Table Of ContentDedication
From the time my memory began I have believed that policemen
are among the finest human beings on this earth. Nothing has ever
changed my mind. My grandfather was a sheriff and then my
uncle. At the age of 19 I became a law enforcement officer myself.
With the wisdom and experience of almost four decades I have
learned that there will always be a minute percentage of bad cops.
But they are only a tiny blot on the bravery and dedication of the
mass of men and women who protect us and uphold the law.
I dedicate You Belong to Me to the millions of good cops out there—
to those who will, and too often do, lay down their lives for us.
I thank them and wish them Godspeed.
Acknowledgments
When a book is true, as this one is, I am totally dependent on facts,
documentation, and the keen memories of other people. It is also a
real challenge to gather photographs from dozens of sources, all of
whom furnished them to me graciously and with trust that they
would receive their precious originals back. I cannot say how much I
appreciate that. And, too, I have my front-line critics, my "first"
readers who point out little slips that my eyes can no longer detect.
And sometimes they have enthusiastic comments, and that's even
better. They play such an important part.
As always, the names that follow are in no particular order because
their lives and mine tend to cross again and again in different places
on this earth and for different reasons. I think they will all
understand.
Thank you Don and Susan Dappen, Phil and Margie Williams, Sandy
Harris, Jimm Redmond, Pat and Fred Wessendorf, Jodi Dombroski,
Carol Worley, Kathy and Gary Jacobi, Charles Steadham, Gerry
Brittingham, Verne Carver, Bob and Denise Evans, Maureen and Bill
Woodcock, Lisa and Martin Woodcock, Donna Anders, Bill and
Shirley Hickman, Lola Linstad, "Tex" and Gene Parsons, Fay Moss,
Gail DiRe, Diane Brace, Bobbi Bennett, Chuck Wright, Robert
Keppel, and Greg Canova.
And thank you to John Hansen, Mark Ericks, Joe Sanford, John
Boatman, Sonny Davis, Hank Gruber, Rudy Sutlovich, Don
Cameron, Duane Homan, Jim Yoshida, John Henry Browne, Len
Randall, Mike Baily, Ted Forrester, Joyce and Pierce Brooks, Rod
Englert, Dr. Clyde Snow, Mike Tando, Craig VandePutte, Bob and
Gen Lofgren, Jim Lane, Jim Swenson, Gary Svendson, Dennis Elder,
Colleen and Scott Elder, Qaude and Ernie Bailey, Millie Yoacham,
Austin and Charlotte Seth, Erik Seth and Denise Watson, Nils and
Judith Seth, and Roberta Yochim.
Thank you to Sudden Printing in Burien for living up to your name.
I am a most fortunate writer to have the backup team I do, and I
appreciate them: my editors at Pocket Books, Julie Rubenstein and
Bill Grose; their editorial assistants, Liate Stehlik and Joe Gram; my
publicist, Cindy Ratzlaff; Pocket's sensational art director, Paolo
Pepe, who always understands what I am trying to say; my gentle but
determined expert in literary law, Emily Remes. And finally, my
literary agents, Joan and Joe Foley; and my theatrical agents, Mary
Alice Kier and Anna Cottle. Bless you all!
YOU BELONG TO ME
All of us wonder how a murderer selects his victim or victims; I
think about this often. What chaotic synchronicity brought them
together? Sometimes they have known each other for half a century
or more; sometimes they are strangers until the ill-fated instant
they meet. Always I find myself thinking, "If only..." If the victim
had left a little later or a little earlier If it hadn't rained or traffic
had been lighter or heavier. If the partners in a marriage had never
met, never dated, never fallen in love and had chosen someone else
entirely. If only time could be rewound and choices that turned out
to be fatal could be revised.
But of course, real life does not allow second guessing
In the title story of this second volume, "You Belong to Me," there
were so many variables that might have changed the terrible
ending. The victim was, perhaps, not the woman the killer believed
she was. Perhaps, The killer was the last person in the world most
of us would have suspected.
***
PART ONE
Sandy
1
The slender woman lay on her stomach in the grove of pine trees,
the hot sun baking the air; even though its rays were filtered into
stripes by the pine branches above her, the sun was almost as
intense in March as it would be in full summer. Where she rested
her head the pines opened three or four hours a day, just enough for
one steady golden ray to spotlight her cheek. Her skin was exposed,
but her nakedness was hidden from the drivers and passengers
riding in the trucks and cars that whooshed by on the freeway lanes
that bracketed the pine grove. She was as good as invisible. The
woman paid no heed to the noise of the engines or to the diesel
fumes that drifted into the clean woodsy air.
***
The 1-95 Interstate snakes all along the eastern seaboard of the
United States, beginning on the border between Maine and New
Brunswick, Canada, and ending in Miami. Some who have reason to
know say that parts of 95 are the most dangerous stretches of road in
America. It is certainly one of the busiest freeways and one of the
first ever laid down across the land. Down and down 95 plunges,
from the icy winter in the north to the balmy tropical always-summer
of Florida. From Bangor to Boston to New York it rushes, skirting
Philadelphia, passing through the heart of Washington, D.C., before
it curves south through Virginia and the Carolinas. 1-95 picks up the
Atlantic Ocean salt wind passing through Savannah, and then hugs
the Florida coastline: Jacksonville to Melbourne, Fort Pierce, Fort
Lauderdale, and on into Miami, close by the sea all the way.
Families travel 1-95 as they head for Disney World in Orlando and
come home with their cars full of stuffed Mickey Mouses and funny
hats. "Snowbirds" flee northern blizzards—and then wait until the
very last moment of gently balmy Florida weather, timing their
departure so that they can enjoy northern springtime and escape the
thick, muggy heat of south-em summers. Drug runners cruise along
1-95, some of them with millions of dollars worth of drugs cleverly
hidden, and others as transparent and klutzy as Disney's Goofy.
Many of the travelers drive straight through the 1200-plus miles
from New York to Miami, senior citizens tending to drowse behind
the wheel, young men fortifying themselves with alcohol, and truck
drivers with No-Doz. All of them keep a wary eye out for local law
enforcement and the highway patrol. Everybody's pushing a little too
fast. Troopers will look the other way for five or so miles over the
speed limit; after that, the ticket books come out.
Interstate 95 passes through some of the prettiest country in Florida
as it bisects the eastern coastal counties in the central part of the
state: Brevard, Indian River, and St, Lucie. The Indian River parallels
the coast from Cape Canaveral to Port Salerno, separating the
narrow coastal islands and reefs from the mainland. Here dolphins
leap and the gentle giant manatees swim so ponderously that boats
threaten their survival as a species. Here the land is as flat as a plain,
but lush with trees and flowers that flourish in steamy heat. Orange
groves and pines, crotons and palmettos. Oleanders and hibiscus.
When it rains in Indian River County the hot drops literally pound
the earth; when the hurricanes come they can quickly transform
acres of land heavy with rows of new condominiums back into the
reefs they once were.
In recent years Indian River County has been spared the more
ferocious vagaries of nature. Hurricane Andrew devastated Miami,
but left Sebastian, Winter Beach, and Vero Beach scarcely touched.
The last hurricane to do real damage in Indian River County was
Hurricane David in 1979.
Tourism is the major industry in coastal Florida, but it is still a
civilized tourism in Indian River County. There is no sense of
crowding or traffic jams in Vero Beach. Two Florida state troopers on
each shift can handle the stretch of 1-95 that passes through Indian
River County. Of course, there are drugs here—there are drugs
everywhere, and both the county and the local departments expect to
deal with that. But a cop can still have a listed home phone number,
and he doesn't have to wire his house with a burglar alarm or glance
nervously over his shoulder all the time.
Although most of the travelers heading north and south on 1-95
scarcely notice what goes on in Indian River County, thousands of
people live out their days there, half hoping that their quality of life,
weather, and natural beauty won't be "discovered," making their area
a little Miami. They know one another, recognize obvious snowbirds,
get married, have babies, go to the PTA, and get divorced, and some
of them die there.
***
The Vero Beach Police Department is housed in a white stucco
building with bright blue trim; the Indian River County Sheriffs
Office is beige stucco, and they are both surrounded by flowering
bushes and trees. The Florida Highway Patrol headquarters for the
district is located on North 25th Street down in Fort Pierce. All three
departments work together, their boundaries touching and
intersecting. Some days, the biggest problems local cops have are the
vagrants who migrate down to enjoy a warm winter, a number of
whom are misfits and mental cases.
And some days, Indian River County has unspeakably horrendous
crimes.
Just as in California, Oregon, and Washington, there are few natives
along Florida's coastlines. Hardly anybody living there was actually
born there. Fred and Pat Wessendorf moved down from Gloversville
in upstate New York in the fifties. Fred's dad had a place in Fellsmere
in Indian River County. They were young marrieds then and had a
baby son, Martin. But they soon had three daughters: Kathy, Susan,
and Sandra Lynn. Fred worked for the Vero Beach Press Journal in
production and later became expert at the highly technical process of
setting colored photographs. For years Fred and Pat added to their
income with a paper route, stocking newspaper dispensing machines
in the wee hours of the morning.
A taciturn man who listens far more than he speaks, Fred married a
pretty woman who more than makes up for his quietness; Pat
Wessendorf says what she thinks and what she believes to be right—
whether it is^ tactful or not. She always has. She is very protective of
her children, a fierce mother hen when she thinks they are being
threatened. In the last analysis, it is probably Sandra Lynn
—"Sandy"—who gets most of Pat's energy. Sandy is the baby.
The young Wessendorfs worked hard to raise their four children.
They lived in the house that Fred's dad had owned, a relatively small
house on a big lot full of trees and flowers. When the three girls were
at an age when they needed more space and privacy, Fred built them
a kind of "dormitory'' out in back of the main house. The Wessendorf
girls were all blond and pretty, but as different as three sisters could
be. Funny that two of them would marry cops. Susan and Sandy.
Even so, the men they married seemed to have nothing at all in
common beyond their careers.
Although their son Martin moved back to New York, the
Wessendorfs' daughters all stayed close to home. Kathy and her
husband raised kids and exotic birds and pets. When she visited
Kathy, Pat Wessendorf sometimes had to steel herself, wondering
what might come wandering into the room. Sometimes it was an
iguana, sometimes some critter she didn't even recognize. Susan
worked at a bank, and Kathy and Sandy would eventually work for
the same company in Vero Beach, a real estate and investment firm.
Every Thursday, without fail, Pat and her three girls tried to get
together for lunch. The Wessendorfs and their grown children were
the last family in the world who ever expected trouble. But then,
what family ever does? They had problems, of course, the kind that
everybody runs into from time to time, but not big, tragic, shocking
trouble—not the kind that brings with it years of nightmares and
bitter memories.
2
Fred and Pat Wessendorf's kids were all individuals and seemed
more so by the late 1980s. In her early thirties, Susan Wessendorf
Dappen was unarguably the athletic daughter. Her husband Don
(Donny to his friends) was a lieutenant with the Vero Beach Police
Department. Chief Jim Gabbard invited the spouses of his officers to
use the fully equipped gym at headquarters. Susan was there several
times a week after work. She and Don jogged, usually taking their
dog, Casey, along, and swam in their own pool,
"None of us girls really ever got into cooking," Sue remarked matter-
of-factly. "Not me or Sandy, at least."
Don Dappen has never minded. Sue concentrated on her very
responsible job at the bank and was a great mother to their two kids.
Moreover, Sue was absolutely fascinated with Don's career from the
beginning. Being a policeman's wife is one of the hardest jobs in the
world. Some wives don't want to know what happens on a day or
night shift. Knowing makes them more frightened for their
husbands. The job is easier for a policeman to handle when his wife
cares, though. And Sue always did.
Don Dappen became a cop when he was twenty years old. Stocky and
muscular, a friendly man—but one with a subtly unmistakable air of
authority—he made detective at twenty-three.
A few years ago Don Dappen could easily have seen the end of his
career—and his life—when he took a chance at foiling a major drug
deal. A twenty-eight-year-old Fort Lauderdale man and his partner, a
forty-eight-year-old New York resident and a licensed pilot, had
loaded a twin-engine Piper Navajo plane with fifty-six bales of
marijuana weighing 1,300 pounds and headed somewhat
precariously north from Miami. They made the mistake of stopping
at the Vero Beach Municipal Airport to refuel.
At 9 p.m. on a Thursday night the plane taxied past the Federal
Aviation Administration's flight service center, and the air traffic
controller noted that the numbers on the plane did not match the
numbers the pilot had radioed to the tower on landing.
The controller notified the Vero Beach Police Department, and Don
Dappen responded in an unmarked car. The Vero Beach dispatcher
informed him that the plane currently being refueled had serial
numbers N4469R—numbers that matched those of a Piper Navajo
reported stolen out of a Miami airport.
Don Dappen, who would later shake his head when he remembered
the incident, realizing in retrospect how it might have ended,
watched as the white Navajo, loaded with two hundred gallons of
fuel, began to taxi slowly down the runway. Dappen turned on his
blue bubble lights, hit the siren, and he drove directly onto the
airfield, deliberately cutting in front of the moving plane.
He expected it to stop, but the pilot didn't even slow down. Instead
he revved up his engine. Don Dappen pulled ahead of the plane while
a Vero Beach patrol car raced along beside it. The policemen
intended to at least slow the stolen plane.
At that point they were going eighty miles an hour. "He came up
behind me real fast," Don recalled. "He just kept going. He didn't
have any intention of stopping. All I could see from the whole back of
my car was his headlights..."
Playing a dangerous game of near-misses, Dappen veered off the
runway, and then back in front of the Navajo. The pilot became
airborne—but barely—skipping over the top of Dappen's car at no
more than fifteen feet.
Weighed down by the bales of marijuana, the pilot couldn't get high
enough to clear a cabbage palm tree at the west end of the airport.
His left wing slammed into the palm, and the plane spun so violently
that it ripped apart and catapulted through the darkness into the
thick undergrowth at the end of the main runway. It ended in a
smoldering heap, leaking the gas it had just taken aboard. Don
Dappen and his fellow officer, along with firefighters, pulled the
wounded drug traffickers from the wreckage.
"It was pitch dark," Dappen said. "You couldn't see anything, and
there was an odor of nothing but gasoline."
Miraculously, the wrecked $245,000 plane didn't catch fire. Just as
miraculously, the pilot and his partner survived, although they
needed a hospital stay to recuperate. They were charged with
trafficking marijuana, aggravated assault, resisting arrest with
violence, and grand theft.
"The chase didn't get to me until I got home," Don Dappen said.
"Then I started to think about it..."
Sandy Wessendorf met her cop when she was still in high school. She
and Timothy Scott Harris came together like two people in a novel,
their meeting as close to a woman's romantic fantasy as you can get.
Sandy was only sixteen, and Tim was twenty-one, those five years a
wide stretch at that point in their lives. Had they been even a few
years older, no one would have raised an eyebrow. But Sandra Lynn
Wessendorf was a junior in high school, and Tim Harris was already
a police officer in Sebastian, Florida, the tiny hamlet where she lived.
