Redemption (Amos Decker #5)(6)

“Her death wasn’t instantaneous,” Decker pointed out.

“No. But she fought hard.”

“And got Meryl Hawkins’s DNA under her fingernails,” Decker said pointedly. “So, in a way, she beat him.”

Decker moved past her out of the room, across the hall and into the bedroom there. Lancaster followed.

Decker paced over to a point against the wall and said, “Victim number four. Frankie Richards. Age fourteen. Just started at Burlington High School. Found on the floor right here. Single GSW to the heart.”

“We found some drug paraphernalia and enough cash hidden in his room to suggest that he wasn’t just a user but a dealer. But we could never tie any of that to the murders. We tracked down the man supplying him, it was Karl Stevens. He was a small fry. There was no way that was the motivation to kill four people. And Stevens had an ironclad alibi.”

Decker nodded. “Okay, we were called in at ten-twenty-one. We came by car and arrived here fourteen minutes later.”

He leaned against the wall and glanced out the window that overlooked the street. “Four neighboring homes. Two were occupied that night. No one in those houses saw or heard anything. Killer came and left unseen, unheard.”

“But then you found something when we went through the house that changed all that.”

Decker led her back down the stairs and into the living room. “A thumbprint on that wall switch plate along with a blood trace from Katz.”

“And the perp’s skin, blood, and resultant DNA under Abby’s fingernails. In the struggle with her attacker.”

“He’s strangling her with a ligature and she grips his arms to make him stop and the material gets transferred. Anybody who’s ever watched an episode of CSI knows that.”

Lancaster’s hand flicked to her pocket and she pulled out her pack of smokes.

Decker eyed this movement as she lit up. “You cashing in on tomorrow’s allotment?”

“It’s getting close enough to midnight. And I’m stressed. So excuse the hell out of me.” She flicked ash on the floor. “Hawkins’s prints were in the database because the company he had worked for previously did some defense contracting. They fingerprinted and ran a background check on everyone who worked there. When the print matched Hawkins in the database, we executed the search warrant on his house.”

Decker took up the story. “Based on the print, he was arrested and brought to the station, where a cheek swab was taken. The DNA on it matched the DNA found under Abby’s fingernails. And he had no alibi for that entire night. And during the search of his home they found a forty-five-caliber pistol hidden in a box behind a wall in his closet. The ballistics match was spot on, so it was without a doubt the murder weapon. He said it wasn’t his and he didn’t know how it got there. He said he didn’t even know about that secret space. We traced the pistol. It had been stolen from a gun shop about two years before. Serial numbers filed off. Probably used in a string of crimes since that time. And then it ended up in Hawkins’s closet.” He glanced at his old partner. “Which raises the question of why you think we might have gotten it wrong. Looks rock solid to me.”

Lancaster rolled the lit cigarette between her fingers. “I keep coming back to a dying guy taking the time to come here to clear his name. He has to know the odds are stacked against him. Why waste what little time he has left?”

“Well, what else does he have to do?” countered Decker. “I’m not saying he came to this house to murder four people. Hawkins probably picked this house to commit a lesser crime of burglary and it snowballed from there. You know that happens, Mary. Criminals lose it when they’re under stress.”

“But you know his motive for the crime,” said Lancaster. “That came out in the trial. Without really admitting his guilt, the defense tried to score some sympathetic points on that. It might have been why he didn’t get the death penalty.”

Decker nodded. “His wife was terminal. He needed money for her pain meds. He’d been laid off from his job and lost his insurance. His grown daughter had a drug problem and he was trying to get her into rehab. Again. So he stole credit cards, jewelry, a laptop computer, a DVD player, a small TV, some watches, and other miscellaneous things from this house and the vics. It all fits. His motivation might have been pure, but how he went about it sure as hell wasn’t.”

“But none of those items ever turned up. Not at his house. Not in some pawnshop. So he never realized any money from it.”

Decker said, “But he had money in his pocket when he was arrested. We could never prove it was from fencing the stolen goods, and he might well have been scared to try to move it after the murders. That’s what the prosecutor postulated at trial, although, reading the jury, it seemed to me that they thought the money he had was from selling the stuff. It’s just a cleaner conclusion.”

“But none of the neighbors saw a car drive up or leave other than David Katz’s,” retorted Lancaster.

“You know it was storming like hell that night, Mary. Raining buckets. You could barely see anything. And if Hawkins didn’t have his car lights on, maybe no one would have noticed it.”

“But no one heard it?” said Lancaster.

“Again, the noise of the storm. But I see you really have doubts about the case now.”