Page 206 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

“Mitchell Bowan, too, died at that earlier hour. His right hand was
on top. And a third thing had changed, as well: his body was not
moved far from the bed; the head was nowhere near the hall door.
Are you following this, Duncan? Do you feel ill? What did you have
for lunch?”
“Uh, I’m okay, Lieutenant. Just let me take a couple of these
antacid tablets.”
“As you wish. The physical evidence surrounding the fourth
victim, Beryl Creighton, displayed those three aberrations
accumulating from the earlier murders, plus a new one: the number
of stab wounds increased from two to three.”
My last chance to counter her stream of absurdities with cold logic:
“So what?”
“So we must conclude there were two killers, each engaged in
making the murders look like the work of a Simulian, but not quite
able to pull it off. As one made a mistake, the other learned of it
through the media coverage and was impelled to perpetuate it in
order to maintain the illusion of a single assassin. But neither of them
could perform their task perfectly. Thus the widening gap through
time between the original model and the final murder.”
“Final? Don’t you mean ‘fourth?’”
“No. Beryl Creighton was the last victim. There would have been
no more murders, even had no one been arrested.”
“How can you be so sure, Lieutenant? Eight jurors are left. They
all voted to convict Sherman Simulian. Four of them died without an
arrest occurring. What is to stop the series?”
Labelle pulled up to the curb and parked. My eyes were on her,
however, not the address.
“It is over because one of the killers finally killed the other. Beryl
Creighton killed Wanda Lustig and Mitchell N. Bowan.”
My head was spinning. Nothing made sense anymore.
“But who killed her? And why?”
“As to motivation, Ms. Creighton, who committed the first crime
and started the cycle, apparently decided during the trial to write a
book about it and cash in on its temporary notoriety. She had the
expertise and connections, and likely wanted to use the ensuing
celebrity as a springboard into a literary career. During the
deliberations, however, she must have gotten wind of that same idea

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