Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

was simply covering the fact that he had been at the very spot where Angela died. He was covering the fact that he killed her.”

“Sure, and that is true. But it leads you back to the very first question. What made him tell us he had information in the first place? If he’d just kept his mouth shut nobody would ever have suspected he was there at all. A couple of years and he would have been out and nobody the wiser. The question was, what would drive him to tell us he had information in the first place, connect himself with the murders, but make it seem he was a witness?”

She made a face and grunted. “Yeah, that was the circle I was trapped in.”

“He needed us to know that he was there. He made that very clear from the start. And the fact that he lied about the place where he witnessed it from, made it clear to me that he had actually been on the grassy knoll, either killing her himself, or watching it.” I sighed. “Now, here is where it got a bit tricky. I began to feel there had to be more than one person involved. If he was just protecting himself, why draw attention to himself at all? He would only place himself at the scene if he was confident he could put somebody else in the frame.”

I paused and looked at them. They were both looking a little lost, but nodding. I went on.

“He confirmed this when we took him to the river and he showed us where the purse was. That was important for a couple of reasons. First of all, he needed to get up close to find the spot. How could he possibly do that if he had witnessed the hiding of the purse from almost a hundred yards away at night? There was only one way he could have known so precisely where it was—and recognize the spot by a close inspection—if he had put it there himself.” I paused and smiled. “To quote Sir Walter Scott, ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ It’s a web that tends to trap the deceiver sooner than the deceived. Because, when he realized that he had to explain this to me as well, he told me that it was he, and not Jimmy, who had hidden the purse. You remember he said he had done this to secure some kind of insurance.”

Dehan was very quiet. The inspector said, “Yes, I remember, on your recording.”

I gave a small laugh. “So how is it that his prints were not on Angela’s purse but Jimmy’s were?” They both frowned. I went on, “OK, follow me here. Jimmy has handled the purse, at the bar or wherever. His prints are on it. He takes Angela to the river. He kills her. The patrol boat shows up. He runs. Wayne goes to the body, picks up the purse, leaving his own prints on it, and then what? He wipes them off? How does he do that without wiping Jimmy’s prints off? So that means…?” I looked at them both. “He used gloves. So, what? He went to the river to smoke a joint and look at the stars, chose the most uncomfortable, inconvenient spot he could find and, in May, happened to take a pair of gloves along with him.” I shook my head. “No, it’s absurd, his prints should have been on the purse, and they weren’t, which meant this was another part of the manipulation.”

Dehan said, “I should have seen that.”

I had no answer. I agreed with her. So I went on.

“And that led me to a disturbing conclusion. As I said before, if Wayne was willing to admit that he had been at the scene and hidden the purse, he had to have some kind of ace up his sleeve, somebody to put in the frame, to prove that he had not committed the murder.

“To begin with, the question, why would he implicate himself if he was guilty, would be enough. But by this stage, when he actually knew the location of her purse, he needed something more. He needed proof positive that somebody else—the person he was framing—had done it. There was only one way to do that.” I glanced at Dehan. “You remember I told you I had a bad feeling something terrible was going to happen?”

She nodded. “Cherry Pie, Noelia Gomez.”

“Her murder was intended to confirm his story, but it actually confirmed my theory. There was somebody else, an accomplice. The pressure to get the killer caught, to get Wayne’s testimony, was such that you overlooked the obvious ways in which this was not the same MO. The key, central, defining characteristic of the previous murders was missing.”

Dehan sighed. “He didn’t dump her in the river. It crossed my mind several times, but everything else…”

I shook my head. “No. Not that. The point is that Angela, Rosario and Sonia—and who knows how many more—were murdered because they were nice, demure, respectable, middle class Catholic girls. He would never have preyed on prostitutes. And that meant that Noelia died simply to put Jimmy firmly in the frame. That is why she was not thrown into the river.

“The river had proved to be a very effective way of getting rid of forensic evidence. But now they wanted to preserve it. This body had to be found. So, instead of taking her the short two hundred yard walk across the playing fields to the river, where he could dump her in the water, he took her five hundred yards into the woods, where her body would be found in a very short time. Not only that, but he went to all the trouble of wearing gloves so as not to leave his fingerprints, yet kindly donated his semen so that we