The Butterfly Wing Murders

By William E. Blaine Jr.

There is no available information at this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450035644

William E. Blaine Jr.

William E. Blaine, Jr. practiced law and owned several lumber companies. He taught as an adjunct professor-served on nonprofi t: hospital, social service and college boards. Navy pilot—WWII and Korea. He and his wife Jo Ann have four children. Residence in Columbus, Ohio.

Book preview

THE BUTTERFLY

WING MURDERS

William E. Blaine Jr.

Copyright © 2010 by William E. Blaine Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places

and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events,

or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

75628

Contents

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PART THREE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

PART FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

PART FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

PART SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

PART SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

Dedicated to

all my friends in the lumber industry

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

As I approached my seat at the head table on the stage of the San Francisco Municipal Auditorium, I must have been quite a sight with a black patch over my left eye and walking with a cane. I had to laugh at myself when it occurred to me that I looked more like a candidate for a nursing home than a detective with the San Francisco Police Department.

I found my seat, sat down and looked out over a crowd of at least 500 people who had shown up on a cold, gloomy December afternoon only two weeks before Christmas. And I was sure that most of the audience wished that they were Christmas shopping instead of being where they now were, in this huge auditorium listening to dull speeches and eating a lunch of luke-warm tomato soup and a dry tuna sandwich. I would have given one month’s pay for a stiff drink!

But I was trapped. I was the sacrificial lamb and certainly out of my element. I would much rather have been at my desk at police headquarters taking care of the job of solving crimes for which I was adequately paid instead of being honored for merely doing my job.

*     *     *

Besides the fact that the program had been planned as a luncheon to raise $50,000. for the San Francisco Police and Fireman’s Disability Fund, the Mayor of San Francisco had determined that during the program, I would receive the city’s ‘Favorite Citizens Award’, previously given to distinguished San Francisco citizens such as the poet Robert Frost, or the publisher William Randolph Hearst, or the dancer Isadora Duncan, or the author Jack London, or the journalist Lincoln Steffens. So why was I here being honored in the same auditorium and in the same manner as those famous people? It had to be a big mistake. I wasn’t in the same league as those people. I’m not trying to be humble, I’m serious! All I had done was what anybody would have done in my circumstances.

*     *     *

The lunch remained on my plate, uneaten. I was afraid that if I ate anything, it would refuse to go down. And I had drunk so much iced tea that I had to go to the men’s room. But I couldn’t just get up from the head table and leave in the middle of all the praise that was being showered on me, so I sat there in agony wishing that I was anywhere in the world except in the San Francisco Municipal Auditorium.

*     *     *

There were wonderful words spoken about me by the Honorable Daniel Worthington, Mayor of San Francisco. Then the city’s Safety Director, Pete Compton, rambled on about me but he was planning on running for mayor next fall so he welcomed any chance to stand before potential supporters and display his eloquence. Then the Chief of Police, Captain Bill Casey gave praise to someone that I didn’t recognize—me.

Finally my partner, Sergeant Pete Potts stepped to the podium. In a nervous gesture, he grabbed the microphone, blew into it and the sound system went crazy with a shrieking noise that made the audience cringe. He quickly backed away so far from the microphone that I’m sure his words would not be heard by those in the back of the auditorium. He looked nervous when he cleared his throat and said in his unusually low pitched voice,

"I first met Lieutenant Mike about eight years ago when Chief Casey called me into his office at police headquarters and told me that I was to take this new rookie by the name of Michael Sean Malone as my partner and teach him the ropes. The Chief said, ‘Pete, this kid just barely made it through the police academy and he will need all the help he can get, so take him under your wing and try to make a policeman out of him’. I will admit that I was mad at the Chief for making me a nurse-maid and before I realized it, I said to the Chief, ‘And when do I feed him his bottle and change his diapers?’. The Chief looked at me hard and said, ‘Potts, you were no gift from Heaven when they gave you to me. Now either take Malone or turn in your badge’. I, of course, obeyed orders. And I admit that in the beginning I gave Mike a hard time. But then one day I realized that I was working with someone who showed remarkable talents and signs of genius.

Since those early days, Mike has solved more crime cases than anyone, and it was this last case of ‘The Butterfly Wing Murders’ that brought him International fame. So Mike, you deserve every praise that you are getting and I am proud to tell people that I am now your partner.

*     *     *

At last the show was about over. The only thing left was for me to rise from my chair and approach the podium where the Mayor was to give me a beautiful plaque with my name inscribed below the names of those famous people that I have previously mentioned. I held the plaque for only a few seconds before it was taken from me to be returned to City Hall where it would rest in a glass case under lock and key.

I thanked the Mayor and was ready to return to my seat when he whispered in my ear,

You should say something. The audience is expecting you to. That’s why they came.

I was utterly shocked because I had not prepared a speech. Like an idiot, I didn’t think that I would have to say anything. I realized now what a fool I was for not having been ready.

So with my cane in hand, I approached the microphone, stood as tall as my 6'4" frame would allow, took a deep breath, girded my loins as the saying goes, hoped that I could say something profound and began to tell the audience the story of The Butterfly Wing Murders.

I thought to myself, if I prepared my criminal cases like this, I would be dead. The honest truth was that I wished that I were!

CHAPTER TWO

As I recall, it was about four years ago. I was in my office at the downtown headquarters of the San Francisco Police Department trying to catch up on an accumulating backlog of paper work when my phone rang. I felt like ignoring the ringing because Captain Bill Casey had been on me for getting so far behind in filing my reports. One of the reasons that I became a police officer was to avoid paper work—how wrong I was!

Sergeant Pete Potts and I had just finished solving the case of a young college student, Miss Joyce Powers, who had been raped and murdered in her dormitory room. After interrogating witnesses, we narrowed the possible killer to one of her boyfriends, of whom she had many! It was an unusually violent crime and an easy one to solve because the killer had carelessly, in his angry, love-sick rage, left clues all over Miss Power’s room. Of her many boy-friends, fingerprinting and DNA soon told us who the killer was: a student by the name of Charles Fellows who is now serving a life sentence at Alcatraz.

*     *     *

The public thinks that solving a murder case takes skill. That may be true but it’s the easy part. The hard part comes when you wrap up the case which includes securing the evidence for trial, taking statements from various witnesses, filing, in triplicate, a thousand forms, typing a statement of the facts of the case and countless meetings with the prosecuting attorney.

In my opinion, the paper work is the worst part of crime solving if you don’t consider the late hours, the bad pay and the terrible things you see.

When I became a police officer I had to learn two important things: how to shoot straight and how to type 40 words a minute. It took me longer to learn to type than it did to shoot straight.

*     *     *

Anyway, as I previously mentioned, my phone rang. I spun my chair around away from my typewriter and for some strange reason, looked at my watch. It was 3:45 pm. I picked up the receiver and proclaimed my identity,

Lieutenant Malone. A soft, delicate, feminine-like voice—of a man, said,

Malone, I have decided to tell you that I’m going to do something so evil that even Ted Bundy’s 30 murders will seem like child’s play. I immediately concluded that I either had a prankster on the line or some evil psychopath who was intending to carry out his threats. So I kept him on the line and exclaimed,

Do you realize that it is against the law to call police headquarters and make false statements? He came back with,

What makes you think my threats are false? I was getting irritated and said,

Who is this? The soft, delicate, feminine-like voice answered,

That’s for you to find out. I could tell that the voice wanted to talk. So I asked,

Why call me?

Because to make it a worthy contest, I don’t want some dumb flat-foot. I want a smart adversary with brains and imagination, and from my research, that’s you. The caller’s comments made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like some creep doing research on me. I wanted to meet this character so I said,

Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk about it? I could tell that the caller did not like to be treated like a child and his soft, delicate, feminine-like voice was filled with anger when he said,

Don’t treat me like an idiot, Malone! You’ll learn that I mean what I say.

Can you tell me your name?

Just call me Collins, Tom Collins. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And before this is over, you’ll wish you had one.

What crime are you going to commit, Tom?

Make that what ‘crimes’ am I going to commit, Malone?

Okey Tom. What ‘crimes’ are you going to commit?

Before I tell you, I need a worthy adversary. Do you want to play my game?

What game in that Tom?

"I leave clues and you are suppose to figure