!â
CHAPTER 22
DEAD RINGER
Becky Buttram arrived to see Scott Saxton sitting in a police interrogation room. She wanted to stare into the eyes of this creepy SOB and ask him pointed questions. By now, they had Saxtonâs list of crimes from up north and Buttram was more confident than ever that they had stopped a man before he escalated from home invasions and violent assaults to cold-blooded murder.
Buttram later recalled looking at Saxton for the first time: âWell, I remember having the composite with me and it matched this guy in front of us to a tee. I mean, he was a dead ringer.â
The detective slid the sketch across the table, stopping in front of Saxton.
He looked down.
âI . . . I . . . donât know who that is.â
It was akin to a facsimile of him.
Checking Saxton out from head to toe, Buttram viewed scratches and bruises and scuff marks all over the guy.
âThose were from when he fought with the army [sergeant],â the detective said. âWe could see them.â
Buttram and her colleague questioned Saxton for two hours. They asked him all the questions youâd expect: where, when, how, what time, alibi, etc.
He had an answer for everything. None of it, of course, made sense.
âI thought,â the law officer explained, âas I sat there and listened to him, looking him over, âWhat a wimp.â I mean that. He was a little weasely piece of mucus. Disgusting. Gross.â
âWhy were you out there looking in that window?â Becky asked Saxton.
He had no answer.
Most of what Saxton said during those two hours, as far as Becky Buttram could later recall, revolved around Mr. Saxton denying everything they threw at him.
CHAPTER 23
FINALLY
For Melissa, Scott Saxtonâs arrest was starting to sink in. It was her neighborâthe guy across the hall. Mr. Nondescript. Someone she had seen in passing in the halls numerous times and not even noticed. She had not even paid a second thought to him. But Saxton had been watching her, lusting for her, thinking about her. Melissa wondered how many times heâd been inside her apartment while she wasnât home. How many times had he planned to attack her but stopped for some reason? It was paralyzing, that fear of the unknownâthose images in her head now of what could have happened. We all go there. Itâs akin to an entire new layer of trauma for the crime survivor, the victim. Once the perp had been apprehended and the victim began to learn things about the crime and the perpâs life, the victim began to suffer all over again.
So ... I got the phone call that they actually made an arrest. They told me they had found this guy up a tree peeping in another window in another apartment complex. They said that since he matched the description that I had given, they decided to run the fingerprints against the bloody ones left in my apartment. They were a match. Then they asked me if the name âScott Saxtonâ meant anything. I said I remembered getting mail for that person on different occasions, but didnât know who he was. So I would just set the mail back out for the mailman to pick up. Thatâs when they told me it was the next-door neighborâwell, my former next-door neighbor. He had moved out some time ago. I said that I had never even spoken to this guy except to say âhiâ while passing in the hallway or in the parking lot out front.
Yet, as Melissa thought more deeply about Saxton as the days after his arrest went by, she came up with one very âdistinctiveâ memory. It was right after she had first moved in. She recalled seeing this guy outside in the parking lot working on his car. Melissa and her boyfriend were walking by, on their way into her apartment.
âOh, my God! That guy looks like a child molester,â Melissa had said to her boyfriend, judging the man by the way he looked. We all do it on occasion.
She didnât know if this
Tara Shuler
William Bayer
Catie Rhodes
Gary McMahon
Max Allan Collins
Minnette Meador
Alice Ward, Jessica Blake
Tim Hehir
Georgette Heyer
Simon R. Green