Last Dance, Last Chance

Eloise beg, “No! Stop…I can’t breathe!” After that, there was only silence.
    Rita waited, still helpless in her bonds, while Elledge went someplace with Eloise. And then, she said, Jim had taken her to the mobile home in Everett where he lived with Ann. But Ann wasn’t there, and Jim had sexually assaulted Rita several times before he finally released her.
    Rita didn’t have any idea where he was at the moment, but she was afraid he might come back for her.
    Lynnwood Detectives Jim Nelson and Steve Bredeson were assigned to the case. That Sunday night, they went to the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church, looking for Eloise. Humans alone couldn’t have found her, but they had a search dog with them. The dog led them to a crawl space in the lower part of the church.
    Eloise was there, her hands clasped together as if she were praying. But she was dead. She was still tied with carefully measured lengths of nylon rope. The discoloration in her face, the broken blood vessels, and the ligature marks around her neck showed that she had been strangled. She has also been stabbed in the throat in a sadistic overkill.
    The Lynnwood detectives soon learned that Jim Elledge had a long criminal record that included murder. They put out a Wanted computer memo on him, sending it to the 13 Western states, and then all over America. Elledge had always been a traveler—at least, when he wasn’t locked up.
    He was probably driving Eloise Fitzner’s car, which was missing. Rita told detectives that he had told them to bring the car because they would need it to carry home all the presents he was going to give them.
    The blue Buick was found at 2:30 in the morning on Tuesday on South Commerce Street in Tacoma, sixty miles from Elledge’s Everett trailer.
    Jim Elledge might have been tired of running, or he might have finally faced the reality of the other side of his nature, the dark side. At 9:30 on Tuesday morning, he called Tacoma police and told them that he wanted to surrender. He told the dispatcher that he was staying at the Morgan Motel in the south end of Tacoma. He was as good as his word. As police pulled into the motel parking lot, Elledge walked out with his hands in the air. He had been staying there, he said, since Sunday.
    Lynnwood detective Steve Bredeson felt that Elledge had come to the end of his resources. His image was all over newspapers and television, and he was running out of money. He didn’t dare drive his victim’s car, and he wouldn’t get far on foot. Maybe he was only sick of fighting the violent impulses that whispered in his ear.
    The man that Lynnwood detectives transferred back to their jurisdiction didn’t look like a murderous monster. He looked like what he was: a wimpy, aging church janitor. He told them that he’d tried to kill himself—twice—but found he didn’t have the nerve.
    He admitted to police that he had killed Eloise, but he denied raping Rita Bentsen. “I hope I get the justice that Eloise got,” he said bleakly. “And that’s death. I want it so bad you can’t believe it.”
     
    The congregation that had held out a hand of friendship and encouragement to a long-term prisoner was stunned, more so because Jim Elledge had chosen their sacred building for the scene of brutal murder. “Things like that aren’t supposed to happen in a church,” a departing member said. “Did I experience anger? Yes, I did.”
    Members and clergy of the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church held a massive cleansing service to rid their building of the real or imagined miasma of horror, pain, and bloody death. They gathered to pray on the grounds, asking God to give them back peace and love and to remove the sad mind pictures of an innocent woman trapped and dying in a dark crawl space.
    One church elder visited Jim Elledge in jail. He was looking for answers as he asked Jim, “Was there anything we could have done to prevent this?”
    Jim shook his head. It wasn’t the church’s fault. He was sure he hadn’t given anyone any warning about the compulsion he carried within him.
    He had hurt the church that reached out to him. Even though he had had no access to the nursery school, the state closed it down. Members drifted away, unable to shake the memories. Rita Bentsen would eventually bring suit against the church.
    Duane Grooters, who had come into the Monroe Reformatory so many times to help Elledge find God, was shaken. He wasn’t sure if he could ever be involved in prison