(“He just kind of blew it off, and I took him for his word. I figured that’s what they were doing.”)
“Okay,” Cathy responded.
“Hey, listen, you mind putting the room in
your
name?” Kevin asked his old friend. They were almost at the lobby desk.
“What? No. . . . Why, Kevin? What’s going on?”
“If anything happens, you know . . . I don’t want anything left behind that would put me being here.”
Cathy thought this to be an odd statement.
Why would he say such a thing? What in the heck is Kevin talking about?
Approaching the desk clerk, Kevin reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of cash, and paid for the room—probably not the smartest thing he’d ever done—and put it in his own name.
Sybil and Patrick unloaded the luggage. They all went up to the room. After unpacking, they sat around for a short time and chitchatted.
“You need to take me back to the bar,” Cathy said at one point. “I left my purse in my dad’s truck.” Cathy and her father had gone to the bar together. She had taken off with Kevin and the others. “I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” she added, looking at the LCD clock on the nightstand.
Kevin nodded. “No problem.”
Cathy and Kevin took off.
After they stopped and picked up Cathy’s purse back at the bar, Kevin said, “Hey, is there a Walmart round here?”
“Yup . . . right next to your hotel.”
The store was one of those twenty-four-hour outlets. Kevin walked in. Cathy followed. He headed directly back to the “hunting area” of the store, as Cathy later put it, but “they were closed.”
“When y’all opening up again here?” Kevin asked a store employee.
“In the morning,” the guy said. “Six o’clock.”
“What do you need back here?” Cathy asked.
“Bullets.”
(“I never thought anything of it,” Cathy later said, “because he drove a truck, and it seemed logical to me.” At times Kevin worked as an over-the-road trucker, hauling loads in one of those big eighteen-wheelers, or smaller box trucks, with sleepers. Having a gun meant getting a good night’s sleep in his rig. And what good was a gun without any bullets?)
“Come on,” Kevin said, “I need something else.”
Cathy followed.
Kevin walked over to the medicine aisle and picked up some rubbing alcohol.
When they got back to the hotel room, Kevin, Patrick, Sybil, and Cathy were “all just sitting around” shooting the shit. Patrick and Sybil had some leftover food they ate. Kevin got up at one point, put on a pair of what Cathy described as “baseball batting gloves”—those stretchy latex types that golfers use, too—and pulled “something wrapped in a towel and T-shirt out of his coat.”
What in the world?
At first, Cathy didn’t know what it was; but then, as Kevin presented it in a proud gesture, as if displaying a prized fish he had just caught, she realized, “It was the biggest handgun I had ever seen.”
There were two beds in the room. Cathy sat on one by herself. Patrick and Sybil, playing around like teen lovers, giggling and talking sexy, tickling each other, laughing and whispering, sat on the other bed. Kevin positioned himself at the desk chair, a mirror in front of him, marveling at this enormous weapon in his gloved hands.
As Cathy looked on, Kevin took out that rubbing alcohol he purchased back at Walmart and placed it on the desk in front of him. Then he removed “three or four bullets” from the chambers of the gun, wiped each bullet down with rubbing alcohol and a tissue, wiped the entire gun off, put each bullet back into its respective chamber, stared at the weapon admiringly for a beat, wrapped it back up in his T-shirt, and put it back in his coat pocket.
Kevin was ready—and so was his gun.
Cathy later talked about the utter look of fascination on Kevin’s face as he sat and methodically went about cleaning the gun, bullets, and then wrapping them back up. It was as if he had entered into another realm. Kevin had that rebel-without-a-cause look, to begin with: searing blue eyes, dark hair, a bit of a boy-band beard and goatee, hair slicked back like Elvis. But with that gun in his hand, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, a look of darkness on his face, he resembled a young Marlon Brando—a “wild one” on a mission. Someone hired to do a job he loved.
“Does anyone want a soda?” Patrick asked. He jumped up from the bed, putting his hand on the doorknob.
They all said, hell yeah.
Patrick left. Sybil stayed.
“Too bad we had to bring him, huh, Sib?” Kevin said out loud. Patrick was out of the room by then, on his way to the vending machine.
“Uh-huh,” Sybil answered.
“He’s just in the way, ain’t he, Sib?”
“He sure is, Kev.”
Sybil turned to Cathy at that point and said, “We had to bring him, though, ultimately, because he
knows
too much.” She smiled.
What?
Cathy thought.
Knows what?
Cathy had no idea what they were talking about. Still, she knew whatever it was, she didn’t need to know, so she never asked or pushed the issue. Instead, Cathy Baxter nodded, playing along, as though she knew what they were referring to.
51
C
ATHY WOKE UP
first the following morning, October 4, 1999. She had slept with Kevin, but she didn’t “sleep” with him. Kevin had been a friend of the Baxter family for a long time. He even lived with Cathy’s family for a brief period.
Cathy needed to rustle everyone up and get them moving so they could check out. While getting their stuff together, Patrick asked Cathy, “Hey, you know anyone round here who can sell us some weed?”
“I do,” Cathy said.
Patrick looked at Kevin, the de facto leader of the group, almost as if to ask for permission.
They drove to Cathy’s connection and “waited there for probably two hours or so, until they got it.”
“You know where I can get me some more bullets?” Kevin asked Cathy, who had become like some sort of intern. She could tell by now they had stopped in Akron to use her to get the things they needed for whatever they were up to. But she didn’t want to say anything, obviously.
“There’s a pawnshop nearby,” Cathy said. “They probably sell them. Let’s check it out.”
“Let’s go.”
Patrick, Sybil, and Cathy sat in the car while Kevin went into the pawnshop.
“He came out,” Cathy later explained, “with a brown paper lunch-size bag that had a box in it.”
Kevin drove. Cathy requested to be dropped off. “I need to get back home, Kevin. It was nice seeing you.”
“Sure,” he said.
Kevin, Patrick, and Sybil dropped Cathy off at her apartment in downtown Akron, said their good-byes, and headed northwest, toward Lake Erie. They had about a four-hour drive ahead: up and around the left tip of Lake Erie, through Toledo and Detroit, and then finally past the Rochester Hills region of Lake Orion, where Gail Fulton was at home preparing to go to work at the library for what would be the last day of her life.
About six hours before Gail was murdered, Donna Trapani e-mailed George and asked if he had billed a company for several claims CCHH processed back in September. According to Donna, the claims amounted to “lots of money.” She listed seven of the actual claims George was supposed to have billed. The e-mail was all business. Nothing personal.
George responded at 6:38
P.M.
, saying he didn’t have all of his notes in front of him in order to bill the company accurately—and that was it.
Gail was at work by then.
Donna Trapani was at home in Florida.
A band of murderers was on its way to Lake Orion.
52
B
ACK AT THE
pawnshop in Akron, where Cathy Baxter brought Kevin, Kevin went inside the shop by himself and asked the owner if he had a speed loader for his .38-caliber weapon. A speed loader allows the shooter to load all the rounds at once into each chamber, instead of one bullet at a time. In asking for this speed loader, what was Kevin planning? Did he have a change of heart? Was he going to mow down everyone who walked out of the library with Gail in order to make it look like some nutbag had “gone postal” in Lake Orion? Surely, six shots were enough to take out Gail. Why would he need to reload the weapon so quickly?
The pawnshop clerk said he didn’t have a speed loader for that six-shot model .38.
At this point of the trip, Kevin later remarked, he did not even know the name of the town they were heading into to commit the murder. All Kevin knew, he said, was that it was near Detroit. So as they passed through the Motor City, breezing by the seat of Wayne County, Kevin pulled over and parked the Malibu at a gas station. Before stepping out of the vehicle, he leaned over the seat and looked at Patrick. “You drive from here. I have to go get some cigarettes.”
When he came out of the gas station, Kevin was looking at the back of the Malibu as he walked toward the car, shaking his head. “Shit . . . that’s great. Just great.”
Sybil and Patrick heard him and looked at each other.
That damn broken taillight.
Kevin walked back into the gas station and bought some tape. The taillight was hanging. During their trip north, the tape Patrick had put on in Florida had come undone. During the entire time he did this, Kevin had his .38 packed in the side pocket of his leather jacket, as if he were some sort of professional hit man.
After he finished taping the taillight back together, Kevin sat in the backseat, and Sybil moved into the front with Patrick. Patrick and Sybil had been up here already; they knew where they were headed. Kevin didn’t even want to think about it. He was focused.
“We’re close,” Sybil said. “Lake Orion is right up the road. Let’s get ready here.” She got out of the car. Patrick followed. Sybil popped the trunk and took out that ski mask. She handed it (and a map) to Kevin, who was still sitting inside the car. Sybil and Donna had written notes all over the map, plotting out Gail’s every move: where she went on a certain night, where she lived, where she worked and went to social events. It showed the systematic nature of planning this murder from Sybil’s and Donna’s perspective. Kevin, a male, was more focused on the mission—getting there and committing the kill; Sybil and Donna, however, were fixated on the mechanics of the murder: the intimate ins and outs of every possible scenario, as if they enjoyed the choreography involved in plotting and planning.
“Here,” Sybil told Kevin, “take the mask.”
“Right,” he said, staring at it on his lap. “Let’s go.”
An eerie silence took over inside the vehicle as they drove toward the library. It was near eight o’clock at night. Gail didn’t leave work until nine. Sybil wanted to case the parking lot, though, and Kevin wanted a handle on how many people were still around. Additionally, they needed to find out if Gail was actually working. For all they knew, she might have left early or called in sick.
After some time Patrick took the right on Joslyn Road into the Orion Township Library parking lot and drove around the inverted J-shaped entrance drive. Pine trees as perfectly straight as arrowheads lined the lot. When they took the corner and the parking lot appeared before them, closer to the building, where patrons and employees parked their vehicles, Kevin was shocked to see how many people were still there this late into the night.
“There was a whole bunch . . . there,” Kevin said later.
Kevin had no idea what type of vehicle they were looking for, but Sybil and Patrick had stalked Gail. They knew her van. Where was it?
Patrick drove the Malibu through various lanes, passing white-lined parking spaces. It was dark, even though there were plenty of overhead lights. The southwestern portion of the parking lot was surrounded by dense, thickly settled woods; the northern side was lined with a row of pines in front of the South Newman Road neighborhood adjacent to the parking area. There was a long, multiple-acre field directly in the back eastern portion of the lot. So there was good cover all the way around. The only witnesses they had to worry about were people coming out of the library, or anyone pulling into the parking lot to pick up someone.
“There it is,” Sybil said, pointing out Gail’s van. “Pull up over there.”
“No way I’m doing this with all these cars and people around,” Kevin said from the backseat, his eyes darting side to side. “No way.”
Patrick stopped the Malibu near Gail’s van.
At first, they stared at Gail’s van without speaking. Then Kevin and Sybil started talking, figuring how it could be done.
Sybil got out. She walked over and checked to see if Gail’s van was unlocked.
“Patrick, you go into the library,” Kevin ordered from the backseat. “You find out for me how many people are still working.”
“Yup.”
Patrick walked into the library.
Kevin got out of the car, and he and Sybil spoke.
“If it’s not locked,” Sybil said, “you can get in, and as she leaves, do it then.”
Kevin liked that idea. Come up from behind Gail while she drove—and pop her in the back of the head. No one would see a thing. Just a flash of light inside a van. Gail wouldn’t have a clue it was even coming.
“It’s locked,” Sybil said after trying all the doors. “Damn.”
“Shit.”
Patrick came back. They all sat inside the Malibu.
“Any ideas?” Sybil asked. “What’s the best way?”
Kevin didn’t say anything. He was thinking. Patrick knew his place by now and kept his mouth shut.
“I got it,” Sybil said. “Cut one of her tires. She’ll get stuck there after everybody else leaves.”
Kevin remained quiet. Then he got out, looked around the parking lot, took out his knife, and slashed the back passenger-side tire of Gail’s van.
A loud
hissssss
. . . and the van sank to one side.
“Gail’s working now,” Patrick said. “There’s four or five employees with her.”
“Leave,” Kevin said. “Go. Get out of here.”
Patrick took off out of the parking lot.
53