Worth More Dead

he—might need.
    “I’m not the one who decides that,” Gruber said easily. “Over here, we’d seal that house up, but you’ll have to ask the detectives at Kitsap County.”
    Sensing that Pitre was going to stall, Gruber called Ron Edwards in Island County and asked if they could send down a copy of Pitre’s prints.
    What should have been easy continued to get more difficult. Detective Myrle Carner of the Seattle Police Crime Stopper program agreed to prepare a television announcement asking for help from the public. Someone had to have seen Cheryl or her car between Kitsap County and Lake Union. All it would take would be one sighting.
    An ignition key was made for Cheryl’s car. The engine turned over immediately, and the fuel gauge showed that the gas tank was between one-half and two-thirds full.
    There were no prints on the gas cap, none on the ignition. The Mikrosil tool marks test from the trunk were insufficient to identify exactly what had been used in the bludgeoning or its manufacturer. None of the forensic science evidence of the kind that was often truly helpful was panning out. Both the detectives and the criminalists came to the conclusion that the murderer knew that he or she had to be wary of leaving fingerprints; the prints that had been lifted showed patterns that were consistent with someone who wore rubber gloves. Anyone who wore rubber gloves to carry out an abduction and a murder had to have carefully planned it all out.
     
    In the end, despite the dozens and dozens of items of possible physical evidence the detectives had gathered, they had to admit that they were out of luck. Hairs, fibers, blood, buttons, smeared prints, keys, papers, books, tool marks, rope, strapping tape, and more: all of it useless as far as bringing them any closer to the person who had so callously bludgeoned Cheryl Pitre.
     
    The circumstantial evidence didn’t make them any more optimistic. If Della Roslyn was telling the truth, Roland Pitre could not have been the person Cheryl encountered as she left PJ’s on the last night of her life. Della and her teenage children and his 10-year-old daughter had apparently seen him all that Saturday evening and at the very time Cheryl was believed to have encountered her killer.
    Doug Wright and Jim Harris had searched her home thoroughly. They found absolutely no indication that Cheryl had ever come home that night. Although none of her friends who had seen her while she worked at PJ’s remembered exactly what she was wearing that night, they agreed that it was jeans and a blouse or T-shirt of some sort. And that was what she was wearing when she was found: jeans and an aqua T-shirt.
    Hank Gruber and his partner, Rudy Sutlovich, took another ferry ride to Port Orchard to confer with Harris and Wright, and they picked up evidence the Kitsap County detectives had preserved: Cheryl’s purse and its contents, dried out now; a knapsack that held papers and records connected to her job at Bay Ford; and the answering machine they took from her home. They rewound the machine and listened as it played all the messages left after Cheryl had reset it before leaving for work on Saturday, October 15. There were calls on Sunday morning from PJ’s, the manager and another clerk wondering why she hadn’t come to work. There was a call from Roland at about 6:30 that evening. Just as he told detectives, he phoned to ask Cheryl if she was going to pick up Bébé and André or if he should bring them home.
    “If you’re not already on your way over,” his voice said, “give me a call.” He sounded calm; there was no hint of concern in his voice. Either he had no reason to be worried about Cheryl on Sunday evening or he wanted to leave that impression with anyone who might listen to his message after she disappeared
    It was hard to tell.
    Kitsap detective Doug Wright asked the local phone company for records of toll calls made from the phones belonging to Roland Pitre, Della Roslyn, and Cheryl Pitre.
    They found two of particular interest: collect calls to Roland on October 15 at 10:23 PM (fifteen minutes) and on October 18 at 7:52 PM (seven minutes). They came from the prison on McNeil Island. The McNeil authorities were able to identify the numbers as having come from pay phones in the Olympic Hall cell area; which prisoner had made a particular call would be more difficult to determine. Records were kept, but it might take a long time to cross-reference the