Page 190 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Slow Burn

murderer was never a consideration; that’s why I left your cars alone.
The garish disguise and bumbling exit were obviously designed to
establish a precise time when an alibi would be needed if the attempt
to make Al Carbone’s death look like a bizarre accident failed—
which it did, in enough respects to raise our suspicions.”
Now the quints were starting to squirm. Labelle took a marking
pen out of her purse and drew a grid of squares on her makeshift
flipchart. Then she turned it into a city map by positioning the
Carbone family on it.

Quantrill Quarles
* *

Quincy Uncle Al
* *

Quentin Quigley
* *

“Although all of you were absent from home at five o’clock
exactly, each of you had an alibi for a crucial part of the time during
which, if you were guilty, you would have had to be in transit to and
from Al Carbone’s apartment. Unless I could overcome that
difficulty, enough doubt remained about your uncle’s death to
establish your innocence and leave us with either an accident or an
unsolved case. So, as you anticipated, I, the investigating officer,
began looking for patterns involving the number five. Looking at
your addresses on a map revealed no pentagonal relationship, and I
moved on to other lines of inquiry. Unfortunately for you, one of
those avenues led me right back to the map.”
I could sense the tension mounting in the room. The door—the
only door—was to my back. I braced myself to defend it.
“The places where you took up residence were not random. They
were dictated by Quentin, given your uncle’s address and the
rectilinear plan of our city’s streets. Quentin, searching for a way to
commit the perfect crime, found a pattern which would not be
obvious to anyone looking for a symmetrical arrangement of five: the
quincunx.”

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