Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jamie

I left the chief’s office after a good hour of his ranting and raving at me. He was furious that this had leaked to the press, and while he understood that I was too, I was still the one on the firing line because it was my investigation. I was the one who was meant to be responsible for stopping shit like this from happening. I had given up even trying to get a word in and had just taken the lecture. And things had only gotten worse when we moved on to talking about the actual case.

I gave the chief a rundown of everything we did know, which in fairness was a lot of stuff, but the chief was no fool. He saw straight through everything I was telling him and cut to the chase and asked me point-blank if we had any evidence to suggest which of the Aldens was the guilty party. I hated that I had to say no, but I wasn’t in the habit of lying to the chief and I wasn’t about to start now.

That set another lecture in motion. The first lecture, I accepted even though I knew in my heart that a leak wasn’t really my fault. This lecture I took personally. It was my job to find Candy’s killer and I was the one who was failing.

At the end of the lecture, the chief made it clear to me that he expected some real answers and soon. I knew better than to tell him that I did too, and we were doing the best we could.

Instead, I just nodded meekly, telling him I was sorry and that I wouldn’t let him down. It was all I could do, really. The fact that the case was complicated and full of dead ends didn’t give me an excuse not to solve it. Candy Xavier deserved justice.

I had just left the chief’s office and was on the way back to my own office to lick my wounds a little bit when Officer Dumont appeared.

“Please tell me you have found out who leaked this case to the press,” I said.

He shook his head and my heart sank, but he looked revved up, like something had happened. I waited impatiently for him to share it with me.

“I’m sorry, Detective. I barely got started on that when William Alden came in. He asked to speak to you, but you were with the chief, so I talked to him instead.”

“And?” I prompted him, leading him into my office and sitting down.

He sat down opposite me again where he had been when he delivered the bad news earlier. Maybe this time, he would be bringing me some good news. Something concrete we could actually use.

“And he told me he had been lying about losing his memory because he had been covering for his wife,” Officer Dumont said. “His story was all over the place, and to be honest, I’m not sure I believed most of it, but I figured you’d want to hear it.”

“Of course I want to hear it,” I said, sitting forward, my arms on the desk.

Officer Dumont pulled a notebook out of his pocket and began telling me what William had told me.

“Okay. He said Carlotta lured Candy to their house with the intention of killing her,” he said.

“Well, that’s the first lie right there,” I said .

“Exactly. Forensics found the window she broke to get into the property, right? Not exactly how you’d enter someone’s home if you were invited,” Officer Dumont said.

I nodded and motioned for him to go on.

“William said that he didn’t know anything about it until it was too late for him to stop it. Carlotta apparently herded Candy to the bedroom with a knife. William said he didn’t recognize the knife as being one of theirs. Carlotta then pushed Candy out the window and the knife fell out too. He said he caught Carlotta looking for the knife, but she couldn’t find it.”

My mind was spinning. It did sound like a load of bullshit, but the part about the knife was niggling at me.

“I asked him what he thought Carlotta’s motive might be for killing Candy, and he said he thought she was jealous of the girl because of his affair with her,” Officer Dumont went on.

“Well, that much could be true, but the rest sounds like bullshit. Why would William do this?” I said.

“Maybe he’s the one who is really guilty, and he’s worried we’re getting closer to finding out the truth, so he thought he’d get in first and make it look like Carlotta is guilty,” Officer Dumont suggested.

“Maybe,” I said.

It sounded plausible, but my mind was back on the knife. It was the one other part of William’s story that had some truth to it. The autopsy had shown wounds on Candy’s hand made by a knife. And they could have been defensive. And they were made by a knife that wasn’t from the Aldens’ home, or at least one that wasn’t still there once the officers arrived.

That told me one thing for sure. William might be making this up, but he remembered something from that night, or how would he have known to mention a knife? He had no idea about the autopsy findings.

I was still wracking my brains over the knife when it hit me like a thunderbolt.

“The knife,” I said suddenly. “We’re looking in the wrong places.”

I had a team of officers out searching every trash can, every place that it might be plausible to hide a knife, because I was working under the supposition that one of the Aldens had hidden the knife. But maybe it really had gone out the window with Candy. And if the part was true about Carlotta searching for it and not being able to find it, there was only place it could be.

“I need you to call the fire department. Get a truck out there now. Go and meet them there and find the knife. I'm going to bet it’s in the tree branches outside the Aldens’ bedroom window,” I said quickly as adrenaline flooded my body.

This was it. The breakthrough I had been waiting for. Officer Dumont frowned at me.

“I don’t believe most of William’s story, but we’re going to find that knife in the tree. I can feel this is right. Go,” I said.

Officer Dumont still looked doubtful, but he didn’t argue with me. He jumped up and was already calling the fire department as he left my office.

Maybe William’s story was true. Not about Carlotta luring Candy there. We knew that was bullshit. But maybe it was true that Carlotta had been the one to drive Candy out the window. I just had to pray that there were still fingerprints on the knife that we could lift.

It was going to be a long morning now, waiting on news from Officer Dumont.

Officer Dumont burst into my office without knocking several hours later. He was instantly forgiven for forgetting to knock with the gravity of the information he had to give me.

“You were right. We found a knife lodged in the tree branches. It matches the description the coroner gave us for the kind of blade that would have been used to make those cuts on Candy’s hand,” he said.

His enthusiasm seemed to fade, and I frowned.

“And?” I said.

“And we’ve fingerprinted them and there’s only one set of fingerprints. They don’t belong to either of the Aldens. They belong to Candy Xavier. She was the one with the knife on the scene,” he said.

“Dammit,” I shouted.

So much for our breakthrough. Still, this was an interesting find. It proved that William knew something about that night.

The discrepancy in the fingerprints bothered me a lot, and the holes in William’s story bothered me too. But there was something else niggling away in my mind. Something that told me to look very closely at Carlotta. She had every bit as much of a motive for killing Candy as her husband did.

But I wasn’t sure that was really what had happened. I was starting to think that Officer Dumont’s theory about why William would come in with a fake story was right. Because Carlotta wasn’t quite as sweet and put upon as she made herself out to be. She was very manipulative, and it seemed to me that she would do anything to protect her husband and avoid a scandal. Could it be possible that she was the one covering up the murder rather than William and that he was the killer, not her?

I didn’t know for sure, but I knew I needed to speak to Carlotta again.

“Officer Dumont, go out to the Aldens’ place and bring Carlotta in. It’s past time she and I had another little chat on the record,” I said.