Cruel Doubt

  Their tactic had been straightforward. While presuming Bonnie herself to be innocent, they, like Taylor, Crone, and Lewis Young, had grave doubts about her son. They also thought it distinctly possible that Bonnie herself shared their doubts and—by not letting Chris take a polygraph test, for example—was trying to protect him from their scrutiny. The more they shook her, they thought, the quicker she might be to let go of Chris. This assumption, however, was based on a profound misreading of her character.

  * * *

  Bonnie left the office, went straight to a telephone, and called Wade Smith. She was as angry as she’d ever been. At first, she had thought the investigators were merely incompetent. But with each new insult to her and her family, she had begun to suspect them of something worse, and this had been the worst yet.

  “I feel like they’re trying to build a Jeffrey MacDonald case against me,” she told Wade.

  He assured her that on the basis of everything she’d told him so far, as well as her impeccable polygraph result, she had nothing to worry about in that regard.

  “But they’re not following up on any of the things that they should be,” she said. And who were these new men, anyway? And why had the old chief of police resigned? What was going on in that little town she’d never liked? It seemed to her, Bonnie said, that they were trying to cover something up. She didn’t know what, and she didn’t know why, but she was not going to stand by and let it happen.

  Wade, as usual, counseled patience and caution. He said he was sure that the interview had been a difficult and even degrading experience. He knew how those things could be. But it was over now, she’d answered all their questions, just as Angela was in the process of doing, and just as Chris would be doing that night.

  He knew what a strain this was for her, but the hard truth was there really wasn’t much she could do. She’d managed to hang on this long, she should just try to last a little longer—at least until they saw what happened next.

  Bonnie said she could not wait. She would have to initiate some action of her own. She told Wade that she wanted him to find the best private detective in the state—for that matter, the best private detective in the country—and hire him to solve the case. She didn’t care how much it would cost. There could be no better way to spend the money Lieth had left her, she said, than to finance the quest for his killer.

  If the police were unable or unwilling to do it, well, then, Bonnie Lou Bates of Welcome, North Carolina, would just have to do it herself.

  * * *

  Angela’s interview with Newell and Sturgell lasted only half an hour. Later, she told Bonnie that they’d asked the usual questions and she’d given the usual answers, which were that she’d slept through the whole thing, she knew nothing, and that her best guess was that someone from National Spinning had probably been responsible for the murder.

  She said they’d also showed her the pictures. She’d told them she had no idea how the pages had come to be spattered with blood, or how they’d come to be torn from the book. She said she didn’t even remember the book. There were a lot of books in the house, a lot of books in her room. Some she’d read, some she hadn’t. About this one, she just didn’t know.

  Chris’s interview, that evening, lasted longer. Newell and Sturgell began the way everyone else had, asking Chris to go over in detail his every action on the weekend of the murder.

  He’d gone home that Friday night, he told them, and had either stayed in watching television or had gone out with friends, he wasn’t sure which. On Saturday night, after cooking supper, he’d gone back to school, leaving his house between seven and eight P.M. He was driving his Mustang fastback.

  Sunday, he’d drunk beer and eaten pizza at Wildflour Pizza, a typical activity any day of the week. By ten-thirty P.M. he was in Karen and Kirsten’s room, playing cards and drinking more beer. He stayed until three-thirty, when he went back to his own room and to bed.

  He described the phone call from Angela, saying that when he couldn’t find his car keys in his pants, he’d stopped looking because he didn’t want to wake his roommate again. He’d gone to the car, hoping that he’d left the keys in it, but had found it locked. Then he’d returned to his room and continued looking for the keys. When he still couldn’t find them, he’d gone to the campus security telephone and called for help, explaining that he had to get home to Little Washington because his father had been murdered and his mother had been stabbed.

  Newell and Sturgell began to press him a bit about the car.

  When was the last time he’d driven it that night? He said, no later than eleven P.M.

  Why had he parked it so far from the dorm? Because that lot was better lit, and a car parked there would be less likely to be vandalized than one parked in the lot closer to the dorm. He explained that his car had been broken into earlier that month while he was visiting his aunt in South Carolina and that his radio and tape deck had been stolen.

  Where did he eventually find his keys? He said Vince had found them under a chair cushion sometime after he’d left for home.

  Let’s go back to that Sunday. Tell us again who you were with. During the day, he said, Hamrick, Upchurch, who was also known as Moog, Karen and Kirsten, and Daniel Duyk.

  Where are they now? Where is Upchurch? Where is Duyk? Chris said they’d both dropped out of State. Duyk was working as a bartender. The last time Chris had seen him was about six weeks earlier, when he’d passed through Raleigh. Upchurch, he hadn’t seen in months. He said Upchurch’s mother lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and was either separated or divorced from his father.

  Okay, let’s talk about drugs. Chris admitted to using marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and Ecstasy. He said his first summer roommate, not Vince, had gotten him started on drugs.

  Where’d you get the money to buy these drugs? He explained that he had a job at the Miller and Rhoades men’s clothing store in the Crabtree Valley Mall near the campus.

  What does that pay? Four dollars an hour, he said.

  What kind of drugs can you buy for four bucks an hour, especially if you’re only working part-time? Chris said he also got a $50-a-week allowance from home, which he used for drugs, and that he’d charge a lot of regular expenses to his credit cards, which his mother would then pay off. Also, if he got real short of cash, he could always ask her and she’d give him more.

  Then they zeroed in on Sunday night. Tell us again. Take it real slow. Who was where when? Who was with whom? Who did what when? The answer was that the only ones who’d made it to Karen and Kirsten’s room after the beer drinking at Wildflour had been he and Daniel Duyk. He said Moog and Vince had gone to study.

  How the hell can you study after drinking beer for four hours? He said he and Daniel had done most of the drinking; Moog and Vince had not drunk that much.

  That happen a lot? Five or six of you out drinking for hours and suddenly two guys disappear to start studying late Sunday night? No, Chris admitted, it wasn’t common. In fact, he said, that night was one of the first times he could ever remember Moog, in particular, saying he had to go off to study by himself. The truth was, Chris said, none of them had paid much attention to schoolwork that summer.

  But you had to rush back that Saturday night so you could work on a term paper? Yes, he said, that term paper had been very important. His grades had been poor and he’d really needed to get it done.

  What was the topic? The topic? Yeah, the topic. You know, what was the paper about? Oh, Chris said, it was just one of those English things. Kind of vague. With all that had happened since, he didn’t really recall the actual topic.

  Never got it done, did you? No, he said, not after getting the call from Angela. That had kind of been the end of schoolwork for a while.

  But all day Sunday. You’re not working, you’re drinking beer. And Sunday night. You’re not working on any paper. You’re playing cards
and drinking more beer. You’re up until at least three o’clock in the morning. If nobody got killed, when were you going to write the fucking paper?

  This was a problem, Chris admitted. He had a lot of good intentions when it came to his studies, but he was just such a jumpy, impulsive, scatterbrained guy that he found it hard to apply himself consistently.

  They asked him about Dungeons & Dragons. He said he’d played with Daniel, Vince, and Moog. It was a role-playing game, set in medieval times. Once, they’d gotten high and played in the steam tunnels under the campus. He’d used a wooden sword to act out his role, and a couple of the others had brought along sticks or clubs made of rattan, the sort of thing used in Japanese martial arts. He wasn’t sure whom they’d belonged to.

  So what do you think? Who killed your stepfather? Chris was ready with an answer. In his opinion, it was someone from the Trust Department at North Carolina National Bank. They’d done it to prevent Lieth from transferring his account.

  You think a bank like that—a multibillion-dollar operation—could give such a shit about one lousy little million-dollar trust account that they’d hire somebody to commit murder? You really believe that? Chris just shrugged.

  Hey, do me a favor, one of them said. Chris nodded, eager to please.

  Here’s a pencil and a piece of paper. Draw me a map. Doesn’t have to be fancy. Just a little map of your neighborhood. Just so we can orient ourselves.

  Chris complied willingly, sketching the lines quickly, as if without thought.

  Newell and Sturgell looked at the map.

  One more thing. Your street. Lawson. Why don’t you print the name of it, just so we know which one it is. Sure, no problem, Chris said. And he printed the word LAWSON on the map. In fact, he printed it twice.

  Like the housing card from NC State, these, too, appeared a perfect match with the word found on the original map.

  After the interview, Bonnie said, Chris did not seem “nervous or out of sorts.” She asked what sorts of questions they had asked him. He said, “Just the usual old crap.”

  14

  Two days later, on Friday, March 24, John Crone and his wife drove to Mooresville, near Charlotte, to visit his in-laws for the weekend. He wasn’t very good company. He was preoccupied, lost in thought. Chris Pritchard was much on his mind.

  And on the way back to Washington Sunday afternoon, as Crone was driving through Raleigh on I-70, he suddenly exited the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a large shopping center called the North Hills Mall.

  Crone went directly to a bookstore. He asked if they had any material about a game called Dungeons & Dragons. A clerk showed him a whole section of the store devoted to the game and its many accessories. There was book after book, manual after manual, a dazzling array.

  He gazed at the Player’s Manual, Expert Rules, Companion Rules, Master’s Set, Dungeon Master’s Rulebook, Dungeon Geomorphs, Player Character Record Sheets, Monster & Treasure Assortment, and game scenario after game scenario, with names like “In Search of the Unknown,” “The Keep on the Borderlands,” “Palace of the Silver Princess,” “The Lost City,” “Horror on the Hill,” and on and on, all with covers that showed various sorts of warrior types wielding swords and knives and locked in combat with fearsome dragons or other garishly drawn monsters.

  The chief bought what appeared to be an introductory set, returned to his car, and resumed the trip to Little Washington. As he drove, he asked his wife to read aloud from the manual.

  “It is another place, another time,” she read. “The world is much like ours was long ago, with knights and castles and no science or technology. . . . Imagine: dragons are real. Werewolves are real. Monsters of all kinds live in caves and ancient ruins. And magic really works! . . . You are a strong hero, a famous but poor fighter. . . . You explore the unknown, looking for monsters and treasure. The more you find, the more powerful and famous you become. . . .

  “A ‘dungeon,’” she read, “is a group of rooms and corridors in which monsters and treasures can be found. And you will find them, as you play the role of a character in a fantasy world. . . .

  “You are carrying a backpack . . . you own a beautiful sword, and have a dagger tucked into one boot, just in case. . . . You will make a map of the dungeon so you don’t get lost.”

  She explained that there were various types of characters, including “thieves” and “fighters” and “magic-users” and that each time a character or group of characters successfully completed an adventure by successfully mapping out a “dungeon” or darkened cave and killing any monster who tried to stop them from finding treasures, they acquired more power, which was measured in something called “experience points.”

  As his wife read on, John Crone found himself driving faster and faster. He found it hard to keep his eyes focused on the road. As she began to describe the first adventure in detail, he felt his palms grow slick with perspiration.

  The players were to enter a castle and kill the overlord in his sleep. The only weapons they were allowed were knives and clubs, which were to be carried in a knapsack. A princess named Aleena was sleeping in the castle near her father, the evil overlord. The players could not tell if she was friend or foe, so they allowed her to continue to sleep. If they were successful in killing the overlord and escaping from the castle undetected, they would inherit all his wealth and develop new and greater powers, which could then be used in subsequent adventures. The more times they stabbed the overlord, the more experience points they would receive. . . .

  “Oh, my God!” John Crone said. “Oh, my God . . . oh, my God . . . oh, my God.”

  Crone paced the floor of his office Monday morning, trying to drink coffee, gesticulate, and read aloud from a Dungeons & Dragons manual all at once. Listen to this! he told John Taylor. And this! . . . And this!

  What had happened seemed obvious. These kids had gotten so deep into their Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world that they’d decided to act out an adventure.

  “Look, we know Pritchard drew the map,” Crone said. “The question is, who could he get to do the killing? The answer has to be, one of the people he was playing that game with. Which one? I think we can both make a pretty good guess.”

  “Upchurch,” Taylor said.

  James Upchurch. Moog. The only one with a criminal record. The one with whom Chris had disappeared on July 4. Also, the only one currently missing in action.

  “I can’t believe it,” Crone said. “I can’t believe that for eight months those kids have been sitting up there on that campus and that we haven’t been all over them.”

  “I can change that in a hurry,” Taylor said.

  Crone said yes. Get to Raleigh. Get after those kids. Find out all you can about Upchurch and then find the son of a bitch himself.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” Taylor said. “Last thing his probation officer told me was she heard he’d changed his hair color to pink.”

  Starting the last week of March, John Taylor, as he put it, began to “burn a lot of rubber” between Little Washington and Raleigh. He spent so much time on the NC State campus he felt entitled to an honorary degree. He met many of Upchurch’s and Pritchard’s acquaintances, and the more he saw of them, the less he liked what he saw.

  Daniel Duyk, for instance. He was one of the Dungeons & Dragons players. He was, in fact, the one who’d been up with Pritchard until three-thirty the morning of the murder.

  Taylor knocked on his door at noon and Duyk answered it in his underwear. Why the hell weren’t these people in classes? What were they doing in their underwear at noon? Taylor wasn’t even sure it was clean underwear.

  Duyk said he didn’t know Pritchard well. He wasn’t really a friend of mine. Or Moog either. None of them. He’d just seen a notice posted on a bulletin board in a dorm lobby at the start of the first summer session, saying anyone inte
rested in getting up a Dungeons & Dragons game ought to come to a meeting in a certain room at a certain time. Daniel had played D&D since seventh grade. He thought it might be fun to play that summer.

  Half a dozen people showed. Pritchard, Moog, two black guys, someone named Vince, someone named Neal, and a couple of other guys. It had been Moog, he thought, who’d posted the notice.

  Nervously, Duyk explained how the game worked. They were all at a very advanced level, he said, and their “campaigns” lasted fifty or sixty hours, played in segments, four or five hours at a time. They’d played almost every day. They’d gone down to the steam tunnels to write graffiti, but the tunnels, which he called “hell tunnels,” hadn’t really been part of the game. Once, they’d brought torches down to the tunnels, and on other occasions fake samurai swords belonging to Moog. Drunk or high, they’d wave the swords around and pretend to duel.

  Chris Pritchard, Duyk said, had once bragged that he’d found a confidential folder in his parents’ home which revealed that they were millionaires. This struck Duyk as ironic because Chris was always over the limit on his credit cards. Of course, Chris—whom he described as “a sweetheart . . . a real nice guy,” though “easily led”—did spend a lot of money on drugs. Chris had done a lot of acid with Upchurch, who was even more heavily into drugs.

  Taylor asked about the weekend of the murder. Duyk said he’d met Chris and Vince Hamrick and Karen and Kirsten at about nine P.M. Sunday and they’d gone to the girls’ room to play cards. Vince had been in the room, trying to study, while they played. At some point he’d gotten mad about something and left. Vince was always getting mad about something. Upchurch? No, he didn’t remember seeing Upchurch that night.

  At seven or eight the next morning, Vince called to say Chris’s parents had been attacked, maybe killed, and that Chris had needed a ride home from the campus police because he hadn’t been able to find his car keys.