"White, Pamela - The Perfect Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Pamela)

"But I want you with me," Serena tilted her head sideways. I looked away.

"Sure, just let me go to the bathroom, then we'll go. Is that good?"

"Yes," she sniffled but managed a brave smile.

I splashed water on my face. I was terrified, I should have realized the only way to keep Serena from being suspect number one was to confess.

We entered the station with an air of anticipation on Serena's part, total guilt on mine. couldn't they see I was the one? Didn't they know by looking at me that I had killed a man?

We needn't have worried. They had asked her in for questioning to solidify their case against the prime suspect.

When Robert got the letter asking for ransom, it took him several minutes to read the shaky handwriting. How was I to know that sometimes business partners don't really like each other? Robert waited a day, I guess trying to decide whether or not to act on the kidnapping note, before calling police claiming that he had been busy trying to gather up the ransom money. The police were unimpressed and immediately went to the possible scene of the crime: the Evans home.

Once there, they apparently turned into keystone cops, bumbling their way through the home, walking over my tracks from the cellar through the downstairs into the kitchen. They dusted the entire house, save for the kitchen which was the immediate choice for the police's temporary HQ, and the cellar, which no one seemed curious about. They found lots of fingerprints though, and that kept them busy for awhile. During the time the detectives were conferring in the kitchen further destroying any possible evidence, the future prime suspect, Robert, decided to do some investigating on his own. And the detectives let him!

He wound up down in the cellar and, gagging at the smell, rushed over to the washbasin to vomit, further confusing any possible evidence. He saw the body wrapped in plastic pushed under the workbench, which certainly aroused the suspicion of the police. And now the case was murder, so more police were called in, more dusting for fingerprints, more checking for method of entrance.

Curiously enough the house's cellar had windows near the ceiling. They were simple and old - small, but not too small for a man Robert's size to squeeze through, and they actually were latched into place from the outside. No inside screens or glass blocked the perpetrator's admission to the home. The recent snow had obscured any possible tracks. Neighbors had seen nothing of the dastardly deed done that night. A writing sample taken with Robert's right hand, not his dominant left one, produced a shaky and illegible scrawl that had experts crowing about a 45% matchup with the ransom note.

Due to the Medical Examiner's personal schedule, the autopsy took place 36 hours after the body was found. Time of death was quite randomly established, leaving Robert without the possibility of a definite alibi.

The clumsily cleaned galvanized steel tip, top of the line, lifetime guarantee rake was nowhere to be found in the cellar, a terrifying reality for me. Someone had found the weapon and removed it. Someone knew.

Police assumed, incorrectly, that the murderer had taken the strange unknown weapon with him, although they were fairly certain it was a sharp ended cylindrical device that had been used to pierce Brock's lung and heart at evenly spaced intervals. And the gun? Brock's little gun was real, but it didn't belong to him. It was Robert's gun all along. Kept at the office, easily accessible to Brock on the one night he had an unexpected intruder of the female persuasion. That gun just served to confuse the case more - it belonged to Robert, had only Brock's prints on it, and it had never been fired.

As the "facts" of the case became known, public outcry against the brutal murder of Brock Evans by his partner increased. A rational district attorney who never felt the circumstantial evidence was enough, kept the case open, but untried.

The murder and all its fallout proved too much for my unrequited love for Serena. I couldn't stand to be near her, her tender expressions became for me a mask that kept the truth under wraps. I never told her what happened but I was certain she knew.

The nagging thought knocking at my brain finally found a chink and worked its way in through that small opening; it was the undeniable truth that Brock Evans knew that I, Kelly Pointer, would be in the storage room of his cellar on that deadly Monday evening. He knew what I would be looking for and where I would be looking. He knew the time, and he knew my name, even though I was certain my existence was not known to him.

The papers have analyzed the Evans murder, of course focusing on his partner. Serena was scrutinized but with her blue eyes and fragile emotional state along with her therapist's deposition as to the brutal facts of her marriage kept her from being a true suspect.

I don't know where Serena is today. She took the money and ran, claiming she had to leave the sad memories of her old home, placing it on the market for $700,000. She could have asked more because of its notoriety, but then on the flip side she could have gotten less because of its murderous history. I don't know whether she put the rake there, intending it to be the murder weapon, but no one else could have removed it from the cellar. I try not to speculate on whether she was willing to let me die there in that cellar if her plans had gone awry.

Rumor has it that a book is due to be published on the second anniversary of the dastardly Brock Evans' demise. The thesis of this book is that someone unknown, aided and abetted by the bumbling police, Robert and Brock's deteriorating partnership, snow storms and cellar windows, accidentally committed the perfect murder.

I guess that would be me.