Good Cop/Bad Cop. Rebecca Cofer - Dartt
in her car. They all wished each other a Merry Christmas. “And a Happy New Year,” Tony added, “Remember, I’ll be on vacation for a week.’’ Then he got in his car and headed home.
Kathleen Martin came by the Grey Goose from Brooktondale around 5:45, hoping to stop and buy some Christmas ornaments, but the shop was closed. The Harris house looked dark too.
As Jim Raponi drove by the Harris house about 7:15 on his way home to Brooktondale, he noticed a figure, illuminated from behind, walk by a downstairs window. He saw a light on in an upstairs window. Raponi was in the habit of looking at the house as he drove by. He had watched it go up three years before.
When Shelby didn’t show up at her boyfriend Jim Ciolek’s house by 7:30 that night, he called her, letting the phone ring and ring. He thought, This isn’t like Shelby not to show up or at least call. Maybe her family went to dinner on the spur of the moment. He hoped she hadn’t had a car accident. The road conditions were very bad. He called every half hour until eleven and then gave up.
Bruce Miller awoke to a loud, high-pitched sound just before daybreak. It had to be some kind of siren going off, but where was it coming from? Somewhere outside. He shivered as his feet hit the cold floor. He rose and walked to the window. Maybe he should investigate. His wife, who was still half-asleep, mumbled that it wasn’t a good idea and told him to come on back to bed—which he did.
Elizabeth Regan was awakened by the same shrill, penetrating noise at 6:35 that cold December morning. She woke her husband, Dennis, who realized in his half-awake state that it had to be looked into. The sound was so loud that he thought it was coming from somewhere in their two-story house. Perhaps the severe cold had caused an electrical malfunction in the furnace. Elizabeth remembered hearing something similar a few years before during the winter, when a neighbor’s car horn malfunctioned and went off continuously for twenty minutes.
Getting up, he trudged down to the cellar, searched it, and then began looking all over the house. He opened the door of his daughter Lisa’s bedroom. She was sound asleep. He went to the back of the house and opened the kitchen door. The noise seemed louder, but he didn’t think it was coming from that direction. He walked to the front entrance and opened the door. Then he knew. It was coming from their next-door neighbor’s house about thirty-five yards to the east of them. He saw that one of the garage doors was open and wondered why.
Around 6:40 Bob Armstrong heard an alarm as he put Saturday’s Ithaca Journal in the Harrises’ paper tube that stood next to their mailbox on Ellis Hollow Road. He thought about calling the police, but by the time he finished his route, he had forgotten about it.
Meanwhile, Dennis Regan had walked back to his bedroom. He still was sleepy and now baffled. “It’s over at the Harrises,” Dennis said to his wife. “It’s some kind of alarm.’’
Dennis and Elizabeth hadn’t known that the Harrises had an alarm system, but obviously they did. Why weren’t they shutting it off? Elizabeth assumed they were not home. The family probably had gone to Syracuse to pick up Dodie Harris’s father for the holidays. She had overheard Dodie at her cookie exchange party last Monday night, talking about having him spend Christmas with them. The Regans surmised that the cold weather had caused a water line to freeze and break, setting off the alarm.
But just to be sure, Dennis called the Harrises to make sure they weren’t sleeping through this noise. He let the phone ring about ten times and then called the State Police barracks in the town of Dryden on Route 366, about six miles from Ellis Hollow.
“I don’t know if I should be calling you or the Sheriff’s Department, but the next-door neighbors must have a burglar alarm and it’s going off really loud. I called them and their telephone doesn’t answer.”
The soft-voiced police dispatcher asked Regan for his name and address and the neighbors’.
“It’s next door, further out Ellis Hollow Road toward Route 79 on the same side of the street,” Regan told the dispatcher. “Probably something shorted out, but I don’t know. Their outside lights are on, but no inside lights.”
“Okay, I’ll have a patrol check on that.”
Regan felt better now. The police would handle it.
Fifteen minutes passed. The Regans didn’t hear any car wheels crunch on the Harrises’ gravel driveway, but suddenly the alarm stopped. They were puzzled. Regan called the Harrises a second time. Still no answer. He called the police again and told the dispatcher the alann had stopped, no one answered the phone, and he’d noticed earlier one of their garage doors was open. The dispatcher replied, “We’re checking it out.”
It was now about 7:10 A.M. The alarm was silent, the cops would be there soon, and everything seemed okay. Dennis went back to bed and fell asleep. He and his wife Elizabeth were exceptionally tired, as they had stayed up late the night before, celebrating their daughter Lisa’s early acceptance to Cornell University by having dinner at her favorite restaurant on the outskirts of town. When they got home, Dennis had built a fire in the living room fireplace. He and Elizabeth had some brandy and talked until late.
Sleeping soundly once again as the darkness outside turned to light, the Regans awoke suddenly when they heard more noise. This time it was the sound of cars moving in and out of the gravel driveway next door. They opened the bedroom blinds a bit, peeked out and saw a lot of commotion at the end of the Harrises’ driveway. Police cars and other vehicles were parked along Ellis Hollow Road, men were hurrying up the driveway to the house, and some were in groups near the road. Then they noticed smoke coming out of the far side of the Harrises house. They knew the house was new and well-built and the Harrises were careful people. If the Harrises had gone away, they were not the kind to leave ovens or irons on. How could a fire have started? The Regans decided to throw on some warm clothes as fast as they could and go see for themselves. In the upstairs bedroom that faced the Harris home, Lisa was still asleep.
State Trooper John Beno came on duty earlier than his regular shift. December 23 was his wife’s birthday and they had planned to celebrate it with an afternoon Christmas party at a friend’s restaurant in town. After patrolling in his car, Beno stopped off at the police barracks to have coffee with some other officers. Another trooper, Scott Hendershott, asked if Beno would mind going to check an EID (electronic intrusion device) over on Ellis Hollow Road. It wasn’t Beno’s assigned post for the day, but he was up and ready to walk out the door, so he said he’d go over.
The roads in Tompkins County were slippery—a light snow had fallen during the night—and the back roads still had an icy undercrust which loudly crunched as the patrol car’s tires rolled over it. It was just before daybreak as Trooper Beno proceeded slowly on Route 366, turning onto Turkey Hill Road, which intersects Ellis Hollow after three and a half miles. Beno was glad it wasn’t a real emergency with these terrible driving conditions. He passed Ellis Hollow Creek Road and Peaceful Drive, then crept along behind a Town of Dryden snow plow. He thought Hendershott had said the alarm was at the house after the one with lights on, but when he passed it, there were no other houses on the right-hand side. Beno knew he’d gone too far. He turned around, drove back to the house with the outside lights on, and radioed the barracks for clarification. A new dispatcher verified the address.
Beno parked on the road by a circular driveway. He saw a gray New England saltbox house standing far back from the road in an open field. The house carved a towering presence 011 the barren, white landscape. There were no trees to soften the sharp edges; only Christmas lights strung along a split-rail fence that bordered the road brought relief to the deserted scene.