Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

Anderson began to get jumpy, and he told her he’d decided they would leave before it got dark.
    “We’re going now .”
    Like a mother bird leading a predator away from her nest, Martha Carelli was almost relieved when they left her house. At least her captor wouldn’t be able to shoot her family. She hoped his accomplice wasn’t as jumpy as he was. She got behind the wheel of her car while the big man crouched down below the car windows.
    He instructed her to head out over the old bridge to Kennewick. She had no idea where they were going.
    Back in the house, John Carelli heard the back door shut. It was very quiet. Tied up and gagged in the bedroom, he had no way of knowing if his wife and children were still alive. He hadn’t heard a gunshot or any outcries, but he had heard the stranger go down to the basement twice.
    Carelli prayed the stranger hadn’t harmed the boys tied and gagged down there. He struggled with his bonds, and eventually managed to get his feet partially free. Stumbling and falling, with his hands still bound fast behind him, he made his way to the front door and somehow managed to get it open. Painfully, he crawled across the street and kicked at his neighbors’ door. They were shocked to find him crumpled there.
    “Call the police,” he gasped. “My wife—my children! There’s a killer in my house!”
    Carelli didn’t know yet that the “killer” had left his house or that his wife was gone too, hurtling at eighty miles an hour on the freeway, putting as much distance as possible between their car and Pasco.
    Acting Pasco police chief Lew Smathers and Franklin County sheriff Dick Boyles knew at once who the man in the Carellis’ house was. Their street was soon alive with squad cars, and officers crept stealthily toward the house where Anderson had warned that his buddy was holding the youngsters at gunpoint.
    But as the task force members prepared to storm the house, something happened. Thinking it was funny, teenagers drove by and threw out firecrackers. They sounded just like gunfire, and people hiding inside their houses thought that the jail escapees were shooting at the police. Fortunately the cops held their fire until they determined the source of the noise. But if the accomplice Anderson had warned Martha about had a gun, too, the pranksters’ totally stupid and heedless act could have resulted in her family’s deaths.
    The Pasco officers checked the garage—and found no one. They entered the Carelli home and searched it room by room, including the closets.
    They found no stranger there, either. The three boys were still in the basement, unable to call out because of their gags. Frightened but uninjured, they were found and led to safety.
     
    Mike Anderson had pulled off a highly successful sham. It was clear now that he’d been alone, probably from the beginning. Still, his threats about leaving someone behind to kill Martha’s family if she didn’t do what he said had worked.
    She had no way of knowing that her family was safe, and she still believed they were being held at gunpoint.
    As she drove, Anderson regaled her with the details of the time he’d spent hiding in her house. He told her he had watched them as she and her family had gone about their usual routine, completely unaware of him.
    “I watched you play with your dog. How come your husband didn’t go shopping with you yesterday? I was watching you and listening all the time.”
    She realized with horror that Anderson had been in her home all during the previous evening and night. She had been all alone in the house with him. That gave her such a sick feeling—to know that someone had watched her when she had no idea he was there.
    He gave her directions to a deserted fairgrounds, but when they got there, they found the gates were locked. Next he ordered her to drive to an area behind the Kennewick Hospital. Here he reminded her with a strange grin that she had promised to do anything to assure her family’s safety.
    She realized that he intended to rape her. She pleaded with him while he obviously enjoyed the thought that she was completely helpless. Finally, he let her alone, but she felt no sense of safety at all. He was as changeable as the wind that blew across the nearby desert.
    “Now,” he said. “you get in the trunk. You make a sound and you’ll get it.”
    She crawled in and huddled in the trunk, her body aching as he gunned the motor and drove wildly, bumping over a rocky