Blood Games (35 page)

He realized that failure not only could affect his own reputation and career but the new chief’s as well.

But underneath his worry was a growing sense of challenge and excitement. And he knew that now that he was committed, there was only one thing he could do.

“Just take it and go with it,” he told himself.

30

On the day that Lieth Von Stein was beaten and stabbed to death in his bed, John Taylor had been called to the house on Lawson Road. He had photographed the body and the house, then had helped SBI Agent Lewis Young gather evidence at the scene, because no SBI crime lab was available. He also had videotaped Lieth’s autopsy and helped to tag the evidence gathered at the roadside fire site in Pitt County where the map of Smallwood and the knife that apparently had killed Lieth had been found. Beyond that, he’d had no further role in the case, and had not kept up with the day-to-day details of the investigation. Now he had to undergo a crash course to determine what had, and, more important, what had not been done, so that he would know where to begin.

He immersed himself in the three fat casebooks of reports that already had been filed, and when he emerged, he, like every other officer who had become familiar with the case, felt that Chris Pritchard had to have had something to do with the murder. Chris was his obvious beginning point.

Taylor also saw that several avenues had to be explored further. If Chris had planned the murder, and if he actually had been at N.C. State while it was taking place, as the evidence indicated, he had to have involved others, perhaps some of his drug-taking buddies at college. Yet only a couple of those had been interviewed. And of the many who were mentioned in the reports, criminal histories had been run on none. Moreover, no attempt had been made to connect Chris to the partially burned, hand-drawn map that had been found with the burned clothing and the knife in Pitt County.

Taylor requested criminal histories on all of Chris’s college acquaintances whose names were mentioned in the reports. And he began preparing a list of Chris’s friends whom he wanted to interview.

One of those at the top of the list was Davida Cox, whose mother had mentioned the previous fall that Chris had given her daughter papers to read. Perhaps Davida still had some of those papers, Taylor thought, and if they were written in Chris’s hand, he might be able to compare them to the writing on the map.

Davida had dated Chris a few times when they were in tenth grade, and although they had quit dating, they had remained close friends. Davida said that she hadn’t seen Chris much since he had gone away to college, and she had not had a chance to be alone with him since the murder.

Chris was still coming to Washington to visit periodically. He had shown up at the Christmas parade with a four-foot-long pet boa constrictor he had named Elvis draped around his neck—typical Chris, always seeking attention. After the first of the year he had returned and given Davida a short story he had written. He had been giving her things that he had written for her to critique since they were in high school. She always returned them to him, but she still had this particular story. Taylor asked to see it and was disappointed to find that it was neatly printed out by computer and not in Chris’s hand. Taylor read the story anyway, to see if it might hold some clue.

The story was two and a half pages long, in two parts. The first part told about a man driving home on the same stretch of road that he had ridden daily for years. He encountered a dead dog in the road, its entrails spread over the pavement, and he continued on, thinking about the dog. The second part told about a rabbit that lived along the same road. The rabbit called the road the Demon Track and thought of the vehicles passing on it as demons. He saw the dog killed by one of the demons but was unconcerned because the dog had eaten most of his family. The side of the road that he lived on had been burned, and he needed to get across the road for food. When he finally built up his courage to make the attempt, a car nipped him, but he made it across and survived. Taylor didn’t bother to consider symbolism. The only thing the story told him was that Chris had an active and strange imagination.

Davida said she couldn’t imagine Chris having anything to do with the murder. He always was so nice, she said, so eager to please. She’d never heard him say anything about hating Lieth, and she was close enough to Chris that if he had any problems with his stepfather she was certain he would have told her about them.

Taylor had requested criminal histories on Friday, March 10. When he came to work Monday morning, he had received a response. One of Chris’s friends at college, James B. Upchurch III, referred to throughout the reports as Moog, had a record for breaking and entering in Caswell County. That caught Taylor’s attention. A person who had broken into one house likely wouldn’t have qualms about breaking into another. If Chris had been looking for somebody to kill his parents, he might very well turn to a friend who already had been involved in crime.

Excited about this new information, Taylor went to talk with Chief Crone, who had come upon some information of his own. In his youth, Crone had been fascinated by strategy games, especially military games that he played with his father. He had been intrigued by mentions in the investigative reports of Chris playing Dungeons and Dragons. He knew nothing about the game, and neither did anybody else in the department. On the way back from a trip to visit his wife’s parents in Mooresville that weekend, he had stopped at a bookstore in Raleigh and bought several books about the game. His wife read one of the introductory books to him aloud as he drove on home. The more she read the more excited Crone became. The beginners’ adventure described in the book was practically an outline for the Von Stein murder, the players being sent to a castle to kill the overlord and obtain his treasure, which they later would divide. The players carried weapons and supplies in a knapsack. There even was a young woman named Elena asleep in another room in the castle, and Crone couldn’t help but think how close the names Elena and Angela were. Crone noted that players even got extra points for multiple hits, and Lieth certainly had been hit and stabbed many times.

Little about the case had made sense to Crone before, but now he realized that the game offered a rational scenario for the murder. Perhaps Chris and his friends had become so obsessed with the game that they were enacting it in real life.

“My mind was racing,” Crone recalled later. “She’d read a paragraph and I’d say, ‘Underline that right there.’ I was so excited I didn’t even remember driving back.”

Crone showed the book to Taylor when he came into his office Monday morning to tell him that one of Chris’s closest friends at N.C. State had a criminal record. Taylor thought the chief’s theory of the murder as a Dungeons and Dragons game acted out was interesting and should be pursued, but he didn’t share his enthusiasm. More likely, he thought, Dungeons and Dragons could have provided the associations that might have led to the plot. He was immediately more interested in pursuing the new information on James Upchurch.

He called the Caswell County Sheriff’s Department and talked with a detective who told him about the break-ins in which Upchurch had been involved in high school. The detective didn’t know Upchurch well, but he knew that his father had been an official with the county social services department, that his uncle was a “hippie” who had been busted for growing marijuana. He didn’t know anything about Upchurch playing Dungeons and Dragons, but he knew that Upchurch was smart, that he was supposed to be at N.C. State, and that he was still on probation for the break-ins.

Taylor called the probation office in Wake County, learned that Christy Newsom was Upchurch’s probation officer, and spoke with her. Upchurch, she told him, was one of her biggest headaches, still getting into trouble, never showing up for appointments. She hadn’t seen him in months, she said, but she was looking for him. She had three outstanding warrants on him for probation violations.

Now Taylor was even more intrigued. He wanted to talk with James Upchurch, but he knew he would have to find him first. After talking with Newsom, he called back the detective in Caswell County to tell him about the warrants. “If he shows up over there,” Taylor said, “nail him, and call me.”

Taylor also called the FBI and arranged to have Upchurch’s fingerprints compared to prints found in the Von Stein house. And he began trying by telephone to locate other of Chris’s friends mentioned in the reports, some not fully identified, so that he could arrange to talk with them. Perhaps one of them could lead him to Upchurch.

He also made several calls to N.C. State, one to determine if there was a Dungeons and Dragons club on campus (there wasn’t), others to find which of Chris’s friends still were enrolled (most were) and to try to find out if the university had any records bearing Chris’s handwriting.

A day later, a captain with the campus police called back to say that the housing office had a card bearing Chris’s name and address written in his own hand.

Chief Crone was pleased when Taylor told him about this. With that card, the word “Lawson” could be compared with the same word on the map. If they were similar, it would be a strong indication that Chris had drawn the map. Taylor was wary of this as hard evidence. His experience with the SBI lab on handwriting analysis told him that the lab liked to see lots of samples before coming to conclusions. One word would hardly suffice, he thought.

Despite his misgivings, Taylor went to talk with District Attorney Mitchell Norton about getting a subpoena for the card, primarily to appease the chief, and Mitchell issued it.

But before Taylor could go to Raleigh to take a look at the card, he had to take care of another matter. He wanted to meet Bonnie Von Stein.

Taylor had found out the day before that Bonnie was in the area. He had gone to talk with Bonnie’s close friend and across-the-street neighbor, Peggy Smith, primarily to see if she could remember anything more about Chris’s actions following the murder. Peggy told him that Bonnie had been in Washington just the day before to take care of some personal business, had spent the afternoon in the Von Stein house. She and Bonnie had had a long talk.

Bonnie had tried to call Lewis Young recently, Peggy Smith said, but was told that he would be away for several weeks. Bonnie expected to be able to see the investigative file on the case the next time she came to Washington, Peggy said. Bonnie also had compiled a list of suspects. Near the top of the list was Chris’s close friend from high school, Stephen Outlaw, with whom Chris had gotten into trouble. He was the only one of Chris’s friends, Bonnie said, that she always felt leery about.

Peggy knew that the police were suspicious of Chris. She told Taylor that she was at the hospital when Chris arrived there on the morning of the murder. She met Chris in the hallway outside his mother’s room, and he asked her to wait for him because he might need a ride. He went into his mother’s room, she said, stayed a few minutes, and when he came out she went over and hugged him. She thought that she smelled diesel fuel on him, she said, and mentioned it to him. He told her that he’d had a rough morning and hadn’t had time for a shower. Peggy gave him a ride to Smallwood. On the way, she said, he quizzed her about what his mother had said about the attack. Peggy told him everything Bonnie had told her. When she said Bonnie had described the shadowy attacker as young and strong, Chris responded, “You mean it could have been one of my best friends?”

Peggy thought that was a curious thing for him to say, and so did John Taylor.

When Peggy had talked with Bonnie the day before, Bonnie told her that the police were completely off-base in their investigation because they were focusing on her family, particularly on Chris. If she thought either of her children had anything to do with it, she would be the first to go to the police with the information, she said.

Taylor knew that Bonnie soon would know that he had come to talk with Peggy Smith. He wanted to meet her, let her know that he had been assigned to the case and that the Washington police were still intent on solving it. He drove to Greenville, where she was staying at a motel, to meet her and Angela. He had no intention of conducting an interview. This was just to be a get-acquainted session. He wanted to find out how he could reach her, and he wanted to leave his business card with her and let her know that she could call him at any time. He took no notes, but he did form some impressions.

“She seemed like a nice, sweet lady,” he said later. “She seemed concerned. She seemed genuinely interested in finding out who killed her husband.”

Taylor left the meeting with another question answered in his mind. “I just didn’t think she was involved in it,” he said.

On Thursday, March 16, Taylor drove to Raleigh armed with the subpoena to see the document bearing Chris’s handwriting. He went first to the campus police department, and Captain Laura Reynolds took him to the Department of Housing and Residence Life. An official brought out the document. Taylor handed him the subpoena. The official handed him the card and turned to leave.

“Do I keep this?” Taylor asked. The subpoena only gave him authority to see it.

“Yes, if you’ve got a subpoena, keep it,” the official told him.

Taylor took the card back to Capt. Reynolds’s office and fetched the photograph of the burned map from his briefcase. He and Reynolds sat down to compare the two, and a smile began to spread across Taylor’s face. “Lawson” on the card looked identical to “Lawson” on the map.