“That I know of. I told you before, I was probably high.”
“It was rainy and chilly that night. I doubt he would have been wearing a short-sleeved shirt.”
Gardiner was looking at her watch. “Okay, but isn’t that beside the point? His DNA was found under her nails. That came out at the trial.”
“Which leads me to this question. Can you think of anyone who would want to frame your father?”
“Frame him? How? By killing four people that he didn’t even know? By putting his fingerprints and DNA at the crime scene? My father wasn’t that important, Agent Decker. Why would anyone waste time incriminating him?”
“I take that as a no?”
She didn’t bother to answer.
“Your father said the scrapes on his arms were from when he fell down, not from Abigail’s fingernails.”
“But again, his DNA was found under her nails. Isn’t that conclusive?”
“We were also thinking that if your father was innocent, he could have raised any number of defenses, implicated other people. For instance, he could have said that another person had scratched his arms. And that that person had used the DNA from under their nails to plant under Abigail’s fingernails.”
Decker sat back slightly. This was the moment of truth. Gardiner was sharp enough, he knew, to realize the implications of his question.
But she surprised him. “After my father lost his job, he started hanging around a bad lot, Agent Decker.”
“That never came out at the trial.”
“Well, he did. He was desperate for money. For all I know, he started committing crimes but was never caught until the murders. As I told you before, he did whatever he could to get money for my mother’s pain medications. So maybe he was in a fight and got the injuries that way. He probably wouldn’t tell anyone that, because he was afraid it might incriminate him, or the person might do him harm if he did tell the authorities.”
Mars said incredulously, “He was on trial for murder. How much more danger could he be in?”
Gardiner didn’t even deign to look at him. She kept her gaze on Decker. “He might have been trying to protect my mother and me. If he talked, his ‘associates’ might harm us.”
It was at that moment that Decker realized he had seriously underestimated Mitzi Gardiner.
“That’s an interesting theory,” he said.
“Really?” she said. “I would think it was the only theory that would adequately answer your question.” She looked at her watch again. “Well, time’s up.”
“And if we have any more questions?” said Decker.
“You can ask someone else for answers.”
She walked out of the room, leaving them there.
A few moments later they heard a door open and close. After that, a garage door cranked up and a car drove out. From the window, they watched her drive down to the gate in a silver Porsche SUV. The gate opened, and a few moments later she was gone.
“Gentlemen?”
They turned to see a woman in a maid’s uniform. “Mrs. Gardiner asked me to show you out.”
As they left the house Mars said, “We just got our asses handed to us, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did.”
Chapter 36
IT WAS SIX-THIRTY EXACTLY when Decker and Mars pulled down the drive into the Richardses’ old home. Decker drove into the parking area behind the house and they got out. It wasn’t raining yet, but it was scheduled to start soon, and the dark clouds confirmed that prediction.
Mars looked up at the old house. “So this is where it all happened? And where you started your career as a homicide detective?”
“Apparently an inauspicious start,” commented Decker moodily.
“Hey, it was your first time. You think the first time I ran the ball at Texas I was as good as the last time I ran it? You learn from your mistakes, Decker, you know that.”
“Well, I made enough of them on this case to last a lifetime.”
He led Mars to the side door. This presumably was where David Katz had gone into the house. Decker had a key that had been given him by Natty. He unlocked the door and stepped into a utility room. Up a short set of steps was the kitchen.
“So we’re here to sort of walk through the crime scene?” said Mars.
Decker didn’t answer right away. He gazed around at the small room. The HVAC equipment was in here, as well as hookups for a washer and dryer.
“Why would Katz have pulled around here to come into the house?” He was really saying this to himself more than Mars.
“Well, maybe this was the way he always came in.”
“There’s no record that he was ever here before.”
Mars looked around the room. “Well, then I guess that is strange. Why come in here instead of through the front door?”
They walked up the stairs and into the kitchen.
“You think maybe Richards told him to come in that way?”
“I have no way of knowing that,” replied Decker. “I don’t know who arranged the meeting or why. Or even if it was a meeting or just a shoot-the-breeze sort of thing.”
They arrived at the spot where David Katz had been shot.
“He fell here and the beer he was drinking hit the floor but didn’t break.”
“Okay. And then Don Richards was shot—”
Decker put up a hand. He had just downloaded something from his “cloud” that was not making sense.
“What?” said Mars, who had seen this expression before.
“Two things. The beer bottle was nearly empty when it hit the floor.”
“How do you know that?”
“The spill pattern and volume of beer on the floor.”
“Wouldn’t some of it have dried?”
“We took that into account.”
“Okay, so he drank the rest.”
Decker shook his head. “He had almost no beer in his stomach when they did the autopsy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. And the second point?”
Decker closed his eyes and brought two images up in his head.
“Katz was right-handed. The print of his we found on the beer bottle was from his left hand.”
“Well, that’s weird. You didn’t see that before?”
“No, actually I did. But I didn’t place any great importance on it because sometimes you hold a drink in your other hand. We’ve all done it.”
“But now?”
“But now I’m looking at everything that doesn’t seem to fit.”
“And what does that tell you, looking at it that way?”
“That someone could have pressed his hand on the beer after he was dead, but used the wrong hand.”
“To make it look like he was drinking beer? Why would that matter?”
“I don’t know.”
Mars looked at Decker nervously. “And if there was almost no beer in his stomach, that wasn’t a red flag?”
“Should have been,” admitted Decker. He looked down at the floor. “But if Katz didn’t drink the beer, who did?” He eyed the kitchen sink. “Maybe it went down there.”
“To make it look like he’d drunk most of what was in the bottle?”