Blood Games by Jerry Bledsoe

Caroline’s the night he was killed.
    Did anybody in Washington know about their financial status? Lewis Young asked.
    Nobody, she said. Not even their children.
    After getting the names of the bank trust officer and the family attorney who had handled Lieth’s parents’ estates, the officers asked about the trailer Lieth had been planning to buy.
    He was going to put computers in it and use it as an office for trading stocks and managing his money, she said. He was planning to quit his job after Christmas, and he wanted a place to go to every day. He didn’t want to work at home. Also it would be a place for her family to stay when they came to visit.
    The officers wanted to know about service people who came regularly to the Von Stein house, and Bonnie told them about the housekeeper who came every Monday, two high school boys who mowed the grass every Thursday, a pet-sitter who had a key to the house and came when they were out of town. She gave the name of the school maintenance man who had painted the house recently with a couple of helpers. They had painted it on weekends over a two-month period.
    Had any of the painters been inside the house? Only one, the man in charge, and he’d come in only once, about a week earlier. He stepped into the kitchen to pick up some shrimp she had offered him to take home.
    Young now brought up another delicate matter. Life insurance. Had Lieth bought any recently? Not recently, she said, but she volunteered without hesitation that he was heavily insured and she was the sole beneficiary. How heavily insured? the detectives inquired.
    Probably between $800,000 and $1 million, she said.
    Why did he have so much insurance?
    Well, he was a fairly heavy drinker, about a six-pack every night, plus occasional vodka and wine. He also had a job that entailed a lot of stress. He thought it inevitable that his health would fail before he got old. It was a sound investment in his view. “He just had a feeling that he wouldn’t live very long,” she said.
    Bonnie could think of no reason why she and her husband had been attacked. She only knew that the shadow who had done it had seemed big and strong and had been methodical in his work.
    Asked about the man she had testified against in court for attacking police officers after he had struck Lieth’s car at the dentist’s office, Bonnie’s voice broke and rose and she appeared to become excited as she related the frightening and violent incident. But Lieth had not been present, was not a witness, and didn’t even go to court when she had to testify, she said. If that man were seeking revenge, wouldn’t it be only against her. Why kill Lieth?
    The officers ended their interview with no more idea of who the killer might be than when they had arrived. But Chief Stokes had come to one conclusion. He didn’t think that Bonnie was in any danger of further attack, and he was going to remove the around-the-clock guard at the door of her hospital room.
    Young and Hope spent much of the afternoon talking with neighbors of the Von Steins. They asked more questions of Peggy and David Smith, talked with other neighbors who had seen suspicious cars or strangers in the area over the weekend. They also went to the junior high school and questioned the school maintenance man, Louis Moore, who had painted the Von Stein house. He described the Von Steins as “kinda quiet” and said he couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to hurt them. “No nicer people in the world to work for,” he said.
    Tuesday night, Young and Hope gathered with other detectives in the small, cluttered detective squad room at the Washington Police Department. They wanted to assess what they had learned so far about the case and as they bandied theories and talked about leads, one detective mentioned a call he’d received the night before. A farmer in Pitt County had called about a fire he’d discovered alongside a country road early Monday morning. Thought it might have