Worth More Dead

Cheryl’s home; they clocked it at 3.6 miles, and it took six minutes. They then drove from the Brotzwellers’ to PJ’s and found it was only eight-tenths of a mile, driving time: one minute. Furthermore, the most direct route for Cheryl to have taken from PJ’s Market was past where Alby lived.
    The elder Brotzweller had once been under investigation for a homicide, although charges were never filed.
    The detectives went to his house to talk with him, and he met them in his yard. He was polite but evasive. He told them his son had moved out sometime in October. “I don’t know where he’s at, and I haven’t heard from him in a long time.”
    Cal Brotzweller* had no idea who Alby’s friends were or where the investigators might check to find them or him.
    “What about his mother?” Gruber asked. “Could he be with her?”
    Cal spat on the ground. “We don’t have anything to do with her. We both hate his mother. She lives someplace in Seattle, I hear.”
    “Do you know how he hurt his hand?” Jim Harris asked.
    “He cut it fishing.”
    “When was that?”
    “Right about the time he moved out.”
    That was all the information they got from Alby’s father. They left with the impression that Alby was no longer living with his father but were pretty sure that Cal Brotzweller knew exactly where to find him if he wanted to. He had been lying to protect his son even though he believed they were there to see Alby over a DWI (driving while intoxicated) warrant.
    Harris radioed the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office and asked them to do a search on a current DWI involving Alby Brotzweller. That netted a possible current address for him: his grandparents’ home in Bremerton. When they drove there, Gruber and Harris found a very rundown tri-level house. No one answered their knocks, and there was no car on the property, although there were fresh tracks in the mud of the carport. And then, just as they started to drive away, a car pulled in. Three men carrying grocery bags headed for the house.
    The detectives approached one of the men and asked if Alby Brotzweller was there. At first, he said “No” but then admitted that the young man in the back seat of the car was Alby. Alby agreed to talk with Harris and Gruber and willingly got into their car.
    “We’re here about Cheryl,” Gruber told him. “We’ve been talking to everyone who works at Bay Ford.”
    Alby nodded. “I read the article in the paper about that guy who called.”
    Asked if he would accompany them to the sheriff’s office, the suspect—and he was a suspect—said that would be fine. There Alby was advised of his rights and he gave a detailed statement. He denied having anything to do with Cheryl Pitre’s death and insisted he was not the person who had called the Bremerton Sun. “I’ve never called them for any reason.”
    “You go to Seattle much?” Harris asked.
    “I don’t like it there,” he said. “I only went there one time with my grandparents to visit my mother. She lives in an apartment on someplace called Queen Anne Hill.”
    “Is that near Lake Union?” Gruber asked casually, knowing that the area was a mile or so from the lake.
    “I don’t know. I don’t know where that is.”
    He was either stonewalling them or telling the truth or, perhaps, the partial truth. Alby said he’d never called Cheryl when he had car trouble, never asked her for help, didn’t know she worked part time at PJ’s.
    Gruber didn’t change expression, but he wasn’t buying Alby’s story. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Alby even denied knowing where PJ’s was. He certainly wasn’t admitting to having any thoughts about dating Cheryl.
    Alby’s alibis all sounded contrived. He told them that Friday, October 14, had been a bad day for him. He had an accident with his car on his lunch hour and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get that straightened out. He quit his job that day, too.
    “On Saturday?” Harris asked. “What did you do on Saturday?”
    “I was with my friend, Jer, until about ten PM , and then I went home to my dad’s house about 10:30. He was asleep, but my brother was there listening to music.”
    As for Sunday, Alby said he’d gone fishing with Jer about eleven AM. “I cut my hand that night trying to fillet a flounder. I had to go to the hospital to get it stitched up. Jer and his father were there when I cut myself.”
    If that was true—and there were, indeed, witnesses to his injury—that