Harry Coder first met Billy Milligan when he came to Coders apartment to replace some broken screens.

“You could use a new water heater,” Milligan told him. “I could get one for you.”

“How much would it cost?” Coder asked.

“Wouldn’t cost you anything. Kelly and Lemmon would never miss it.”

Coder looked at him, wondering how Milligan could suggest such a thing, knowing he was a Columbus police officer and a part-time security officer for Channingway.

“I’ll think about it,” Coder said.

“Just let me know anytime. I’ll be glad to install it for you free of charge.

When Milligan left, Coder decided he’d keep a close watch on him. There had been a sharp increase in burglaries in the Channingway and Williamsburg Square apartments. All indications were that whoever was doing it had a master key.

John Wymer got a call from a maintenance man who had been hired about the same time as Milligan was. The man said he felt Wymer should know about Milligan. Wymer asked him to come to the office.

“I feel bad about doing this,” the man said, “but that guy’s a weirdo.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s been bugging the girls at the rental office.”

“By ‘bugging,’ do you mean bothering or—”

“I’m talking about electronic bugging.”

“Oh, come on now.”

“I mean it.”

“Do you have proof?”

The man looked around the room nervously. “Milligan told me himself. And then he repeated, almost word for word, a conversation I had in the rental office with Carol and Sharon. It was just the three of us, talking about how in high school almost everyone did drugs. Stuff like that. He also said when the girls were alone, they used dirtier language than guys in a locker room.”

Wymer tapped his fingers on the desk thoughtfully. “Why would Billy do such a thing?”

“He said he had enough on Sharon and Carol that if he got fired, he’d take them with him. If he went down, everyone— including Kelly and Lemmon—would go down with him.” “That’s foolish. How could he do that?”

“He told me he offered to make a blue box for your car, free of charge.”

“That’s true, but I decided against it.”

“Well, he also told me he planned to bug that car phone so he could keep tabs on you, too.”

When the man was gone, Wymer called Sharon. “I guess you were right about Milligan,” he said. “You’d better let him go.” That afternoon Sharon called Billy into the rental office and told him he was fired.

“If I go, then you go too,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be working here much longer.”

At home later that afternoon, Sharon answered her apartment doorbell and was astonished to see Milligan, dressed in a blue business suit and vest, looking like an executive.

“I just dropped by to tell you that you have to be at the district attorney’s office tomorrow at one o’clock,” he said. “I’ve also got to see John Wymer. If you can’t get to the D.A.’s office on your own, they’ll send a car to pick you up.” Then he turned and left.