a new day!

Enjoy it while you CAN!

Oh my God! she thought. He’s going to kill me because I fired him.

Terrified now, she called Terry Turnock and brought him the note. They compared it with samples of Milligans writing. It matched.

On Monday at two-thirty, Milligan called Sharon and told her she would have to be at the Franklin County district attorney’s office at one-thirty on Thursday. If she didn’t acknowledge his message, he said, he would have to come for her with the police. Which, he pointed out, wouldn’t look real good.

That evening, Harry Coder called Milligan at the apartment to tell him he’d have to back off bothering the girls at the rental office.

“What do you mean ‘back off’? I’m not doing anything.”

“Look, Bill,” Coder said. “If the girls really have to show up at the D.A. s office, there should be a subpoena.”

“What does this have to do with you?” Milligan asked.

“The girls know I’m a police officer. They asked me to look into it.”

“Are they scared, Harry?”

“No, Bill. They ain’t scared. They just don’t want to be hassled.”

Allen decided to let the matter drop for .the time being, but sooner or later he was going to get Sharon Roth fired. In the meantime, he still had the apartment, but he would have to start looking for another job.

For the next two weeks, Allen job-hunted, but it was impossible to get anything decent. He found himself with nothing to do, no one to talk to. He kept losing time and his depression deepened.

On October 13, 1977, he received John Wymer’s eviction notice. He stormed around the apartment. Where was he going to go? What was he going to do?

As he paced up and back, he suddenly noticed Ragen had left his 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson out in plain sight on the mantelpiece. Why was the gun out? What the hell was wrong with him? That and the 25-millimeter Italian gun in the closet could get him sent back to prison on a parole violation.

Allen stopped pacing and took a deep breath. Maybe that was what Ragen wanted deep down, without even knowing it himself—to go back to prison, a place of danger. So he could rule the spot!

“I can’t handle this anymore, Arthur,” Allen said aloud. “It’s just too much.”

He closed his eyes and left …

Ragen’s head snapped up, and he looked around quickly to make sure he was alone. He saw the bills on the table and realized that with no money coming in from the job, they were in great difficulty.

“All right,” he said aloud. “Young ones must have clothes for coming vinter and food to eat. I vill commit robbery. “

In the early hours of Friday, October 14, Ragen slipped his Smith and Wesson into a shoulder holster and put on a brown turtleneck sweater, white running shoes, brown jogging jacket, jeans and a windbreaker. He took three hits of Biphetamine 20s, drank some vodka and left before dawn, jogging west toward the Ohio State University campus.