Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) Page 12

  “I don’t know what this woman was into, John, but there are photographs stored in a password protected file that you need to see.”

  “OK, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I gently shook my head for a while as we sped east and north toward the Jacobi. Eventually I said to myself, “This is like a spaghetti junction of the mind.”

  She looked at me curiously. “I think that’s the first time I ever heard you admit that you were confused.”

  I grunted. “Don’t get used to it.” And after a moment I wagged my finger. “Points that we can nail down.”

  “Not many of those.”

  “No,” I said, a little sullenly as we turned into Seminole Avenue past the oddly named Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Every time I went by I wondered if it was for people who were relatively ill. I didn’t share that thought with Dehan. Instead I said, “Marcus witnessed the murder of his sister, Lea, and his adoptive brother, Lee.”

  She nodded. “Solid fact.”

  “Emma Mitchell does not want Marcus to talk to us, or anybody else, for that matter.”

  “Also a solid fact, but possibly a misleading one.”

  “We are not interpreting right now, Dehan. We are just stating facts.”

  She pulled into the hospital parking lot and parked the Toyota in the shade of a big plane tree. As the engine died she said, “Lea’s throat was cut, Leroy was stabbed in the back, while Brad Mitchell was running to the shed. Fact.”

  “And the only people in the house were the Mitchells and their three children. Fact.”

  She spread her hands wide and shrugged. “Of the two Drs. Mitchell, only one, Brad Mitchell, has anything approaching a motive.”

  I nodded just once. “That we know of. But while Brad Mitchell has been nothing but helpful and cooperative, Emma Mitchell has been nothing but obstructive.” I paused a moment, then added, “Fact.”

  She sighed noisily through her nose and climbed out of the car. I followed.

  We made our way to the lab and found Joe in the small cubicle he called his office. He was sitting at his desk with a manila file open in front of him. Inside the file was a small stack of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. He looked up as we came in and smiled.

  “Hey, the dynamic duo. How’s it hanging?”

  “Could be better, could be worse. What have you got?”

  He arched his eyebrows and shook his head. “I don’t know. This was a file on her computer, called BM and MW. It was password protected. Pretty basic security. When we got in this was what we found.”

  We sat and he slipped the file across the desk to us. There were eight pictures. Each one of them of Dr. Brad Mitchell and Dr. Margaret Wagner. They were not at the university. They were outside what appeared to be a small, country hotel. In the first they were pulling a couple of cases out of the trunk of a car. In the next, the car had gone and they were standing, holding each other in a deep kiss. In the third one they had emerged from the kiss and she was holding his face tenderly, while he had his arms around her waist. In the fourth they were climbing the steps to the hotel entrance, arm-in-arm.

  The next four showed them walking on the beach, holding each other and also kissing. I looked up at Joe. He said, “I’m still printing. There are another twelve of them. Twenty all together. There are five taken with a telescopic lens through the hotel window which are definitely X-rated.”

  He turned the screen of his computer so we could see them, and clicked through them one by one. When he came to the hotel window, Dehan wolf whistled. He had not exaggerated.

  I sank back in my chair. My brain felt as though it was stretching like an overinflated balloon. “So, she was blackmailing him.” I looked at Dehan. “Sonia was blackmailing Brad Mitchell. So much for her concern that Lee was taking after his father instead of his mother.”

  “Not only that, but she was actually using Leroy as her go-between.”

  I shook my head, like I was trying to clear it. “But, what does that make Brad? The most cunning, devious, evil genius on the planet? How can he play it so cool and come across as so sincere?”

  She nodded. “I agree. He was totally credible.” She turned to Joe. “We confronted him with the fact that the kid had tried to blackmail him. He not only admitted it. He told us that when the kid showed him a photograph of him with this woman, he laughed and called his wife to come and see the picture. She confirmed it.”

  Joe smiled. “That’s one cool customer.”

  “Too cool,” I said. “I find it hard to buy it. He must have known that the first photograph was a shot across the bows. They must have warned him that there were more, and more incriminating. It makes no sense that he would call his wife, show her the photograph and tell her what the boy had done.”

  Joe frowned at me. “But that is what he did. There is no would or wouldn’t about it. He did it.”

  I studied him a moment and Dehan studied me. I heard myself say, “Unless somebody is lying.”

  Joe and Dehan looked at each other like I was nuts. Dehan said, “How do you figure that?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood, but there wasn’t enough room to pace, so I just made a couple of ineffectual turns with my hands on my hips. I drew breath to speak but Dehan said, “Only two people could be lying. Assume Brad killed the kids, that would mean Emma is lying about them having breakfast, hearing the screams and Brad running out ahead of her to the shed. According to her, remember, she arrived just a few seconds later. So that begs the question, why would she lie to protect her daughter’s killer? Even if it is her husband, surely murdering her daughter would be enough to overcome her loyalty to him.”

  I grunted. “I know.”

  “So assume Emma killed the kids, for some motive we do not yet know about. That means Brad is lying about having found the kids, because he is trying to protect his wife. The same question applies. This woman just killed his daughter. What possible reason could he have for protecting her—especially as we now know he was having an affair with Dr. Wagner.”

  “I know, I know!”

  “So that leaves the third option.”

  Joe said, “That they both did it.”

  Dehan nodded at him, “Exactly, that they both did it. Again, for some motive we do not know about yet. And I have to say I find it so improbable as to be fantastic, that those two would conspire together to kill their own daughter, or to protect their daughter’s killer.”

  “And yet,” I said, “one of those scenarios has to be at least partly right. Simply because there is no other possible explanation.”

  Dehan and I stared at each other for a long moment, and Joe stared from Dehan to me and back again. Then I said, “Unless…”

  Joe said, “Unless what?”

  “Unless Lea was not intentionally killed.” Dehan frowned and drew breath, but I silenced her. “Wait! Just hear me out for a moment. Maybe we are getting stuck in a rut here. We are assuming that the only person with a motive is Brad. Because he was being blackmailed by Lee and Sonia. But how do things change if, just for the sake of a thought experiment, we assume that the Mitchells have an open marriage? Let’s assume that Brad was not phased by Lee’s threat because he knew that his wife would not mind. Maybe she knew about it already and approved, because she’s having an affair or two herself.”

  Dehan made a face. “She did come on to you a bit when we first spoke to her.”

  Joe snorted a short laugh. “You old dawg, you.”

  I ignored them both and kept going. “So he happily calls in his wife and they both laugh it off and hope that by doing that they have killed off the blackmail attempt. But like Brad said, he suspected there was somebody else behind it—Sonia. And Sonia knows that it ain’t all that simple. Maybe Emma doesn’t care if Brad is having an affair, but what about the university? What about the press? Let’s not forget he is planning to open a multi-million-dollar clinic. And what about the general public’s impression of him, when he is trying to sell his servi
ces to people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse? If he is perceived as a libertine, or worse, a sexual predator who is exchanging positions of responsibility at his clinic for sexual favors, his clinic will be finished before it ever gets off the ground. Now that…,” I wagged a finger at both Dehan and Joe, “gives both Brad and Emma a very powerful, financial motive. Because she wants that clinic open as much as he does. Maybe she’s even invested money in it. We need to look into that company.”

  Dehan shrugged. “OK, but what about Lea?”

  “I’m coming to that. So, Brad and Emma conspire to kill Lee, and they set up this elaborate story on which they both agree. But before they can execute it, something goes wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  I tried again to do some pacing, but found myself a couple of inches from a steep rack of shelves loaded with various types of paper. I turned my back on it and took a single step to the center of the room.

  “There is an accident of some sort and Lea is killed.”

  “No way, Stone.” She stood and leaned against the doorjamb. “I know what you’re driving at and maybe it’s the right direction, but it is pretty hard to accidentally cut your own throat.”

  “Or somebody else’s, for that matter,” put in Joe. “Though, conceivably, an unlucky fall could cause damage to the throat that could then be disguised with a cut of a rusty knife… But to do that to your own daughter is pretty intense.”

  “If,” I butted in, “they wanted to throw suspicion away from themselves.”

  Dehan puffed out her cheeks and blew. “That is a lot of supposition. A lot!”

  “We need to talk to Frank and have him go over his notes to see if her wounds were consistent with that possibility.”

  Dehan raised her hands. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what exactly are we saying happened here?”

  “We’re not saying anything happened. We are speculating about what might have happened. Let me run through it. We have the Mitchells at breakfast on Sunday morning. We assume that Lee, under the direction of Sonia, has been attempting to blackmail Brad. Brad has told his wife and both of them are worried about the damage that Lee and Sonia could do to the project for the clinic. Now, what happens next is pretty much what they have both told us, with small but important changes.”

  Dehan stepped forward and leaned her hands on the back of the chair where she’d been sitting. “They hear the screams?”

  “Yes. That happens just as they said. But they are not Lea’s screams, they are Marcus’s screams. Brad runs into the garden, followed closely by Emma. I figure they both recognized the screams as their son’s. Brad is the first to arrive at the shed and he finds Lea lying on the floor, with her throat badly damaged from having fallen onto, say, for argument’s sake, a garden rake. It might have been a hoe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, anything with a metal edge. Try to imagine how he would react. His daughter is lying there dying, choking to death, and Lee, the kid who has been threatening to blackmail him and destroy his future is right there, watching, perhaps bent over her...”

  Dehan spoke almost dreamily, “He freaks. Rage and frustration overwhelm him. He goes crazy. He grabs the knife and plunges it into Leroy’s back, just as Emma is walking in. There is a moment or two of hysteria, and then they both realize they are going to have to call the cops and explain what happened. I don’t know which one of them decides, my money is on her, either way, one of them decides they have to make it look like Lea was killed by the same person who killed Lee. Otherwise, suspicion will fall on them. So they must alibi each other, and they must cut Lea’s throat. Marcus witnesses all this and goes into shock, which becomes chronic catatonic depression.”

  Joe gave his head a sideways twitch. “That is heavy.”

  Dehan narrowed her eyes at me. “But we are still left with the question, why the hell is Brad so willing to cooperate? Why is he willing to give us access to the kid, while Emma is so violently opposed? If they are coconspirators, they should be at one, but they’re not.”

  “Because he is a very subtle psychologist with many years of experience, and he knows that if he opposes us we’ll go after him, whereas if he cooperates, behind the scenes he can pull strings, call in favors, and even manipulate Marcus if he decides to talk.”

  Dehan dropped into the chair again. “So let me get this straight. We are now saying that Brad is the guy. We are saying that he killed Leroy and then Sonia Laplant, and that Lea was killed by accident.”

  Joe turned to watch me. I thought about it for a few long seconds and finally shook my head and said, “I don’t know.”

  Fifteen

  We walked through the cold, dappled sunlight, under the whispering trees, toward

  where Dehan had left the car. I had my cell to my ear and after a couple of rings Frank, the ME, answered.

  “I’m busy, what do you want?”

  “Aside from your babies?”

  “You can have them. I’ll even pay you to come and take them away. While you’re at it, take my wife and her mother too. Again, what do you want?”

  “You remember the Mitchell case…”

  “Yeah, hard to forget, especially in light of the Sonia Laplant murder.”

  “Right.” We had arrived at the car and I leaned against the trunk. Dehan leaned next to me. I put the phone on speaker. “So here’s what I am wondering: The girl, Lea, if she had been running, tripped and fell, and hit her throat on something hard, like the edge of a wheelbarrow, or a hoe or a rake, could that have been disguised as a knife wound by cutting her throat with the same knife that was used to stab Lee?”

  He was quiet for so long I wondered whether he had walked away from the phone.

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking. It’s pretty farfetched, but stranger things have happened. Yeah, possible, it’s certainly possible, sure. Why not? The cut would have to be rough, brutal and bruising. A razor or a scalpel would not do…”

  “But the knife in that case was a rusty gardening knife.”

  “Yes, I remember. The answer is yes, that kind of cut, administered very soon after the accident, could certainly conceal the original wound. Is that what you think happened?”

  “I’m not sure yet, Frank. I’m just exploring ideas right now. Thanks.”

  I hung up. Dehan opened the car.

  “We need to pull them in.”

  She climbed in and I got in beside her. She spoke as she fastened her belt.

  “Brad in one room, Emma in the other, and we take turns good-copping and bad-copping them. Make ’em think the other is selling them down the river. ‘Brad says it was your idea to kill Leroy,’ ‘Emma says she came into the shed and saw you stab Leroy.’ Sooner or later one of them is going to crack.”

  As we pulled out onto Morris Park I drummed a rapid tattoo on the vinyl dash and said, “What about Dr. Margaret Wagner?”

  “What about her?”

  “What’s her involvement in all this?”

  She frowned at me. “Does she have to be involved?”

  “I’m not sure. It seems to me that she and Brad have had plenty of opportunity to have sex.”

  She glanced at me again with a curious smile. “Crude…”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. If their relationship was just sex, they have had plenty of opportunity. She’s single, we are assuming, at least to some degree, an open marriage…”

  “What are you getting at, Stone?”

  “Well, you saw the photographs. They looked like a couple. They went away together on a holiday or a break. They posed as a couple, in the same car, walking on the beach…” I trailed off. “I’ve never had an extramarital affair, but as far as I know they usually involve sneaking in and out of motels while nobody is looking. But what Brad Mitchell and Margaret Wagner have seems to be more of a relationship than an affair. I mean, how long has it been going on? Several years.”

  “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

  Well, how likely is it that he would r
eceive this threat of blackmail—a threat which affected her directly—and not tell her about it?”

  “It’s not likely, at all.”

  “So, I mean, I am just playing with ideas here, Dehan, but what if she was the sixth person at the house?”

  “Jesus, Stone!”

  “We have to consider that possibility, that all three of them were involved, like in The Orient Express.”

  “So, what the hell…?”

  I sighed, feeling like the blind guy who was leading the blind.

  “OK, here’s what we do. Take me to Broadway, to collect my car. Then you go pick up Brad Mitchell. Get Sanchez and Olvera to pick up Emma. Don’t let Brad and Emma talk to each other. I’m going to go get Dr. Wagner. We’ll interview the three of them at the same time.”

  She didn’t reply for a while, then said, “What if they refuse to cooperate? Or they lawyer up? We haven’t got enough to arrest anyone.”

  “Then we know we’re onto something.” I sighed again, feeling restless, like I was missing something. “One thing is really clear to me, Dehan. The blackmail and the murders are intrinsic to each other. But…,” I gently beat my brow with the heel of my hand, “I am also aware that I am not seeing something. Something fundamental. I am overlooking something obvious. It is right there, staring us in the face… But I’ll be damned if I can nail down what it is.”

  “I gotta tell you, sensei. This time I think we are on the wrong track somehow. I know.” She held up one hand. “I know, the pool of suspects is almost nonexistent, but I don’t love any of them. They are all possible, but not a one of them goes ping.”

  She dropped me at the French Roast and headed off south down Broadway toward the Psychology Department. I climbed in the Jaguar and headed north toward the Alexandra Hamilton Bridge, and White Plains.

  The drive took me a little less than forty-five minutes and at shortly after noon I pulled up outside the clinic and walked into the cool, echoing vault of the reception. There was an attractive woman in her late thirties behind the reception desk, who watched me approach with a smile and an arched eyebrow. I showed her my badge and she arched both of her eyebrows.