Because You Loved Me by M. William Phelps Read Free Book Online

Jeanne worked at; it was part of who she was.
    Chris smiled. Not because he felt so good about what he had done, but because Jeanne deserved it—someone had loved her in a way she had never experienced.
    Perhaps it was that wholesome spirit Jeanne and Chris so openly displayed toward each other that Nicole had sought in Billy Sullivan as she quickly became infatuated by his seemingly kind and gentle manner. Nicole didn’t realize it then, but she was following in her mother’s footsteps.
    “I was fascinated by the idea that someone would love me,” Nicole said later. “I didn’t want to lose Billy.”

C HAPTER 11
     
    Nashua police officer Kurt Gautier was approximately one mile away from Jeanne’s house, sitting in his cruiser on Amherst Street, when he responded to a report of a “sudden death.”
    Flicking on his lights, Gautier rushed toward Dumaine Avenue.
    When he arrived three minutes later, Chris McGowan was waiting at the door. Chris appeared desperate and perplexed. Gautier had been a cop for twenty-one years. He’d been involved on all levels of police work throughout his career: a K-9 handler, criminal investigation division officer, drug enforcement officer and straight patrol. He was experienced and respected. A big, hulking man, with a customary buzz cut, Gautier didn’t know what to expect as he entered Jeanne’s house. Dispatch reported a man had called in an account of a woman on the floor of her home who was not responding. There was a pool of blood around her.
    After some time, several more officers arrived, accompanied by EMTs and firefighters.
    Because of his training and experience, Gautier knew as soon as he looked at Jeanne that she was dead. Chris was still wondering if she was alive. He wasn’t thinking straight, but Gautier had seen dead bodies. He had no doubt.
    “It was a bloody mess,” Gautier said later in court. “There was blood all over the floor, all over the cabinetry. It was everywhere. I saw massive amounts…splattered on the walls. The blood was still wet. It hadn’t dried….” (This told Gautier as he began surveying the scene that the crime had perhaps just taken place.)
    Maybe Chris was responsible?
    Police officer Jeff Connors arrived next. He escorted Chris away from the house. Gautier had questioned Chris after first entering the house, but it was “hard,” Gautier recalled, “to get any information out of him. He was stuttering. He was a mess.”
    With Chris standing outside next to Connors, Gautier invited the paramedics inside to take a closer look at Jeanne while he stood nearby. No one was completely certain whether an intruder—if, indeed, Jeanne had been killed by a stranger—was still inside the house.
    Were there more victims? Where were Billy and Nicole? What about Drew?
    It didn’t take paramedics long to make the call. “She’s gone, Officer.”
    “OK, please step back outside,” Gautier advised. Then he walked toward the back door. “Connors?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Come here.”
    Connors and Gautier searched the house completely to make sure no one else was inside, “alive or dead.”
    For all Chris knew, Billy, Drew and Nicole were upstairs, like Jeanne, lying in a pool of blood.
    Standing outside, running his hands through his hair, Chris thought: Oh Christ…what’s happening?
    “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Chris said aloud, pacing the lawn. Then he dropped to his knees and, moments after, got up and walked around.
    Donna Shepard, Jeanne’s next-door neighbor, was looking out her porch window a few minutes later when she noticed two people standing by the side of Jeanne’s house. She couldn’t quite make out who they were through the brush blocking her view, but she was convinced it was Chris and Jeanne.
    “I thought for some reason,” Donna said later, “Chris and Jeanne were out there talking.”
    It was the perfect opportunity, thought Donna, to go talk to Jeanne regarding something she had found out about Nicole the previous