weren't?"
"Our guy says there needn't have been any."
"And our guys, as many as we need to convince a jury, will say there
must have been. Forget it. Can you prove that she was in the house
for any longer than she says? Her story is that she let herself in
with a key Neidholm had given her, went into the kitchen and found him
there. Have you got a time of death?"
"He was still fresh when the scene-of-crime doc got there. He'd barely
started to cool. But that's not an issue."
"The length of time she was in the house could be. The autopsy report
found no signs of intercourse on the body, so you can't argue that she
had sex with him then."
"No," Brady admitted. "Those stains were a couple of days old."
"Exactly, so you have no physical evidence of her being there other
than at or immediately after the time of death, and you have no
physical evidence of her killing him."
"Christ, Bob, we have her prints on the knife."
"You also have his. Plus, you've proved that she was in the house days
before the killing. She must have handled the knife then. That's all
the prints prove; that she handled it. Evidentially the knife will
support the proposition that Neidholm killed himself."
"Why the hell would he do that!" the American protested. "The guy's
rich, he's a sporting hero, plus he's just got back together with the
love of his life."
"By that token, why the hell would Sarah want to kill him?" Skinner
shot back. "Show me a scrap of evidence that says she might."
Chief Brady shifted in his chair. He glanced at Dekker, then back at
Bob. Eventually he reached into a folder on the table and took out a
sheet of paper, encased in a clear evidence envelope. Carefully, he
passed it across. "That was in her purse," he said.
Skinner took Ron Neidholm's letter of proposal to his wife. His face
was impassive as he read it, once, twice, three times. When he had
finished studying the words, he held it closer and peered at the
signature.
"It's his blood," Brady told him. "Remember, the autopsy report
mentions a healing cut on his left thumb. The guy sliced himself open
and signed it in blood. That's how serious he was about her."
The big Scot shook his head. "This might be evidence against me,
Eddie, but not Sarah, surely. If I'd been in Buffalo and had found
that, it might have made me think about fucking killing him."
The chief of detectives drew himself up in his chair. "It's our
contention that your wife went to confront him about this letter. We
reckon she went to turn him down, he got heavy about it, things turned
nasty and she panicked and stabbed him. The only reason we ain't
charged her yet is because the DA wants to talk to Vranic about taking
a guilty plea to second degree homicide."
"He'll also accept a plea to involuntary manslaughter, Bob," said
Sheriff Dekker. The chief shot him an exasperated look. "She could
get a pretty light sentence."
"No way," Skinner muttered.
"Think about it, please. Ron Neidholm was a local hero; if this case
goes to a jury, any jury.. . Need I spell it out."
"You heard me, Brad. No way. My wife did not kill this bastard." He
turned back to the detective. "So far, Eddie, you've told me about the
crime scene; that's all. Tell me about the rest of your
investigation."
"What investigation? We caught her in the act, or as good as."
"You did no such fucking thing, because she didn't do it. Your guys
got there before she had time to get herself together and call them
herself, that's all. Are you actually telling me you don't have any
supporting witnesses, to the relationship or anything else?"
"No, I'm not. We have two witnesses, friends of your wife, who have
testified that she and Ron were intimate during their college days.
They say that when he went off to play football Sarah dumped him, and
went to New York, then Scotland, where she met you. He never married,
or had any long-term relationships; when they met again recently, the
witnesses say he was ecstatic'
"How did they meet again?"
"At the home of one of the witnesses."
"Babs bloody Walker!" Skinner exclaimed.
Brady looked alarmed. "I can't tell you that."
"You don't have to, man, I know her all too well. The little bitch put
them together, and she did it with malice in her mind. Sarah never
talked to me about Neidholm until Babs told me the whole story,
embellished,
I dare say. You put her on the stand and, under oath, I will have
Vranic crucify her.
"Who's your other witness?" he demanded.
"Again," the chief protested, "I can't give you her name. I will tell
you that she drove past Neidholm's house last Saturday, and saw them
get out of his car. She says that they appeared very affectionate
towards each other. Later she drove past in the other direction, on
her way home. She saw Sarah through a bedroom window; she was
naked."
"Did she tell anyone about this, apart from you?"
"She told the first witness."
"Then you might as well give me her name, for you can bet that Babs
Walker will have told Sarah she was seen, and by whom."
Dekker nodded to his detective. "Might as well, Ed."
"If you say so. The woman's name is Alice Bierhoff."
"So who else did dear Alice tell about my wife and big Ron the football
stud?"
Brady blinked. "I don't know."
"You mean you didn't ask her?" Bob exclaimed.
"Hell no. How would it have been relevant?"
"If you can't fucking see that.. ." he retorted. "It would introduce
someone else who knew about the relationship. Another woman, say?
Another woman who had designs on Neidholm herself?"
Sheriff Dekker held up a hand. "Hold on, Bob. You're getting ahead of
yourself."
"Maybe so, Brad, but you get my point. This case has not been properly
investigated. Eddie," he snapped. "Did your forensic team search for
the presence of anyone else in the house?"
"There were no prints, other than those of Neidholm and your wife."
"Killers often wipe them, man. But what they can't do is pick up every
single body hair that might fall off them, or every single soil sample
they might bring on to the scene on their shoes. Did you search for
extraneous samples or did you simply settle for what was on the bed?"
"We saw no need to do more than we did."
"Do you see it now?" Skinner fixed his eyes on Brady, hard,
unblinking, intimidating. The man tried to look away, but found that
he was unable to do so.
"If it'll satisfy you," he replied, eventually. The words came out as
a croak.
"Satisfy me? What sort of a fucking investigator are you? Eddie,
every miscarriage of justice that I can think of came about because of
coppers like you, people who went for the first obvious solution and,
because the facts seemed to fit, didn't bother to look any further. A
detective has a public duty to carry out a complete, exhaustive
investigation of every case, wha
tever the circumstances. There is no
such thing as enough evidence, especially when there is the slightest
possibility that some of it might actually disprove the guilt of your
obvious culprit." He stabbed the air with his index finger, aiming it
straight at Brady.
"So yes, you get your forensic team back on the job, if they haven't
contaminated the whole damn scene, and get them looking for traces of
someone else, the person who actually killed Ron Neidholm. And as for
the Bierhoff woman, if you won't interview her properly, then I
will."
"Now wait a Goddamned minute," Brady squealed. "You cannot do that.
I'll arrest you if you try."
Skinner glared at him, until the man flinched, visibly. "Bring help,"
he murmured. "Lots of it."
"Now, gentlemen, please," Dekker exclaimed. "Let's cool our tempers
here. Bob, you have made your point. There are things that need to be
done in this investigation that haven't been. They will be, though,
I'll see to that. However," he continued, "I have to say, as a lawyer
as well as sheriff, that I still see a pretty good case against Sarah.
On the basis of what we have now, we have to proceed. You mentioned
politics a while back. Given the victim, if we just let her walk on
this, the flak would be unbelievable. We're going to need more than
alternative theories to keep this away from a jury. I'll go as far
with you as I can, but..."
"Give me twenty-four hours," Skinner asked, his voice calm once more,
'until you charge and arraign her, and keep her name secret till then.
Plus, I want to go with Eddie as an observer when he re-interviews the
Bierhoff woman .. . I've never met her; he doesn't have to tell her who
I am ... and I want her and Babs Walker warned that there will be
consequences if they leak Sarah's name to the media before any charges
have been laid."
Dekker nodded. "You can have all of that. The last part's already
been done. The DA himself laid down the law to the wits about talking
to the press." He turned to the chief. "Eddie, when will you see
Bierhoff?"
"What's wrong with now?" Skinner rumbled. "The clock's ticking
already."
Forty-Nine.
"We've got to take a decision on this, Stevie." There was a degree of
impatience in George Regan's tone, but Steele tolerated it, partly
because he liked the gruff detective sergeant, but mainly because this
time he knew that he was right.
"Go on, then," he conceded. "Talk it through."
"Okay. We've been through the Candela and Finch staff lists,
concentrating on males, because whatever the Vargas woman might have
put in her picture, the God who made that wind-up call to Andrea
Strachan was definitely a man.
"We've still got Sheringham in the frame as a suspect, but without any
supporting evidence that puts him in possession of the materials it
took to make the incendiary device, that's all he'll ever be. Plus,
though he accepts that the call to the girl was made from his phone, he
maintains someone else nicked it and made it."
"And that," Steele interjected, 'could only have happened during the
staff party."
"Right; that gives us a list, if we leave in the partners, of one
hundred and thirty-seven males, one hundred and nineteen, if we take
them out. Take away Sheringham and we've got a hundred and
eighteen."
"But were they all there?"
"I've asked Mr. Candela that; he checked and told me that eleven staff
members were out of town on business last Friday evening. So we've got
a hundred and seven men potentially in the frame. After the incident
on Saturday we interviewed all the staff members who were there, and
all eighteen partners. Of the staff people we spoke to, twenty-three
of them were males, not counting Sheringham."
"But can we rule out the possibility that the bomb was triggered from
outside the building?"
"No, but if we take this further, we go there second. I'd say we must
concentrate on the people who were actually inside the room. Even at
that, though, Stevie, if we're going to be thorough and not rule out
people on grounds of importance, we've got a list of forty-one. I've
got all their statements sorted out for us to go through in detail, but
I've had a quick shuftie through them, and nothing jumped out at me.
None of them even mentioned Andrea, so how will anyone have spotted
someone less noticeable?"
Steele nodded. "I take your point. I don't expect to get anything
from the statements either, but they're all we've got. We can't get
search warrants for forty-one people, forty-one bloody lawyers at that.
And we can't exactly ask all of them to talk to Andrea on a mobile
phone and say "Hello, dear, this is God". It's a nice idea," he
chuckled, 'and it might even be good therapy for Andrea, but it's not
on. No, George, I agree with you. We'll probably have to go through
these statements again, and maybe even re-interview a few people, but
it's all just to show the bosses that we haven't stopped trying. This
investigation is stalled, stuck, stone cold."
Regan sighed. "Still, best get on with it, and keep Dan Pringle
happy." He reached for a pile of statements on his desk. "Do you want
to split these down the middle?" He glanced at the inspector, and saw
that he was staring ahead at nothing, with a frown on his face.
"Stevie?"
"What? Oh sorry, George. I was away for a minute, thinking of
something Andrea said to me at lunch, and what it might mean." His
eyes narrowed as he looked at his colleague. "What if our getting
bogged down in this was the whole idea?"
Fifty.
Bob Skinner had often wondered exactly what a soccer mom was. As he
looked at Alice Bierhoff across her comfortable, well-furnished living
room, he began to understand. She was a classically pretty woman, and
had an outdoor look about her, well scrubbed and with an all-embracing
enthusiasm shining from her eyes, and a smile permanently on her
face.
There were pictures of her son Byron all over the room, in various
stages of growth, from infancy to twelve; understanding moved a step
closer for Skinner when he saw that the most recent showed him in his
football kit... as is true of most Scots, soccer was an alien term to
him. There were no photographs of Mr. Bierhoff. They must have been
removed, Bob guessed, after the stockbroker shocked the neighbourhood
by moving in with a cheerleader from a college basketball team.
Eddie Brady was still seething quietly at his presence, but Dekker had
stood firm. Skinner had been included on the interview, with Brady and
Sergeant Madigan; he had been introduced simply as a colleague from
another agency. Bizarrely, Alice Bierhoff's bland nod and smile at the
description had made the image of Johnny Rotten flash before his eyes,
as he looked at her, the chorus of the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant' ran
through his brain.
He stood by the window as she served tea to the two Erie detectives. He
&nb
sp; had declined; he had drunk enough American tea in his time.
"So you're chief of detectives, Mr. Brady?" Alice twinkled as she sat
opposite them. "I guess I'm honoured. What can I do for you?"
Brady sipped his tea, and gave a short, spluttering cough. "Sergeant
Madigan and I," he began, when he had recovered, 'would like to go over
a couple of points in the statement you gave our colleagues, after Mr.
Thursday Legends Page 31