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"Slayer Statute" - Excerpt Featured in the September/October 2003 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Wilcoxin shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. They're both dead. All I care about is who gets the money." He frowned, as though considering how callous that sounded. "That's for damn sure all the beneficiaries care about." "How much money?" The insurance adjuster gazed morosely at the folder sitting like a toad in the middle of his desk. He named an amount certain to gladden the heart of any beneficiary, then appended a caveat. "Payment to the beneficiaries is my top priority, but I want to be sure the insurance company hasn't been defrauded. That's where you come in, Ms. Howard. You were recommended to me as someone who can untangle messes. This case has been a monumental headache." I wasn't sure I wanted to jump into this briar patch. "Tell me more. Then I'll tell you if I'll take it." Judging from the look on his face, the thought that I might not be willing to take on his headache evidently hadn't occurred to Wilcoxin. He reached for the file, which concerned a husband and wife, both of them very dead. In fact, one of them had apparently committed homicide before committing suicide. Why? That was just one of the questions I had about the late Claude and Martha Terrell. Late fifties, both of them. Late residents of Alameda, the island city in San Francisco Bay. They'd both been in real estate. Claude developed commercial, Martha sold residential. Having made piles of money, they both retired. Claude played golf, Martha played bridge -- when she wasn't collecting old silver. The Terrells had married eight years earlier, a second marriage for both, after their first matrimonial forays ended in divorce. Each had two adult children. Claude's son Eric was thirty-one and married. Daughter Erin was twenty-nine and single. Martha's daughter Pamela was thirty, married, with one child. Son Colin was twenty-seven and unmarried. Not long after their wedding, the Terrells had purchased life-insurance policies with Wilcoxin's company. The policies had included the standard suicide clause, designed to discourage people from promptly killing themselves to benefit their families. The clause stated that if the insured committed suicide within two years after the policy issue date, the insurance company's liability was limited to a return of the premiums paid. The suicide clause on the Terrell policy was no longer in effect. The insurer was now obligated to pay the beneficiaries, whom the Terrells had designated in what should have been a straightforward, logical fashion. Should have been, that is, until words like homicide entered the equation. "You're familiar with the Slayer Statute?" Wilcoxin asked. "California Probate Code Section 250? Indeed I am." "The medical examiner can't say who died first. The police can't figure out which one killed the other. You see my problem?" "Indeed I do." And it was a doozy. The California Slayer Statute says that a person who "feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent" is not entitled to any of the decedent's property, interest, or benefit, which then goes to the heirs "as if the killer had predeceased the decedent." So what did the Slayer Statute have to do with the Terrells' life insurance policies? Everything. Under normal circumstances, if Claude died first, the money from his insurance policy went to his primary beneficiary, Martha. If Martha was no longer living at the time Claude died, the payout went to his secondary beneficiaries, Claude's two children, Eric and Erin. If Martha died first, the money from her insurance policy went to her primary beneficiary, Claude. If he was no longer living when Martha died, the payout went to Martha's secondary beneficiaries, her children, Pamela and Colin, then to her tertiary beneficiary, Pamela's young daughter. But if the deaths were murder-suicide, normal went out the window. The law assumed the killer died first. So when it came to distributing the estate, the scenario went like this: If Claude killed Martha, then turned the gun on himself, the law figured Claude died first and Martha was his beneficiary. Since Martha was also dead, her beneficiaries would get the money from Claude's life insurance policy–plus the payout from Martha's life-insurance policy. And if Martha killed Claude, then herself, the law said she died first and Claude inherited. So Claude's beneficiaries would get the money from Martha's insurance -- and Claude's insurance money, too. It was a lot of money. No wonder the beneficiaries were fighting. The winners got all the slices in the big, juicy pie. "Why don't these people just split the money four ways?" I asked. Wilcoxin's pained expression told me I didn't know all the nuances of the insurance biz. Maybe not, but I knew about greed. "It's not that simple." I smiled. "No, I suppose not. It never is, where money is involved." "There's going to be a hearing in a couple of weeks," he said. "The court may rule on which of the Terrells died first based on the existing evidence. Or that the estate can be divided evenly. But until that happens, my company has to make a good-faith effort to determine who gets the money." "Why can't the medical examiner make that call?" "He can place time of death to the hour, but not the minute. He says they died too close together for him to be sure." "Suicide note? Gunshot residue? Fingerprints? Weapon position?" Wilcoxin pressed his hands to his temples. "No suicide note. Gunshot residue on the right hands of both decedents. Prints of both decedents on the weapon, which was registered to Claude and usually kept in a locked drawer in his nightstand. The gun was found under the table in the breakfast nook. Odd place for it to wind up, given the position of the bodies." "I have to hand it to you, Mr. Wilcoxin. This one is a stinker." "Will you take the case?" he asked, naked pleading in his voice. By now I was thoroughly hooked. So I might as well follow the line and see where it led. "All right. I can't promise anything. But I'll give it my best..." I almost said "shot" but caught myself in time. "I'll need the police report, autopsy results, and lab analysis. You have crime-scene photos?" He nodded, looking queasy. "They're awfully grim." "They usually are. Right now I want a look at the report." He handed the report across the desk. I began to read. The Terrells became the late Terrells on a Friday in May, courtesy of bullets in their brains–one each. Housecleaner Estrellita Mejia arrived at approximately one o'clock that afternoon. She opened the front door with her key, went back to the kitchen, and found two bloody corpses on the floor. She ran screaming into the street, alerting a gardener working at a nearby house. He summoned police with his cell phone. Initially the Alameda Police Department viewed the slayings as a home-invasion robbery gone bad. But nothing had been taken. Claude's wallet, full of cash and credit cards, was on his dresser. Martha's baubles were still in her jewelry case. The purported burglars ignored a cabinet full of valuable silver. That pretty much eliminated the robbery theory. On the surface, it did look like a murder-suicide. Did Claude kill Martha and then turn the gun on himself? Or did Martha kill Claude, then take her own life? And why the hell hadn't one of them left a note detailing all the whys and wherefores? I looked up at Wilcoxin. "No reason?" He shook his head, his voice edged with frustration. "Out of the goddamn blue. The cops talked to family, friends, business associates, neighbors, anyone, anywhere, who might have known or met the Terrells. There's no apparent reason why Claude would kill Martha, then kill himself. Or vice versa. They were both in excellent health. They had no money problems. From all reports they were a happy, loving couple." Happy, loving couples don't usually blow each other's brains out. So maybe the Terrells weren't as happy and loving as everyone thought. Or maybe something else was going on here. "I'd like to take a look at the house." Wilcoxin pulled open a desk drawer, fished out a brass key on a metal ring, and handed it to me. "The house is vacant, can't be sold until the estate is sorted out." I fingered the cardboard tag with the Terrells' name and address printed in black ink. "Who else has keys?" "All four heirs." That didn't sound like a good idea to me. He noticed my raised eyebrows. "The Terrells gave each of their children keys when they bought the house." "The heirs have access to the property?" "After the police took down the crime-scene tape, the lawyers let them remove personal belongings -- family photos, clothing, things like that." "What about everything else, like jewelry, and Martha's silver? I assume they're not still at the house." "The lawyers put all the rest, except the furniture, in storage. It'll stay there until the lawyers figure out who gets what. The wills are more complicated, but that's the attorneys' battle. My battle... My concern is who gets the money from the insurance policies." "Does the housecleaner still have a key?" Wilcoxin shook his head. "That's hers." "Any of the neighbors have keys?" "Not to my knowledge," he said. "I'll give you the code for the alarm system." I left with Wilcoxin's headache. I spent the rest of that Friday afternoon in my Oakland office, examining the Terrell file and making some notes of my own. Saturday morning I drove to Alameda. The Terrells had lived at the end of a wide, tree-lined street in a part of town known as the Gold Coast, full of solid old homes. I'd grown up in a Victorian house nearby. The street, like others in this section, dead-ended at the lagoon which had once been the shore of San Francisco Bay, until the late 1950s when developers had filled in a portion of the bay to create the area called South Shore. The Terrells' house was a two-story stucco that looked as though it dated to the nineteen thirties. I parked in the double driveway and let myself in the front door. After deactivating the security system, I stood in the entryway for a moment, getting my bearings, waiting for... What? Vibrations, maybe, or feelings. I've felt it at other crime scenes. I felt it here...
All material on this web site © 2002-08 Janet Dawson. Art by Ron Bucalo.
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"Why would one shoot the other?" I asked. I like to know why things happen.