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

clutching at straws, Dr. Mitchell. But in investigating the murder of two children, I would rather clutch at straws than ignore a possible lead so as not to offend somebody.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a moment he opened them again.

“I am not having an affair with Dr. Wagner, and I have never had an affair with Dr. Wagner. Does that answer your question? And please, before you go blundering about in your so-called investigation, bear in mind the enormous damage you could do to my career, Dr. Wagner’s career and my family. I think, Detectives, that we have been through enough in recent years, without this ham-fisted attempt to pin my daughter’s murder on me.”

Dehan raised an eyebrow. “What about Leroy?”

He frowned at her for a moment like he didn’t understand what she was saying. “You mean Lee. You can’t be so naïve as to think that Lee’s death devastated me as much as my daughter’s. I have been a psychiatrist for thirty years, and I have been in analysis for every one of those years. I am not going to sit here and lie about the most central, important things in my life. I was learning to love Lee. I certainly cared about him and his welfare. But we all knew, from the very start, that it was not going to be easy. He was a troubled and conflicted boy and in the last year he was with us he made it hard to like him. Even so, Emma and I stayed the course and supported each other, and we were learning to love him.”

He shook his head and tears welled in his eyes, “But Lea… Not a day goes by that my heart does not break when I remember her. I long for her and weep for her. I didn’t need to learn to love her. I loved her from before she was born. It’s neurology, hormones, brain chemistry, whatever you like. That’s how human beings work. It doesn’t change the fact that she was my baby girl, I love her still and I will love her to the day I die.”

It looked sincere, but after thirty years studying the human mind, and how emotions work, I was prepared to hedge my bets.

“Were you aware, Dr. Mitchell, that Lee had told his aunt, Sonia, that he believed you were having an affair with Dr. Wagner, that he had followed you to the university and taken photographs of you?”

“Yes.” He gave a single nod. “I was aware of that.”

“Were you aware that it was his intention to blackmail you with that information?”

“He told me that, yes. He came to my den in the house, knocked on my door and came in. He showed me the photographs he had and told me he wanted a hundred bucks a week to keep silent about it. Otherwise he would tell my wife.”

The room was very quiet for a moment. Then Dehan asked, “Do you not agree, Dr. Mitchell, that what he did provided you with a very powerful motive for murder?”

His face was like granite. He held her eye for a long moment, then said, “Yes, I do. I’d say it provides a very powerful motive for murder indeed.”

Four

“I’ll tell you.” He laid both of his large hands on the edge of his desk and examined them. “I’ll tell you what I did. He sat there, across from me, with an impudent sneer on his face, and what I wanted to do was what my father would have done to me, if I had dared speak to him the way Lee spoke to me. What I wanted to do was lay him across my knee and beat him soundly with my slipper.”

He paused, and there was still anger in his eyes. “But what I did, what I did, Detectives, was to laugh in his face and call my wife. When she arrived I showed her the photographs and told her what Lee had said. She laughed too, and we tried to have a dialogue with him, to make him understand that he did not need to blackmail love out of us. We were ready to love him anyway. He ran out of my study in a tantrum and slammed his way up the stairs and into his room.”

“Will your wife corroborate that?”

He picked up his phone and dialed, then held it out to me across his desk. “Ask her yourself.”

I heard it ring a couple of times and then a cultured, female voice came on the line. It spoke with warmth.

“Hello, darling. What are you doing calling me at this time?”

“Dr. Mitchell, this is not your husband. He has given me his phone to speak to you.”

“Who is this? Is Brad all right?”

I put it on speaker. “Yes, Dr. Mitchell, he is fine. This is Detective John Stone, of the New York Police Department. I run a cold cases unit at the 43rd Precinct. We are talking to your husband about the murders of Lea and Lee. I had a question for him but he felt it was more appropriate that you answer it.”

“What question?”

“Dr. Mitchell, do you recall a time when Lee tried to blackmail your husband?”

She was quiet for a moment, then, “Why, yes, but it was an absurd, childish thing. I believe he wanted something like fifty dollars a month, or a hundred. We all laughed at it.”

“Could you tell me what happened?”

“Happened? Well, nothing happened. Brad called me to his den, where he was sitting with Lee. I remember Brad was laughing his head off and Lee was looking very offended.” She started to laugh at the memory. “Brad showed me a couple of pictures on Lee’s phone. They were of him talking to one of his colleagues at the university. Dr. Margaret Wagner. She now runs his clinic for him in White Plains. He told me that Lee wanted to blackmail him and we laughed about it. Lee was