Дэвид Балдаччи - Redemption

Decker thought about this. “That means they would have come to the house in broad daylight with no rain to give them cover. Someone would have seen them coming down the road.”

“Maybe they came from behind the house and not down the road.”

“And waited hours to kill everyone? Why?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Mars. “Maybe they were trying to get some information from them before they murdered them.”

“That’s a possibility, Melvin. And an intriguing one.”

“So the only car found here was Katz’s?”

“That’s right. Susan Richards had one car and the other was in the shop for—”

Decker froze as another image dropped from his cloud to rest atop another.

“What is it, Decker?” asked Mars.

Decker came out of his reverie and said slowly, “Don Richards and his son, Frankie, were shot once in the chest, both through the heart. Nonsurvivable. But Katz was different. He was shot in the head, twice . Temple and the rear of the skull.” He looked over at Mars. “Why would that be? Why change the scenario for Katz?”

“Maybe he struggled with them or he ran off, and they had to shoot him in the head. Got him in the back and then in the temple.”

“The order of the wounds was actually the reverse of that. Temple first, then the back of the head. The temple shot undoubtedly would have been fatal. He would have fallen to the floor. Why shoot him again in the head when they knew he was already dead?”

Mars shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Abigail was strangled, I believe, because that was the most plausible way to get Hawkins’s DNA under her fingernails. If they were that purpose-driven in the way they killed her, maybe there was a similar purpose behind shooting Katz twice in the head.”

“But what would that purpose be?”

Decker pantomimed a gun with his hand and held it to his temple. “Bang. The guy drops. They bend over him and, bang, shot to the back of the head.”

“Right, but why?”

Decker straightened and looked at his hand. “Because they wanted to cover something up that the temple shot didn’t accomplish.”

“What would that be?”

“Maybe a contusion on the back of his head.”

“From what?”

“From when he was knocked out. Before he was brought here to die.”

A puzzled Mars looked at Decker. “Wait a minute, are you saying that he didn’t drive his car here?”

“His car was driven here, certainly, but who’s to say he was the one driving? We just assumed all along that it was him. I think it’s possible he was in the trunk or the backseat unconscious, and the killer or killers drove him here. The neighbors only saw the car, not the driver. They didn’t know Katz from Adam, so they couldn’t have identified him even if they had seen him.”

Mars said, “And that would explain why they parked the car in the back and came in that way.”

“Right, they couldn’t exactly carry an unconscious Katz in through the front door. And that would also explain his left-hand print on the beer. They just pressed his hand against it. They might not have known whether he was right- or left-handed. They just wanted it to look like he had come here of his own free will and was enjoying a beer when someone shot him.”

“But you said there was some beer in his stomach.”

“They could have revived him and made him drink some, or else they poured some down his throat while he was unconscious. And it would explain the absence of any marks by another car, and the lack of rain traces brought in by the killers. They were in the house before the rain started, not because they were here before Katz came as you speculated, but because they came with him. They left the house after the rain started and therefore wouldn’t have left any traces of it inside.”

“And if they left out the back on foot, the rain would have covered all those tracks.”

Decker nodded. “And I missed all that because of this.”

He led Mars back into the living room and pointed at the light switch on the wall. “That’s where we found the fingerprint. My attention was drawn to it because there was a smear of blood on the light switch plate. No print associated with it. Like someone had rubbed their arm or hand against it or something. But right after I saw the blood, I checked for a print, and there it was. And it matched Hawkins perfectly. Far more than you need to hold up in court. This was a home run. And he said he’d never been here, so how else could it have gotten here unless he’d been here that night? It showed he was lying, and that pretty much sealed his fate. That and the DNA under Abigail’s nails.”

“And you said it would be hard to forge a print.”

“Yes. But to do it really well, you need some knowledge of forensics and you need some special equipment deployed in a multistep process, and even with all that there are a lot of things that can go wrong.”

“Damn, didn’t know it was that complicated.”

“You obviously never watched CSI .”

“I was in prison for most of that time, Decker. And for obvious reasons, CSI wasn’t a real popular show for the inmates.”

“Bottom line is I have confidence in the expert who said he believed Hawkins’s print was genuine.”

“Then Hawkins had to be here, no way around it.”

Decker wasn’t listening. He was staring transfixed at the switch plate. Then he ran back into the kitchen and looked at the light switch there. Moments later he hustled into another room and did the same. Mars followed him into each new space with a bewildered look on his face.

“Decker, you okay?”

Decker returned to the living room, dug into his pocket, and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He deployed the screwdriver.

“Dollars to donuts this is the same light switch plate that was on the wall that night.”

“Okay, so what?”

“It’s different from the switch plates in the other rooms.”

Decker unscrewed the plate and removed it from the wall. Underneath was revealed the imprint of a smaller rectangle.

“Do you see that, Melvin?”

Mars looked at him. “Yeah, but what does that mean?”

“The original switch plate was smaller . That’s the outline there between the painted area and what was underneath the plate. You can see where the paint faded because it was exposed to light all those years. They needed the same size or a bigger plate there to cover it.”

“Wait a second, you’re saying somebody got Hawkins’s print on that plate and brought it here and replaced the other plate with this one?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

“That way his real print is on the original surface. That’s why my expert swore it wasn’t a forgery.” He paused. “Instead it was a fabrication . They brought the print to the crime scene, but in a way that was beyond suspicion. A glass or other object introduced to a crime scene can easily be placed there. A light switch plate? It seems like part of the house. Immovable. But it’s not. Just two screws, in fact. Like I just took out.”

“Somebody went to a lot of effort to frame the guy.”

“Which means the motivation was pretty significant. But this is not about Meryl Hawkins. He was a pawn. It could have been anybody. But they picked him for a variety of reasons. And this shows the murders weren’t the result of a random burglary gone bad. The focus now should be the victims. Who would want them dead?”

“Well, there were four of them. I guess we can discount the kids. I don’t see some middle schooler who got his feelings hurt doing this.”