Along Came A Spider (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 28), page 1
ALONG CAME A SPIDER
Copyright © 2021 by Blake Banner
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Join My Newsletter
I try to publish new books often. Sometimes even two a month. I wake up, drink coffee, write stories, sleep, then repeat.
If you'd like to be notified when a new book hits the digital shelves, sign up below and I'll give you a quick heads up with direct links when that happens. Nothing more. Nothing Less.
JOIN MY NEWSLETTER
(No Spam. Ever.)
One
“The crazy thing was—” Detective Justin Campbell clasped his hand over his mouth and half closed his eyes. He had a cigarette between his first and middle fingers and he sucked on it like it was oxygen and he had severe emphysema. When he had his lungs full he stretched up his chin and drew the smoke deeper before letting it out in small wafts as he spoke. His voice was like gravel matured in nicotine and whiskey. “Her DNA was at the scene, on the victim, fresh. She’d had sex with this guy just before he died.” The smoke drifted up into his eyes and he squinted at me, then at Dehan. “It should have been an open and shut case. It was an open and shut case.”
He shrugged. Neither of us said anything. He took a piece of tobacco from his lip and examined it.
“But she wasn’t there.” He raised his eyes to look at us. “Two hundred people could swear she was more than a hundred and eighty miles away, in Boston. And among them was the Boston police commissioner.”
Dehan was leafing through the file while she listened, glancing at him occasionally while he spoke. She was sitting on a faded green sofa in the bay window, with a square of warm morning sunlight on the cushion beside her.
“What makes you so sure it was just before he died? Maybe they hit the sack that morning before he left.”
He was already shaking his head before she’d finished, flicking ash into the glass ashtray on the arm of his chair.
“Nah, Frank—you know Frank, the ME—” We both nodded that we did. “He examined the body at the scene.” He paused to give me a knowing look. “Believe me, that is one examination of a dead body you don’t want to watch when you just had dinner! You know what I’m saying?”
I winced and he went on. “Not only did he have her…” He waved the hand with the cigarette around in circles, making small spirals of smoke. “Her discharge all over his…” He made more spirals. Dehan cut across him.
“He had her vaginal discharge all over his penis?”
He frowned at her. “Yeah, that, but the doc said it was not even dry yet. Like it was real recent. Like, they did it and she did him. Badabim badabam! Also,” he turned to me, “and get this, her saliva was all over his chest,” he stabbed down with his smoking fingers, “and in the wound! How sick is that? I mean that is…” He nodded a while then shook his head. “That is some special kind of sick.”
Dehan found the pictures of the body and handed me one. It showed a naked man in his early forties lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. There was a lot of blood underneath him, and somewhat less blood on his chest where there was an ugly wound in the region of his heart. Beyond him was the bed, unmade.
I said, “He was stabbed first in the back, the chest wound was perimortem.”
He sucked on his cigarette again, squinting at me through the smoke.
“Yeah, the stab in the back was what killed him. He must’ve fell down, then she gets on top of him, stabs him in the heart, pulls out the knife and then the crazy bitch licks his chest.”
Dehan was reading a form in the file.
“Prints were on the knife.”
Campbell nodded. “Yeah, clear set of prints on the knife.”
I made a face that said that didn’t impress me much.
“That’s to be expected. It was her house.”
“Sure, but what is not to be expected is that there were no prints on top of hers. Neither were there smudges from a pair of latex gloves. All you’ve got is his prints and her prints. It’s their house, their kitchen, their knife. But nobody else used that knife.”
I grunted. “Tell me about Paul Gotlieb. He found the body, right?”
“Paul and Helen Gotlieb live next door at 2253. Bob, the victim, and Sheila, his wife, lived at 2251. Now, 2251 sits alone in its own grounds, with seven steps going up to the front door. It’s a very noticeable house. Now Paul and Helen live next door, but next door is like thirty or forty feet away. Like I said, the houses aren’t connected. So you’re not going to hear anything through the walls is what I’m saying. But they’re pals, always in and out of each other’s houses. Helen and Sheila are best friends, Bob and Paul are best pals. Bob worked from home…”
Dehan interrupted, “He had his own web design company, right?”
“Yeah, IT services kinda thing, successful, he was making money. Paul was an architect and worked from home three days a week, so they saw a lot of each other. So on the night of the murder, Monday, October 1st, 2018, at about seven thirty PM, Paul is taking out the trash, and from his porch he sees Sheila leave the house in a hurry. She runs down the steps to her car and drives away. He’s surprised because he thought she had some kind of event in Boston that night. As it turned out he was right, that’s where she was, but he swears he recognized her and the car.” He shrugged. “They’re close friends, right? They see each other most every day. He knows her.”
“Did he talk to her?”
“He says he called out to her. Something like, ‘Hey, Sheila, how’s it going? Aren’t you supposed to be in Boston?’ Something like that. But she doesn’t respond. She gets in the car and drives away. Now he notices the front door is open. He thinks she left in a hurry and forgot to close it, or it didn’t close properly, whatever. He dumps the trash and walks over to Bob and Sheila’s house. Like I said, the house its in its own grounds, so we’re talking about maybe fifty-five or sixty feet from Paul’s front door to Bob’s front door. He climbs the seven steps, pushes open the door and calls Bob. Nothing. But all the lights are on. He calls again a couple of times. Looks in the living room, the kitchen; no sign of Bob anywhere. Now he’s beginning to get worried. So he goes upstairs. He’s still calling his name. He sees the bedroom door open and when he steps in this is what he finds. He freaks, runs downstairs and calls 911.”
He paused to take a final drag on his cigarette before crushing it out in the ashtray while smoke trailed from his nose. Dehan still had the crime scene photographs in her hands but she was staring at the cold fireplace. I broke the silence.
“So what did you find when you got there?”
“There’s Paul Gotlieb sitting on the stoop with his wife, Helen. They’ve both been crying. He tells me he hasn’t touched anything, so we go inside. Upstairs it’s just like you see in the pictures. He’s naked. Somebody has stabbed him in the back. They’ve pulled out the knife. He’s gone down bleeding profusely. They’ve got on top of him and stabbed him again in the heart. They pulled out the knife again and dropped it beside the body.”
Dehan spoke as though to the fireplace. “He’s naked, suggests either the killer surprised him, or he was intimate with the killer.”
“Right? That’s what I am thinking. Either the killer has crept in and stabbed him in the back without being seen, or she has put her arms around him like she is going to hug him and kiss him, and stabbed him in the embrace. And that kind of fits in some sick way with the saliva on his chest.” He looked slightly sick. “Kind of kinky mix of murder and sex. Like she got a kick out of it or something.”
Dehan scratched her head and left a couple of long black strands slightly raised, reflecting the sunlight through the window. A fly buzzed against the glass.
“I thought I read somewhere that Bob and Sheila were splitting up…?”
She gave it the intonation of a question. Campbell gave a dry bark that was meant to be a laugh.
“Right. That was where it started to get complicated. Bob’s den is next door to the bedroom. So while the crime scene boys are taking prints and photographs, and Frank is examining the body, I take a stroll into the den.” He turned to me and leaned forward slightly. “What do I find there? I find his computer switched on. I find Skype open. I have a look and I find this is not unusual. He has been using Skype all day. In fact, when Joe and the crime scene boys look at the computer they find he uses it all day every day for work. And it just so happens he’s been on Skype that evening at seven-something. I have a look at the last person he’s spoken to.” He wagged his finger at me once. “One Sorka Williams. She’s a writer, IT geek. She doesn’t write books, she writes content for websites. So they work together, a lot. But that is not all they do together a lot. On his desk there are some travel brochures, and he has sent her pictures of those brochures. I’m thinking maybe it’s for a website, but it’s not. When Joe and the boys had a look at his phone it became clear, they were having an affair—a very serious affair. She’s a real looker, twenty-four, real cute, and judging by the messages they were real crazy about each other.”
I sighed, trying to visualize the scene. “So, he was alive and talking to Sorka Williams on Skype at seven, and at seven thirty Paul claims he saw Bob’s wife—”
Dehan said absently, “Sheila Walklet.”
“—Sheila Walklet, leave the house. He entered, found the body and made the 911 call at seven forty PM. So that gives us a pretty tight window of forty minutes for Bob to finish his Skype call, go into his bedroom and get killed.”
Dehan looked at me and curled her lip. “Makes you wonder how close Paul and Sheila were.”
Campbell nodded. “Right, that was my first thought. Simple, he sees Sheila leave, tells his wife he’s taking out the trash, goes over to Bob’s house, lets himself in. Upstairs he finds Bob naked in his bedroom, kills him, calls 911. But…”
I was shaking my head. “It raises more questions than it answers. For a start, if Sheila didn’t leave the door open, how did he get in?”
Dehan said, “Not impossible or even difficult for him to get a key. Or maybe that part of the story was true and Sheila did leave the door open.”
Aside from a grunt I ignored her. “Second, if he has a thing for Sheila and jealousy is his motive, why does he then cast suspicion on her? Last, but by no means least, it does not square the circle of Sheila’s DNA being on Bob’s body while she is giving a talk in Boston.”
Dehan held up both hands. “Waitwaitwait! Let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s say, just for the sake of the argument, that Paul has harbored a secret love for Sheila for a long time. For some reason his feelings have recently come to a head. On the night in question he either sees Sheila leave or doesn’t—it makes no difference for the purposes of my theory—he is going to take out the trash and sees Bob’s door open,”
I interrupted, “Or he has a key. That kind of neighbors often have keys to each other’s houses.”
“Right. Either way he is suddenly seized by a crazy idea. He takes a knife and some rubber gloves from the kitchen. He dumps the trash, goes into Bob’s, puts on the gloves and kills Bob. He then takes a knife from Bob’s kitchen, smears it with blood and drops it beside the body. He goes downstairs, calls 911, goes home and on the way dumps the gloves in the garbage, washes the knife, puts it away and tells his wife Bob has been murdered.”
Campbell had been listening with a frown on his face. “But what about…”
“Wait. I’m coming to that. Paul had seen Sheila leave—but earlier than he said—at maybe two, three or four o’clock. That’s what put the idea into his head to say he’d seen her. But it wasn’t right then, it was several hours before.”
I said, “She was supposed to have left for Boston late morning.”
“But she didn’t. Sometimes couples that are breaking up get all nostalgic and amorous. So they hit the sack. After she’d gone he was too lazy or too busy or both and didn’t shower. The rate at which bodily fluids dry is notoriously unreliable. Sure, it was recent, but hours not minutes. It takes three and a half hours to drive to Boston, more or less. If the conference was at seven, she could have left as late as three or four PM. If she took an air taxi, she could have left even later.”
I made a question with my face and showed it to Campbell. He shrugged.
“It’s not impossible, I guess. Sheila did have witnesses that placed her in Boston at midday, waiters, a concierge. But…”
Dehan echoed his shrug. “If their marriage was on the rocks, she might have panicked and decided it was smart to get a few witnesses to say she was in Boston all day. That’s not so hard to do.” She frowned and leafed through the file again. “She’d been a cop, right?”
He nodded. “She was a cop for a few years, then got a job as an insurance investigator, then became a security consultant for insurance companies. Smart lady.”
“So if she was a cop she’d know that the spouse is the first person the cops look at as a possible suspect. We’ll have to look good and hard at her alibi.” She glanced at him. “No offense.”
Campbell smiled. “None taken. Be my guest, Detective Dehan, but we’ve already done that. You do it again. Maybe you’ll find something we missed.”
“There’s just one other thing I wanted to ask you about.” I gave my head a scratch. “Sheila Walklet had been having an affair, right?”
“Yeah. When she discovered Bob and Sorka had been hitting the hay she got real mad and started having an affair of her own with a guy at her office. Man by the name of Jesus Pinaglia, Mexican. Looks like he has a record back in Mexico, but it got lost or some shit. You know how it goes. My own feeling was that he was a creep and I thought for a while maybe they were accomplices, but he had an alibi and worse still there was zero evidence to implicate him.” He sighed. “And even if they was working together, it still didn’t explain how she could be in two places at the same time!”
“She had motive,” said Dehan, reading a form in the file, “and then some. Not only was her husband cheating on her, she got a handsome payout from his life insurance.”
“Yeah,” Campbell rumbled, nodding. “Don’t forget the prenup too. If they divorced, she was not entitled to a damn penny of his company. And the worst part of it is, she increased his insurance just one month before, right around the time she found out he was cheating on her. She never disclosed the amount. She didn’t have to because she had an airtight alibi.” He waved his finger in the air. “But there is no question in my mind, none at all, that she killed her husband. But how? That’s the question. At the time of his death she was almost two hundred miles away, in Boston. But everything, all the forensic evidence, says she was here, screwing her husband—excuse me, Detective Dehan—and in more ways than one.”
“Be my guest.”
“Screwing her husband and sticking a knife in his back. With motive. The two oldest motives known to man.” He shrugged again. “I know you two got a reputation for cracking these cold cases, but I’m telling you, whatever about your theory of an air taxi, you got your work cut out for you on this one.”
He pulled a cigarette from his packet, tapped the end on his lighter and poked it in his mouth. Then he sighed and stared at his Zippo for a moment before shaking his head and lighting up.
Two
Some time later we stepped out of Detective Justin Campbell’s house and into the breezy, briny sunshine of Clarence Avenue, on Eastchester Bay. I paused for a moment to look at the stars and stripes flapping over his door, then followed Dehan down the path, through his front yard and out to my ancient burgundy Jaguar parked by the gate. She sat against the hood and crossed her arms.
“What’s the time?” she said. “I could use a coffee.”
I glanced at my watch. “Eleven. Yeah, let’s grab a coffee, then decide how we tackle this.”
We took a stroll to the Fisherman’s Wharf on the corner, where we sat out back, drinking coffee and eating muffins under a blue parasol, watching the boats dart and heel on the water.
Dehan waved a muffin at me. “The investigation failed because Campbell got hung up on trying to understand how the impossible happened.”
I watched a sail like a pale wraith lean over and skip across the small waves. I made a face like maybe she was right and broke my muffin in two. She went on.
“It’s like he was fed the data: her DNA says she was in New York having sex with her husband at the same time as she was giving a talk in Boston; and he went, ‘Cannot compute, cannot compute, cannot compute.’”
I gave a small laugh. “So?”
“So obviously that is impossible, so we eliminate it. It is established that she was at the house with Bob and they had sex. It is also established conclusively that she was in Boston from roughly six o’clock onward—waiters and concierge notwithstanding. Now, note, Stone, the time is established in only one of those two cases. Therefore,” she waved the muffin at me again and broke it in half, “as a person cannot be in two places at the same time, we have no choice but to conclude that she was in New York having sexual congress with her husband before she went to Boston. Quod erat demonstrandum.”
