Thomas Prescott Superpack (47 page)

Chapter 37

Interrogation rooms have changed over the years. The concrete bunkers, one-way mirrors, bolted down tables, garage lighting, and heat lamps were a thing of the past. Leave that stuff to the KGB. Nowadays, most everything was glass. Studies showed suspects were measurably more cooperative when they were on display.

Today, however, this would not be the case.

I rested my elbows on the thin, rectangular table and watched Ethan, Erica, and a handful of others confer through the tinted glass. This went on for over an hour. Different people would come and go, there would be a quick conference, sometimes something would be passed from one person to another, and always a quick glance in my direction before leaving.

Twenty minutes later, Ethan pushed through the door.
He feigned reading a document, then looked up. He looked almost surprised to see me. Like he hadn’t expected me to be in the room he’d locked me in.

He asked, “How you doin?”

“I’m super.”

He sat down and I noticed for the first time since I’d met him that he wasn’t chewing gum.
At that moment, he pulled a pack from his coat pocket—that stuff you push through the foil—and popped a piece. He offered the pack to me and I respectfully declined.

“I’ve been off the stuff for three years now,” I said.

He didn’t find this amusing.
I almost told him to lighten up. I mean, you would have thought the guy was a suspect in a homicide investigation or something. He had a bunch of paperwork spread out in front of him, including the manila envelope containing the crime scene photos of Riley. This might be my only chance to view the pictures and I asked, “You mind?”

He shrugged and slid the envelope across the table.
This would have been a later tactic on his behalf—make the suspect study the pictures. Sometimes the reality of the crime would hit home and then the suspect would crack on the spot. I’d seen it happen before my very eyes. I’d even had one suspect look at the crime scene photos of an eleven-year-old girl he murdered and smile with pride. I may have accidentally smashed his face into the picture. Accidents happen. 

I slid the envelope off the table and stared at it.
I’d seen hundreds of these crime scene photographs and it’s never easy. If you know the person intimately, as I knew Riley, it was nearly impossible. Some people could flip that switch, turn off their emotions. Take Ethan, for example. He had looked at these pictures and he didn’t see Riley; he hadn’t even see a woman. He saw a case. He saw a picture of someone behind bars. He saw a picture of me, maybe with a needle in my arm. Or maybe he saw a picture of me tossing some big black guy’s salad. Whatever he saw, he didn’t see death.

I’d never been able to flip that switch.
I was emotionally involved in every case I ever worked. It separated me from them. It’s why I was the best. Or had been.

I extracted a stack of seven glossy photographs.
The top photo was the one I’d already seen. I gave this a quick glance then shuffled it to the back. The next was a close-up of Riley’s head and neck. Her short brown hair fell over her face, but her left eye was visible, open about half way. There was a dark gash in her neck, and dried blood was caked around the wound like dried lava. The blood pooled around her neck in about a foot radius, and the surface had just began to harden into a blood pudding.

I flipped to the next picture.
It was the whole of the kitchen. Blood spatter covered the white linoleum, a couple of the cabinets, and half the white cutting board.

I glanced at the remaining four pictures, slid them back in the envelope, and slid the envelope back across the table.

Ethan said, “Admiring your work?”

“Fuck you.”

He paused for a few moments, then said, “So tell me how it went down.”

“I told you, when I last saw Riley she very much alive.”

He nodded.

He riffled through the papers, not looking at anything in particular, then glanced up.
“Here’s what we got. We can put you at the scene. You and no one else. So you had the means. You lied to us about your alibi. That’s never good. And we found the murder weapon hidden under your sister’s bed.” He shook his head. “Now if you were me, would you arrest you?”

Was this guy born in Pronounville?

I asked, “If I were me, would you arrest
I?”

“You think this is funny?”

“I certainly do not.” And I didn’t.

After a long moment I answered his question.
“First, I’m not you. If I was, I would have done the world a favor, checked the organ donor box on the back of my license and jumped in front of a Greyhound years ago.” Ethan’s nostrils gave a slight flare and I continued. “Second, yes, I would probably arrest me.”

He grinned.

“But only if you were me.”

The grin faded.
He’d had about enough of me. I’m better in doses.

He stood up and said, “I’m gonna go grab a drink.
You want something?”

I was parched and said, “A blue Powerade.
The one with the sport top.” There was a vending machine on the third floor that sold such things. At least there had been eight years ago.

He waved me off and said, “Nothing, then.”

Jerk.

I watched through the glass as Ethan conversed quickly with Erica. I could make out the last words he said:
Are you up for this?

She nodded.
Then she stared at me through the glass. Ethan gave me one last look.

I mouthed, “
Blue Powerade. Sports Top
.”

He mouthed two unmistakable words before walking off.

Erica had turned around—no doubt to take one last calming breath—then pushed through the doors.
I didn’t take my eyes off her as she pulled out a chair and sat. She raised the left side of her mouth and said, “How you doing?”

I shook my head.
This was going to be far more difficult than I had anticipated. Ethan had been a cinch. This tore at my heartstrings.

She gave a quick smile, then her right hand shot forward a couple inches.
She caught herself and drew it back. After a lengthy pause, she said, “So, I’ve been talking to the D.A.”

I knew where this was heading and I began shaking my head.

“Hear me out. Please.” Her voice was trembling. “I’ve been talking to the D.A. and I think we can plead this down to Man Two. That’s less than fifteen. Hell, these days you wouldn’t do more than six or seven.”

I reached out and grabbed Erica’s hand.
I said slowly, “I . . . didn’t . . . do it.”

It might have been my touch, or the fact that tears were starting to form in the creases of my eyes, but I saw it.
Erica had walked through those doors under the presumption I was a killer. No longer.

If Ethan hadn’t entered then, I might have leaned over the table and kissed her.

Ethan pulled up a chair and said, “Am I interrupting something?”
I noticed he just happened to be holding a blue Powerade. With a sports top.

Erica shook her head.

“Good.” He flipped the top on the Powerade, threw me a wry smile, brought the bottle to his mouth and squeezed. Nothing came out. He raised his eyebrows, shook the bottle, and squeezed again. Again, nothing came out.

I laughed.

Three shakes, five squeezes, and thirty seconds later, Ethan unscrewed the top and peeled off the safety seal under the cap. This took my mind off the fact I was being investigated for murder for a split second. That is, until a woman in a lab coat pushed through the door and handed a printed document to Ethan.

Ethan perused the document, then handed it to Erica.
She gave it a quick glance before handing it back to Ethan.

He shook his head and said, “Bad news, Thomas. Very . . . bad . . . news.”

 “Aren’t you supposed to ask if I want to hear the good news first?”

“There is no good news.”

That
was
bad news.

He slid the document across the table.
He said, “We were able to lift a set of fingerprints from the knife. Full thumb and partial right index.” He paused and added, “Both are exact matches to your prints on file.”

I picked up the document.
The document was six separate images. There were images of both sides of the knife. The knife was about eight inches long, slightly curved. Like a quarter moon. Small amounts of dried blood speckled both sides. You could see the thumbprint on one side of the blade and the partial index on the opposite side. Then there were two blown up images of the fingerprints, as well as two blow-ups of my prints that were on file. Both were positive matches.

I slid the document back over the table and said calmly, “I did the dishes.”

He looked confused and I repeated, “I did the dishes.”

“You expect me to believe that you left those prints while washing the dishes.”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe. That’s what happened.”

“If you were washing the dishes then it makes sense that you would have washed off your fingerprints as well.”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“I must have confused you. By doing the dishes, I meant that I put the dishes in the dishwasher.” I heard some people gave the dishes a quick rinse before placing them in the dishwasher, but this always seemed silly to me. If the dishes aren’t clean after their first go-round, you do a second. I ran a load once—after eating only peanut butter and jelly for a week—eleven times.

Ethan said, “You said before that the victim filleted the fish.”

“True.”

“Then why aren’t her prints anywhere on the knife?”

“Maybe you’ve heard of this thing called Teflon. Many consumer products are made from this material, like the handle of the fillet knife, for instance. Teflon, by virtue of its slipperiness, repels oil and would make a fingerprint nearly impossible to come by.”

Was this guy still cooking in clay pots?

He nodded.

Point, Prescott.

I wasn’t done.
“And if you look at your little printout there,” he picked it up, “Those fingerprints are on the blade.”

I mimicked picking up the blade with my thumb and right index finger.
“That’s how I picked up the knife and set it in the dishwasher. You don’t grab a knife in that fashion if you intend to use it to take someone’s life.”

“That’s not to say that you didn’t handle the knife by the handle.
You said yourself that Teflon repels oil so fingerprints would be hard to come by.”

“Actually, I said, ‘
Impossible
to come by.’”

“Regardless. Technically, you could have handled the knife without leaving a print.”

My friend Ethan was starting to piss me off, and I mentally took an invisible two-by-four out of my pocket and smashed it across his face, which, surprisingly enough, made me feel much better.

He was about to start talking and I interrupted him. “But—”

He raised his eyebrows.

I leaned forward and said, “That knife that you have a picture of—”
I paused so he could pick up the printout, “—isn’t the knife that was used to kill Riley.”

He looked at the image.
Erica leaned over for a better look. I’m not sure either of them bought what I was selling.

Ethan said, “And why exactly do you think this?”

“For one, those prints are set in fish oil.” Fish oil was thick and it had sheen to it. I continued, “Can we agree on this much?”

Erica said, “We’d have to run a test, but I’d say that is accurate.”

Ethan gave her a harsh stare, but he, too, seemed to concur with this analysis. He said nothing to contradict this statement. “So if my prints are set in fish oil, it’s safe to say that these prints were imprinted prior to the death of the victim.”

Erica nodded.
I looked at Ethan. After a long pause, he nodded.

I continued, “Look at the amount of blood on the knife.
Not much at all. Barely any actually.”

Erica and Ethan’s faces were just inches from the document.
Nearly touching. They both surveyed the knife for a long minute. Erica said, “You’re right.”

Of course I was right.

I added, “The victim died from a laceration of the neck, more accurately the carotid artery, which we all know is the biggest artery in the body.
I mean, look at the crime scene photos; there’s blood splatter six feet from the body. How, then is it possible, that there is almost no blood on the knife. No, if this knife was the murder weapon, there would be so much blood that those perfect fingerprints of mine would be long gone.”

Erica was smiling.

Ethan was stewing.

In case I hadn’t already convinced the pair, I said, “Also, if you look at the size and shape of the laceration on the victim’s neck, it isn’t consistent with the knife found under my sister’s mattress.
The knife that killed the victim was serrated.” Fillet knifes aren’t serrated.