The Murder of Marabeth Waters

By Robert Trainor

The midnight murder of a prostitute, who was strangled to death with a red cord, appears to be an easy case to solve. Inside Marabeth Waters' handbag, Detective Devin Driver finds a threatening note that leads him to Mark Sievers, a teacher at a local community college. Mark supposedly has an alibi since he claims that he spent the night with "Ambrosia," one of the students in his advanced English class. But when Devin talks to Ambrosia, who appears to be drunk, she gives him a number of contradictory statements: Maybe she had only been with Mark from 9-11 P.M.; maybe he had stayed until 1 A.M.; maybe she had spent the whole night with him. Or maybe, to be frank, this is a novel that continually returns to the oily pool of dark satire and sticky black humor from which it arose.

At any rate, Ambrosia isn't the only one with a drinking problem—ever since Devin's wife died of cancer about six months before Marabeth's murder, Devin has been hitting the sauce to the tune of somewhere between a pint and a fifth of vodka a day. Now forty-four, Devin views himself as a sexual outcast since none of the women he's really attracted to—ages eighteen to twenty five—are showing any interest in him. So all he's left with are older women and all the baggage that they carry around—maybe they're overweight or mean or ugly or have some nasty skeletons in their closets.

Devin isn't a particularly sharp detective—inwardly, he refers to himself as a right-time and right-place detective. In other words, if he finds a guy standing over the body of his murdered wife with a smoking gun in his hand, Devin knows that he'll be able to figure the whole thing out unless there's some trick twist to the whole thing. But Marabeth's case appears to be child's play because while Devin is searching Mark's car, he discovers a small bloody fragment of Marabeth's blouse on the floor of the back seat, and when a DNA test confirms that the blood on the fragment is Marabeth's blood, the case is essentially over.

Or is it? Even though the trial of Mark Sievers is a slam dunk for the prosecution and results in an easy conviction, the case takes an unexpected turn when another woman is found strangled to death with a red cord around her neck. What follows afterwards is a wayward descent into the mind of a serial killer who has been able to remain in obscurity despite committing a number of blunders in the commission of his crimes. Of course, when the detective investigating the case is drunk and incompetent, a lot of strange things can happen…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Trainor
• Release date: Feb 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224865796

Robert Trainor

Over the past twelve years (since I retired at the age of 59), I've written nineteen novels, four novellas, four non-fiction books, and seven anthologies, all of which you can find in the Kindle Store. Instead of writing a biography of myself, which seems rather irrelevant, I would prefer to write a biography of my books. Here, in the order in which they were written, is a brief sketch of the plots, themes, and subject matter of these books.1/ The Voice of the Victim describes a series of murders in a small city. I've always felt a great deal of empathy for the victims of violent crimes, especially those who are murdered by guns. What, I wondered, would these people say to us if they could speak? When reading this book, it is important to remember that my intention, from first page to last page, was to present the voice of the victim. And, to me, this voice is not a straight-line accusation of weapons and murderers but tends to veer to a pervasive mockery and total indictment of modern culture. This novel is much different than anything else I have written, and there will be many who will object to what the "voice" is saying.2/ Some Things Are Sweeter than God is somewhat along the lines of a classic murder mystery but is certainly not one of those books where the conclusion is some wild revelation that no sensible reader could ever discern beforehand. The protagonist is a forty-year-old woman lawyer who, in her role as a public defender, is required to represent a man who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.3/ The Road Map to the Universe is a well-constructed novel--at one time, I was a tournament chess player, and this book required a great deal of planning and analysis. Essentially, it's a highly unusual murder mystery, but the perceptive reader may be able to identify a standard plot theme lurking in the background. The Road Map also examines an interesting philosophical question: In a universe of four billion galaxies, what relevance, if any, does the human being have?4/ The Great Barrington Train Wreck, a truly offbeat social commentary, includes a unique type of murder mystery and is one of my favorite novels. Although I almost never include anything from my own life experience in my books, I was, just like the protagonist in the Train Wreck, homeless for many years. So I'm familiar with the lingo and attitude that some of the homeless have. This is a catchy, captivating book where the plot seems to materialize out of thin air until it becomes the elephant in the room. Also, to my mind, this tale could describe what happens to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the Catcher in the Rye, as he approaches forty. It's not all peaches and cream! Especially when he falls in love with the daughter of a millionaire, and even more especially when he ends up on death row.5/ Your Kiss Is Like the Sweetest Fire describes a teenage romance between Jaime and Renee, who were adopted at a young age into the same family. It seems illogical to me, but in almost all states, the law views a sexual relationship between adopted siblings who live in the same family as a crime of incest--exactly as if they were related by blood. So Jaime and Renee have this difficulty to contend with, and also, their mother and father are both rather repulsive characters who are totally incapable of helping them. Wait until you meet Renee--I love her.6/ Requiem for the West is partially based on an apocalyptic poem that I wrote during the 1990's. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time to spend on a seven-hundred-word poem! Requiem is also an examination of some apparently abstract themes that seem highly relevant to me: 1/ The pervasive role of explicit sexuality in our culture and the very different ways that people react to it; 2/ The often farcical, Dilbert-like nature of the modern workplace, in this case a college; and 3/ Is doomsday just around the corner? The 1960-2000 version of myself considered a nuclear apocalypse to be inevitable, but nowadays, I'm ambivalent.7/ Frontier Justice was easy to write because once Adriana Jones arrived on page 10, she took over the book, and all I had to do was keep up with her as she overpowered every obstacle that crossed her path. I hadn't intended for that to happen, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Do I agree with, support, condone, or advocate Adriana's way of doing things? Difficult questions. Adriana is my creation, so I have to take some responsibility for her, I suppose, but I look at it this way: To be true to a character, one has to let the person speak and act in a way that is appropriate to his or her personality. I just can't legislate them into political correctness! Adriana didn't just overpower the other characters in Frontier Justice--she also overpowered me. I really like this book--I wish, as a writer, I could think of more characters who are as dynamic as Adriana.8/ A Tale from the Blackwater River is a novella that is meant to be a satire on a certain kind of story that is showing up far too frequently nowadays, but on another level, it's just kind of a humorous tale that was a lot of fun to write. This book is written in the first person by a forty-two-year-old woman named Alanda Streets. I almost published it under the pen name Alanda Streets because I thought some people might say that no woman would ever write a story like A Tale from the Blackwater River, but for those who feel that way, I hope you will ask yourself this question: If the name Alanda Streets had been on the cover of the book, instead of mine, would you have felt that a woman couldn't have written it?9/ The Blackwater Journal is another Alanda Streets novel--this time, she is only sixteen. I couldn't seem to get away from Alanda--she does have a spunky survivor's attitude towards life that appeals to me. In this book, she has to call on all her resources when her evil father imprisons her in a room and tells her that she has only a week left to live. As the days pass by, the terror mounts on her own personal death row. Does Alanda escape? Maybe so, maybe no.10/ Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) is another murder mystery that has a humorous undertone, which many will probably miss. The problem with writing a murder mystery is that anything that can be thought of has already been done about a thousand times. The only original idea left would be to have the most obvious suspect turn out to be the murderer. Think of it--that's probably never been done! And so...maybe you can guess the rest.11/ The Book of the Dead is about a man who goes to his 25th reunion and meets his high school sweetheart. The two of them embark on an impulsive twenty-four hour car ride that will take them through three southern states and bring them face-to-face with death. This is a tale where the boundaries of ordinary reality are stretched out a little bit! I'll leave it to you to decide whether The Book of the Dead is a fantasy or a reality.12/ Destroyed by Malice sees the return of a character who played a minor role in The Voice of the Victim. He's the world famous novelist Barker Drule, but unfortunately, he (and his wife) exit the book on page 1 when they are gunned down in their driveway. It isn't long before detective Jeff Willard is convinced that the murderer is a member of the Drule family. Perhaps it's Lenore, the older daughter, who was, years ago, secretly raped by her father; perhaps it's the beautiful Raylene, who wrote a novel about a rape victim that her father managed to have the publishing industry blackball; perhaps it's Ricky, the cocaine-addicted son who is desperate to get his hands on his father's money; and perhaps it's Dalton Drule, Barker's irascible eighty-two-year-old father who just happens to own the gun that was used to murder his son. In the end, when the truth finally comes out, there will be very few left to tell the tale.13/ How to Write an Imaginative Novel takes you through the whole process of writing a novel and then uploading it to Kindle. Among the many things covered are: Where will you find a plot? What is the best way to find names for your characters? How important is it to punctuate your book correctly? Is there a quick way to learn punctuation and sentence structure? What is the best way to write dialogue? What kind of things should one avoid in a novel? What is the significance of the first draft and why is it so important? How does one begin a book so that it immediately commands the reader's attention? How does one revise and edit a novel? Is it possible to create the cover for your book without spending any money? How does one convert a book to the correct format so that it can be uploaded to Kindle? And finally, how does one upload a book to Kindle?14/ I Ching 2015 contains a complete translation (minus the Confucian commentaries) of this ancient Chinese classic. Also included are detailed instructions on how to consult the I Ching using either yarrow stalks, coins, or dice. (For those who have been using coins, one should be aware that a significant error has crept into the method that many people use to cast an omen. This error, which involves using either three or four similar coins will seriously affect the accuracy of the omens you receive.) Additionally, there is extensive advice on how to interpret an omen. By using the correct method of interpretation, you will be surprised at how much clearer omens become. As part of this advice, I have posed a number of questions to the I Ching and have then interpreted the omen I received. Finally, for each hexagram, as well as many of the lines in each hexagram, I have included my own observations as to the essential meaning of these hexagrams and lines.15/ Blood and Blackmail is an elegant murder mystery with an unusual plot twist that took me some time to piece together. For those readers who enjoy the challenge of solving a crime before the final chapter arrives, this novel should provide you with a truly interesting puzzle. I doubt many people, if any, are going to see the underlying deception that runs throughout this tale because...if I say anything else, I might help the reader unravel this mystery, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that!16/ Fairy Tales by Martians takes a humorous look at the theory of evolution. Science, of course, claims that the human being originated from an amoeba that eventually became a tadpole that eventually became a frog and so on and so forth. However, I just can't conceive of the fact that ten million years ago, two frogs mated in a swamp and because of that event, I eventually arrived on the scene. What kind of a genealogy chart is that? Neither does the seven-day religious version of events appeal to me, so what I'm left with is a very cynical view of both the religious and scientific theories concerning the origins of our existence.17/ The Book of Dreams repeats a very old idea that has been used in many a novel. But here, in this murder mystery, the idea is taken to another level entirely and contains a twist that not many will see coming. The clues are there, starting with the poem in the Preface.18/ The Dark Side of the Moon is a tale about an attractive high school teacher who falls in love with one of her students. However, Carolyn Black is nervous that her sexual liaison with the student will ruin her career. Eventually, she tries to break off their relationship, but when he threatens to commit suicide, Carolyn is faced with an excruciating dilemma.19/ The Murder of Nora Winters was inspired by John Dickson Carr who wrote a number of locked-room mysteries. In this type of mystery, the murder victim is found in a room that does not allow the killer any means of exit. The doors and windows are all bolted from the inside, and it's considered very poor form for the author to create a room where there are sliding walls or secret panels. The solution to the murder of Nora Winters is, I think, relatively simple, but I've woven in enough deceit and misdirection to confuse all but the most astute readers.20/ The Vanishing Victim is a tale of a psychiatrist and a troubled woman who comes to him for counseling. What she reveals to him proves to be a confession to a brutal crime, but he is unable, because of the doctor/patient privilege, from revealing this crime to anyone, including the police. But even more troubling is that the woman's confession, although it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, turns out to have a terrifying reality of its own.21/ The Fatality Game follows a series of innocuous crimes in a rich neighborhood that seem to be more pranks than anything else. But when a woman is murdered in her bed, Detective Cody Barnes realizes that there is something evil lurking under the placid veneer of swanky mansions that are inhabited by millionaires. And when Cody becomes romantically involved with one of the earlier victims, the beautiful Lucinda Kane, the case begins to take on a life of its own that will eventually lead to the deaths of three more people.22/ How to Write an Intelligent Murder Mystery describes some of the adventures I encountered while I was writing murder mysteries (of my twenty-one novels, thirteen are murder mysteries.) This is a somewhat unusual instructional book that attempts to relate the problems encountered in the writing of a murder mystery to the more general problem of writing fiction in today's market where any new novel is almost instantaneously buried under an avalanche of new novels.23/ The Real Meaning of Life is definitely one of my favorite books. It's written in the first person by Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old guy who writes murder mysteries. But his father, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, wants Patrick to write something that will take his readers to a "better place." Patrick decides to follow his father's advice, but a few days later, his roommate's pregnant girlfriend is murdered, and Patrick becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Eventually, after his roommate is convicted of the crime and sent to death row, Patrick is faced with a dilemma that will lead him to the discovery of the real meaning of life.24/ Flight 9525 is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the question as to why there is so much suffering in the world. For the most part, this book bypasses the usual political, psychological, and social reasons for suffering and examines the following: If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful Being permit its creations to suffer? The usual explanations, such as the hypothesis that God granted man free will, don't answer the question at all. In fact, this is a question that's never been answered satisfactorily.25/ The Scriptwriter is the tale of a man who becomes entangled with three different women. There's the incredibly beautiful woman, the incredibly rich woman, and the incredibly homeless woman. Which one will he choose? Events, mishaps, and character flaws lead him to an interesting decision.26/ The Murder of Marabeth Waters contains a considerable amount of subtle black humor and describes the investigation that ensues after a prostitute is found strangled to death. Detective Devin Driver is quickly able to focus on a suspect; not only did this man send a threatening note to Marabeth, but also, her blood is found in his car. As it turns out, the real murderer lurks elsewhere, and unfortunately, Devin isn't a particularly perceptive detective, so it isn't surprising when the wrong person is convicted of the crime. However, even if Devin had been Sherlock Holmes on steroids, he undoubtedly wouldn't have solved this murder.27/ The Trial of Shada King--a district attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of the man who had raped her ten days before the shooting. Shada claims that she acted in self-defense, and since she was wearing a recording device at the time of the shooting, her claim of self-defense seems to be valid. But why was she wearing the recording device? The prosecuting attorney is convinced the crime scene was an elaborate stage production that was intended to deceive those who would be listening to the tape and that the victim was murdered in retaliation for the rape.28-34/ Finally, I have seven anthologies on Kindle that combine complete versions of many of the books listed above: Four Novels, 5 Novels, Four Murder Mysteries, The Blackwater Novels, Dark Tales, Six Novels, and Five Murder Mysteries. The purpose of the anthologies is that it gives the reader a chance to buy, for instance, five novels of mine at the rock-bottom price of $2.99.I spend a great deal of time revising my books. After finishing the first draft, I go through the book at least eight more times--first page to last page. Each journey through the book is slow and painstaking--no less than three hours and no more than thirty-five pages a day. From my experience, the kind of errors that pop up on some of the later readings can be rather surprising, if not downright alarming! I particularly look for inaccurate punctuation, lackluster sentence structure, and inaccurate or repetitive vocabulary. I also do not permit confusing sentences to stand--I can't imagine that any reader will want to read a sentence twice because I couldn't find a way to explain myself clearly.Finally, I would ask you all to keep an open mind about novels by an author who has no brand name. I am quite unusual because I do not advertise myself in any way, shape, or form (outside, I guess, of this little biography). My books are well-written, entertaining, and thought provoking, but they are often truly original, and I worry about the page-six syndrome. That's the point where some readers abandon a book by an unknown author because of a single sentence, idea, or attitude that seems amateurish to them. Have faith that there are some genuine diamonds in the Kindle arena and have faith that your instinct to buy one of my books was a good instinct. If you read any of my books to the finish, I think you'll feel that your time was not wasted because these novels are not cheap imitations--they are real creations.

Book preview

PREFACE

Most murder cases are solved quickly—the suspect is fairly obvious, and the physical evidence points to that suspect. However, there are some cases that prove to be quite difficult to solve, and this difficulty is usually created by some unusual circumstance that surrounds the crime. The murder of Marabeth Waters is certainly one of those cases—before the murderer was brought to justice, there would be a second murder that closely mimicked the first. Eventually, the truth would come out, but it would be a long and winding road that led to the door of this murderer who, despite committing a variety of blunders in the commission of his crimes, remained in obscurity until the very end. 

It is important for me to note that much, if not most, of this book is based on a number of recorded conversations I had with the detective who investigated this case, Devin Driver. I have no way of determining the accuracy of some of Devin’s recollections as they pertain to the murder of Marabeth Waters, but I have, in most cases, refrained from modifying his perception of events even when this perception appears to contradict known facts. What I am saying here is not that I suspect Devin of lying, but rather, for reasons that will become apparent later, I feel that his memory of the events surrounding the murder of Marabeth Waters may, at times, be somewhat skewed. However, for the most part, especially in the long conversation Devin had with Ambrosia, I have repeated his recollections exactly, word for word, as he told them to me. I doubt many readers will believe that a conversation like this could have actually taken place, but personally, based on her performance at the trial that arose out of this case, I think Devin’s memory of his interaction with Ambrosia is reasonably accurate.

I have also relied on Regina Hollister for the transcripts of conversations that she recorded with various people connected to this case. Regina investigated a number of issues related to the murder of Marabeth Waters, and without her help and cooperation, this book would have had to rely on inferences and anecdotal accounts.

Finally, my intention with this book is not to portray law enforcement in a negative light—it just so happens that the town where the murder of Marabeth Waters occurred had, in all probability, the most corrupt and inefficient police department in America. Because of various legal issues, which are too numerous and complicated to mention here, I have fictionalized the name of the town and state where this crime occurred.

CHAPTER ONE

Around one-thirty on the afternoon of September 20th, 2017, two students who were walking through a large field adjacent to Medford High School in eastern Connecticut came across the body of Marabath Waters who was lying just off a dirt road that cut through the field. Within a half hour, a number of police cars had arrived at the scene, along with the lead detective for the Medford Police Department, Devin Driver.

Devin was forty-four years old, of medium build, with light blue eyes and sandy blond hair that fell almost to his shoulders. He was well-known in Medford, having worked in the department since shortly after he graduated from college in 1995. Devin had originally been hired as a patrolman but was now one of three detectives in Medford, which was a relatively small and quiet town of fifty thousand people that lies on the banks of the Merrimack River, which flows south from Massachusetts and eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

Medford is a fairly typical northeastern town—it was incorporated in 1710, and there are still many structures within the city limits that were built in the 1800’s. For the most part, the northern half of the town is picturesque with wide streets and sidewalks that cut between rich neighborhoods; however, the southern end of town is not nearly so picturesque and is littered with a number of mini-malls as well as the gigantic Fairhaven Mall.

The high school is about a mile north of the mall, and beyond the field where Marabeth’s body was found is a dense forest that extends for miles before it reaches the outskirts of Haverford. The forest is practically primeval—there are no roads, paved or otherwise, that run through it, and over the last few years, it has become a favorite spot for the homeless, who often cut through the field to reach the woods. 

The first thing that Devin did when he arrived on the scene was to take a close look at the victim’s body. Marabeth had apparently been strangled—there was a red cord made of cloth wrapped around her neck. The cord was decorative in nature and appeared to be the type of cord that is used to hold a window drape in place. Marabeth was dressed in a short black skirt and light grey blouse and did not appear to have been sexually assaulted, which seemed a little odd to Devin. She was obviously a very attractive woman, with blond hair that fell to her shoulders, and the skirt she was wearing! So short...it must have stopped about eight inches above her knees. Devin’s first thought was that she might be a prostitute—the garish bright-red lipstick and the low-cut blouse added to that impression.

Marabeth’s handbag had been found about ten feet from her body, and since it contained a photo ID, Devin was quickly able to determine both the identity of the victim and where she lived—according to the ID, she lived about thirty-five miles away in Hartford, Connecticut. Devin also found two credit cards, eighty dollars, a bank card, and a checkbook in Marabeth’s pocketbook, but, rather surprisingly, he couldn’t find her cell phone. Maybe she didn’t own one, but nowadays, most women carry cell phones in their handbags—maybe the murderer had stolen it, but if so, why had he left the eighty dollars behind? The other possibility was that the murderer may have destroyed the cell phone because it contained incriminating evidence.

However, there was something in Marabeth’s handbag that immediately drew Devin’s attention. It was a letter that Marabeth had apparently received from someone who, according to the return address, lived on 26 Willis Street in Medford. Curiously, outside of the return address, there was nothing else on the envelope—no postage and no address as to where the letter should be sent. Marabeth’s handbag was quite large, and the envelope had been buried beneath a number of items, including a set of women’s nylon stockings, two paperback books, two small bags of potato chips, an energy drink, and a number of other odds and ends. The letter, which had been written on a computer and contained no handwriting, was fairly brief, but it was certainly interesting.

Marabeth,

If I were you, I would change your ways. Screwing around for money may seem like fun, and I’m sure the money is good, but sooner or later, your luck will run out. Don’t push it too far, or you’ll end up in a ditch—not that I care anymore. But a word to the wise should be sufficient—even for someone as depraved as you.

The letter was unsigned, so obviously, one of the first things that Devin needed to do would be to discover who lived on 26 Willis Street. But before leaving the area, Devin carefully searched the area around the body—by now, another detective, Kevin Maine, had arrived, and the two of them took a close look at the entire dirt path that ran next to where Marabeth’s body was found. Unfortunately, the path was hard packed and dried out from a recent dry spell that had lasted for almost two weeks, so neither detective could find anything that looked even remotely similar to a tire track.

The medical examiner, Darius Brooklyn, arrived while Devin and Kevin were searching along the edge of the path for anything that might be significant—the path followed a roughly semicircular route as it veered off from the paved road, Dorchester Drive, which ran in front of the high school, before it reconnected about a mile up the road with Dorchester Drive. The search took some time, but Devin wasn’t surprised when they came up empty handed since it wasn’t very likely that the murderer had tossed something out of his car as he drove away from the crime scene.

When Devin returned to the place where Marabeth’s body was located, Darius told him that Marabeth had definitely been strangled and that she had put up only minimal resistance. Most likely, the killer had approached her from behind and placed the cord quickly around her neck before he began to strangle her. Other than three of the fingernails on her right hand being bent back until they had broken—probably as she tried to place her hand between the cord and her neck—there was no other sign of injury to her body. Darius also told Devin that it was very unlikely that Marabeth had been raped since her clothes showed almost no signs of disturbance except for what one might expect when a body is pushed out of a car and rolled onto the side of the road. Devin wanted to know whether the murder could have occurred where the body was found, but Darius thought that was unlikely because there was no evidence, either on the road or in the foot-high grass that ran alongside the road, to support such a conclusion.

Perhaps, said Devin, she was murdered inside the car that brought her here, and then the guy just threw her out of the car.

Not likely, said Darius. To do something like that, the perpetrator would most likely have had to strangle her as he faced her, and in that type of strangling, the victim puts up much more resistance. Also, even if she had been strangled from behind somehow while she was in the car, she would have been thrashing around and would have incurred some bruising to her body.

Do you have any estimate as to when she died? said Devin.

Somewhere around midnight, give or take a few hours. I’m just basing that on her body temperature, but I’ll be able to give you a more accurate time of death after I’ve analyzed the contents of her stomach.

Before leaving the area, Devin talked to Kevin, and they decided that Devin would check out the address of the person who had written the letter to Marabeth, while Kevin would go to the homeless encampment that was a mile away in the middle of the woods across from the field. It was certainly possible that a homeless person had heard or seen something as he or she was crossing the field to the woods, but Devin was hopeful that the letter found in Marabeth’s handbag would lead him quickly to the murderer.

Before attempting to find the letter writer, Devin stopped at the police station to see what he could discover about Marabeth. Devin typed Marabeth Waters’ name into the police computer and discovered that she had two arrests for prostitution, another arrest for DUI, and two more arrests for possession of cocaine. At the time of her death, she was twenty-four, having been born on October 30th, 1992. Currently, she lived in downtown Hartford in a rent-controlled community of apartments that overlooked the Connecticut River. All of her arrests had occurred in Hartford—the two prostitution arrests were in 2013 and 2014; the arrests for possession of cocaine occurred in 2016 and January of 2017; and the DUI had occurred three months previously in June of 2017. The case for possession of cocaine in 2016 had been dismissed, but she had made a plea deal in the 2017 case that allowed her to avoid jail time in exchange for three years of probation. As for the other charges against her, she had received small fines for the prostitution charges and a six-month suspension of her license for the DUI charge.

Having finished with Marabeth’s biography, Devin discovered that the owner of the house on 26 Willis Street was Mark Sievers, and by four o’clock that afternoon, he was knocking on Mark’s door, which was opened by an attractive woman in her late twenties.

Hello, said Devin, is Mark home?

No, he isn’t. May I ask who is calling?

I’m Detective Devin Driver, and I work for the Medford Police Department. Do you know where I can find him?

He should be home any minute. He’s a teacher at Hartford Community College. Usually, he doesn’t come home until five, but tonight is our second wedding anniversary, so when he left this morning, he said he’d try to be home by four. What did you want to talk to him about?

I’d rather not say right now. What’s your name?

Evelyn Sievers. Would you like to come inside and wait for him?

Alright, said Devin as he stepped into an entranceway that led to a living room, which had a number of stuffed chairs and two couches. After the two of them had taken seats in the stuffed chairs, Evelyn said, It’s not often that I entertain male guests.

Devin wondered what that remark was supposed to mean. How long have you and Mark lived here, Evelyn?

Mark and I bought this house about a month after we were married, but I don’t like it all that much. Mark and I are planning on having children, but this place can only accommodate two more people—at most. I argued with Mark about how this house wasn’t big enough for our needs, but like a lot of men—and I hope you’re not one of them—Mark tends to ignore me when I talk about practical things.

Evelyn had straight brown hair that fell to her shoulders and was wearing a deep-blue blouse and short black skirt, which revealed a lot of leg. She also had a crisp figure—crisp was the word that Devin liked to use for a woman that didn’t have any extra weight on her. And also, to qualify as crisp, the woman had to have a figure that bulged out and bulged in where it was supposed to bulge out and in.

Devin’s wife had died of breast cancer about six months previously, and by now, he couldn’t help but look at women in a sexual way—it was just human nature as far as he was concerned, like some kind of primal instinct. But, of course, any woman that he met during one of his investigations was taboo and definitely off limits. That was the trouble with working for the police department—you always had to be aware that you were a public figure, and since people basically didn’t like or trust cops, they were always looking for a way to drag them down. Still...those legs of Evelyn’s were enough to make any man forget about his responsibilities. Even so, Devin was way beyond being seriously tempted—even if this woman’s husband was undoubtedly fooling around with a prostitute.

Probably, though, since Marabeth was twenty-four, she had now moved up the sexual food chain and was working for an escort service. It was a much more genteel way to ply her trade—if getting paid for having sex with a man could ever be called genteel. But that’s the way these women worked—often, they started out as teenagers who had run away from home, but after a few years of standing on street corners and trying to hustle guys who were driving by, a few managed to catch on with one of the two escort services that operated in the Hartford area. The pay was much better, and the security was also better, but as most everyone knows, no woman who gives up her body for money is ever completely safe from the predators who like to victimize prostitutes. They were, after all, easy marks. Many of them had no roots or connections in the area, so when they disappeared, no one much noticed or paid any particular attention.

Anyways, Evelyn had a very crisp figure. As Devin stared at it in what he hoped was a surreptitious way, he began to lose track of the conversation. It was obvious that Evelyn was rambling on about something or other, and from the few snippets that filtered their way into his consciousness, Devin began to realize that she was complaining about her husband. Mark made a fairly good salary, but it wasn’t quite enough for all the pressing demands that they were facing. Three kids was their goal, but Mark was now saying that it might be a good idea to wait until they were on a better footing financially. He had even suggested to her that she apply for