by Blake Banner
“I hear you, Reverend. We wll be as sensitive as we can.”
We shook hands and made our way back to the car.
THREE
Instead of going back to the precinct, I turned right on Van Nest and then left onto Paulding and pulled up in front of Doyle’s Pub. We grabbed a couple of beers and went to sit at a small table by the window. Dehan started talking while I took a pull and wiped the froth from my mouth.
“Okay, brief review of the facts: Sylvie is home alone with her newborn, Mary. The kid Ahmed is out in the garden doing the gardening. Neighbors—and you would know this if you had read the file—reported that they saw Simon arrive home in his car shortly after seven.”
She paused to drink, smacked her lips and sighed. I interrupted her.
“He lets himself in and finds that the lights are off. She made a point of that and she is not there to greet him. He was the kind of man, I suspect, who would have expected his wife to be there to greet him, with his dinner ready. But she said she heard him calling out for her.”
“So why were the lights off and…”
I pulled a face. “I don’t like ‘why’. It is too open. What was it that stopped her from putting on the lights, as she would normally have done? Focuses the question a lot more keenly. What was it that stopped her from being at the door when he arrived? I wonder if there was a meal being cooked…”
“You done, Sensei?”
I nodded.
“So, something unusual has happened before Simon gets home that has prevented his good wife from preparing for his homecoming.” She raised a finger. “Now, things happen pretty quick at this point. Simon is struck forcefully in the ribs and on the jaw. The medic’s report says he was bruised, pre-mortem, on his left floating ribs and on the left side of his mandible. Which may have caused him to collapse on the floor. He was found still wearing his coat, stabbed in the chest, and, as Sylvie said, with his briefcase still by his side. All of which suggests he was barely through the door when he was attacked and murdered.”
“You said stabbed in the chest, not stabbed in the heart.”
“Yes. He was stabbed right through the sternum, at the height of the third intercostals.”
“Through the sternum? You’re sure?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think? You think I’m sure?”
“I think you’re sure.”
“The blow must have been delivered with considerable force, which adds weight to the theory that he was lying on his back at the time he was stabbed. So his assailant was able to put all their weight behind the knife.”
“Okay, so the picture suggests that the killer was the unknown element that prevented Sylvie from putting on the lights and dutifully greeting Simon at the door. And, as soon as he came in, the killer struck. The position of the body was, if I am not mistaken, at the foot of the stairs…”
“Correct, which would suggest that the killer was either on the stairs or up the stairs when Simon came in the door.”
“And from what Sylvie has told us, she was found sitting on the stairs, with the telephone in her hands. The actions around the trauma all center around the stairs.”
Dehan nodded. “The 911 call was made from the phone she was holding.”
I stared at the dry rings on the mahogany tabletop, seeing my imagined version of the Martins’ entrance hall. “So the idea is that Sylvie is being held upstairs by the killer. Simon comes home, calls her, and the killer rushes down, punches him twice with his right fist, first in the ribs and then on the jaw, and, when he falls to the ground, he sits on him and stabs him through the sternum.” I frowned at Dehan. “How many stab wounds?”
She smiled. “I was wondering when you’d ask that. Two.”
“Hmm… So our killer is in a bit of a frenzy and is certainly not a seasoned assassin. He has delivered two blows where one would have been ample, and he has stabbed him in the most difficult place on the chest. While, presumably, Sylvie is standing on the stairs watching him. It is very odd.”
She turned her glass around a few times on the table, like she was trying to screw it down, or wind it up. After a moment, she said, “You’re not wrong. I keep asking myself, ‘Where was the phone?’”
She looked up at me and I nodded. It was what I had been asking myself, too.
She went on, “What did she do? Stand there and watch her husband get murdered, then go to fetch the phone and return to sit on the stairs to call 911?”
I pulled a face, like I knew I wasn’t convincing her and I wasn’t really convincing myself, either. “Maybe it was upstairs.”
She echoed my expression with a shrug. “Maybe. Same thing applies. Anyway, motive and opportunity: Prima facie…”
I smiled. “I like that. That’s good. Prima facie. It’s nice.”
“You like that? It’s good, huh? Thank you. So, prima facie, the only motive we can be sure of is Sylvie’s.”
“The life insurance.”
“It has got to be pretty generous because it is paying either for the rent on a substantial house, or the mortgage. Plus, it’s giving her enough to live on without having to work. If, on top of that, he was a miserable bastard to be married to …”
“That is a big assumption, Dehan.”
She offered me a smile that was richer in scorn than in mirth. “Come on! He saw, ‘little point in fun,’ and ‘joy was to be achieved exclusively through devotion to God.’ I call that being a miserable bastard. And remember…” She wagged a finger at me. “For a woman like Sylvie, divorce is not an option. The vow is ‘till death do us part’, and God holds them to that. The penalty is not just hell, but being ostracized by their community. Hell is just an imagined future. Being reviled and ostracized is a hard reality to live with, especially for someone like Sylvie.”
“So she was stuck with him for life.”
“For the next sixty years.”
“Unless…”
“Unless he died before that. Drink up. The next ones are on me.”
“I have to drive.”
“We are a ten-minute walk from your house. We’ll be having spaghetti tonight.”
“We are? Okay, sounds great to me.”
I watched the streetlights come on through the darkening glass in the windows, and the attitude of people’s walk shift from a businesslike stride to a homeward hurry, as evening enclosed around them, past parking cars with amber headlamps. I thought of Sylvie, curled helpless against Dehan’s shoulder, weeping, hiding from the truth in the shadows of amnesia.
Dehan sat and placed a glass in front of me. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “Sylvie hasn’t the strength, either physical or of character, to knock her husband to the ground and stab him twice through the sternum. And I would have to agree. But that doesn’t take away the fact that, so far, she is the only person with an apparent motive.”
I took another pull on the beer. “So are we talking about an accomplice? That would imply a second motive.”
“Do you ever wish you smoked, Stone?”
“Sometimes.”
“Right now I could definitely use a cigarette.”
“I read that nicotine helps ward off Alzheimer’s.”
“He didn’t actually have the disease. It wasn’t his.”
“No, he just discovered it.”
“So, who else stood to gain by Simon’s death, Stone? The kid, Mary, was only about one year old. Reverend Paul Truelove?”
“Love? Sex? If that’s the case, why haven’t they gotten together since?”
She shrugged and sipped, then shrugged again as she put down the glass. “Maybe her Christian guilt kicked in and she repented after the deed was done. But we might equally ask, how come she hasn’t gone back to Texas? Remember, Reverend Truelove was keen for us not to pursue the investigation because, and I quote, she was ‘healing, working for God’.”
“Good points all three. Plus, he has no alibi for the night in question. Still, this is mere surmise at this
stage, we need hard evidence to make it stick.”
“I will contact her insurance company tomorrow and see how big the pay out was.”
I turned it over a few times in my mind with my glass half way to my mouth. I spoke absently, half to myself, “I want to talk to the first emergency responders, too. I’m interested in the wound. It might have more to tell us…”
Walking toward my house about half an hour later, through quiet, lamp-lit streets, Dehan said, “I guess, if either one of us was in a relationship, we couldn’t do this anymore, huh?”
I looked at her with big eyes. “Do what?”
“I mean, me stay over in your guestroom, have dinner and breakfast… A husband or a wife would make that kind of hard.”
I gave a small laugh. “Are you brooding, Dehan? What’s eating you today?”
“Nothing! I’m just wondering. Jeez… I’m Jewish already! We over think everything. It’s part of our purpose in the world. Other people don’t think enough, so we over think to compensate…”
“You’re babbling again.”
“We do that too.”
“Are you trying to tell me you met someone?”
“No!”
The expression of horror on her face made me laugh. “It’s okay if you did, it’s cool. Everything is cool.”
She spoke to her boots. “I just keep wondering why you haven’t.”
Things didn’t go exactly as planned the next morning. As I sat down behind my desk at eight AM, my phone rang.
“Stone.”
I saw Dehan roll her eyes and frown-shrugged ‘what?’ at her. She made a face like a gorilla answering the phone and mouthed, ‘Stone!’
I turned away because Reverend Paul Truelove was talking to me.
“Ah, Detective Stone, I am glad to catch you early. I was wondering if I might come in and have a chat with you.”
“Of course. What’s it about?”
“So, would half an hour suit you?”
“Just fine. See you then.”
Dehan was typing. She said, “Who?” to the screen.
“Reverend Truelove. Wants to have a chat in half an hour. He’s on his way already, apparently.”
She smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm…”
“What are you doing?”
She picked up her phone and dialed. “Insurance.” She stood up and walked away on very long, slim legs. I called Frank.
“Hey Frank, Stone here. How is it hanging?”
“Loose. What can I do for you?”
“5th September, 1999. Simon Martin. Stabbed through the sternum, twice, does that ring any bells?”
His laugh was mirthless. “You know how many stabbings we’ve had in the last eighteen years, Stone?”
“No. Can you look it up? Maybe even scare up the pathologist who did the report by this afternoon?”
“Yes, maybe, no. Yes, I can look it up. Maybe I can scare up the pathologist if he, she, or it is still in a condition to be scared. No, I can’t do it by this afternoon. I’ll call you when I have looked into it.”
“I appreciate it.”
“No, you don’t. You take me for granted.”
“You’re right. I do, I’m sorry.”
He hung up.
Dehan was strolling back across the room, listening carefully to her cell. She spoke briefly, giving her email address. Then, she sat, hung up, and reached behind her head to tie her hair in a knot at the back of her neck.
“He had two insurance policies. The first covered the mortgage on the house in the event of his death. Which means that she basically got the house without having to pay for it. The second gave her an income for life of five thousand dollars a month; so sixty grand a year.”
“Holy cow. That’s like having a million bucks in the bank and living off the interest.”
She leaned back in her chair and picked up a pencil, which she put in her mouth as though it were a cheroot. “I have a perfect life. The only problem is, this pain in the ass of a husband who keeps pissing on my parade. Now, to make matters worse, he has taken out two insurance policies that make him totally redundant.”
I thought for a moment and wagged a finger at her. “We need to take a closer look at the nature of those bruises. Frank is looking up the case. He’s going to get back to me.” I checked my watch. “Let’s grab some coffee before the reverend gets here.”
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Table of Contents
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One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
LAST CHANCE
EXCERPT OF BOOK FIVE …
Two
Three