Twisted Justice by Patricia Gussin

Author:Patricia Gussin [Gussin, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat
Publisher: Seven Ox Press
Published: 2007-01-16T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chuck had timed the investigative blitz for early evening to simulate as much as possible the scenario of two weeks earlier. The weather was humid and in the high eighties, similar to the night of the murder, but it had been drizzling that night. Chuck personally questioned the older woman living upstairs from Steve, who had called the police. He had interviewed her previously and this time, although cooperative, she had nothing more to add. He then planned to interview the neighbors on either side and the house directly across the street, along with the two houses flanking it. They all had the most direct view of who came in and out of Steve’s apartment and the best chance to have heard anything unusual.

The neighbors directly across the street had been away that entire weekend. When they’d approached Oregon Avenue at ten thirty, it had been blocked off and they had difficulty getting through the police barricade to their home. This was substantiated by the police reports that Chuck had repeatedly scrutinized. To their right lived an older couple in their seventies, who relayed the details of the TV programs they had watched that Sunday evening from their family room in the rear of the house, denying even glancing out their front windows.

On the other side of Steve’s, a middle-aged housewife delayed preparations for the family’s dinner so Chuck could question her and her two teenage sons. Her husband had also been there, but he’d left that afternoon for a sales conference in Miami. Consistent answers. Nobody saw anything that shed new light. The older of the boys recalled seeing Laura’s light blue station wagon parked right behind Kim’s canary yellow Firebird. He remembered thinking that the wagon was parked too close to the Malone driveway and that old man Malone would be pissed, maybe enough to even clip it with his ancient pickup. He estimated the time to be minutes, maybe ten, maybe twenty, from when he’d noticed the two cars to when all the action started. None recalled any other unidentified parked vehicle. Nobody saw Laura or Santiago enter the house or noticed any type of commotion or noise. Nobody — except the woman upstairs from Steve — heard the gunshot.

Next, Chuck revisited Matt Malone, a widower with a mean-tempered reputation, who lived alone in the gray, two-story house on the left of Steve’s.

“Who is it,” the scrawny, white-haired, elderly man growled as Chuck rang the bell for the third time.

Chuck could smell the hint of whisky on his breath, but the old man seemed coherent. First time Chuck’d stopped by Malone’s, he’d merely heard, “I didn’t see nothin’, and that’s what I told the cops.” This time Chuck came prepared with a fifth of Jack Daniels, which he hastily pushed into the man’s veined hands.

“I’m not the law, Mr. Malone, I just need answers about that poor woman who got killed next door. Pay you back a little for helping me out.”

Malone took the amber liquid. “I dunno, guess we could talk some.

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