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

We need to know what happened to him, and we need to know who is caring for him.”

Her answer was immediate. “I am,” and then, “me, and he has a professional nurse twenty-four hours a day.”

Dehan frowned. “What about a doctor, or a psychiatrist? His father…”

“No!” She cut her dead. “I am his mother.”

Dehan glanced at me. I said, “You said he was diagnosed with catatonic depression.”

“He was. We employed several therapists, but they all had this same, stupid idea that the way to get him talking and responding again was to force him to go back and deal with what happened. It was the damn event that traumatized him! Why would we want him to experience it again, for Christ’s sake? I will not have it! He has suffered enough and I will not have some quack torturing him and forcing him to go through that hell again. I am looking after him, I am his mother, for God’s sake. And I know what’s best for my child!”

“Has he ever said anything, anything about…”

“No.”

“Has he spoken at all?”

“No!”

Dehan leaned forward with her forearms on the table. “He knows who killed his sister.”

Emma stared at Dehan with something close to loathing. “Well I hope he forgets! And then maybe my baby can come back to us. I wish we could all just forget! And I wish you would go away, and leave us in peace! We have been through enough and frankly, Detective, I don’t want the killer found. I don’t want the trauma and the horror of a trial. I don’t want to look my little girl’s killer in the face and relive the madness and the pain—the sheer agony—of seeing her lying there, dead! I just want to forget!” Her eyes were suddenly wild and she stabbed at her chest with her finger. “I relive that horror every day! And it hasn’t healed me! So why should it heal him?”

We sat in silence for a while. Dehan and I exchanged a look and I nodded.

“Dr. Mitchell…”

She cut across me, speaking like an automaton. “Please, just go.”

I glanced at Dehan again and we stood. I took a card from my wallet and placed it on the table in front of her.

“Any time, day or night. For your daughter.”

“Go away, and please, don’t come back.”

At the door I stopped and turned back to her. She was still staring at her mug.

“I can’t promise you that, Dr. Mitchell. We will be back, and we’ll keep coming back until we catch the person who killed Lee and Lea. We are relentless, and you would be wise to cooperate with us.”

We followed the path to the gate in the picket fence and the double garage, then walked down the driveway to my old Jaguar. We climbed in and I sat for a while staring at the key before I slipped it in the ignition. Then I sat staring down the street at the plane trees and the ugly redbrick building on the corner. After that I stared at Dehan as she tied her long, black hair in a knot behind her head.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“Yeah?” I smiled. “I wish you’d tell me. All I have is a blank.”

“You’re thinking, it’s impossible for a sixth person to have entered the house to kill Leroy and Lea by the back or sides of the house. So any sixth person must have come from the front, but that is so improbable as to be virtually impossible. Therefore we are left with two possibilities.”

“Therefore?”

“Indeed. Those two possibilities are, one, the Mitchells are shielding a sixth person who was there and killed the kids, which is also wildly unlikely, or two, it was one or both of the Mitchells.”

I sighed and drummed my fingers on the walnut steering wheel. “I’ll give you nine out of ten.”

“It was not either of the Mitchells, Stone. There is no way either of those two killed their own daughter. I reserve judgment on Leroy, but there is no way they killed Lea.”

“Based on what evidence, Dehan?”

She sagged, raised her hands and let them flop into her lap. “Well, for a start, they alibi each other. Also, the way she told her story, she was reliving that event, Stone. You can’t fake that kind of thing. That was genuine.”

“That is a very dangerous way to investigate a murder, Dehan, and you know it. Basically you’re saying she’s not guilty because you believe her.”

Irritation contracted her face. “Come on, Stone! You know me better than that! This isn’t a court of law. It’s you and me exchanging impressions.”

“OK, but as things stand, Dehan, you yourself have said that the only people who can feasibly have killed those children were the Mitchells. So, I have to ask you, in terms of hard evidence—something we can give the DA—what makes it impossible for the Mitchells to have killed their daughter?” She looked away, out of the window, chewing her lip. I added, “Or, for that matter, provide each other with a false alibi. You have to admit that her unwillingness to have anyone see, or even help, Marcus is suggestive to say the least. What did Marcus witness that she doesn’t want him to talk about?”

She didn’t look at me but just shook her head. “I don’t buy it, Stone.” Now she turned to face me. “I can’t tell you why. I can’t give you hard evidence. But I know, and so do you, that neither Emma nor Brad Mitchell killed those kids.”

I turned the key in the ignition and the big old cat growled into life. As I pulled away from the curb she was watching me, with the dappled light from the trees touching her face. “You don’t? Are you telling me you think one of them might have done it?”

“Not exactly, Dehan. I don’t know, for a fact, with the same certainty that you have, that one or both of the Mitchells did not kill those kids. I wouldn’t go