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“And he’ll never get those years back, will he?” Her eyes flashed. “He gave up half of his life while the real killer has lived a free man or woman and we won’t rest until Jonas McIntyre is absolved of the crimes he was charged with.” She was shouting now and a handful of people standing nearby hooted and raised their signs and began chanting, a weak performance compared to the crowd the day before.
Sheila asked, “Does justice have a price tag? I’ve heard that Jonas McIntyre is going to sue the county for thirty million dollars.”
Mia’s mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “Freedom is priceless.”
“You heard it here, at Whimstick General Hospital, where Jonas McIntyre is recovering from injuries sustained in an automobile accident when he reportedly visited Merritt Margrove at his mountain retreat, just hours after Margrove’s death, which authorities are calling a homicide. Margrove, who once claimed a list of celebrities as his clients, drew national attention when he defended Jonas McIntyre twenty years ago in the McIntyre Massacre where most of the family was slaughtered. Mystery still surrounds that tragic event as one of the children, a teenager named Marlie Robinson, disappeared that night, neither she nor her remains ever found.” Sheila gave a quick report on the old murders and trial while pictures of the McIntyre family and the crime scene flashed onto the screen. When the camera returned to her, still outside the hospital: “The investigation into Merritt Margrove’s homicide is ongoing and if you have any information about the crime, please call the local authorities.” The number and email address for the department flashed onto the screen as Sheila smiled and said, “Now back to you, Ned.”
Thomas snapped off the television and walked up the two steps to the laundry room that connected his bungalow to the garage.
After stripping down, he tossed his sweats into an overflowing basket, walked through the house naked and once in the single bathroom showered, shaved and dressed for work.
The city was still quiet, traffic thin, a snowplow scraping the streets free of ice and packed snow, Christmas lights reflecting on the piles created.
He was at his desk an hour before the change of shift and Thomas made the most of that quiet time where he was alone with his thoughts before the clamor and din of the day intruded. For nearly an hour telephones, fax machines and printers were almost silent, and the sound of footfalls, boots scraping and bits of passing conversation punctuated by laughter hadn’t yet interrupted his thoughts.
He’d already asked for one of the tech guys to create an enhanced computerized likeness of Marlie Robinson, aged twenty years from the headshot on her driver’s license. The photoshopped picture had come through, and he found himself staring at the image of a beautiful woman with an oval face framed by curly blond hair, her blue eyes large and round over a long, straight nose, a woman who, aside from a slight dimple in her chin, looked a lot like her mother, Zelda McIntyre.
“What happened to you?” he said to the image on the screen even though he believed that the enhancement was most likely an exercise in futility. He believed that Marlie Robinson had died that night, or soon thereafter. Drops of her blood had been found at the scene and matched by DNA to strands of hair recovered from her hair brush. There hadn’t been enough of her blood to think she’d been seriously injured, unless she’d stanched the flow and escaped somehow.
How likely was that?
Absently he picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser end on his desk as he considered the alternatives.
Had Marlie gotten away, escaped after locking Kara in the attic? Had she been chased by the killer, slightly wounded in the house, then slaughtered somewhere else? If so, then Jonas McIntyre, himself injured, probably hadn’t killed his stepsister.
Thomas twisted the pencil in his fingers. Was that possible? For two decades he’d believed that McIntyre was the killer. Had he and the rest of the force been so wrong?
If Marlie Robinson was dead, where the hell was her body? Had the search teams and dogs missed her trail and her remains decomposed in the forest, her bones and flesh carried off by wild animals? Or had she somehow survived?
He kept coming back to the same question that had nagged at him whenever he’d thought of the tragedy: Why had Marlie Robinson hidden her little sister away? Why didn’t she stay in the attic with Kara and save herself? How had Marlie been involved? Had Jonas McIntyre—or another killer—spared her? Why?
Had Jonas McIntyre been telling the truth all these years? Was he really innocent?
Thomas found it hard to believe and scanned Jonas’s statement again. His story had never changed, never once faltered: Yes, he’d been “messing around” with the sword earlier, and he had been in a fight with Donner earlier in the week, all over Lacey Higgins, but that night he had not killed his brothers or his parents. He’d been in the living room when an intruder had slipped into the house and attacked him first from behind. Injured, Jonas had lost consciousness. When he woke up, Kara was in the room; he told her to run, to get help, and then he passed out again. He could not ID the killer. Had not seen the murderer’s face. Jonas assumed the intruder had been wearing gloves, hence no fingerprints other than Jonas’s appeared on the sword. Jonas swore that he had no idea why anyone would slaughter most of his family, and he did not know what happened to Marlie Robinson, his stepsister. He figured Kara lived through the rampage because she was hidden away and he survived only because the killer thought he was dead already.
Thomas leaned back in his chair until it creaked in protest.
It just didn’t add up.
And now, after Jonas was finally released due to new testimony, his attorney was killed and the guy who changed his story about the evidence trail of the sword that night, Randall Isley, was barely holding on to life in a hospital fifteen hundred miles away in Nebraska.
How effing convenient.
He dropped the pencil back into its cup, walked to the lunch room, where the dregs of day-old coffee sat in the glass pot, and opted for a can of Diet Coke from the machine in the hallway. Thomas was missing something, something important. Lost in thought, he barely noticed that the day shift was arriving, more voices, more commotion. Sipping from the can, he sidestepped a couple of uniforms heading to the lockers, then settled down at his desk again.
What was it?
How was it connected to Merritt Margrove’s death?
Jonas McIntyre had been the obvious suspect. Not only was he convicted for the multiple homicides twenty years ago, but on the first day he was let out of prison, he visited Margrove and the attorney who hadn’t been able to convince the jury of Jonas McIntyre’s innocence all those years ago ended up with his throat slit.
Just like Donner Robinson.
Revenge? Had Jonas spent half his life seething and blaming the attorney for not being able to keep him out of prison?
Or a setup?
Thomas took another long pull from the Diet Coke.