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Tate thought about it but really couldn’t see a woman hoisting that old sword and killing the entire family and he said as much.
“Just covering all the bases,” Connell explained. “And women can have long memories, vendettas and accomplices.” True enough, Tate thought as he heard footsteps overhead. “Take Leona McIntyre, Samuel McIntyre’s college sweetheart and wife number one. She blamed her husband for their baby’s death and then lost custody of her only son, Sam Junior, because Sam Senior claimed she was nuts. It was all probably depression, but Leona has always claimed her husband and his second wife, Natalie, ruined her life. She never got over it.”
“It would be hard.”
“I suppose. Anyway, she never remarried and became a bit of a loner. Then years later, when Sam left Natalie, his second wife, for Zelda, Leona was supposedly ecstatic.”
“How do you know that?”
“An old friend of hers who knew both Leona and Samuel back at the university. I found her on Facebook, tracked her down on the Internet and she was more than willing to talk. Anyway, Leona, upon hearing that Samuel was dumping Natalie, said, ‘What goes around comes around, even for bitches who break up a family.’”
“No way would Leona kill her own son, Sam Junior,” Tate countered, because he’d gone down this mental path before. “And Donner died that night. That’s the primary reason Walter Robinson wasn’t considered. He was a great dad, loved his kids. Sent himself to school on the GI Bill or something. Became an electrician. But he had been at the house that day and got into an argument about custody.”
“Have you ever thought that there may have been more than one killer?”
“As in a team?” Tate asked.
“Yeah. Or possibly someone who didn’t intend to kill everyone, but because he was seen and could be identified, murdered the witnesses?”
Again, this wasn’t a new trail, but there was a roadblock. “Sam Senior and his wife were in their bed. Asleep. Both had traces of sleeping aids in their blood. Dead to the world.”
“So to speak.”
“Not funny,” Tate said.
Connell said, “Maybe they were the ultimate targets, but the killer didn’t expect everyone to still be up. Could be that all of the killings weren’t part of the initial plan, but it went awry.”
“They were killed with the same sword. Every last one of them. Blood from all the victims was found on the blade. Two killers—one weapon?”
“Again, I’m just throwing out ideas. I’ve still got some things I want to dig into. Alibis and motives, I figure the whole money angle should be more deeply explored. Samuel McIntyre was a rich man when he died. People lose their perspective and their moral compasses get all skewed when money’s involved.”
“But kill the whole damn family?” Watching an older-model Ford Escape slow near the front door of the building, he saw a newspaper being tossed through the driver’s open window. The paper landed on the snow-covered sidewalk outside the front door just as the Escape, engine revving, tires spinning, drove off.
“How else would someone end up with the pot o’ gold and not have to share?”
“I’m pretty sure the police have looked into that angle. I know I have.”
“Wait a minute, you just said yourself you found it hard to believe someone would kill the entire clan for money. I beg to differ. But we’ll see. In the meantime I’ll send the info I got to you, encrypted, and you can go through it yourself.” Which Tate would and compare it with the data he’d collected over the years, as well as what he’d taken from the jump drives he’d lifted from Margrove’s office.
“So I’ll keep looking,” Connell said, and was about to disconnect, but Tate asked, “What about Marlie?”
Connell let out an audible sigh. “So far a dead end. But I’m still searching.”
“Good.”
“And I’ve been searching for Hailey Brown in Modesto,” he admitted.
“And?”
“None of them that I’ve located in the area match up with the online profile for the woman who’s a follower in Jonas McIntyre’s Facebook fan page.”
Tate already knew this as he’d been checking himself as Jessica Smith, his own alias. The groups were hyped up over Jonas McIntyre’s release and hospitalization and were already screaming that he couldn’t have killed the attorney who had finally secured his release, that no doubt the police would try to pin the murder on him.
Hundreds of fans had commented or “liked” the posts, but many had been silent, and in that group was Hailey Brown of Modesto.
Tate heard a thump overhead, probably the sound of Kara’s dog jumping from the bed to land on the floor. “Gotta go.” Tate ended the connection and grabbed the newspaper from the front walk.
By the time he climbed the stairs to his loft, Kara was awake, her hair a brown tangle, her expression far from friendly as she stood over the coffeemaker in a knee-length sleep shirt, the dog dancing at her feet.