Robert Walker - Final Edge

"And Ryan, did he ever confess to Yolanda's murder?"

"All his victims were white. He swore he never killed the Sims girl. No DNA typing then, so no way to know for certain, but he went to the chair claiming he only did the seven white children found in city Dumpsters."

"How was he captured?"

"Captured on a tip by a gray-haired woman with insomnia, taking out her trash. The old lady was smart enough to get a license-plate number. The ID happened when she saw him discarding his last body, a little boy. When detectives showed up at his house, Ryan lost it at the door, said something to the effect, 'Why didn't you guys form a task force sooner to stop me? Why'd it take you so long? Why didn't you stop me sooner? I ought to sue your asses.'"

"He didn't know the gay uncle and had never worked the area, right?"

"None of his victims were dumped anywhere near the Sims murder site. And try as they might to make correlations, they could not find any real connection, no."

"And you suspected someone connected to the uncle."

"Yeah, there was one guy stuck in my craw, the uncle's boyfriend."

"He got a name?"

"Gay Uncle Bobbie and his lover, Lyle Eaton, had a nasty breakup that same evening of the abduction. There'd been a scene, a car chase in which Eaton caught up to Uncle Bob where he was holed up."

"At Yolanda's house?"

"Using it for a hideout. Eaton got violent, breaking a window, beating on the door. A squad car was called out to the address to evict Eaton from the front porch."

"Any arrests?"

"Should have been, but no, and so no paper trail."

"How'd you learn about the fight? Interviews?"

"Yeah, the hard way. He was waving a crowbar when the cops cooled him down and sent him off. Had there been an arrest report, maybe so many years would not have gone by before anyone learned the truth, years during which Ryan appealed and awaited execution for the Dumpster deaths."

"And no subsequent confrontations at that address between the men?"

"I know. It sounds fishy, doesn't it?" Remo asked.

"I agree, doesn't sound like a typical breakup, either gay or straight. Most relationship breakups happen over a series of engagements, retreats, and further battles."

"Only one encounter after Uncle Bobbie moves out on a seven-year 'marriage' to Eaton, and it's without a word, according to Bobbie Sims. Then suddenly the man's niece disappears, is killed in horrific fashion, and suddenly poof- Eaton disappears from the city immediately after being cleared by virtue of a questionable alibi. Then a year goes by before I catch the case when the file sorta fell into my possession, and I confirm that Eaton laid carpets as well as tile, as well as doing odd jobs as a carpenter, and that he conveyed his own tools to the job sites in his cream-colored van. People spotted a white van sitting at the end of the street that night. You ever look at a beige van under orange street lamps? It's white!"

"Hoffman and Blake got none of these connections?"

"These were my leads, uncovered years later when no one wanted to hear the truth or be proven incompetent. I was a rookie in charge of filing down here in the dungeon. I prove I'm right, I also prove they're nincompoops, and they had seniority big-time in those days."

"You ever get the chance to interview Eaton?"

"Once. He choked on a weak alibi that ought to've been proven a lie. Eaton's grandparents also swore to Hoffman and Blake-and years later to me-that he was with them that night, all night, playing board games and watching Gun smoke and Ed Sullivan. Soon after, Lyle and his van left the area, reportedly for a work site in Amarillo."

"That's bordering on leaving the state."

"Fact is, he didn't go to Amarillo. He went to Seattle, Washington. And valuable potential evidence, like the damned van, his carpet strips, likely under someone's carpet somewhere by then, his soldering iron, and other tools used to assault the girl, all gone. There's no statute of limitation on murder, but there sure can be on contaminated evidence."

Lucas squinted, thinking in pictures, trying to get a fix on what had happened, and how it had been allowed to play out as it did. Sure, it was 1956 and investigators had no fingerprint evidence in the case, and DNA was nonexistent, but they had the same findings from the coroner as Remo had. The difference seemed to be a sadly prevailing attitude taken toward the case, that other, higher-priority cases took precedence, and worse still, that Yolanda and her parents had somehow brought the tragedy down around themselves and so must accept it-almost as if it were an act of God. An inexcusable excuse, Lucas thought of the deceased detectives as his admiration for Remo increased.

"So you think Eaton found a nearby isolated place to park, never leaving the unfamiliar neighborhood, attacking her in the van and-"

"— and dumping her body on the wrong doorstep in his haste to get the hell out of the area, yes."

Lucas recalled the details of the puncture marks all over Yolanda's body. The words of the autopsy report flashed through his mind: "sawdust in victim's hair and body; unusual puncture wounds over body, determined as marks consistent with beating from wood carpet stripping; cigar- sized, round burns on legs and arms consistent with cigar or possibly a soldering iron as wounds are clean of ash debris. Foreign object used in sexual battery consistent with marks made by a Phillips-head screwdriver…"

"And this guy Eaton, you're convinced he doesn't know the neighborhood?"

"He'd only been in the Houston area for six months. Here's my take on it, if you'd care to hear it," replied Remo.

Lucas drew him a cup of coffee from the nearby urn. "Lay it out for me. Detective."

"All right. It's like this. A jilted Lyle Eaton drives down there in his white work van to Uncle Bobbie's neighborhood and is jilted again by his lover. He then goes away but not far. He cruises the alleyway and parks behind the house, hatching a scheme when he sees Yolanda playing on the back porch."

Lucas sipped at his coffee. "I follow you. Go on."

"Fact is, Lyle Eaton was lying in wait to have it out again with Bobbie, but Bobbie didn't come out that night, only Yolanda did-sent to the store to get Uncle Bobbie's smokes! Then voila, she returns safely home. Eaton watches her come and go but does nothing at this point. Then he sees her come out a second time, this time rewarded with an extra hour's playtime on the backyard grass, inside the fence. It's at this point that Eaton-having watched this trivial drama play out from the confines of his van-decides to make Bobbie pay through his niece. He exits the van and charms her right out of her backyard and into his van. Promises, I'm sure."

"This is unbelievable, that no one put this together at the time."

"By the time it got to me, leads were cold. Still, I went out and talked to the family, tracing the original steps Hoffman and Blake had taken, a pair of real Sherlocks. When I talked to Yolanda's father, out comes the story of Bobbie and Lyle on the doorstep, ready to kill one another. The old man claimed he told the investigating team all about it, but that they didn't think it relevant."

"They accepted the alibi at face value?"

"Part of it, sure. Any rate, the catfight never got into their reports. Me, on the other hand, I became instantly curious, and I pursued it, but years later now both Bobbie and his boyfriend are long gone. Bobbie was overseas, had enlisted in the Army. I had to put out a call for information on Lyle Eaton, and word on the street was that he had moved to Seattle, but my contacts up there came up blank."

"And in the meantime the Dumpster Killer was an easy fill-in-the-blank for Hoffman and Blake."

"With the captain and the DA on their asses, you bet. The departmental push was on to clear the case by getting Ryan to cop to the killing. They tried to push it down his throat, but he wouldn't budge."