Free Then No One Can Have Her by Caitlin Rother Page A

photographed the clean and orderly two-story town house and seized a number of items, including his passport. They found a cell phone battery on the windowsill in Steve’s office there, and another one in his computer bag. A third battery, in his cell phone, was working fine.
    They also took photos in the garage, including a set of left-handed Cleveland golf clubs and a head cover for a Callaway Steelhead III #7 club, which was sitting on the third shelf from the bottom in a rolling unit of vertically stacked shelves. Steve typically stored his bike riding gear—such as his clip-in bike shoes, helmet and gloves—on the same unit.
    Because Steve said he’d showered right after his bike ride and washed the clothes he’d been wearing, investigators seized the clothes he’d described, which were still in the dryer. Taking no chances, they dismantled the entire washer to check for any blood or DNA evidence tying him to Carol’s murder. They also searched his drains and dryer as well. But in the end they found no blood or DNA there linking him to the crime scene.
    They did, however, take note of a box of rubber gloves in the laundry room.
    When investigators inspected Steve’s mountain bike tires more closely, the rear flat tire’s valve stem appeared to have been rotted for quite some time. This indicated to them that it probably couldn’t have held any air, and was likely already flat the day Steve took that ride. It was as if he had walked in the bike, laid it down in the heavy brush and walked it out again.

CHAPTER 9
    Around eleven o’clock that morning, Deputy Pam Edgerton was assigned to examine Carol’s dogs, which had been taken to her neighbor Janet Drake’s house, around the corner on Jockey Path.
    Edgerton was able to pick up Daisy, the white dog, but Ike wouldn’t let her. The deputy didn’t see any sign of blood or stains on Daisy, which matched with the evidence—a lack of bloody paw prints—in Carol’s house.
    Janet said she hadn’t washed the dogs, although Daisy had run through the sprinkler. Between the peeing and puking dogs, Carol often had to treat the rugs with spot cleaner, she said, and also had to put up gates around the house to keep them off the carpets.
    Telling Janet that they were investigating Carol’s death as a homicide, Edgerton asked if anyone might want to hurt Carol.
    â€œHer ex-husband,” Janet said immediately.
    â€œWhy do you think he might have done something like this?”
    â€œHe is the biggest creep ever,” Janet replied, noting that he’d had at least thirteen affairs during the marriage.
    Asked if she suspected Steve just because he was a creep, Janet admitted that certainly was part of it, but she also thought that he was capable of doing the deed. Carol was a very sweet person with no enemies, she said, but Steve might have been so used to women giving in to him that he couldn’t handle it when Carol had rejected him this last time.
    â€œHe took everything else from her,” she said, adding that during the protracted divorce period “he wouldn’t give her a red cent” toward her bills.
    Janet said Carol told her that Steve had asked her within the past week to try to work on their relationship and to get back together again. Aghast, Carol said no, and reminded him that he was already dating Renee.
    â€œShe means nothing to me,” Steve told Carol, and continued to try to persuade her to reconcile.
    But Carol, Janet said, told him she wasn’t interested.
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    At three forty-five that afternoon, the county ME, Dr. Philip Keen, began the autopsy of Carol’s body. He determined that she’d been struck at least ten times with a blunt-force object, including seven or more times in the head.
    When Keen testified about his findings at a hearing on November 12, 2008, he explained that any one of the head blows would have rendered her unconscious and