The Quick and the Dead

A fisherman had found him. Went looking for Grand River steelhead, found a nice-looking dead kid instead. Built like a brick shithouse, this kid. But from the looks of him, he'd tangled with someone bigger. His head was beaten in like a tin can, his clothes ripped off down to his boxers and socks. The belt had been yanked off so hard it had almost snapped in two. But it was the bullet hole in his thigh that did him in. He'd bled out like a slaughtered sheep.

What happened to you, kid? Sayer pondered, as he followed the path of evidence markers around the park. A trail of blood started in the parking lot and led down into a ditch, then up to the top of a culvert near where the body lay. Strewn nearby were the boy's pants. Inside one of the pockets was a blood-stained wad of cash -- $2,452, to be exact. If this was a robbery, it hadn't gone how anyone planned.

As Sayer stood there racking his brain, a lieutenant told him about a call from dispatch. Some hysterical girl had called 911. Said she and her friend Dustin Spaller had been assaulted in the park by three men just a few hours earlier. Dustin had run off, and she had no idea what happened to him.

Well, that was one mystery solved. It was time to deliver the bad news.

The poor girl was a wreck when Sayer got to her grandparents' house around 5:30 a.m. They seemed like good people. An American flag big enough for the White House hung in the driveway of their little ranch. Grandpa's pride and joy was a 1930 Model A sitting in the garage. They were from the old Painesville, back when it was all farmland and they knew you by name at the drugstore.

Their granddaughter was from the new Painesville -- Jennifer, a white girl with cornrows who'd traded in her cheerleader pom-poms and Tom Petty smile for baggy clothes and a prison mouth. But the ghetto had been knocked out of her this morning. She lay balled up, crying in her grandmother's arms.

She'd gone with Spaller to the park that night to buy crack, she told the detective. They were supposed to rendezvous with some guys, but things had gone bad. Real bad. The three men rushed their car, ripped them out, and tried to rob them.

One guy held Jennifer, while the other two fought with Spaller. When he wriggled free and started running away, all three gave chase and left her alone. She heard a gun go off. She jumped back in the car and peeled away.

Sayer asked Jennifer to come back to the station for a written statement. But as he was leaving, he saw something glimmering on the side of Jennifer's Monte Carlo.

It was a handprint in blood. In fact, the entire side of the car looked like a butcher's table.

Out of all the dead mopes Sayer had woken up for, this would be the one to keep him lying awake at night.

Dave Tills and Brett Cameron were still shaking off their hangovers when they walked into the Painesville Police station that morning of December 4, 2001. They'd been partying with Dustin the night before. The party was sure over now.

The three were not your typical dope fiends. Especially Dustin. Fact is, there was a good chance the guys back there with the latex gloves remembered him from his days at Harvey and Fairport Harding high schools. Played running back and defensive end. Back then, Dustin's life was class, the gym, and practice. He could have appeared in one of those Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercials.

But he hung up his jersey after graduation. Turned down offers to play college so he could sell cars. After that, he had cash in his pocket and no coach on his back. And in Painesville, temptation was always just around the corner.

The town square feels like stepping into a time machine. At noon, bells ring from the clock tower atop the courthouse. Brides and grooms exchange kisses in a gazebo on the green. In December, children line up in the cold to read their Christmas lists on Santa's lap. The historic Rider Inn Bed & Breakfast, built in 1812, hosts tea parties for the genteel.