Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

while. When he got back from the war, I looked in on him, mostly because I was working my way up at the bank at the time and I wanted him to invest whatever money he made while he was in the military.”

He took a long wheezing breath. “He did and he would come in every couple weeks to check on things. Mostly, I think he just knew I would listen to him. We became sort of friends, I guess. After the murders, he started to come in a bit more often. I guess I was like his therapist in a way. He would tell me everything about the investigation.”

I said, “The investigation into the murders that you orchestrated.”

He nodded.

“And since Victoria survived, you wanted to know everything you could.”

“Yeah, that bitch.”

I kicked him again.

Victoria made some horrible choices, but she didn’t deserve to be shot. And if I was being truthful, I couldn’t muster the strength to dislike her.

“Keep going.”

Jerry grimaced, then said, “So Mike told me everything about the investigation. One day, I asked him about Victoria, asked if she had any suspicions. But, like everyone else, she just thought she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What about the two hundred and fifty thousand that you stole from her account to give to Lowry?”

“I don’t think she ever noticed. Or if she did, she never said anything about it to me.”

“How did you get it? Banks don’t usually keep that much cash around?”

“I ordered the cash a couple days earlier. No one would have noticed. I’m in charge of all that stuff.”

“And what about after the murders, did you and Victoria keep the same arrangement?”

“Yeah.”

“And how much were you getting?”

“Fifteen percent.”

“Of the sixty grand she got each month?”

He seemed surprised that I knew the exact number. “Yeah.”

So he got $9,000 a month. Roughly $110,000 a year. On top of his banker’s salary.

“You must be a shitty fucking gambler,” I said.

He bristled, but didn’t disagree.

“When did she first approach you about assisting her in her embezzlement scheme?”

“Twelve years ago. I was at a horse track in St. Louis. I ran into Victoria and it turned out that a couple of her horses were racing. After her horses finished up, we met for a couple drinks. I’d gone to the track to try to make some money to cover a couple bad beats that I’d taken with my bookie the day before. But I’d just gone deeper in the hole. I confided this all to Victoria after a few martinis and she proposed we help each other out. I couldn’t say no.”

“And then you helped her set up accounts and trusts at your bank?”

He nodded.

“Okay, back to Mike.”

He sighed, then said, “Mike kept me updated on the investigation. He told me that he was going through one of the victim’s belongings—the stuff they had on them when they died—and he found a notebook.”

“Will’s Moleskine, his sports book?”

“Yeah.”

“So what?”

“So, my name is all over that thing.”

“Fuzz?”

“Right.”

“So what?”

“So I’m thinking that if Mike traces all those bets back to me, that I owe Will eighty large, that he might see a motive and start, you know, digging a little deeper.”

“But the case was open and shut.”

“Not for Mike. He always thought something was off.”

According to Eccleston, it had been Lowry’s statements about being fired that had nagged at Mike. Mike thought they had come off as rehearsed—lines from a play.

I said, “Tell me how you killed him. And why?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“I heard you’d been to see him. I didn’t know who you were at the time. I’d just heard this new guy in town—who used to be a homicide detective—had been to see Mike.”

“So you went over there?”

“Yeah.”

“To get Will Dennel’s notebook?”

“When Mike was forced to retire, he confided in me that he’d taken the book. That he thought there was still something to it.”

Of course, Mike never thought there was really a connection to the sports book. That was his cover. What he really thought was that Lunhill was involved. I didn’t have the time or the energy to explain this to Jerry.

“So you strangled him with a garrote?”

He nodded. “I ordered one online.”

“But Mike was much bigger than you, it couldn’t have been easy.”

Now that the cat was out of the bag, it appeared Jerry was in the mood to talk. He said, “I went over to his house late Sunday night, the day after you went to visit him. I told him my car had broken down not far from his house and that my cell phone was dead. He offered to take a look at the car. I told him that would be great but asked to use his restroom first. When I came out of the bathroom, he was in the kitchen. I came up from behind him, then I wrapped the garrote around his neck.” He paused then added, “But since he was bigger than me, I did it like they show on YouTube and pulled him backward over my back.”

That was it.

Everything about my theory had fit, except that Jerry was right-handed. I knew this from golfing with him. And this didn’t fit with the bruising on Mike’s throat. But as Jerry described it, it did make sense. Since he was smaller than Mike, he’d pulled Mike onto his back, using Mike’s own weight to help strangle him. And putting the garrote around Mike’s neck, then crossing his arms and pulling Mike onto his back, things would have been reversed. Like looking in a mirror. So Jerry pulling harder with his dominant right hand would have resulted in deeper bruising on the right side of Mike’s throat.

I asked, “Then you searched for the notebook?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you find it?”

“It wasn’t hard to find. It was in the drawer of his desk.”

That’s because Mike had just spent a day and a half copying the notebook to make a near replica that he’d sent to me.

“Then you made it look like a robbery?”

“Yeah.”

There were three loud chimes.