Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) by Blake Banner (most inspirational books of all time .TXT) 📗

very offended and ran off. Poor boy. He was having a lot of trouble adjusting to a new way of life. Do I understand you have reopened the investigation?”

“Yes, Dr. Mitchell. Somebody has come forward with new evidence, but please don’t get your hopes up. The evidence is pretty thin. We’ll be in touch.”

I handed back the phone. “I’m sorry to have caused you distress, Dr. Mitchell. If something like this turns up, we have to look into it.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything. I glanced at Dehan. She shook her head and we stood. “Thank you for answering our questions. If anything comes up, we’ll be in touch.”

“You’re going to keep investigating? The other detective gave up almost immediately.”

“I can’t promise anything, but we’ll have a look at it. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes sees things that weren’t apparent before.”

He lowered his eyes and bit his lip. “Sometimes I have wondered…”

“What?”

“That blackmail business. I have wondered sometimes whether he was not alone in that. Perhaps I should not have laughed. Perhaps I should have taken it more seriously. Perhaps there was somebody else behind it. And when it didn’t work out…”

Dehan was frowning. “Have you anyone in mind?”

He heaved a big sigh. “It is so hard to be sure what my motivation is. Am I projecting? Am I jealous of Sonia, because he was close to her and rejected my paternal love? He was in touch with Sonia, a lot, you see? And I know he told her about his blackmail idea…” He looked at me hopelessly and spread his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I have someone in mind or not.”

“We’ll look into it. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.” At the door, with my hand on the handle, I stopped and turned back. “Dr. Mitchell, would you have any objection to our visiting the scene later?”

“I confess I can’t see much point, but if you think it will help…” He shrugged.

When we got down to the street again, a breeze like a cold, steel blade was moving down Washington Place, stabbing people in the back, creeping through the folds in their clothes, and seeping in among their ankles to chill their blood. Dehan shuddered as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She hunched her shoulders and moved toward the car with her hands in her pockets. I felt the cold creep into my shoulders and make my skin crawl, shoved my hands in my pockets and jerked my head toward Washington Park. “Let’s walk.”

“Why? What’s wrong with driving?”

“Come on, walking helps me think.”

She fell in beside me, shaking her head. “You know it’s cold, right?”

“Is he a good actor, or is he telling the truth?”

She shrugged with one shoulder. “He was pretty convincing.”

“He has been in analysis for thirty years. Method acting and psychoanalysis are not a million miles apart from each other. They both involve exploring deep unconscious emotions, and tapping into them to understand them. A man who has spent thirty years studying his own unconscious emotions, and analyzing them, could conceivably give a very convincing performance by evoking the emotions he wanted to portray.”

She watched her feet a moment as she walked, and seemed to recite, “Indignation, grief, regret, confusion…” She paused. “When he called his wife, that could not have been rehearsed.”

“I agree.”

“In the first place they had no time. In the second place, I can’t imagine many women covering for a husband who is suspected of infidelity. I mean, nobody has a greater interest in knowing if he’s been unfaithful than his wife, right? And if he had been unfaithful, Dr. Margaret Wagner has got to be a pretty good candidate as his long-term colleague and potential partner. She’s also a looker. But his wife didn’t seem in the least bit suspicious of her. Or him, for that matter.”

I grunted. “I want to talk to Emma Mitchell, without her husband present, and hear from her what went down that day, and if there was any time during the morning when she was not with her husband.”

She glanced at me. “We can get that from the file. But I really don’t think she’d cover for him, especially as her daughter got killed in the same attack, and her son was driven into severe catatonic depression.”

“I know,” I sighed, “and I agree. “But there is something about this that just doesn’t hang together right.”

We had reached Washington Square East, by the NYU Arts and Science building, and crossed over to the park entrance. As we walked through the gates she said, “We need to have a good look at the backyard. I mean, essentially, what we are saying is that, if Brad Mitchell didn’t do it—and I don’t think he did—there was a…” She counted out on her fingers. “Emma Mitchell, Brad Mitchell, Lea, Lee and Marcus—that’s five. So what we are saying is, there was a sixth person either in the house or in the backyard. That person got into the garden shed when the kids were playing in there, and killed Lea and Lee.”

I nodded. “Testimony from Emma and Brad states that they were the only people there aside from the kids.”

“But clearly, if Brad is not our killer, then there was a sixth person. So one of the questions we need to be asking is, how did that sixth person get in?”

We moved in among the crowd at the gate and then turned right, away from the people and in, under the trees. Dehan kept talking.

“Was he knowingly admitted? In which case, are they shielding him?”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Yeah, I know, but psychiatrists and sociologists are all a little crazy, Stone, and we have to ask the question, even if we then dismiss it. Did one of them admit that sixth person?”

“OK—”

“So we have to ask that, and we also have to ask, did one of the kids let him in, and the parents didn’t know?”

“Which brings us to Mitchell’s suspicion that Lee might have had