by A W Hartoin
“No, Dr. Watts, I haven’t served you cheap wine.”
“Good, because I’m busy.”
Deanna downed her glass and said, “What exactly are you going to do?”
“Run some tests to determine the murderer,” said Dr. Watts.
Robin’s hand shook slightly. “Tests on us?”
“Who else? The murderer is in this room.”
Robin’s wine sloshed and dripped onto her white capri pants. “Dammit.”
John handed her a napkin and took the glass. There wasn’t an expression on his face, but I could tell that to him spilling a Premier Cru was a greater crime than murder.
Dr. Watts took another sip, made a small humming sound of pleasure, and put the glass on a bookshelf. She clapped her hands once. “Who’s going to help with my equipment?”
“That’ll be me,” I said before anyone could offer.
I went out into the hall and nearly screamed. Flincher stood by the door with his bony fingers steepled.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
“Good question,” said Dr. Watts. “He insisted on coming.”
“Yes,” said Flincher. “I wanted to see Miss Watts at work.”
Nobody in history has ever made ‘at work’ sound so creepy.
“Yeah, well, great.” I closed the library door behind Dr. Watts and looked at the stack of equipment Dr. Watts had bungee corded to a dollie. “What did you bring?”
“Everything portable.”
“Got any luminol?”
“Always. What do you have in mind?” she asked.
“I want you to tell them that you’ve got conclusive fingerprint evidence off of these.” I pulled the half-burnt gloves out of my pocket. Dr. Watts took the baggie and shook her head. “I can’t get fingerprints out of these. It’s impossible.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that. You have your magic spray.” I grinned at her.
“How stupid do you think they are?”
“They’re not stupid at all, but Robin and Deanna watch CSI. Maybe the others do, too. The CSI effect could help us out here. None of our suspects are scientists. How do they know that the technology they see on TV isn’t real? They carry around amazing technology in their back pockets. Doesn’t CSI have a magic spray that illuminates pretty much anything at any time?”
Dr. Watts scowled. “I hate that show. I never carried a gun or interrogated a suspect.”
“Now’s your chance. It’s funny when you think about it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Fine,” I said, suppressing a grin. “Let’s just go in there, you talk about the unique characteristics of the hands that were in these gloves, and we’ll see what happens.”
Dr. Watts held up the baggie. “I might get some DNA out of these. Sweat, skin cells. They were in a fire though.”
“Yes,” I said. “DNA is good. People love DNA. Tell them you got samples and sent them to Springfield. They’ll have the results within an hour.”
“It’s not that fast,” she said.
“Lie. Lying works. My dad does it all the time.”
“This isn’t what my profession does, but I can lie with the best of them.”
I turned to Flincher, who’d crept up on me and was stinking so bad I got nauseous. “And you?”
“Me?” he asked.
“I want you in there, creeping around and looking at them. You know, what you usually do.”
“Why?” asked Dr. Watts.
“Because he scares people. I want you hitting them with your science and him being him.”
She grabbed her dollie. “That is a winning combination. Your father will be proud.”
I fluffed my hair. “Scheming is a family trait.”
Phelong and Gerry ambled up carrying their fingerprinting kit.
“Perfect. We’ll fingerprint them, too.”
“Who?” asked Phelong.
“Our suspects,” I said.
“We have suspects?” asked Gerry.
“Yes, we do and with any luck we’ll have a murderer in a minute. Grab that dollie.”
We went back in. I was pleased to see the wine glasses were empty and there was plenty of fidgeting going on.
“What took so long?” demanded Bill.
“This isn’t CSI: Miami,” said Dr. Watts. “Proper science takes time.”
Nice one, doctor.
“Who’s first?” I asked.
“For what?” asked Tim, taking Robin’s shaking hand.
Dr. Watts directed Phelong to take the dollie to the table. I rolled up Sorcha’s map and gave it to her. She whispered to me, “This is so cool.”
Er…okay.
I helped Dr. Watts unpack her autopsy equipment. We obviously weren’t going to need a rib spreader, but everyone’s eyes were trained on that thing. There was some serious frowning going on, and I suppressed a smile. The frowning got worse when Flincher started circling the room. He’d look at everyone’s hands, make a phlegmy noise, and move on. Gross and effective. The men’s brows shown with sweat and Nicole cleared her throat every couple of minutes. The only problem was that they all looked guilty and not just a little bit. They looked super guilty and they all didn’t do it. It only takes one to strangle.
“Here.” Dr. Watts gave Gerry the cord to a portable scanner and he plugged it in. It was a regular HP scanner, but everyone shifted in their seats. Dr. Watts opened a fat metal packing case and pulled out a can of luminol. She tossed it in the air, caught it like a juggler without looking, and popped off the top, aiming the nozzle at the suspects in a broad sweep. “Who’s first?”
They froze. Phelong and Gerry retreated to the door and appeared just as nervous as my suspects. I hadn’t told them anything about the plan and it was working out for me. The cops were clueless and it made them fearful. My suspects were watching them. If the cops were scared, they should be, too.
“It won’t hurt.” Dr. Watts lifted one shoulder. “Not much anyway. A little stinging.”
Nicole jolted to her feet and pointed at me. “She did it.”
“Me?” I asked. “What’s my motive?”
She wagged her finger. “You…you…I don’t know, but you did it. Confess.”
“I confess you’re an idiot. I never met Cherie before this weekend whereas you knew her well, didn’t you?”
Nicole gasped. “I didn’t. No, no. You snuck out. The front desk guy told me. He said you used your code in the middle of the night and you did it.”
“Mercy is cleared,” said Dr. Watts.
“By who?” asked Bill.
“By me. Tell them how it happened, Mercy.”
I ticked off the series of events. I got nice and detailed about the brutality and the times. Their windows all overlooked the rock garden and they knew it.
“So you were in your room during love garden part. So what?” Bill pointed at me. “You could’ve been the one in the rock garden.”
I yawned. “Drinking with my cousins and Aaron.”
“Maybe your family faked the video time and John went along with it.”
John stared at Bill and the big man swallowed hard, but he wasn’t backing down. “They’re your family. They’d lie. I heard you say that your father knows Leslie and John.”
“We wouldn’t lie and alter evidence,” exclaimed Sorcha, waking up and taking her attention off Oliver. “That’s a crime. Accessory after the fact.”
“Well, maybe she wasn’t that drunk,” said Robin. “Maybe she was faking. They probably have her all wrong on the news. She could be a sick lunatic that strangles women.”
“No, she isn’t,” said Dr. Watts. “Would you like to see why?”
The women crossed their arms.
“Yes, I would,” said Deanna. “She looks like the type.”
Hey now. Slut I can see, but crazed murderer? Come on.
Bill stood up. “She’s trying to pin it on us and you’re helping her. She killed those kids’ mother. Their only parent le
ft.”
Anthony stood up and, without a word, sucker punched Bill in his gut. “I’m left, you smelly bag of cat barf.”
Bill keeled over and gagged on the floor. Everyone jumped up and started yelling about evidence and justice and me, of course. Pick pranced around, barking and growling, nearly pulling me off my feet.
He snapped at Bill, and Anthony yelled while hitching up his jeans, “Get up and I’ll punch you again, asshole!”
John walked over, real casual, and put Anthony back in his seat with minimum effort. “You,” he nudged the groaning Bill, “shut up. Mercy’s cleared.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Cory, rubbing his head so hard it was jerking the skin up and down on his forehead. “She knows everything about what happened.”
Dr. Watts pulled out the autopsy photos of Cherie’s neck. Anthony buried his face in his hands. “She was such a good woman.”
Nicole shot him a look of hate. “No, she wasn’t. She was the bitch who killed my brother.”
“Shut up,” said Cory.
“It’s alright,” I said. “I already know all about it.” I told them what happened on the bridge. Nicole and Cory looked stunned. Anthony wept and said over and over again, “It wasn’t her fault.”
“Yes, it was,” hissed Nicole. “She did it. She did it on purpose. I hated her. I hated that she got to keep on breathing when my brother was dead.”
“Shut up, Nicky.” Cory had gone pale and jittery. “Stop being so angry. I’m so sick of you being angry.”
“I didn’t do it so who cares what I say?” she yelled. “I’m glad she’s dead. Now I can be happy. And Mercy probably did it. Everybody hated that bitch. Who knows what Cherie did to her.”
Dr. Watts held up the photo. “See here. The fingers that did this were blunt and thick.”
“So what?” asked Tim.
“It was a male of good size.” She held up my arm. “Her hands are too small.”
“So what are we here for?” asked Deanna, holding up her glass for a refill. “What do you want to do to us?”
Dr. Watts held up the luminol can in one hand and the glove baggy in the other. “I’m going to match the very unique fingerprints in these gloves to—”
She didn’t even get to the DNA part. Cory bolted off the sofa and darted across the library past the cops and out the door. Phelong and Gerry actually stepped aside to make room for him.
“Get him!” I yelled and John responded. I should’ve known he’d be the one. He pulled a .22 from his waistband and ran out after Cory. Pick yanked the leash out of my hand and darted after them.
“Pick!” I’m ashamed to say that was my first thought. Not catch the murderer but catch the dog, Chuck’s dog. If that poodle got shot, Chuck would never forgive me. I’d never forgive me and John was totally capable of shooting him.
I ran over paintings, over tapestries, and scattered pieces of armor. Cory had a plan and it was pulling stuff off the walls. What else can you do when you’re a murderous idiot. Cory’s plan didn’t stop John and they were his paintings. He ran right over the Duchess of Devonshire with his Italian loafers. Pick jumped over everything gaining speed so that I barely got a glimpse of his puffy tail as he went around a corner. I jumped over an intact suit of armor and caught up with John. “Do not shoot my dog!”
John put on speed and turned into a long hall lined with bookcases. Cory was hauling ass down the middle with Pick attached to his rear. The poodle dragged down his workout pants, exposing his pale flabby rump. He smacked Pick’s snout. There was a rip. He lost half his pants and Pick fell to the floor. John assumed a firing position.
“No!” I yelled.
Cory juked to the right toward the Japanese armory and Pick leapt at him. John fired just one shot. Cory screamed and Pick hit him in the back, knocking him to the floor. Pick had him by the hoodie, snarling and tossing his head back and forth.
“Pick!”
The poodle jerked his head up and looked at me. He was fine. Cory wasn’t. The murderer rolled around, howling and clutching his rear. “I’ve been shot. My ass. My ass.”
“You could’ve killed him!” I yelled, referring to Pick not Cory. He could kill Cory, an eye for an eye and all that. Pick was another story.
“No,” said John not blinking at my outburst.
I poked him in his breast pocket. “What do you mean ‘No’?”
John whipped out a crisp handkerchief and cleaned the gun in it. “No, I couldn’t have killed him.”
“You’re that good?”
“Yes.”
“You could’ve killed the dog.”
“Collateral damage,” said John, disinterested at best.
I punched him in the shoulder with everything I had and it was a pathetic effort since John didn’t appear to notice. “We would’ve caught Cory eventually.”
“Chasing is for amateurs.”
That cinches it. I’m an amateur.
Cory rolled around yelling, “I’m going to bleed to death. I’m dying. Help me!”
“Shut up,” John and I said together.
“But he shot me!”
“It’s just a .22, you wuss. It’s barely bleeding,” I said and turned back to John. “What are we going to do now? You just shot Cory. People are going to notice. You’ll be arrested. How is that hiding?”
John pressed the gun into my hands. I screeched and dropped it. “What the hell?”
He pushed me against a bookcase and Pick ran over growling. John pointed at the dog and said, “Quiet.”
Pick dropped to the floor and whined.
“You’re a young woman,” said John. “Daughter of a famous well-connected man. You panicked and fired a warning shot, winging him in the butt.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“When did you know that Cory did it?” asked John, loosening his grip.
I glared up at him. “When he ran.”
His grip tightened. “When?”
“Nicole reminded me earlier that Cory’s very good at memorizing facts and figures, but I didn’t know why he’d kill Cherie until I found out about Nicole’s brother.”
“Ah, yes. Cory knows a million baseball stats.”
“And he was standing next to me when I was holding my card with my code on it.”
He nodded. “That’s not enough for a slam dunk.”
“I was hoping for a confession,” I said.
“Consider it done.” John let go of me and stalked over to the writhing Cory, whose hollering had gone up in pitch. He kicked him over, knelt, pried off his hand and grabbed his rear.
I followed and grabbed John’s arm. “What’re you doing?”
John squeezed. “Why did you kill Cherie?”
Cory screamed, a piercing howl that hurt my ears.
“Stop! Stop!” I yelled.
John looked at me.
“They never confess,” I said. “I should’ve known better than to try.”
“You’ve been listening to the wrong people or should I say the good people. He squeezed again. “Answer me, Cory. I haven’t got much patience and you’re not accustomed to pain.”
Cory gasped. “I…I…”
John squeezed and was answered with a scream.
I yanked on John’s arm, but he didn’t budge. “Did you work at Abu Ghraib or what?”
“I only offered some tips,” he said.
“Are you kidding?”
“I have no sense of humor.” John dug his fingers in and Cory answered with, “I wanted her to confess.”
“To?”
“To killing Quinn. Nicole never got over it. She obsesses. If Cherie went to jail…”
“But she wouldn’t confess,” I said.
“No.” Anger flashed across his face. “She said she didn’t give the vodka to him. Lying bitch. She ruined Nicole. She ruined my life.”
“So you strangled her.”
“I didn’t mean to. It just happened. If she would’ve agreed, I would’ve
stopped.”
“It’s all her fault. She made you kill her,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s not my fault.”
I tapped John’s arm and he squeezed, not one of my proudest moments, but damn did it feel good to watch Cory writhe in pain, a man who blamed his victim.
“She didn’t give it to him,” I hissed in Cory’s ear. “You killed an innocent woman.”
John glanced at me. “Leslie told you.”
“He did.” I removed John’s hand and took the handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it to Cory’s rear. There was a small amount of blood, not nearly as much as he deserved to lose. I felt around and discovered entry and exit wounds. It was clean and through the muscle, the perfect shot with minimal damage. .22s could take some pretty interesting paths in the body. I’d seen one enter the buttocks, spiral down, and exit out the knee. Much more painful. I wish that had happened to this scumbag.
Cory howled as I pressed the handkerchief to the exit wound and John smacked him in the jaw, not a light smack but a full on brain rattler.
“Enough,” said John and he got to his feet as Tiny and Dr. Watts ran around the corner. Tiny was feeling around his waist and stopped short at where I’d dropped the weapon.
“My gun,” he said, looking at it on the carpet.
“I borrowed it,” said John. “Mercy accidentally shot him.”
Dr. Watts knelt beside me. “Oh really. I seem to remember that you didn’t have that gun.”
“Um…”
She glanced at John and narrowed her eyes. “I see.”
Everyone else came up behind her with wide eyes. Nicole screamed and ran to Cory, cradling his head. “What did you do?” she hissed at me.
I couldn’t answer. It was confess to John’s crime or out him. My fingerprints were on the gun. I was me and he was a supposedly gentile innkeeper with a well-laundered past.
John straightened his tie. “It was an accident. Mercy was only firing a warning shot. He darted into it.”
“Mercy?” asked Tiny with a furrowed brow and I shrugged as the rest of my former suspects ran up. They saw Cory caterwauling on the floor and the questions came, fast and furious.
The Troublesome Trio pushed through the gathering crowd.
“That blood looks so real,” said Sorcha, hanging onto Oliver’s arm.