Sense of Deception (30 page)

He frowned. “Looks like a stand for a baseball,” he said. I could've hugged him.

“Exactly!” I shouted. Then I lifted the photo of Skylar with the couple. I guessed from the witness statements that they were her neighbors, Doreen and Ted Mulgrew. Holding it up to show Dutch, I said, “Skylar told me that Noah's prize possession was a signed baseball by Nolan Ryan. She said he used to tap it for good luck every night before he went to bed. But look,” I said, handing him that photo and grabbing for the other one. “In this picture it's missing. And . . . ,” I added, searching through the other photos for one showing Noah's nightstand, “it's not here either.”

“Someone took it,” Dutch said.

“The
killer
took it,” I said, and then tapped the photo of the Mulgrews. “I'm guessing an Astros fan took it.”

Dutch scratched his head. “Yeah, but, Abs, didn't Skylar go running over to the Mulgrews right after the attack? I mean, if your theory is right, how did Mulgrew go from murdering Noah, attacking Skylar, to answering his door when she started pounding on it?”

I held up a finger. “But he
didn't
answer the door, Dutch! His
wife did!” I got up and moved down the table to the witness statement I wanted, fished around in the stack, and came up with it. Bringing it back, I handed it to Dutch. “See? Doreen answered the door. She says that she had to holler to her husband to call nine-one-one while she tried to tend to Skylar.”

“Wouldn't she have known if her husband was home or not?”

I sighed in frustration. My theory was wild, for sure, but I could imagine a scenario where Ted Mulgrew attacked Skylar, and the second she raced out of the room, he grabbed the baseball—or maybe he already had it—and dove out of the window, running over to his own backyard, which was right next door, and maybe he headed in through his own back door just as his wife was answering Skylar's knock. Maybe Doreen didn't realize her husband wasn't in the house at the time. I said all this to Dutch. “I mean, it's possible that in the confusion of being awakened in the middle of the night by incessant knocking, Doreen didn't notice her husband was gone. Maybe she was so focused on Skylar, bloody and hysterical at her door, that she didn't take note of where her husband was.”

“That's a bit of a leap,” Dutch said.

I sat down and thought through the theory a little more. “But it's possible, Dutch. Someone who knew intimate details about Skylar's house and could gain access to it broke in and murdered her son. Maybe Mulgrew got into Noah's room because he was after the Nolan Ryan baseball. I mean, what's something like that worth, anyway?”

“Depending on the year and the game, probably anywhere between three hundred bucks and a thousand.”

“So it'd be valuable,” I said.

“Somewhat,” Dutch said. “But I don't know that I believe it'd be worth killing over.”

“But what if Noah woke up as Mulgrew was taking his most prized possession?” I argued. “Seriously, Dutch, what if Mulgrew panicked and stabbed Noah to shut him up?”

Dutch's expression told me he wasn't buying it. “I suppose it's possible, but I don't know that I'd hang my hat on it.”

I took the picture of the Mulgrews from him. “Yeah, well, I don't think we can afford to leave any stone unturned here. I'm gonna have Candice check out Ted Mulgrew and I'm gonna ask Oscar to come with me to interview him.”

Dutch reached out and rubbed the back of my neck. I hadn't realized how tense I'd been until his magic fingers began working on the muscles there. “Okay, Sherlock, but for now let's call it a night.”

I purred under the massage. “Keep doing that and I'll offer you every penny currently in the swear jar.”

He chuckled. “I'd rather have the IOUs. They gotta be worth double what's in the jar.”

“Triple,” I confessed. “But who's counting?”

*   *   *

T
he next morning I was on the phone with Candice and Oscar. Both of them listened to my argument, but neither of them expressed much enthusiasm for my theory. Basically they both mirrored Dutch's rebuttal; the timing didn't really seem to fit. “I'll admit that it's possible, Sundance,” Candice said after I kept pushing the theory. “But it still doesn't explain the missing footprints from the hallway.”

“He went out the window, Candice,” I said with a little irritation.

“On his way out? Possibly. But what about on his way in?”

“Again, the window,” I said, and then realized what I'd missed.

“Okay, then why aren't there footprints in the hallway from when he went to get the knife from the kitchen?” she asked. “That's the thing that's really bothering me about this whole case. We need a plausible reason why the killer would've entered the home from the front door, taken the knife, avoided the hallway, retraced his steps out of the house, and headed out and around to the back of the house to climb in through Noah's window.”

I sighed. “I haven't figured that part out yet. But that doesn't mean Mulgrew didn't take the knife at some earlier point. Like maybe he was invited in for some lemonade or something and he snatched it then.”

“Didn't Skylar say that she'd used the knife earlier that night?” Oscar asked.

“She did, but I've been thinking about that,” I said. “Maybe Skylar only
thought
she used the same knife to cut up the salad she'd had for dinner. Maybe she'd used another knife and simply got confused. I mean, that knife was a part of a set. There had to be other knives she could've used and the shock of her son's murder sort of scrambled her memories a little.”

Candice and Oscar were both silent for a bit before Candice said, “That is actually a more possible scenario. I've been doing lots of research on eyewitness testimony, and it's common for people to replace certain objects in a memory with other familiar objects. The shock of her son's murder definitely could've scrambled Skylar's recollection.”

“The timing for Mulgrew to have done it is still too tight for me,” Oscar said. “And he's only wearing an Astros hat in the photo, Cooper. It doesn't mean he was involved. Plenty of people are Astros fans.”

“More so some years than others,” Candice muttered, with a smile in her voice.

“True,” Oscar said. “If they ever win a game again, I'll get back to rooting for them.”

“Can we keep this on point?” I snapped. I really wanted to interview Mulgrew, and didn't appreciate the idle chitchat about the freaking Astros' winning/losing average.

“Sorry,” Candice and Oscar said together. “Okay, Abs,” Candice said. “I'll look into Mulgrew's background, while you and Oscar go interview him.”

“Thank you,” I said, relieved I'd have company when I went to talk to Skylar's neighbors.

“Pick you up in twenty,” Oscar said.

Oscar met me at the door, and I was armed with my argument and the two photos I wanted to throw in Mulgrew's face when I accused him of murder. I was convinced I was on to something, and I had a frantic passion to make this theory stick. In the back of my mind I knew without a doubt that much of what was fueling me was a sense of desperation, because time for Skylar was definitely running out. We had very little to offer Cal for the appeal, and his warning to me from the day before when I'd brought him up to speed, that we would need nothing short of a confession from either the actual murderer or Chris and Faith Wagner about their arrangement, was what was fueling my efforts to push the line.

The trip to Skylar's old neighborhood was unencumbered by traffic. Not much moves in Austin on a lazy Sunday morning and I felt a little bad about snapping at Oscar on the phone, so I asked him how Amigo was doing.

“Oh, man,” he said, with a sweet smile and a shake of his head. “That pup is so damn cute. No heartworm or parasites, which is great, and the vet thinks he's only about a year old. We both also think he belonged to somebody, because he walks well on a leash, knows sit, stay, and shake, and he's obviously housebroken. There
wasn't a microchip, though, and a search of local Web sites for lost dogs didn't come up with a hit. I'll keep looking to see if I can reunite him with his owner, but, like I told you before, I really hope I get to keep him.”

I leaned back in the seat and relaxed the tense set to my shoulders. The positive changes in Oscar's life were such a nice little respite from the awful business of Noah's murder and Skylar's impending execution. “Amigo's yours, buddy. It was meant to be.”

“You sure?” he asked, sliding a sideways glance at me. “I really like him, Cooper, and I don't want to get my hopes up if some little old lady from South Austin pops up to claim him.”

I tapped my temple to let him know my radar had already looked into it. “You'll have no such bad luck, honey. The pup is yours for keeps.”

Oscar's grin widened. I think he was happier about Amigo than he was about the new house or the prospect of getting a girlfriend.

When we arrived at Skylar's old neighborhood, Oscar parked across the street from her house and we got out and surveyed the house to the right, as there was nothing but a drainage field on the left. The Mulgrew residence was bigger than her home, but not by much. At least not in outward appearances.

I noted that the gate leading to Skylar's old backyard was within a few feet of the gate leading to the Mulgrews'. “See?” I said, pointing to the gate. “He could've ducked through the backyard and into his own yard without anybody being the wiser.”

Oscar nodded, but his expression remained skeptical. “You want to take the lead? Or me?”

“Me,” I said, marching forward to the front door. I checked my watch before ringing the bell. It was ten a.m. Not too early, not too late for a Sunday. I hoped.

It took a minute, but we eventually did hear footsteps shuffling behind the door. They came to a stop and I smiled brightly at the peephole. After another slight hesitation, the door opened and a round-shaped woman in a big baggy purple T-shirt stood there. “Yes?” she asked.

I glanced quickly at the photo in my hand. She'd aged quite a bit in ten years, but she still looked enough like the woman in the photograph for me to be certain we'd come to the right place. “Mrs. Mulgrew?” I said, pulling on the lanyard with my ID, and offering it out in front of me so that she could read it. “My name is Abigail Cooper, and this is my associate Oscar Rodriguez. I know it's early, and a Sunday, but we're doing some investigative work on behalf of Skylar Miller, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question or two.”

She pulled the door open a little more so that she could inspect my ID. Oscar offered up his badge and photo ID too, just to make it official (unofficially speaking, of course . . . ahem).

“Sure,” she said, folding her hands over her middle. She appeared eager to talk to us, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I dove right in. “I know that Skylar came to your house the night of Noah's murder,” I said, trying to be discreet as I peered around her into the house to see if her husband was perhaps inside.

“Oh, yes,” she said, shaking her head as if the memory was a terrible one to recall. “Poor Skylar. Poor Noah. What an awful thing that happened to them. You know, I told my husband that we needed to move, because I didn't want to be in a neighborhood where you could get murdered in your sleep, but he said no, so I ordered an alarm for the house, and then of course we found out that Skylar was the one who killed Noah, and he made me cancel the alarm.”

I squinted at her. She was giving me a lot of information. “So, you believe that Skylar murdered Noah?”

Doreen Mulgrew made a face, as if she couldn't quite decide. “I mean,” she said, “we lived next door to them for only a year, and she seemed really nice, but like, didn't Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors say they thought he was really nice too?”

“I'm sure they did,” I said. “But you still seem to have some doubts.”

Doreen sighed heavily. “I just can't account for it,” she said. “Every time we saw them together, Skylar was hugging Noah or he was hugging her. They seemed to really love each other. And at his birthday party . . . he was just so happy and outgoing, you know? You could tell that kid didn't have a worry in the world, which just didn't fit with what they were saying about Skylar. My mom drank, and I don't ever remember a day I wasn't scared or worried for her.”

I remembered the photo of Noah and Skylar from his last birthday party. They had indeed both seemed so happy. “So you were at Noah's ninth birthday party?”

“We were,” she said.

“Do you remember who else was there?” I asked, more to keep the conversation going while I assessed her energy.

“Well, let me think,” she said, tapping her lip. “Skylar invited us, I'm sure, only because so few people showed up. There aren't many kids in this neighborhood, and other than us and the neighbors from up the street—the Barclays, who moved out about six years ago—that was it for the neighborhood. Noah's grampy and grammy were there at the start of the party, but they had to leave because Mr. Miller had to go get his chemo treatment, and then later Noah's dad came but just for a minute to drop off Noah's present. He wouldn't even stay for cake, even though I baked it
myself and told him it was homemade. Kind of looked down his nose at the house and all of us too. The grandparents were also a little snooty to us, but I found out at the trial that they were loaded, so it figured. Anyway, it was kind of a sad party, but Noah didn't seem to mind. He was the happiest kid you ever met. His grampy had given him a baseball signed by a real famous player and he carried that thing around like it was his prize possession. He was so cute! And, I'll be honest, I don't even like kids very much, but I liked Noah. And, to be even more honest, I liked Skylar. She—”