Cruel Doubt (39 page)

He then identified the remnants of clothing found at the fire scene as being similar to what he recalled Upchurch wearing that night.

But that was it. There was no physical evidence that linked either Upchurch or Henderson to the murder scene. There was only Henderson's uncorroborated story, and an old baseball bat that had been lying in a near-swamp for maybe a year. Even the knapsack found in the back hall could not be identified positively as belonging to Upchurch. Henderson said, “He's always had a bag like that. Typically, he put his schoolbooks in it, or Dungeons and Dragons books.” But again, there was only Henderson's unsupported word.

Henderson said that after Upchurch had prepared himself for the escapade—donning a disguise that could have been taken directly from a Dungeon Master's manual—“We drove down to a wooded lot behind the house. When I slowed down the car, he jumped out. I never came to a full stop. He disappeared into the lot. I went back down to the other road and parked back where I had parked before.”

The road behind the Von Stein house, one block past Lawson, was Marsh Road. It was here, Henderson said, that Upchurch got out of the car. He would have been less than fifty yards from the Von Steins' back door.

The “other road” to which Henderson referred, a dirt road with big bumps and potholes that came to a dead end after only a few hundred feet, was American Legion Road. From the dead end, where Henderson said he parked, the distance to the Von Stein house was about half a mile, across a large, empty field, through woods, across a small street called Northwoods Road, across a backyard or two to Marsh Road, and then through the wooded area that bordered the Von Steins' backyard.

“How long did you stay there?” Norton asked.

“I am not sure. It seemed like forever, but probably, maybe, half an hour. I just couldn't tell. I was supposed to wait until he came back, but I did not.”

“Why didn't you, Neal?”

Bonnie felt her stomach tighten as she watched Mitchell Norton, who'd been so emotionally abusive to her, acting positively
fatherly
toward Henderson.

“Up until then,” Henderson said, “it didn't seem like anything bad was going to happen, and I wasn't too worried about it. But while I was sitting there, I kept thinking something is going to go wrong, or something is going to go right. Either way, it wouldn't be very good. I was scared to death.”

“What did you do?”

“I decided not to wait for him any longer. I pulled out and went looking for him. I couldn't take sitting there by myself anymore. I didn't know what was going on. I had to find out something. So I went down past the Smallwood subdivision, hoping to see some sign of him or something. I kept going past it. Then I turned around and came back. I still didn't see any sign of him.”

What he did spot, he said, was a
different
dirt road—not the one where he'd agreed to wait; not where he'd already been with Upchurch; not where Upchurch, fleeing the scene of a murder, would be expecting to find him.

This new road, this little track he saw leading off into high corn, was called the Airport Road and led to a small landing strip. Though a tenth of a mile closer to Lawson than was American Legion Road, it was
on the other side
of the four-lane Market Street Extension, the main road leading past the entrance to the Smallwood subdivision.

Henderson said he'd driven perhaps “a couple hundred yards” down this Airport Road—
a road that, presumably, James Upchurch didn't even know existed—and
turned off the engine and waited.

This didn't make sense. It had never made sense. It never would. Why would the driver of a getaway car move it almost half a mile away from where the killer, fleeing on foot, expected to find it? What was this, a game of hide-and-seek? Henderson's new location, on the Airport Road, was far from the route he said he'd expected Upchurch to take back to the car.

But this had been his story from the start, and Mitchell Norton was stuck with it, just as he was now stuck with Page Hudson's testimony about the rice in Lieth's stomach.

“Why did you go to the Airport Road,” he asked, “instead of returning to the Legion Road?”

“I wanted to be able to see him if he was going towards the Legion Road. I also figured he probably saw me. I figured that he saw me as I was driving back and forth on the main road. And if he did see me, he would see where I turned into.”

To Bonnie, this was the least plausible testimony she'd yet heard. The driver of a getaway car used in a murder decides all on his own to switch locations,
assuming
that the killer would be able to figure out where to find him in the dead of night, fleeing the scene of what might well be a multiple homicide, in a neighborhood that neither one of them had ever seen before?

Asked how long he sat there, Henderson said, “It wasn't too long Ten minutes, maybe more, maybe less. I just wasn't sure.”

“And what were you thinking?”

“Well, I was hoping we wouldn't get caught. But I was hoping that he wouldn't do anything to get caught for. I didn't know what to think. It seemed like whichever way I was thinking, it wouldn't turn out right.”

“And while you were sitting there thinking, did you see James Upchurch?”

“Yes. First, I heard him running towards the car. I heard
someone
running and I immediately looked around to see if it was him. And I saw him coming up the road from the main road.

“He got to the car, and he opened the door. He jumped in and said, ‘I did it! I can't believe I did it! I never want to see that much blood again the rest of my life. Let's get out of here!' ”

This, too, seemed somewhat improbable. Why would Upchurch's first words not have been, “What the hell are you doing
here
, when you were supposed to be parked at the end of the Legion Road?”

And since the whole assault had been carried out in near-darkness, how could he have even seen the blood?

Henderson described driving off at high speed, looking for the road back to Raleigh, but missing what he thought to be the proper turn, and instead turning down a dark road he'd never seen before.

“Once we got off that main road, James told me to find a dark place, to pull over so he could change clothes. He said he had blood on him. And somewhere along that road, there was a farmer's path off to the right or the left. I just don't remember. I pulled over. There were no lights around, no houses. He walked up ahead of the car, about twenty, thirty feet where some bushes were. And he changed clothes and threw his old clothes in the trunk. He threw everything he had in the trunk.”

“What did he say, if anything, about what had happened inside the house?”

“He told me someone made a loud noise while he was in there. And he thought the whole neighborhood would wake up because of it.”

Instead, however, not even Angela, twenty feet away, had woken up.

* * *

“When he got back to the car,” Norton asked, “do you recall anything that he brought back with him?”

“He had what he was wearing and he had the knife.”

“Do you recall the bat?”

“No, sir.”

The bat continued to pose a problem for Mitchell Norton. But he decided to tackle Henderson's inconsistent statements about it head-on. Why, he asked, had Neal said two contradictory things about the bat?

“At that point,” Henderson said, “I was just trying to give them ideas of where to look. I told them I wasn't sure. James might have had the bat. He might not have. I just couldn't remember.”

Henderson said he and Upchurch had eventually spotted a road sign that said, “To 264,” which was the road that would take them back to Raleigh.

“I was still very scared,” Henderson said. “I didn't hear any police sirens, so I figured they weren't coming after us right away. But someone had still been killed.”

Had they talked? Norton asked.

“I don't think either of us was in any mood for talking. I was thinking what I was thinking. And he wasn't saying anything. Once we got out of Beaufort County, though, James told me to find another place and turn off.”

“How did you know you had gotten out of Beaufort County?”

“There was a sign saying, ‘Entering Pitt County,' I believe. And then at every intersection we came to, I would slow down and we would look to both sides, looking for a place that was dark, that didn't have any houses in it. Eventually, we came to one. It was very empty. We could see a house off in the distance, but nothing close to the road. I drove forward until we were in a dark area, right at the beginning of a curve. I stopped the car, and I got out and went to the bushes to use the bathroom. James asked for the keys to open the trunk up. I came over and opened the trunk for him. He took out the knife. He took out the sweater, the jeans, some shoes, and a can of gasoline. He threw the stuff on the ground and poured the gasoline on top of it. He lit it somehow. I don't know if he had a lighter or a match. I wasn't paying close attention to him. My back was to him, but I heard a whoosh of the gasoline igniting. He went to the front of the car and took out the map, and he threw the map on top of the fire.”

Then they got back in the car and headed home. But they were only as far as Greenville when they decided to stop for gas.

“It was a place that also had a drive-through car wash, and when I got out to go pay for the gas and get something to eat, I noticed the car was very dirty. It had mud all over it. And James came into the place, and I said, ‘Let's get the car washed.'

“Neither one of us said much, if anything, after that. I kept thinking about what James had said when he got back in the car. I didn't know what to do, so I just listened to whatever James said to do and drove the car back to Raleigh. I glanced behind me and listened for any police sirens, but I didn't hear anything. And the closer we got to Raleigh, the more it seemed like everything was behind us. Maybe I could just put the car away and forget it ever happened.”

Henderson said the sun was already coming up by the time they reached Raleigh. Again, from their point of view, not an advantageous situation. A college campus on a Monday morning, with summer session still in full swing, was a busy place. A lot of people up, taking showers, getting ready for class. A lot of people who might have noticed a white Mustang pulling into a campus parking lot.

“James told me he was going straight to his room and for me to go up to Chris's suite and put the keys in the bathroom closet. I did, and then went back to my apartment. I couldn't get in the front door because it had been locked, so I knocked on the window and Kenyatta let me in. I came inside, I lay down, and I told her I had spent the night in the steam tunnels.”

“Why was it that you told her you'd been in the steam tunnels?”

“Well, I didn't want her to know where I had been all night. And to spend the night in the steam tunnels seemed like a plausible excuse.

Maybe not everywhere, but apparently at NC State.

“Kenyatta left to go shopping, and I lay there for a while, and eventually I got to sleep. Later that afternoon, when Kenyatta was at the apartment, James came in. And he told us that he'd heard that Chris's parents had been assaulted the night before. He said Chris's father had been killed and his mother was in the hospital in serious condition. And he suggested that I stop by his room later to talk about D and D.”

“Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Yes, sir. And I went over to his room and I asked him if he had heard anything else. He said, ‘Don't worry. As far as I know, the police don't suspect anything.' He said he thought he'd made it look like a burglary. I asked him to keep me posted if anything happened, or if he found out anything. Then I went back home and went to work.”

Henderson said he'd never again spoken to Chris Pritchard. And as time passed, he saw less of James Upchurch. But also, as time passed, he said he began to feel troubled.

“It wasn't so bad when I was busy, when I was working or doing something. But whenever I had quiet time by myself, I could remember what he had said that night and what I had done. And I couldn't tell anybody about it. I couldn't talk to anybody about it. And that went on for months.”

Then, toward the end of April, he ran into Upchurch on the street, and Upchurch said he needed a place to live for a couple of weeks. So Upchurch moved in with him. And then one day John Taylor and John Crone came looking for Upchurch. That was bothersome, but what was worse—much worse—was that day in early June when Taylor had returned, carrying Upchurch's green knapsack.

“He admitted to me,” Henderson said, “that he had forgotten the bag. Then he said he would be leaving very soon. He said the police were closing in and he was heading out of town. He told me that I didn't have anything to worry about. His exact words were, ‘Look, you just drove the car. If worst comes to worst and Chris confesses, it's your word against his, and no one's going to believe Chris over you, so don't worry about it. But I am getting out of town.' ”

“Did Bonnie Von Stein have any participation in the planning or the murder of her husband, Lieth Von Stein?” Norton asked.

“No, sir.”

“Did Angela Pritchard have any participation in the planning or the murder of Lieth Von Stein?”

“No, sir. It was just James Upchurch, Christopher Pritchard, and myself.”

And that was his story, however rich in improbability and inconsistency it may have been, and however much it contradicted so many aspects of the story Chris had told.

He'd returned the keys to a bathroom closet? Chris had said on innumerable occasions that they'd been found beneath the cushion of a chair.

They'd not left campus until midnight and had not returned until after the sun was already up? Chris had said he'd wanted the murders done by two
A
.
M
., when both Lieth and Bonnie would be most deeply asleep. He'd also wanted his distinctive white Mustang safely back on campus before dawn.