Chapter 5 Of A Whisper In The Static

 Trisha Moore’s apartment was medium sized, clean, and cozy. Trisha herself was a lanky redhead. “So you’ve come to talk about Melanie,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Yes we are, Ms. Moore,” Keith explained.  “From all the info we have, you might be the last person to have seen her alive, so if you can,  tell us what you remember  about that night.”  Trisha sat on the edge of the couch, her fingers tracing a seam in the fabric as if trying to find a way back to that night 40 years ago that she hates to have to relive. “Mel was my best friend. The summer of 76 was supposed to be the best one of our lives.  We were planning our senior year, and we both got hired at the steakhouse at the same time. The day she was killed was a Friday, and our shift was from 5PM-11 PM . That night, some company rented out our VIP lounge  for some party, and it was a really busy night. Mel and I were assigned to them. About 7 that evening, she told me that her head and stomach were killing her, and she was probably gonna take the rest of the night off. I gave her my keys,  told her to go lay down in my car, and when breaktime came at 8, I’d run her home. We lived near each other, so I drove us since she didn’t have a  car yet.   I saw her leave the serving area,  go to the back, talk to our manager. punch out, and wave at me,not knowing that the next time that I’d see her would be at her funeral,” She sobbed while looking down at the floor.  “To get to the employee parking, you had to go through the breakroom and out a back door. One of the VIP’s  stopped to ask me a question, so I actually didn’t see Mel leave. When breaktime came, I went to my car. My keys were there,her purse was there,  but she wasn’t. Since we didn’t live that far away, I thought maybe that she decided to walk home, maybe to get some fresh air and clear  her head.  I know that sounds dumb, but that was kid thinking, I guess. We were off the next day, and we  were going to go shopping for school clothes, and I was supposed to call her. About midnight, after I got home, her Dad called and asked me if she was there at my house. I said no, and that’s when I started to get worried, and I didn’t sleep a wink, I was so scared. Next morning at 6:00 AM-a time that I will never forget as long as I live, I was woken up by a knock at the door—Mel’s dad was there. He didn’t have to say much, but I knew that something bad had happened-her body had been found. For the next month, I cried just about non-stop.”

    “That night, did Melanie seem distracted by anything, did anyone seem to be watching her? Did she ever tell you if anything troubling was going on at home? How about her boyfriend? Was everything OK between them?” I asked. “No, she seemed like her usual self,”Trisha replied. “As for anyone watching, I don’t think so. Her homelife was pretty good, Her parents and brother were top flight people. Mel and Tim were crazy about each other.  She  was pissed when she couldn’t get time off to go to Florida with him to his grandmother’s funeral, but he understood. They were gonna get together when he got back.”             

              “Thank you for talking to us,” Keith said as we handed Trisha our business cards. “If anything about that night or any other time comes to your mind, feel free to call either of us.”  “I will,” she promised. “Even after all these years, I still miss Mel something fierce. I went to both her parents’ funerals, and I know her dying was what lead to their deaths. I used to talk to Mark every once in a while, but I haven’t for a few years. I hope to Hell that you find the bastard who killed her. In my opinion, if he’s still alive, he should be charged with triple murder.”

      “We’ll do our best, Ms. Moore,” I assured her as Keith and I climbed into the car.

“Well, I think we’ve learned quite a lot today,” I told Keith while scanning the files as I sat in the passenger seat. “Trisha’s timeline of Melanie leaving when she said she did matches the timeclock records from the steakhouse, which says she punched out at 7:19 PM. The manager told Calloway that Melanie did tell him that she was leaving early because she didn’t feel good, and he gave her the OK, and he said he definitely saw her head to the breakroom, but after that, nothing. He later moved out of country, so we don’t know where he is or if he’s still alive. And, then there’s the keys and her purse. That shows that she made it to the car. I don’t see where any prints were taken from the car. I’d love to be able to go to the crime scene. Melanie’s body was found in the woods behind the steakhouse at 1 AM that Saturday morning. But we can’t  go back, because the steakhouse closed in ‘86, and the woods around it were later developed. I think the building itself might still be there. If it is, maybe we could go there, compare pics from then and now, and maybe see what route she took going outside. Calloway's notes say their whereabouts checked out, but forty-year-old alibis have a way of thinning out. But what gets me is the keys and purse. That tells us that she did make it to the car.”   

      “I’m thinking that the perp grabbed her from the car, and dragged her to the woods, where he raped and killed her. He had roughly 45 minutes from when she clocked out to when Trisha found the car empty, Maybe he was watching her,” Keith added. “It’s after 6, let’s call it a day, and  tomorrow we’ll  check out the former steakhouse and see if it’s been remodeled. If it hasn’t changed much, we’ll check out that back exit, get a feel of how Melanie would have got from the  timeclock to outside.” “OK, sounds like a plan. I’m wiped anyway, I wanna get home, grab something to eat, and relax,” I said. “Mind if I take the files with me? I wanna go over them at a bit slower pace, make sure that we didn’t  miss anything.” “Yeah, sure. Thanks for helping me, it’s good to have two pairs of fresh eyes on the case.”

After getting back to the station and retrieving my car, I went home. My dinner for that night consisted of leftover pizza and a Coke.  I cleaned up, and sat down at my desk to look over the case files.”Melanie, who did  this to you?” I asked, hoping that the quiet of the evening would help me focus closed my eyes, and suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck began to stand up. I opened my eyes, and my room was there, but blurry. The air was cold, and I felt something. A presence?  I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again, a light began to shimmer in front of me. It expanded and  gave form, until a figure began to emerge. Speechless, I continued to watch. When the figure had fully formed,  there, wearing the yellow dress that she was wearing in that photo on her brother’s wall, was Melanie Taylor. “Help me, please,” the figure mouthed to me, then disappeared. “What the Hell did I just see?” I thought to myself as I jumped up from the couch. Was that a dream, or something else?  That night, I got maybe 3 hours of sleep, the whole experience had me shaken up.

                                                                                        

Chapter 4 Of A Whisper In The Static

  The Taylor home was a 1950’s vintage house, with a well-maintained lawn, a large flower bed, and a fenced area where 2  dogs were playing.  Keith knocked on the door, and a tall man with a salt-and pepper beard greeted us.  “Mark Taylor? I’m Detective Jennings and this is Detective Perry. We’re from the NYPD Cold Case Unit, and we are looking into your sister’s case. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” I inquired.  “Sure, come on in,”  Taylor said while pointing to the kitchen table. “It’s been a long time since anyone from the police has come around to talk about Melanie. Ask anything you need to.”  We sat at the table, Keith arranged his  files,  and  Mark went into the living room to tell a teenage boy playing video games to go to his room; he needed to talk to these gentlemen. The boy looked too young to be Mark’s son, but there was a resemblance. “ That was my stepson Kyle. My wife is out doing errands, she should be back in a bit. All right, what would you like to know?” Mark asked while pouring coffee for the three of us. “To start, tell us a little about Melanie and what was going around here at the time of her death, “ I said while getting my pen and paper ready to take notes. “My sister was a wonderful kid. I’m not saying she was a saint, and she wasn’t a golden child; she did get into her fair share of  trouble, but nothing major. . Mel was the type of person who would help without being asked to, didn’t have trouble making friends, lit up the room with her smile, and it was hard not to love her.” “What kind of trouble?” Keith inquired. “Just the sort of trouble a normal teenage girl would get into: staying out late a few times, getting caught smoking, having an occasional attitude. But she was no juvenile delinquent. She loved school, and when she got hired at that steakhouse, she was over the moon,” Mark beamed. Then he pointed to a photo on his wall. “This was taken a few weeks before she died. That’s  Mel, me, and our parents having a dinner celebration  the day before I left for California to start my first year at USC.”  I looked at the photo closely. It showed Melanie smiling with her arm around Mark, her blonde hair framing her face. Around her neck was a gold cross necklace, which I remembered from the crime scene photos. It was found under her body, the chain broken. Maybe the killer tugged at it  when he grabbed her throat and  ripped it off? I made  a mental note  to ask Barrett to check and see if  any prints or DNA had been taken from it as well. “Anything else you can tell us? Did Melanie say if  anyone was giving her trouble?” Keith asked. “Not to me,” Mark replied. “You might want to talk to her friend Trisha. She worked with Mel at the steakhouse, was a classmate of hers, and probably her closest friend. She still lives around here, so if Mel had anything on her mind, Trisha might have been the one she went to.”  

The sound of a car pulling into the driveway brought our conversation to a pause. Looking out the window we saw a tall, dark haired woman exit a medium blue Audi. “That would be my wife Cheryl,”  Mark smiled. “Let me see if she needs help bringing stuff in,  then we’ll finish our talk.”  A few minutes later, Mark and Cheryl entered the house, each carrying a couple of bags.  “Honey, these are detectives looking into my sister’s case,” he explained while depositing the bags on the kitchen counter.  “Nice to meet you,” she smiled. “Mark has been looking for answers to who killed Melanie, and hopefully the two of you can make some progress into it.  I know there’s no such thing as a perfect crime, but wow ... it’s crazy that there have been no leads over the past 40 years,”   Cheryl remarked as she opened the refrigerator and deposited several packages of food. “Well, Mrs. Taylor, science has changed over the years, and you won’t believe what we can do now. Even the smallest trace of DNA can be detected and evaluated,”  Keith explained. “If there’s anything there that can be analyzed, like touch DNA,  our forensics expert will be able to see if he can match it to any of our databases.”   “It’s a downright sin,” Cheryl mused, sliding a carton of eggs onto the shelf. “The way this family has suffered.”   

  “The not knowing is what hurts the most,” I agreed. The kitchen felt suddenly cramped with the weight of the past.

  “Well, we have to get going, our next stop is to  talk to Trisha Moore, who could possibly be the last person that we know of to see Melanie alive,” Keith said. “Let me walk you out to your car,” Mark offered.  We went to the car, gravel crunching under our feet.  After handshakes, Mark gave us a parting plea. “Please, do whatever you can to find whoever killed my sister. They say that the loss of a child can end a marriage, but for my parents, it didn’t. They had been together since middle school, and I don’t think they could imagine a world where they weren’t , they were so much in love. They were never the same after Mel died.  Mom sank into a deep dark depression, and in the end, it finally did a number on her heart. Dad never was much of a drinker, but after the murder, he hit the bottle any time he could, and it caught up to him as well. For me, I was the dutiful son trying to keep things together. There are so many memories in this house. I’ve considered selling it many times, but I always get the feeling that doing that would be a betrayal to Mom, Dad, and Mel.  Maybe if you  come up with a resolution,  we’ll all be able to find peace and move forward.” “We’ll do our best,” I nodded. “We’ll call you immediately if we come up with anything.”  “Thank you so much,” Mark waved as he went back into the house.

Chapter 3 Of A Whisper In The Static

 At 8 AM the next morning,  Keith and I made our way to the lab with all our evidence, and criminalist Tony Barrett greeted us while analyzing samples under his microscope.  "Morning, detectives," Barrett said, not looking up from his eyepiece. "You're here early. Someone lost a limb?"

Keith dropped the yellowed files onto the counter. "Worse. We're digging up ghosts from '76."

Barrett finally looked up, his brow furrowing as he saw the dated evidence bags. "A forty-year-old cold case.”

"Sixteen-year-old girl," I added. "We’ve got a partial on the buckle and a B-Positive semen sample. Run it against the modern database—let's see if our guy finally tripped up and got his DNA into the system."

“You got it,” Barrett said, though his eyes stayed on the clock. “Just keep in mind we’ve got a backlog out the door. The powers-that-be want results on cases from this century, not the Stone Age. If the Lab Director catches me running DNA for a 1976 cold hit, he’s going to have my head.” “That’s okay, Tony,” I said, giving him a weary nod. “We’ve got fifty years of ghosts to track down anyway. Witnesses, family, coworkers... by the time we find someone who still remembers 1976, maybe the machines will have something for us.”He slid the evidence file into a "High Priority" bin (even if he shouldn't). "All right, go track your ghosts. I’ll get the sequencers started. If a name pops, you’ll be the first to know—."  “Thanks, Tony, you’re the best,” I said as we left the lab and headed to the car.

“Got any family or witnesses left?” I asked, tossing the car keys.

Keith didn't look up from his notes, adjusting his glasses. “The trail's thin. Detective Calloway is five years in the ground. The mother, Sheila Taylor, passed from a heart attack back in '82. The father followed in '87—drank himself to death. There’s an older brother, Mark, who inherited the NYC house, but the only witness we’ve got is Trisha Moore. She was a classmate and fellow waitress at the steakhouse. She confirms Melanie clocked out early that night, but that’s where the trail ends—nobody actually saw her leave the building.”  “Well, let's talk to the brother first, then the friend,” I said. “Sounds like a plan,” Keith replied.

Chapter 2 of A Whisper In The Static

  About a month after Christie’s death, I decided to end my emergency leave and go back to work. I was going stir crazy, and thought that getting back to some sort of normal would do me good.  On my first day back, I visited my best friend, Detective Keith Perry, a 20-year veteran detective with the Cold Case Squad, at his office on the fourth floor.   I’ve known Keith for over 15 years, and during Christie’s illness, he was my rock, always ready to lend a hand or shoulder when I needed him. We gathered around his desk, enjoying coffee and sandwiches for lunch while relaxing together.  “So, what’s on your plate?” I asked Keith. “Got a cold case from 1976,” Keith said, handing me a thin folder. “Give me your fresh eyes on it?”

I glanced at the header—Melanie Ann Taylor—and stopped short. “I was just at the cemetery. She’s buried right behind Christie. What happened?”

“July 22, 1976,” Keith replied. “She was found in an alley three blocks from her house, behind the steakhouse where she waitressed, raped and strangled. We have a semen sample, but since DNA testing didn't exist then, the lab could only give us a blood type: B-positive. It left us with a million suspects and zero leads.”

I flipped the page, the sound of the heavy cardstock echoing in the quiet room. The first thing that hit me wasn't the text, but the black-and-white crime scene photos. They were grainy, high-contrast shots that turned the shadows of the alley into bottomless pits.

"She was only sixteen," I muttered, tracing the edge of a photo.  Melanie was a strikingly beautiful girl with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes.”Sixteen and a half," Keith corrected, his voice dropping an octave. "She was a top student at her high school, played on the girls’ softball team, and wanted to go to college to be a journalist.  Those files in the back? Those are the original witness statements. Dozens of people were at that steakhouse that night, but nobody saw her walk out the back door. It’s like she stepped into the alley and just… evaporated."

"This is the whole hand?" I asked. "A common blood type and a cold trail?"

   Keith leaned into the lamplight, his eyes tracking the faded ink. "That, and a partial on the buckle. Too smudged for the stone-age tech they were running back then. But the world's changed. We have AFIS now—forensic genealogy that can find a needle in a haystack of cousins. Who knows? This guy might be in the system for some crime, or maybe he has a close relative who has. We have absolutely no solid suspects. Her boyfriend, Tim Phillips, who was also 16 at the time, had an ironclad alibi: He and his parents were in Miami for his grandmother’s funeral. He didn’t have a driver's license at the time, and plenty of other family members confirmed to investigators that he was in Florida the entire time, from when they arrived at the grandmother’s house to when they went to the airport to leave, two days after Melanie’s body was found. " He looked up, a grim smile tugging at his mouth. "I think it’s time we introduced this 'B Positive' ghost to the 21st century.

I glanced at the clock. The shift was bleeding out, and so was I. "It’s a plan. Tomorrow morning, we drop this on  Barrett’s desk. If anyone can find a ghost in the machine, it's him."

Chapter One Of A Whisper In The Static

  A Whisper in the Static

A Novel By Bryce Davidson

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                 CHAPTER ONE

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    My name is Bill Jennings.  For the past 20 years, I’ve been a police detective in the New York City Police Department.  For 22 years, I was married to Christie Jennings, the love of my life and the mother of my son Paul. Things were good until that fateful day in July 2015, when Christie was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer.  We and the doctors  decided on a treatment plan involving chemotherapy and surgery, and for a while, it seemed to be working. But a few months later, we got the devastating news: the cancer had spread to Christie’s liver, brain, and lungs.  We knew what that meant, and I took emergency leave to be with Christie and to prepare for the inevitable.  She took the terminal diagnosis like the strong lady that she was, telling Paul and me not to dwell on the bad, but think of all the great times we’ve had.  I kept from losing my mind, not for my sake, but because I wanted her to have peace at the end, and know that we’d be OK.  Finally, at 4:15 AM on  May 17, 2016, my Christie took her last breath, just three weeks from her 48th birthday.  “I love you, both of you,” she whispered as she faded away. 

One week after we lost her, Christie was laid to rest in a service that I went through in slow motion. Through tears, I eulogized her as the best wife, mother, and best friend that a man and son could ever ask for.  I really don’t know how I made it through the service.  Even though Paul, my sister Paula, and her husband Chuck, as well as most of my other relatives and just about everyone from the precinct, were there, I felt totally alone. How do you say goodbye to the woman that you have loved for more than two decades when you know that it’s forever?  For the two hours that the service went on, I felt like I was having a horrible nightmare that I wanted desperately to wake up from.  When the service was over and Christie had been placed in her grave, Paul and I stuck around for a bit so that we could be with her one final time. As we walked back to the car, I looked around the cemetery, and in a row behind Christie, I read one grave stone. It said:

                                  Melanie Anne Taylor 1960-1976

        Beloved Daughter Taken From Us Way Before Her Time

“Only 16 years old, how sad,” I thought to myself. “Way too young to die,” I thought to myself. “I wonder what happened to her?  Did she have a fatal illness like cancer?  Was she killed in an accident, or was it something else?” “Come on, Dad, let’s get going, we have to get home for the reception,” Paul announced, jogging my mind back into the real world.  With that, we went home and spent a couple of hours attempting to entertain well-wishers, but it felt so hollow.