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As for motive, Johnson had hit on it. The running theory had been that Jonas McIntyre had been royally pissed at his parents for grounding him—he’d been caught earlier in the week by the police for getting into a fight with his stepbrother, Donner Robinson. The parents had declined to press charges, but Donner, like Jonas, had been grounded.
Not good enough. Jonas, a troubled, violent eighteen-year-old, had been furious and smoldering in the days following the fight with Donner, so he decided to kill his father and stepmother, along with his stepbrother, whom he’d learned had slept with Lacey Higgins. Whether Jonas had been just trying to threaten and scare Donner or if he’d really intended to harm Donner, the upshot was that things went horribly, murderously wrong, and Jonas, in a fit of rage, ended up killing everyone who walked into that room on Christmas Eve. Only he and Kara had survived, while Marlie had vanished into thin air.
The police thought the murders of Sam Senior and Zelda McIntyre may have been premeditated.
Jonas may have slaughtered them as they slept first, before hunting down Donner—at least that was the prosecution’s theory. Why else wouldn’t they have awakened, even in their drugged state, during what had to have been utter, hellishly loud and savage chaos?
Later, after autopsies and lab work, it had been discovered that massive amounts of Valium were in both of their bloodstreams.
That was one of many parts of the story that didn’t ring true to Thomas. What parent ingests massive doses of a serious sleeping aid on Christmas Eve?
The reigning theory was that Sam Junior had tried to stop the slaughter and had been brutally killed in the attack. Marlie, too, was a victim, some of her blood found at the scene. The fact that Donner Robinson’s wounds were massive and that his jugular was severed convinced the police that he was the intended victim, the source of Jonas’s rage. Sam Junior hadn’t had as many wounds, but his femoral artery had been nicked and he’d bled out, possibly had just gotten in the way and Jonas, already out of his head, killed his brother in the frenzy of the attack. Yes, Jonas suffered wounds himself, but they had not been life-threatening. The DA had painted a clear picture that the defense couldn’t dispute completely or muddy sufficiently.
Though Jonas had sworn that Marlie saw him with the weapon as she passed by his door that day, she ended up going missing and had never been located, her blood identified through DNA matched with what had been extracted from hair on the brush she’d left behind. Even though Jonas’s own wounds were real, they could have been self-inflicted according to the prosecution’s expert witness.
“I can’t believe he was convicted,” Johnson said, closing the file. “All twelve jurors?”
“His juvenile records came into play. Unsealed.”
“How?”
“Severity of the crime. The fact that the records were never expunged. Certain information was kept confidential, but the offenses leaked to the press. He had two prior incidents of violence on his record. Then, of course, there was the fight with Donner after he turned eighteen. Jonas pulled a knife.”
“Jonas assaulted his brother?”
“Mainly threatened, but somehow in the struggle, Donner ended up with a slit on his forearm, not deep, but required stitches and was bad enough for Zelda to call 9-1-1.” Thomas glanced up at her. “Less than a week before the massacre.”
“Holy crap.” She let out a sigh and shook her head just as noise from the outer hallway, voices and laughter, rippled through the open doorway.
“Yup. The real tipping point in the trial was Jonas’s girlfriend at the time.”
“Lacey Higgins. I saw.” She tapped the file with a long finger.
“Right.” He downed the remainder of his now-cold coffee, then crushed the paper cup in his fist and tossed it into the trash can he kept near his file cabinet. He remembered Lacey taking the stand. Dressed in white. Pale and doe-eyed, seeming positively virginal. All part of the theater that was the courtroom. On the stand, Lacey kept her eyes downcast for the most part, but admitted to sleeping with Jonas’s stepbrother, Donner.
When Jonas had found out, she’d said, he’d confronted her at her parents’ house in Portland.
“Did he threaten you?” the DA, a tall woman with sleek blond hair and sharp features, had asked.
“Yes,” had been the meek reply.
“What did he say?”
Lacey had bit her lip and then whispered, “That he would kill me.”
“He would kill you?”
“And anyone I . . . I was with.” Lacey swallowed hard. Fingered the collar of her white dress.
“What exactly were his words?”
“Uh . . . that . . . that if he ever caught me, um . . . you know . . .” She’d visibly swallowed and bit her lower lip.
“If he ever caught you doing what?”
Lacey took a deep breath. “If he caught me with someone else, like, you know, sleeping around, that he, um, he would kill me.”
“Those were his exact words?”