“Alright.”
“Promise?”
He crossed his heart and she smiled. He knew he’d break it.
Chapter 26
Jaxon and Sally were riding back from DC when she asked, “What were the unknowns?”
“In what?”
“The murder of your son. Victoria said there were some unknowns.”
He drove for a bit without saying a thing and he finally glanced over at her. “You really want to drag this up?”
“I just want to know.”
He sighed. “With Michael, the timeframe had some holes in it.”
“Like what?”
“The time of death didn’t match up with Switzer’s activity.”
“Ok…”
The silence dragged out as the memories flooded back in.
“What? Was he doing laundry at the time? Baking bread? Come on. How did it differ?”
He stared straight ahead driving in silence for a minute as she waited patiently. He really didn’t want to go back there.
“Most people don’t know this,” he said, “but Switzer was taunting me. We were getting close to him and he started making threats against my family. I ignored them and it got Michael killed.”
“You’ve told me some of this,” she said, “and I know it’s tough for you to talk about, but what if it helps us with this case? Maybe we’re overlooking something. We seem to have a lot of unknowns.”
“Yes we do.”
“So, why didn’t the time of death match up?”
He sighed. “You know time of death is not exact.”
She nodded.
“The M.E. determined Michael’s time of death as 11:00 p.m. Unfortunately, Malcom Switzer was under surveillance close to that time.”
“Who was watching him?”
“Me.”
Her face showed surprise at this. “I’ve never heard this before. How were they able to get the conviction?”
“He was tried on multiple counts and Michael’s murder was just one of them. Because of the inexactness of the Time of Death Certainty Principal, the D.A. was able to convince the jury Switzer could have done it in that timeframe.”
“How?”
“Remember the Certainty Principle states that if the subject was certain to be alive at a known time, and you know with certainty when they were found dead, then we are 100 % certain the death took place within that interval. Then the M.E. uses other techniques to narrow that down further. Lividity, rigor, vitreous humor, etc. It can still be off an hour or two based on how long the person has been dead.”
“What was the interval?”
“Five hours.”
“That’s pretty good. How did they know?”
“I know when I left him and I know when I found him.”
“Tell me.”
He drove in silence a little more and then it spilled out of him like water. “Victoria was out on her own case with Stansfield. I was at home with Michael. He was in bed at 9:00 when I got the call about Switzer. We’d been trying to track him down, but he had been missing for over a week. He showed up at his trailer and they called me. He only stopped for a few minutes inside the run down piece of shit he lived in and then was on the move. They figured he was on the hunt again. I needed to go, but I couldn’t leave Michael alone. I called the babysitter and I apparently woke her up. She said she was sick, but would be right over. Michael was only going to be alone for a few minutes, or that’s what I thought. I had to go, so I left him asleep and locked up. The sitter had her own key.”
“What happened to the sitter?”
“She never made it over. She told us later, she had taken some cold medicine earlier, before I called, and fell back asleep immediately after. She didn’t even remember me phoning. Switzer killed him while I was out supposedly watching his every move.”
“Oh Jaxon-I’m sorry. I’d heard things about Michael, but I never knew all this. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
He nodded without looking at her and they drove in silence for a few minutes.
“How did Switzer do it?” she asked.
“We lost sight of him for forty five minutes at 10:45 p.m. We picked him up again coming out of the bar we lost him in. He headed straight to his trailer and never left it until we arrested him two days later. He must have gone out the back of the bar and done the deed, then high tailed it back to the bar and walked out the front like nothing happened.”
“Wasn’t Switzer fond of ears? He was known to keep the left ear of his victims as a souvenir, right?”
“That’s another one of the unknowns. He cut the left ear off of the first four victims. We found them in his trailer folded up in newspaper and sealed inside a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Michael had both ears missing and they have never been found.”
Chapter 27
“Q, it’s Luke Harrison.”
“Yo! Luke! What’s up?”
Luke smiled into the phone as he heard Quentin Jenson’s Jersey accent. Even though the kid was from Atlanta, Georgia, you would never know it unless he told you. Luke guessed it was cooler being from Jersey than Atlanta.
“How good are you?” Luke asked.
“Depends on what it is you need,” Quentin said.
Everybody knew Q was the local hacker and could penetrate just about any electronic device known to man. Maybe even gadgets that were not of this world. Too bad there weren’t any to test this theory.
“I need you to hack my phone.”
“Damn, I thought you needed something that was challenging. Bring it over and we’ll crack it open.”
Luke yelled to his mom he’d be back in a while, hopped on his bike before she could object, and rode over to Q’s house. He lived in the neighborhood just behind Luke’s in a beat up 1950’s era cinder block home. Three large dogs roamed the chain link fenced in yard and Luke had to whistle to get Q to call them off. It was amazing to watch the transformation from vicious attack beasts with their teeth bared and saliva drooling from their mouths, to panting and wagging, happy go lucky pets that wouldn’t harm a fly. Q said their names were Wynkin’, Blynkin’ and Nod. Luke guessed the one with the missing eye was Wynkin’.
Q led him through a house which was littered with trash, boxes, and clothes, and they entered another world which Q said was his ‘Cave.’ Everything in the room either lit up, blinked, or hummed. It was an amazing assortment of computers, iPads, Smartphones, video monitors and web-cams. His desk contained three, twenty-
