curfew on their kids, but beyond that, he was not to report any more than what had been established. Sam had been forced to comply.