Two Parts Bloody Murder

by Jen J. Danna

  “No. I canvassed the neighbors but no one saw anyone coming or going that morning except Mr. and Mrs. Kain. We knew what time she finished her groceries because the cashier and the grocery boy both confirmed when she checked out.”

  “And that was?”

  “Just before ten o’clock. It was Mrs. Kain’s habit to do her groceries on Wednesday mornings promptly at ten a.m. But she was actually early that morning, arriving just as the store opened at nine, and she seemed a little frazzled. Both of these things were out of character.”

  “When you say ‘frazzled,’ ” Leigh said, “did they think she was afraid?”

  Gary shook his head. “Not at all. She said she had an important houseguest coming. When I talked to Kain about it, he was unaware she was meeting anyone that morning. Normally, she did all her charity work in the afternoons and often had ladies over for afternoon tea.”

  “Do you know what charities she supported?” Leigh asked.

  “Yes, there’s a list in here somewhere.” Gary flipped through the file again, finally stopping on a page. “Here we are. The Lynn Home for Young Women, the Lynn Historical Society, and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians.”

  “I’m not familiar with that last one,” Leigh said.

  “It’s a group for Irish American Catholic women,” Gary said. “Anna Kain’s maiden name was O’Donnell. It could have been any woman from any of these charities. We questioned them all, but none of them knew anything.”

  “Or at least none of them admitted to knowing anything. If you questioned them, shouldn’t there be a list of all their names?”

  “There should be. Isn’t it there?”

  “Not in the file. I went through everything in that file. Twice. And I was specifically looking for information to identify the missing woman.”

  “Actually, now that I think about it, that list was in my casebook. I’d go back annually to review the case, and that’s where I kept that information. Truthfully, I didn’t think that woman was important to the case. I thought Mrs. Kain was alone at the time of the attack. If she hadn’t been, the second woman would also have been killed or at least injured and would have reported the attack. We always thought it was someone who knew her regular routine. Normally, she wouldn’t have been home at that time; she’d have still been out shopping. So someone came through the back door, but then there she was. There was a struggle and Mrs. Kain was shot.”

  “Why the struggle?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why the struggle?” Leigh repeated. “She was past middle age; he was in his early twenties with a gun in his hand. Why would she fight him? They didn’t have much in the way of valuables in the house. Why not just stand aside and let him take what he wanted?”

  “Maybe she panicked? All I can say is there definitely was a struggle. Groceries were knocked off the counter and there were broken dishes.”

  “Mrs. Kain was shot in the abdomen first, then five minutes later she was shot a second time. Why the gap in time?”

  “We always thought that’s when he was collecting the valuables.”

  “Could be,” Leigh agreed. “So then does your theory follow that she wasn’t as badly wounded as perhaps your perp thought, she tried to escape, and that’s when she was shot in the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I’m on board with that. What about what was taken? Mrs. Kain’s wedding rings, a few other pieces of jewelry, and some cash were all removed from the residence. But what was probably the most expensive piece of jewelry in the house—a pair of antique, inlaid fourteen-karat gold cuff links—was left. Can you explain that?”

  “I would just assume they were missed.”

  “They were left out in plain sight. We suspect they weren’t so much missed, but rather left by the killer as a message to Samuel Kain.”

  “Kain?”

  “Yes. Speaking of Kain, did you ever look at him for this?”

  Gary’s shoulders went stiff and he frowned at her. “Of course I did. You know as well as I do most murders are carried out by people close to the vic. When a wife dies, you always look at the spouse first. So did we.”

  “But he alibied out.”

  “Yes. Normally, if he was on a job in town, he’d come home for lunch. That day, he planned to, but there was an accident on-site and, as foreman, he went in the ambulance to the hospital with his injured guy. We looked into it to be sure, but it was just a bad series of events that led to a guy getting hurt, luckily not too seriously. But it alibied Kain for the whole window covering time of death.”

  “That might have put a crimp in someone’s plans.”

  Gary sat back in his chair, weaving his fingers together and considering Leigh carefully. “You think the murder was committed with the intent of implicating Kain as the prime suspect?”

  “I do. You have a family that tends to be fairly regimented when it comes to their schedule. But there were two changes that day. Mrs. Kain changed her own schedule for some reason and then Mr. Kain’s schedule was changed for him when an unforeseen accident happened on the worksite.” Leigh stared into the flames for a minute, working the scenario through in her mind again. Finally she looked up to find the older man’s eyes fixed on her, discomfort and concern etched into the deepening lines of his face. “Gary, please don’t take this the wrong way. Times have changed a lot in the last decade. Do you think maybe your viewpoint as a man in the nineteen-seventies might have colored how you looked at this case?”

  Gary took off his glasses to peer at Leigh. “I’m not sure I follow. I investigated this case to the best of my abilities.”

  “I’m not implying anything other than that. But right from the start did you think a man was responsible for the home invasion?”

  “Well … yes. Look at the nature of the crime. Home invasions in my experience were always carried out by men, usually young men. Often lower class, often immigrant populations. A violent crime in a nice middle-class neighborhood? It’s almost always committed by a man.”

  “So, taking the nature of the crime into account, was that why you never pursued the mystery woman? Because it wasn’t relevant as far as you were concerned? When you speak of the other woman, it’s as not being a victim, but it’s never as actually being the killer.”

  “At least at the beginning, we didn’t consider her relevant. More of an irritating loose end we wanted to tie up and couldn’t. But then the case went ice-cold. Every year I’d go through the file and my notes again, hoping something would suddenly rise to the top, something I’d missed.”

  “Except there wasn’t anything.”

  “No.”

  “So what changed in nineteen-seventy-nine? What set the ball in motion to frame Santino Cabrera?”

  Gary raised both hands, spread as if in entreaty. “God as my witness, nothing that comes to mind. Once again, I reviewed the case. And as I did every year, I started making phone calls, re-interviewing people who might have seen something, or known something about Anna’s life.”

  “Was it always the same people?”

  “Yes. That list in my casebook.”

  “Somewhere, in one of those phone calls, I think you made someone worried. You maybe even spoke to the murderer, or someone who knew who it was, and that raised concerns. They’d been willing to let the case lie cold, but when you repeatedly came back to them year after year, and wouldn’t let it go, they realized they needed to close the case for good and sooner rather than later. And that was what slammed the door on Cabrera. You don’t have that casebook anymore, do you?”

  For the first time since Leigh broke the news about the frame-up, Gary brightened. “I do. I kept them all. Mostly for old times’ sake, you know? So it’s around here somewhere.” His gaze skimmed overflowing bookshelves. “I’m just not sure where. My memory’s not as … sharp as it used to be.”

  Instinct told Leigh that what Bern lacked in memory, he more than made up for in determination to right what he now saw as a wrong he w
as responsible for. “When you find that book, and find that list, would you give me a call? I think I’ll recognize one of those names.” She stood and extended her card to him. “Call my cell anytime, day or night.”

  Gary rose to join her. “I’ll go look right away. Now … about Cabrera.”

  She touched his arm lightly, recognizing the anguish and guilt in his eyes. She could only imagine how she’d feel in a similar situation and the thought of it nearly made her physically ill. “I’m taking care of it. We have to go through proper channels, but he’ll be released.”

  “Will you let me know when that happens?”

  “You have my word on it.”

  As Leigh climbed into her car, she made a mental note to get membership lists from Anna Kain’s charities at the time of her death, on the off chance Gary couldn’t find his notes. She was willing to bet she would recognize one name, at least, on not only one, but both of those lists.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: DECANTING

  * * *

  Decanting: the process of purifying and aerating red wine by pouring off the clear top layer from the potassium bitartrate crystals that have settled to the bottom of the bottle.

  Monday, 3:28 p.m.

  Boston University, School of Medicine

  Boston, Massachusetts

  “Matt, do you want something?” Kiko paused with one hand on the open door as Juka’s and Paul’s voices faded down the hallway in the direction of the lounge.

  Matt looked up from his laptop screen. “No, thanks. I want to get this report done. I’m expecting to hear from Leigh anytime and I’d like to have it ready for her.”

  Kiko bounced lightly on her toes in excitement. “This is going to knock her socks off. It’s all coming together. I love it when we hit this stage.”

  “I’m learning to love it myself. It’s a lot better than the get-shot-at-by-a-murderous-lunatic stage.”

  Kiko grinned and mimed taking a shot at Matt, blowing on the tip of her finger afterward. “Been there, done that. It wasn’t much fun. Okay, back in fifteen.” The door closed behind her with a thud, leaving Matt in peace and quiet.

  He didn’t look up when the door opened again only moments later. “Paul forget his giant vat of a coffee mug?”

  “Pardon?”

  He looked up to find Leigh standing just inside the door. “Sorry, I thought you were one of the students coming back in. They just went down to the lounge for coffee.” He pushed back from his desk as she crossed the floor toward him. “Did you want some?”

  “No, thanks.” She paused for a second, long enough that Matt second-guessed her and then they were both speaking over top of each other.

  Laughing he raised a hand in surrender. “I guess we’ve both got news to share. Ladies first.”

  “No way. Not if you have news.” She crooked her fingers greedily. “To quote Tucker—gimme.”

  “Only if you’re sure you don’t want to go first.” He tried to look serious but the gleam in his eye must have given him away. He chuckled when she smacked his arm. “Okay, okay, you win, I’ll go first.” He grinned. “I have the cigarette butt DNA results back.”

  “I knew it.” Triumph laced Leigh’s voice. “Have you emailed them to me so I can run the results through the state database? We’re not going to have any trouble getting Cabrera released, but having someone else to arrest for the crime would certainly speed things up.”

  “You don’t need to run the results. We’ve already got a match.”

  Leigh went stock still. “Who? How? No, wait!”

  He stared in fascination as Leigh quickly rooted through her jacket pocket. She extracted her cell phone and started impatiently jabbing keys. “Who are you calling?”

  “Rowe. Last time I updated him, he threatened me with physical harm if I didn’t keep him in the loop right to the end of this case.” She looked up and pushed a few loose strands of hair behind her ear from where they had slipped from her chignon. “I think he was only half joking.” She put the call on speaker and the sound of a phone ringing filled the lab.

  “Rowe.”

  “It’s Leigh Abbott. Matt and I have some results back in the Kain case and we wanted you to be in on them if you’re free right now.”

  “I was due at a budget meeting about two minutes ago, but they can’t start without me. Make it quick, but I’d love to hear where we are.”

  Leigh nodded at Matt to proceed.

  “Rowe, you’re up to date on the Anna Kain murder and how it ties into this case?” he asked. “Specifically the scene of her murder?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you’ll remember cigarette butts were found in an ashtray on her kitchen table. Several cigarettes had been smoked by a woman wearing a different color lipstick from anything Anna wore. Back in nineteen-seventy-five, they had no way of tracing who that other woman might have been.”

  “We certainly can now,” Rowe said. “The DNA’s been analyzed?”

  “Yes. I was just about to tell Leigh that we wouldn’t need to actually run the DNA results through the database because we already have the information at hand.” He met Leigh’s curious gaze. “It was Evelyn Holt. The cigarette butt is a full match to the sample we collected a few days ago.”

  “We were right all along. They really are the Hatfields and the McCoys.” She sat down heavily on a lab stool, letting her bag drop to the ground.

  “Lowell, you’re confident in the results?” asked Rowe. “It’s not another one of the Ward relatives? It was definitely Evelyn?”

  “It was a full match on all fifteen points.”

  A sound of triumph came from the phone. “That definitely ties up that loose end.”

  “This is still circumstantial,” Leigh pointed out, “but circumstantial evidence certainly buried Cabrera. We can place her inside the house, so we can insist on a look at her prints. The prints on the wall might not prove much because her lawyer will argue that she was simply in the house having tea, but any lawyer would have trouble explaining her prints on the gun. As soon as we bring her in, I’ll do her ten-print card and we’ll get Claire on a comparison right away.”

  “And remember what Cabrera said about the type of gun? A Walther PPK, right?”

  “Right?”

  “Not a thug gun. He described it as a ‘gentleman’s gun,’ but maybe in this case, it’s really a lady’s gun.”

  “Any idea where she got it?” Rowe asked.

  “Somewhere under the table is my bet, based on the filed-off serial number. I wonder where a classy society grande dame like that would have a contact to find her that kind of hardware,” Matt mused.

  “It’s definitely going to be something we’ll ask her about.”

  “How about your news? How did it go with Trooper Bern?”

  Leigh leaned toward the phone. “Rowe, you might not remember his name, but Bern was the investigating officer in Anna Kain’s death.”

  “The officer who put Cabrera away?”

  “That’s the one. I just met with him and I learned a few things that now should be looked at in a fresh light given this new DNA evidence. For starters, the Kain household was fairly regimented. Anna did her groceries at ten a.m. every Wednesday. Except the morning of her death, she showed up at the store a whole hour early. Bern said she was described by the staff that day as ‘frazzled.’ From the evidence found at the scene, we can infer that’s because she had someone coming over later that morning for tea. Then there’s Samuel. His habit was to come home every day for lunch, except on that particular day, there was an industrial accident at his worksite and he ended up going with one of his men to the ER instead.”

  “Really?” Matt pulled up another lab stool and straddled it backwards, folding his arms across the back. “Kind of makes you wonder if that was where Evelyn’s plans started to go south.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we’re sticking with our previous theory that this was a revenge killing for Charles Ward’s death and Evel
yn’s goal was to frame Kain for the death of his own wife, then she went to some pretty great lengths to set it up. Arranging to meet Anna Kain for tea at a time that would force her to change her schedule, but would get Evelyn into the house early enough that she could kill Anna and then get out. But close enough to the time Kain normally came home during his lunch break to be their number one suspect.”

  “Except that he didn’t come home, and ended up finding Anna hours later with his alibi for the murder firmly intact,” Rowe said. “Yeah, I’d call that going south all right.” His voice went flat, anticipated boredom creeping into his tone. “Thanks for calling, Abbott. I’d be happy to toss around theories with you all afternoon, but nothing makes true administrators crabbier than a meeting that doesn’t start on time. I’m off to go beard the lion in his den. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Talk to you later.” He clicked off.

  “Man, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now. I hate those meetings,” Matt said.

  “No one likes them except the accountants. You know, this scenario about Evelyn also explains why Anna was frazzled when she went shopping early that morning. Not only was her morning routine tossed on its head, she had Evelyn Holt coming for tea.”

  Matt cocked his head uncertainly. “And this would frazzle her why?”

  “You’re such a man.” She patted his arm as if humoring him, and then grinned when his gaze narrowed on her suspiciously.

  Her cell rang, interrupting them, and she reached for her phone. “Abbott … Gary, that was fast.”

  Matt rested his chin on his stacked hands as Leigh listened to her caller, interjecting occasionally with small murmurs of agreement or encouragement. Finally, “That’s wonderful, Gary. Thank you. I will. Goodbye.” She glanced over at Matt. “That was Gary Bern.” Bending back over her phone, she flipped through several screens to her email. “He found his casebook with the lists of charity members he would call every year to follow up on the cold case. He’s already scanned the lists and sent them to me. And … here we are.”