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

Her eyebrows rose and her face said she was surprised.

“You are going to close that case?”

“Yes. Just as soon as we get back to New York.”

We rose and made our way out to the car. Dr. Wagner climbed in the back of the Jaguar and Dehan and I slung our bags in the trunk.

“So you are going to close the case? Were you going to tell me about it at some point, big guy?”

“I assumed you picked up on what she said.”

“What she said?”

“Yeah, about Emma. All we need is to confirm it with Marcus, but I think it’s pretty clear, don’t you?”

She nodded a couple of times down at our baggage. “About Emma.”

I smiled and said, “Exactly. Come on, let’s get going.”

Twenty

Dr. Simone Robles was sitting beside Marcus, with the cool sunlight from the bedroom window slanting across her ebony face. She had a notepad on her knee and she was watching me carefully. Marcus was on her left, propped up in his bed. He was also watching me. Dehan was sitting on a straight-backed chair on his left, holding his hand, and beside her was Dr. Wagner, in an armchair, watching Brad Mitchell across the other side of the bed, beside Simone Robles.

I was at the foot of the bed, in another armchair. I was watching Marcus. I smiled at him and saw the flicker of a response.

“Marcus, it’s nice to see you again. You do not have to speak if you don’t want to, but I think I have worked out what happened all those years ago, in the past, and all of these people here really need to know.”

He blinked, and I saw a faint wash of color in his pale neck and cheeks. I smiled again.

“So I’ll tell you what we are going to do. I am going to tell all these people what I think happened. And if you think I am wrong about anything, you let me know. You can either interrupt me and say, ‘Come on, John! You’re talking out the back of your neck, dumbo!’”

There was a small ripple of sniggers around the room, and I saw a twitch of a smile on Marcus’s face.

“Or,” I went on, “if you want to you can tell me I’m right on the money. But if you prefer not to talk yet, you can just squeeze Detective Dehan’s hand. Once is ‘That is correct,’ twice is ‘That is wrong.’ OK?”

After a moment Dehan smiled at me and said, “That is correct.”

Simone looked at Mitchell and raised her eyebrows. He looked at me and I like to think there was a touch of awe in his expression. Who knows?

“So, you, Dr. Mitchell, and your wife were in the kitchen, as you told us, reading the Sunday papers. You had the kitchen door and windows open, and the kids were outside playing. At first, Detective Dehan and I had played with the idea that a sixth person had entered the house, either invited by one of you, or by Lee, and that that person had killed Lea and Lee. But when we examined the house we realized that the only form of access was via the driveway, and that anyone arriving that way would risk being seen by you. Also, because the kids and the shed would be invisible to anyone approaching that way, it would make the crime one of opportunism. Which made no sense because the opportunity only became apparent after the person had entered the backyard. It made no sense.

“There was also the question of escape. The killer had had no opportunity to escape by the time you reached the shed. Emma had told us that when you heard the screams you went to the window. So you would have had to have seen him leave¸ but you didn’t. And if he had left after that, you would have had to have intercepted him as you approached the shed. But when you got there it was empty. So it became very clear to us that there was no sixth person. The murder had to have been carried out by one of you.”

I took a deep breath, leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs.

“But that presented us with another problem. Though blackmail provided some motive for killing Lee…”

“No, it never did!” It was Mitchell, shaking his head. “We never took that seriously.”

Margaret Wagner interrupted him. “Oh, for God’s sake, Brad, pull your head out of your ego from time to time. You were never worried by it. But Emma was worried sick by that threat, and so was I, if you must know. Everybody was sick to their back teeth of that brat except you, because you hardly ever had to speak to the little monster!”

I saw Simone Robles smile as she made notes and raised my hand.

“Excuse me. Save it for later, please. Allow me to continue. From a police perspective, Dr. Mitchell, blackmail provided a motive for killing Lee, but it did not explain Lea’s killing. And whichever way we examined it, we came up with the same problems that the original investigating detectives found. There was no way of explaining Lea’s murder.”

I turned my eyes to Marcus. He was staring at me fixedly.

“Then it occurred to us that the explanation might be a simple one. That Lea’s death might have been an accident. That while the kids were running around she might have tripped and struck her neck on some object, like the side of a wheelbarrow, or a hoe. Then, I speculated, Emma Mitchell might have arrived first, before you, Dr. Mitchell, and seen Lee bending over her dead daughter. Already under intolerable stress from the boy’s threats and behavior, and from seeing her family falling apart because of him, she took the knife and killed him. And then, to try to deflect the blame from herself, one of you cut Lea’s throat, concealing