A Score to Settle

This could not be happening to her. Metal filings? As in exactly what Daniel had predicted she would find?

“Thanks, Eddie, I’ll get back to you.”

“Well?” Daniel said. Then his face softened. “Jamie, what’s wrong? You’re pale. Did he say something to upset you?”

Her lips felt suddenly cold, and she could barely form the words. “You said something about a s-serial killer?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHO WAS THAT ON THE PHONE?” Daniel asked sharply. Whoever it was, he’d sure said something to shake up Jamie.

“My evidence tech, the one reexamining Frank Sissom’s clothes. He found something no one else did—very fine metal shavings.”

Daniel could hardly believe what he was hearing. His long shot had paid off. “Jamie, this is huge. Do you realize what this means?” In his exuberance, he threw his arms around the lawyer and hugged her. Finally, someone had listened to him about those damn metal shavings.

“Um, do you always get this happy at the prospect of helping a client?”

Suddenly self-conscious, he released her and scooted back a few inches on the enormous bench seat. “Sorry.” Had he been out of the social scene so long, he’d forgotten how to behave appropriately with someone he barely knew?

Only, he felt as if he knew her. Over the past twenty-four hours, he had delved deeply into Jamie McNair’s background, and his admiration for her had only grown.

Her roots had come from anything but privilege. Her single mother had raised her in a one-bedroom apartment with a series of low-paying jobs. Her father was completely absent—Daniel hadn’t even been able to learn his identity.

Yet Jamie had gotten herself an education with a lot of hard work, scholarships and student loans. Still not rolling in dough, judging from her off-the-rack plum-colored suit and a pair of slightly scuffed black pumps—recently polished, but in need of new soles.

Not that she didn’t look stunning in that color. She would look stunning in just about anything.

Daniel forced himself to focus. “You don’t share my optimism, I take it.”

“Frankly, I’m too shocked to know what I feel. The black, powdery substance on Frank Sissom’s shirt was written off as copier or printer toner. No one ever questioned it or analyzed it until now. It didn’t seem relevant.”

“I’ve learned it’s those tiny, overlooked elements that can make or break a case. So, are we on the same page now? Same offender?”

“It warrants looking into,” she said with some degree of resignation. “One thing I can’t help but notice—Frank Sissom was murdered a scant two months after you were released from prison. If we have a serial offender, who’s to say it isn’t you?”

Daniel felt a prickling of fear. He’d never even considered that he could become a suspect. But he grabbed a bottled water and took a sip to relieve his suddenly dry mouth.

“Why would I push to exonerate Christopher and find the real murderer, if the real murderer was me?” he asked sensibly.

She shrugged. “I’ll put that possibility on the back burner. For now. But that leaves me with Gables as a two-time murderer.”

Daniel curbed his impatience. “Gables was a college kid at the time of the first crime.”

“College kids are adults, perfectly capable of homicide.”

One inch at a time. Daniel had more now than he did last time he’d met with Jamie. He just had to keep building.

“Back to the metal shavings. Was your guy able to distinguish the type of metal, or where it might have come from?”

“Well, it’s ferrous, which means iron or nickel, or an alloy of either. We haven’t gotten beyond that yet. The type of close analysis you’re talking about takes time…and money.”

“I’ll give you the name of a lab. They do photo-chemical spectography, which can give us the exact— What?”

Her expression was closed again, guarded. “It’s not just a question of time or money. My boss is going to throw a fit.”

“Does he have to know?”

“Of course he does! If you’re right, if Christopher Gables was involved in two murders—”

“Wait. Stop right there. You can’t seriously think Gables is a serial killer.”

“How can you know it’s not Gables? Look at it from my perspective, Daniel. I am as sure as I’ve ever been that Christopher Gables committed the murder of Frank Sissom. You can’t argue away those fingerprints. If trace evidence links this murder to another, then Christopher might well be involved in the previous murder, as well. It only makes sense.”

It made no sense at all.

“Would you like me to give you an explanation for the fingerprints?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, this I’ve got to hear.”

Daniel had given this a lot of thought. Because, unlike Jamie, he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he hadn’t killed anyone, yet his prints had been found on a murder weapon.

“Christopher used the knife for something else—hours, days, even months prior to the murder. So long as no one else touches the knife, the prints remain intact.

“The real murderer then uses an identical knife to commit the crime. Wearing gloves, he smears some blood on the knife bearing Christopher’s prints and places it near the body. Voilà, a perfect frame-up.”

“The medical examiner matched the knife to the wound,” she argued.

Daniel opened his briefcase, rifled through it until he came up with a page of the trial transcript with some testimony highlighted in yellow.

“‘The wound on Mr. Sissom’s neck is consistent with a Messermeister Meridian Elite eight-inch chef’s knife—the knife found near his body.’ Do you recognize that testimony, Jamie?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes.”

“‘…is consistent with…’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘exact match,’ does it?”

“Please, I’m not on trial here. You’ve made your point. The murder could have been committed with an identical knife.”

“You have no idea how many nights I lie awake, thinking about how my prints ended up on a murder weapon. I had no conscious memory of using the knife that killed my partner. I’m not a chef, and I spent little time in the kitchen.”

“So how do you explain it?”

“I tried to think of the things I might use a knife for. And here’s what I came up with. I might have used a knife to open a package. Not the day of the murder, but perhaps weeks earlier. I had a penknife I kept in my pocket for such things, because the restaurant received packages all the time. But I could have mislaid it and picked up whatever was handy.”

Daniel could almost see the gears turning in Jamie’s head as she mulled over his theory.

“Christopher wasn’t a chef, either,” she finally said. “Our theory was that Christopher confronted Frank in the kitchen, knowing ahead of time he would have his choice of murder weapons.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Daniel said. “See if he has any memory of touching that knife for an innocent purpose.”