Worth More Dead

calls.
     
    The next place to go for Doug Wright, Jim Harris, Hank Gruber, and Rudy Sutlovich—who had joined the investigation—was an intense scrutiny of the list of Roland Pitre’s associates inside and outside prison. They soon found that he was popular in both circles. If Roland hadn’t left his mistress’s bed on Saturday night, perhaps it was because he had already arranged for someone else to kill Cheryl. It was an awful thought, but with his history, it was possible.
    Few of the people who knew Roland Pitre well in the late eighties found it strange that Roland could have been with Cheryl at the beginning of the summer and then moved in with Della without missing a step, acclimating smoothly to a different woman and different children. For most of his life, he lived parallel lives in the same time frame. He was a chameleon: the powerful and commanding judo instructor, the contrite prisoner who only wanted his wife back, the timid and ineffective used-car salesman, the charismatic nursing student, the good father who took the children in his life skating and played board games with them, the unfaithful husband, the sexual and sensitive lover, the schemer, and the charmer.
    His friends and associates came from all walks of life, from the professional people who were benevolent to their fellow man to the lowest conniving and violent psychopath.
    The latter seemed like the most fertile field for investigators to turn over. Roland Pitre’s friend and fellow convict, Bud Halser,* had been out of prison only briefly: from May 1986, when he was sent to a work-release program, to December 1987, when he was returned to prison. Halser and Pitre were housed in the Olympic Hall cell area for six months just before Roland won his parole. They had evidently been in touch for some time inside and outside of prison. In fact, Roland asked to visit Halser on September 22, a little more than three weeks before Cheryl was killed. That visit was denied by the prison.
    Bud Halser could not have killed Cheryl; he was locked up tight on McNeil Island. But he might have served as an intermediary to connect Pitre to someone who was on the outside.
    Although Halser had been in prison during the vital time period, Hank Gruber thought there still might be some connection to him. He learned that Halser’s sister, Sally, had occasionally visited Roland in prison. She lived in West Seattle. When he knocked at her door, she answered carrying a newborn baby boy. She would have been eight and a half months pregnant when Cheryl was killed, hardly in any condition to participate in either an abduction or a murder.
    “I knew Cheryl and Roland,” she said. “But only because I went to McNeil to visit my brother, Bud.”
    “You didn’t visit them in Port Orchard or Bremerton?” Gruber asked.
    “I’ve never been to either of those towns.”
    “When was the last time you saw Roland?”
    “I never knew him well, so I was kind of surprised last June when he came by my house with his kids and asked me to go to lunch. I was busy and told him no. And then he called me in July or maybe early August. He said he just wanted to see how I was doing. That was the last time I ever talked to him.”
    Sally Halser seemed truthful and eager to help the detectives, but she really didn’t know much about Roland Pitre or anyone else in Seattle he might know. She wasn’t sure if he had been coming on to her or if he was only genuinely concerned about her. But she had a boyfriend, and he had no reason to worry about her.
    Gruber hooked up with Doug Wright again, and they went to McNeil Island to talk to Bud Halser. Halser realized right away that Hank Gruber was the detective who had talked to his sister. But the Seattle detective made small talk for about seven minutes until he explained that he and Wright were there investigating Cheryl Pitre’s murder.
    Halser stood up so rapidly that he might have been stung by a bee. “I have nothing further to say to you,” he said gruffly. “I want to talk to my attorney.” And he stomped out of the interview room.
    A few minutes later, he came back but only to request the detectives’ business cards to give to his lawyer. Gruber said that they might be back as the investigation was proceeding.
     
    They had no shortage of suspects. And they still weren’t convinced that Roland Pitre and Bud Halser hadn’t figured out a way to bring someone who was on the outside in mid-October into a common