2 Murder by Parnell Hall

Author:Parnell Hall [Hall, Parnell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery & Crime
ISBN: 9781936441372
Publisher: Parnell Hall
Published: 2011-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

17.

SOMETIMES YOU FEEL GOOD, and sometimes you feel bad, and sometimes you just don’t know. I guess that’s why the word “ambivalent” was invented. That word had never been more appropriate to describe my feelings than it was now. I was overjoyed that Sergeant MacAullif didn’t consider me a murder suspect. I was delighted that he didn’t want to interrogate me. And I was quite pleased that I was about to find some things out about the Darryl Jackson murder that I needed to know. But I was shocked and dismayed to find out he was doing it because he thought I had meddled in the Albrect murder. I had, but he wasn’t supposed to know it. I thought I was free and clear on that one. I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well. And all the time, all the moves that I had thought were so clever, he had immediately recognized as the bumbling attempts of a gifted amateur. And the emotion that stirred in me was a primary one—at least a primary one for me. And that emotion was fear. That cold, clammy feeling that someone is looking right through you, and knows all about you, and knows what you think.

I had no time to dwell on it, however, for MacAullif was already taking a folder off his desk and pulling papers out of it.

“Let’s start with the autopsy report,” he said. He held up the paper and read from it. “Death was due to a laceration from a sharp object entering the back and perforating the left ventricle, etc., etc., bullshit, bullshit.” He lowered the paper. “We know all that. He got stabbed with a knife. Now, the time element. The medical examiner’s covering his ass like crazy. He puts the time of death at somewhere between eleven o’clock and one-thirty. That’s pretty gutless, under the circumstances, seeing as how your call was logged in at 1:27. But that’s what happens when the lawyers start chewing the shit out of the legal system. This guy’s been on the stand before, and he knows if he made the outside limit 1:15, some wise-ass lawyer would make him look like a damn fool for saying the murder couldn’t have taken place at 1:16, so there you are. 1:30 is a pretty safe outside limit, seeing as how the radio patrol cops got there by 1:35. At any rate, that’s what the spineless fuck has done, and that leaves you right in the middle of it.

“Just between you and me, the murder probably took place somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00, which would almost let you out of it, but we have to live with what we get.”

MacAullif looked at me. “Any comments?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to talk.”

“Naw, I just didn’t want you to lie to me about how you’re not involved. I don’t want to hear it. We’re discussing the case now. Let’s discuss it.”

“All right. What do you want to discuss?”

“The time of death. When do you think he was killed?”

“Before I got there.

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