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

“Right. Or, Lea or Marcus might have made a ‘friend.’ Sometimes the kids from these upper-middle-class families can lead very sheltered lives, and they can become really naïve.”

I smiled. “So, if any of those scenarios is right, we are talking about a layout in the house and/or yard-cum-garden, where the kids could admit somebody to the backyard without being seen by their parents, from wherever they were finishing breakfast.”

She screwed up her face. “Yeah, from which they could not be seen, but close enough so they could also hear the kids scream. But then again, far enough away that by the time they got there, the killer had had time to get away.”

As we pulled away from the crowd she slowed her pace and linked her arm through mine.

I said, “I didn’t get a chance to digest the file fully, but I do remember that they were having breakfast in the kitchen. It was a warm morning and they had the kitchen door open onto the backyard. The windows were open too. I know they have a large lawn, flowerbeds and trees. There is also a garage beside the house, and the shed is at the end of the lawn, up against some kind of a wall or a fence with trees.”

“What’s on the other side of the fence?”

I sucked my teeth and squinted up at the translucent green foliage above my head. “Another backyard, as far as I can recall. I’m pretty sure it’s another backyard.”

“So our killer has done one of four things.” I was nodding, and she went on. “He has come through the front of the house or the garage, he has come over the walls at either side, from neighboring houses, or he has come from the neighbor’s yard at the back of the house. Unless our killer is one of the neighbors, we can rule out opportunism. He was not strolling by and saw an opportunity. He actually intended to kill those kids.”

We came to the arch and I paused to stare at it with my hands deep in my pockets. It was massive, solid, immovable. The icy breeze crept down the back of my neck.

“Unless there is some form of access, like a gate, that somebody left open, or unless somebody left the front door open when they went to get the paper or something of that sort, it is really very hard to see how it could be anything but intentional, and premeditated.”

She gave a small shrug. “Premeditated, or spontaneous but after a long period of provocation, buildup…”

I nodded. “It could be that.” And after a moment, “So what are we saying then?”

She turned away, with her back to the arch, and stared away toward the crowds spilling out of Fifth Avenue.

“Dr. Brad Mitchell is very skilled at hiding his feelings and playing the part of the wise, mature psychiatrist, but in fact Lee’s increasingly challenging behavior, his insults and his threats, had started to get to him. Something happened that Sunday. They were having breakfast, like they said, they heard screams or shouts…” She shook her head. “But they didn’t both go to see what had happened. Brad went alone. Whatever he found in the shed was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He lost it and killed Leroy. How Lea came to be killed as well, we can’t know. Maybe we’ll never know. But Brad went berserk and called his wife. When she got there he told her he had found the scene like that, and begged her to tell the cops they had gone to the shed together, otherwise he would immediately become their prime suspect, being apparently the last person to see them alive.”

“Yeah, it seems to make a lot of sense, but only if you ignore the huge improbability of Mitchell killing his daughter, and we are back where we started.”

“Alternative,” she said, “it was Emma Mitchell.”

I turned and frowned at her. “With what motive?”

“I’m just examining this from every angle, Stone, and thinking aloud. Motive?” She shrugged and turned to face me. “Motives to kill are not hard to find. Maybe she and Brad have an open relationship. Maybe she didn’t give a good goddamn if he had an affair. Hell, maybe they were having a ménage a trios. Maybe,” she said with more emphasis, “Emma is a shareholder in the clinic, with a vested interest in its success, and maybe that little brat Leroy was going to screw the project up for them by revealing that they were less than conventional in their amorous affairs!” She stuck out her hand and pointed her finger at me. “Maybe—and think about this—maybe his blackmail plot against Brad failed, exactly as they described it. So Lee did some research and tried again, this time with Emma, and maybe he found that she had a lover at the Sociology Department. After all, Stone, Emma is just as liable to have an affair as Brad is.”

“That is a hell of a lot of maybes, Dehan, with not a single shred of hard evidence to support the speculation.”

“First, Stone, we need some kind of theory so that we can start looking for evidence. The guys in that initial investigation got all the forensic evidence there was to get. It led them to a blind alley. We need to think around this in a different way, develop some theories and see where they take us.”

I sighed heavily and grunted. “That is a very dangerous way to approach a case, Dehan. You know that. The last thing we want to start doing is hunting for evidence, or tailoring evidence to fit our theories.”

“I’m not advocating that. What I am saying is that the evidence we have from the previous investigation only takes us so far. So we need to develop some kind of theory, based on the evidence we have, and see if that theory takes us a little further.”

“OK,” I said with little conviction, “like what?”

She spread her