Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder by Fred Rosen Page A

down. It was empty. Unless he had fired some of the bullets at another time, he must have fired them in Detroit.
    She reloaded the weapon—there was space for eight bullets, she said—and pushed the clip back into the stock. Then she handed it over to Tim, who put it away. Later, a little bit after 11:00 P.M. , Carol was washing the dishes in the kitchen when Bill, a friend of Nancy’s, drove the waitress home and dropped her off. After coming in, she asked Carol:
    “You got any drugs?”
    “No,” Carol replied.
    Just then, Tim walked into the kitchen.
    “I do,” he said brightly.
    Carol didn’t want her kids waking up to see them smoking and insisted they go downstairs. So they all went downstairs into the basement. It was furnished with a few sofas, tables and an extra bed that Carol immediately went to lounge on.
    Nancy had an abnormal fear of spiders. She was afraid spiders would crawl on her if she slept in the bed in the basement. Instead, she slept upstairs on an uncomfortable couch. Carol thought her fear was silly, especially since she sacrificed her comfort for it. Nancy, though, had no problems sitting on the bed when others were there.
    Nancy loaded up her crack pipe and came over to sit at the foot of the bed, where she began smoking. Tim sat on a chair in front of her with his elbows back, lounging. Carol pulled out a cigarette from a pack and lit up. Periodically she took a swig from a one-liter Pepsi she had brought down with her.
    The conversation went back and forth breezily, about California and about Nancy’s work, until Carol asked Tim what time it was. He looked at his watch.
    “One o’clock,” he answered.
    Nancy made a phone call about 1:20 A.M. to see if her friend Bill, who had dropped her off, had made it home safely. He had and she felt relieved. Carol put the phone on the bed so she could see it ring, because the ringer was broken but an incoming call would light up the dial.
    “So, Nancy, tell me about the break-in again,” Tim asked.
    He wanted to know how she knew where the safe was.
    “What safe? Tim, I didn’t break into the house; I wouldn’t, you know. I wouldn’t steal anything from Carol.”
    Carol explained that the stuff that was stolen was her deceased husband’s jewelry.
    “It’s wrong to steal from a dead man,” Carol said.
    Nancy readily agreed.
    “I think you’re lying,” Tim said, looking her dead in the eye. “I think you know where the stuff is. What do you think, Carol?”
    Carol told her erstwhile “friend” that she thought she had done it, because “… I found the bank.” And then Carol picked up the bank to show her that it wasn’t in the trunk of the car anymore.
    Nancy hastily explained that she had found it at the end of the driveway and put it in the trunk of the car. But Tim was tired of the bullshit.
    “I think you’re lying,” Tim said quietly.
    Carol thought Tim had left his gun upstairs, which was why she was surprised when he flashed across the room and pointed the muzzle of the automatic close to Nancy’s face. If Tim twitched, Nancy was hamburger.
    Nancy didn’t take him seriously.
    “Stop playing,” she said.
    Tim swung. Cold steel bit into soft flesh. At that same moment, Carol heard a noise from upstairs. Fearful the kids were up, Carol ran up the stairs, glancing back long enough to see blood seeping from Nancy’s face.
    After checking on the kids—they were all right, still asleep—Carol went to go back down. Descending the steps, she heard moaning coming from the basement.
    When she got back, she saw Nancy sprawled on the bed, spread-eagled. Her wrists were tied to the bed frame with pantyhose. Nancy still had her uniform on from work, but she had one leg out of her pants.
    Carol couldn’t figure that one out: how had her leg gotten out of her pants? And she wasn’t wearing any panties or pantyhose. Looking closer, she saw that the pantyhose binding her wrists to the bed were one color and the pair binding her