point.”
“There was more than one room at the studio, though,” I said, thinking about this. “He could have killed his stepfather with the trophy and then attacked his sister by strangling her…but…yes, I see. If he killed her at the studio, then why not leave her body there?”
“Lots of stuff about this doesn’t make sense.”
“On that we agree. Tell me more about what you noticed that night, the things that bothered you.”
“Okay-no keys.”
“What?” Ethan said.
“No car keys. Not in the ignition, not anywhere on the ground that I could see them.”
“Wasn’t he supposed to have put stuff in the trunk? Maybe he dropped them when he was doing that.”
“Yeah, when did that happen? After he hit the ditch? So he wrecks a car on a cold, damp night, he gets out and strips everything off but his socks and underwear, then passes out in the front seat. Does that make sense, even for a drunk? Oh, and there’s a laundry miracle while we’re at it-the bottoms of his socks stayed clean, even when he walked around in the mud, leaving shoe prints. And the shoe prints he leaves don’t look like the bottoms of his shoes, which are in the trunk.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You could see the bottoms of his socks while he was passed out in the driver’s seat?”
“Yes.”
“Without moving him?”
“Yes,” he said, frowning.
“But then the seat must have been back too far.”
“What do you mean?” Ethan said.
“When you drive,” I said, “you drive with the seat close enough to reach the brake and accelerator, and to reach the clutch if it’s not an automatic. If his seat is so far back that the bottoms of his socks can be seen, how did he operate that vehicle?”
“If you ask me, he never did,” Tadeo said. “Not that day, anyway.”
“But if someone had to move his unresisting but heavy form behind the steering wheel…”
“Yes, it would have made it easier if the seat was back as far as it can go.”
“You said you didn’t see any scratches or bruises on him. What about blood? I mean, spatter or smears from his victims?”
“Nothing. Not on his hands, not on his arms, nothing in his hair.”
“Maybe he cleaned up,” Ethan said. “Took a shower or something.”
“There was a shower in the studio,” I said slowly, “but why would he shower and then put bloody clothes on? Unless you believe he drove in his boxers and put clean socks on later…”
Tadeo smiled. “That’s the funny part, isn’t it? A guy’s clothing is spattered, but he’s clean. He doesn’t have any other clothing with him.”
“And he’s supposedly driving around the mountains on a cold night wearing not much more than his birthday suit.”
“Right.”
“How long was the car in the ditch?” Ethan asked.
“The last person to drive down that private road before him got home at about ten-thirty. That guy would have noticed the car if it had been there then, because as he came down the main road he would have seen its headlights shining up at an angle through the trees. I found Mason Fletcher at a little after one in the morning.”
“Richard Fletcher was last seen alive-by anyone other than his daughter and his killer, anyway-at about six- thirty in the morning on May ninth,” I said. “And you found Mason almost eighteen hours later?”
“Yes.”
“So to believe he’s guilty, you must believe he had Jenny alive with him in his car while he drove around for almost eighteen hours, and that the whole time he was either wearing bloodstained clothes or drove around all but naked with her in the car.”
“Or that he had killed her already,” Ethan said.
“Why not leave her at the studio, then? He’s already left one body there.”
“That’s it,” Tadeo said. “And if he’s kept her alive so that he can kill her less than twenty-four hours later, you are hinting that he was up to worse things, that he’s really one very sick individual.”
“The prosecution didn’t suggest that he molested her.”
“They made him a child killer,” Ethan said. “He’s lucky to still be alive in prison.”
For all it might be true, it was the wrong thing to say. Tadeo sat brooding silently.
Dora caught my eye and made a little motion indicating that I should keep talking.
“I’m trying to figure out the timing. Let me imagine it two ways-innocent and guilty. If he’s innocent, someone gets control of him early that morning or late the previous night, before his stepfather is murdered-otherwise, Mason might have been able to come up with an alibi. A friend might have met him for breakfast, someone might have seen him go to the store. Anything. If the real killer or killers wanted to frame him, I don’t think they would have wanted to take chances on his whereabouts during the killing.”
“Right,” said Dora, encouraging me.
“He’s supposed to have gone up to the mountains to bury his little sister, and for several hours-during which law enforcement was actively looking for him-driven around. As we’ve said, he was either wearing blood-spattered clothing or nearly naked.”
“He was in a car, so most people would only be able to tell he was shirtless,” Ethan pointed out. “And with a two-hour head start, he could have stayed hidden in the mountains before the crimes in Las Piernas were discovered. Lots of private roads, even empty houses.”
“Okay, let’s say that’s the case. On a cold night in the mountains, he’s still hanging around for a long time. Many hours.”
“Spent the time getting drunk,” Ethan suggested.
“No,” Tadeo said. “The bottle supposedly came from his dad’s office, and it wasn’t empty.”
“If he had been drinking it slowly for more than twelve hours,” I said, “he wouldn’t have been close to dead from the amount of alcohol in his system.”
“He could have waited, drank most of it late in the day,” Ethan said.
“He wasn’t that drunk-it wasn’t the alcohol that almost killed him,” Tadeo said. “I think a lot of it was spilled on him and in the car. That wasn’t what was highest in his bloodstream.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I stopped by the hospital a few days later, talked to some of the ER folks.”
“He mixed it with pills, right?”
“Barbiturates,” Tadeo said. “A load of them. And that’s another funny thing. The barbiturates were mixed into the booze itself. But no one ever found the empty capsules.”
“So if he was opening the capsules and dumping the powder inside them into the booze, you should have seen them on the floor of the car.”
“If the scotch bottle hadn’t come from his dad’s place, I’d say not necessarily. And I suppose he could have buried his sister and then played chemist up in the woods. But that doesn’t seem likely to me. Makes more sense to be hidden in the car, I think.”
“Maybe he wasn’t being sensible,” Ethan argued.
“At his trial,” I said, “the prosecution said up front that he hadn’t arrived at the studio with a plan to kill his stepfather. They said he came there to argue with Richard Fletcher, but it was obvious that he didn’t bring a weapon, and they claimed he didn’t know his sister was there.”
“But it was first-degree murder?” Ethan asked.
“Yes. It’s complicated, but legally you don’t need to have the thought of killing someone in mind for a long time for it to be premeditated. If he had been in a fistfight with Richard and blindly grabbed the trophy and swung it, they might have brought a lesser charge. But Richard Fletcher was at his desk and struck repeatedly from behind, so he wasn’t able to defend himself, and he couldn’t have been threatening Mason.” I paused. “That’s if you believe Mason was there that day in the first place.”
