Page 121 of Think Twice

“Yes. The cops consider it open and shut. Two things in Pascoe’s favor though. One, his wife was home that night. She said that her husband never left the house, but she also admitted that she was up in the bedroom and that he was downstairs watching television. The DA claimed that—one—she’s the wife, she could be lying to protect her husband, and—two—he could have sneaked out without her knowing. The wife testified that the second was impossible, that they have alarms on the house and every time the door opens it pings, but of course, the DA will argue that those can be easily switched off. I have all the details on the case, but let’s move on for the moment.”

She touched the iPad.

“PT also told you about a father-son murder in Austin, Texas. What’s interesting is, it really wasn’t hard for me to figure out the cases from what he told you. We think murders are common, but these kinds are pretty rare. I literally just put in my search engine ‘father son tech executive murdered in Austin’ and the right case came up.”

The screen filled with crime scene photos and articles.

“From what we can tell, the murdered father was a rich guy, his son a ne’er-do-well. A few months before the murder, the father—Philip Barry—disowned the son, Dan. In return for what the son saw as a huge betrayal, the police theory goes, Dan Barry killed his father with a knife. The police got an anonymous call purportedly from a neighbor about a man screaming for his life. They went to the house. The front door was open. They found the dead dad in the kitchen, throat slit. They found the son upstairs still asleep. A bloody knife was under his bed. There were also blood traces on the clothes and sheets, on the stairway, on the path from the kitchen to the son’s room. DNA would show they all belonged to the victim. Only one set of fingerprints on the knife—you guessed it, the son’s.”

“Dumbest killer in history,” Win said.

“There were plenty of drugs in his system. The police theory was old-school—he was hopped up on coke, remembered how he’d been disinherited, killed the dad, and probably didn’t even realize it.”

“Still,” Myron said. “An easy conviction.”

“To be fair, the son’s attorney offered an alternative theory—someone broke into the house while the son was sleeping, killed the dad, planted the knife upstairs, and then called the police anonymously. He pointed out that when the police called, no neighbors admitted making the call and none heard a scream. The call came from an untraceable line.”

“So maybe the killer made the call,” Myron said.

“Yes.”

“That didn’t fly in court?” Win asked.

“It didn’t fly enough. Dan Barry was hardly a sympathetic witness. He had a record, including vehicular manslaughter. He killed someone in a DUI.”

“Did the police look into that?” Myron asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, maybe the DUI victim’s family was seeking revenge?”

“I don’t know. But you hit on a good point.”

“That being?”

“Motive. In all these cases, the person convicted of the crime had a motive, so when they claimed that they were framed in some outlandish schemes…”

“It was easy to dismiss,” Myron said.

“Right. Imagine, like in this case, the time and planning it would take to get in Barry’s house, drug the son, whatever—well, who would buy that someone would go to all that trouble? What would be the killer’s motive?”

“Unless,” Win said, “there was no motive.”

“Like in the case of a serial killer,” Myron added. “It all makes horrible sense. Anything else?”

“Not much. PT mentioned a soybean farmer killed by two immigrants who worked for him. The media was quieter on this. I don’t think they wanted to arouse trouble for other immigrants in the area. I’m still going through it, but again, blood from the victim was found in the immigrants’ bunkhouse.”

Myron and Win spent a few moments studying the information on the screen.

“The evidence,” Win said. “It’s overkill.”

“Agree,” Esperanza said.

“Murderers are oft careless, of course,” Win continued. “And if we view these cases separately, yes, the convictions are solid. But when we group them together, one must marvel at the overall stupidity. Who in our modern world doesn’t know your phone location can be tracked? Who doesn’t know about CCTV or E-ZPass or DNA?”

“And the gun found in Robert Lestrano’s toolshed,” Myron added, rising and pointing to the photograph on the screen. “According to the police report, he readily admits to the police that he owned a gun. He tells the police he kept it in a locked case next to his bed. They even watch him open the drawer to retrieve it, and by the cops’ own admission, he looks genuinely shocked to see it’s missing. How dumb do you have to be to use your own gun and say it’s next to your bed and then just hide it in a shed in your yard?”

“Overkill,” Win said again.