Dennis looked into the open garage door and saw their van was missing. He mentioned this to the police. It was clear now that someone had been in the house. Walking home, both the Regans felt badly. They told each other they should have called the police sooner about the alarm, or gone over to the Harrises to investigate in spite of the frigid weather, still under the assumption it was only a fire they were dealing with next door.
When a police investigator knocked on the Regans’ door a short while later asking to use their telephone, they overheard him say, “Homicide,” and request the coroner and an ID person.
Their daughter Lisa came downstairs, awakened by the doorbell and voices in the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Elizabeth Regan put on a large pot of coffee before she answered her daughter. She knew it was going to be a long day.
A short while later at the crime scene, Investigator Porter’s face appeared puzzled. He had gone over everything with John Beno, the first trooper at the scene. They had walked around the Harris house, and Beno had showed Porter the tire tracks, the open garage bay, and the empty gas cans on the floor. “This is going to be a snap,” Porter mumbled to himself. “Pressure on the husband, so he killed his wife and took off.” Beno looked as if he’d heard.
“We don’t know the full story yet, sir, of what happened over here.”
“I have to use a phone right away,” Porter said hurriedly and trudged over to the nearby Regan house.
Thoughts of the Harrises were churning in Elizabeth Regan’s mind after she discussed the awful news with her daughter. Elizabeth told her daughter that the police had sent them back to the house and that someone would be down to speak with them later.
A few minutes later, after Lisa went upstairs to her room, the doorbell rang. Dennis looked out the window and noticed a car parked on their driveway next to the front porch. He walked over and opened the door.
“I’m Investigator Porter with the state police. Could I use your phone, please?” The tall, graying investigator showed Dennis his badge.
Dennis nodded and said politely, “Yes, Officer, come on in.”
Dennis walked him down the hall to the kitchen to the nearest phone. “I have to look into the missing vehicle,” Porter said. He chose not to explain that he didn’t want to take a chance and call over his car radio because messages could be picked up by anyone monitoring a police scanner. He turned to Dennis. “Would you mind leaving me alone to make the call, sir?” Dennis nodded and walked back to Elizabeth. Porter wanted privacy. He had to notify the station to alert his superiors as to what was happening and to run a vehicle check.
Speaking softly, Porter first asked the dispatcher, “Could you pull up the data on the black Chrysler sedan we found in the garage?” He gave her the license plate number.
In a matter of seconds the dispatcher replied, “The registration is listed to a Warren A. Harris, 1886 Ellis Hollow Road, and a GM van to the same individual.” She gave Porter the van’s registration number. “Hold on a minute,” Porter said.
Porter found Regan. “Do you know what color their van is?” Porter asked him.
“It’s brown, I think. Isn’t it, Elizabeth?”
“Brown, of course,” she replied. “We’ve seen it enough times parked outside the garage, and Dodie drove Lisa to Ithaca High with Shelby several times when they missed the bus.”
Porter went back to the phone.
“The van is brown,” Porter told the dispatcher. “Put an APB out looking for that vehicle in connection with a homicide in the town of Dryden. Get the coroner over here, too.” He hung up and rejoined the Regans.
“Can you tell me about the make-up of the family next door?”
Dennis told him that Tony and Dodie Harris had two kids, Shelby and Marc. It ran through Porter’s mind that the killer didn’t have to be the husband—maybe it was the wife’s boyfriend. He wanted something simple they could wrap up in a hurry.
“Excuse me again,” Porter said and went back to the phone.
Then Porter called Carl Shaver, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation Captain in Troop C of the state police, who was in nearby Windsor that morning concerning another homicide case. Shaver ran down the checklist with Porter: Had he made sure the evidence was taped off (we don’t want the firefighters screwing it up)? What about outside the house, have you made sure it’s secured from the public? And so on. Porter knew it was the captain’s job to ask these procedural questions, but it irritated him to be wasting time on what he considered to be bureaucratic bullshit.
“We need an ID man over here right away, Captain,” Porter said and gave him the Harris address and the Regans’ phone number.
“I agree,” Shaver replied. “I’ll get McElligott to come up right away and take over.”
Porter walked back to where the Regans were waiting.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Dennis asked anxiously.
Porter repeated what he knew. “One body was found in the Harris house, and there was a fire.” The Regans had so many questions they didn’t know what to ask first.
“We feel like we’re in the middle of a storm raging outside with no one telling us how bad it is or what we can do about it.”
“I wish I could tell you more, but we’re just finding out the complete story ourselves.” Porter grimaced. “I’m going back there now, and I’ll try to keep you posted.”
The full horror of what had occurred next door began to sink in when Investigator Porter returned a while later to use their phone. He said, “There are four homicides.”
While Elizabeth Regan walked around the house, trying to cope with the shock of the Harris murders, she found a list she’d made of things to do that weekend: go over to Dodie’s shop for stocking-stufifers, borrow Tony’s saw to cut down the Christmas tree. She had borrowed the saw the previous year too, Elizabeth remembered. Tears came to her eyes.
Dennis and Elizabeth kept focused by answering questions the police asked about their neighbors; it made them feel they were doing something to help. They desperately wanted to believe that the murders weren’t random, but who would want to kill the Harrises? They knew robberies were common near Christmas when people needed extra cash. “If it was a random choice,” Elizabeth said, “it could have been our house just as well.” She shivered. They checked the locks on their doors, and for hours they kept watching out the window, suspicious of anyone coming into their driveway. Finally, Dennis decided he had to keep busy with his usual routine; if not. his anxiety would be too great. He decided to meet his regular running partner at noon and run their usual six miles in Ellis Hollow.
The wire services had already picked up the story and by the next day it appeared on the front page as far away as North Carolina and the Midwest.
David Long walked down his driveway on Eagles Head Road in Ellis Hollow to get the Saturday newspaper from the tube next to their mailbox. His neighbor yelled over to him. “Have you heard about what happened over at the Harrises?” Long shook his head. She went on, “I heard sirens earlier and asked my husband—he went into his office early—to check it out and let me know. He just called me with the news.”
Kathy