Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) by David Rosenfelt Read Free Book Online Page A

limited success.
    The rest of the interior, at least from our vantage point in the front hall, looks as bad as the exterior. “I love what they’ve done with the place,” I say. “Think we should make an offer?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Never mind. Just some murder-scene humor.”
    We go upstairs, then walk down a long hallway to Karen Solarno’s room. Once again, bloodstains from the violence are still on the floor.
    “Hard to make the case that Richard was the target,” Laurie says.
    “Why?”
    “Because he was killed right near the doorway downstairs. We have to assume that Richard opened the door, and got shot almost immediately. Probably didn’t take more than a few seconds, though I suppose it’s possible they talked briefly.”
    “Agreed.” I know where she’s going, but in situations like this I find it helpful to our thought process to let her get there without interrupting.
    “So there would have been no reason to come up here and kill Karen. No reason to think she saw anything, and since her window didn’t face the front, she wouldn’t have seen him arrive.”
    “I don’t agree,” I say. “Or at least I see another alternative. I think the killer could have been covering all his bases. Assuming he had no respect for human life, and that seems a safe conclusion, then what’s the downside to killing her? Even if there’s a one percent chance that she saw him, or heard him, then why not remove that danger?”
    “It would mean spending a longer time on the scene,” she says.
    “We’re on a private, dead-end road at the top of a hill, so there’s almost no chance some other witnesses were going to wander by. He kills Karen and he pretty much removes any chance of detection.”
    “It’s cold-blooded.”
    I nod. “That’s why I was so positive Joey was innocent. I just can’t see him doing this, not the way it was done. It wasn’t a crime of passion.”
    Laurie never bought into my belief in Joey, but she doesn’t contradict me. “You could be right about him, Andy. And you could be right about the reasons the killer came upstairs and killed Karen Solarno.”
    I finish her thought. “But it’s still tough to make the case that Richard was the target.”
    She nods. “Right. It’s possible, but it’s a stretch. The murder scene doesn’t work in our favor.”
    “Didn’t do much for the Solarnos either.”
    “And we still have the two-gun issue,” she says.
    She’s referring to the fact that the two people were shot with different guns. The one that killed Richard was never found, but the one that killed Karen was left on the scene. Devastatingly, a partial fingerprint of Joey’s was on it.
    We leave the house and walk to the car. I turn and look back, and I realize something that’s strange about it. “We need to find out why this place is in this condition.”
    “I would assume it’s because there was no one living in it, no one to fix it up, and no one willing to buy it.”
    “But why would anyone have to buy it, at least at first? Wouldn’t Richard have left it to someone? Someone would have owned it, right?”
    She nods. “I would think so. We know he had a brother named Alex. They were partners, and sold to Edward Young’s company a year before the murders.”
    I nod. “Richard stayed on to run it, but Alex left.”
    “Did they have a falling out?” she asks.
    “Time to find out.”

 
    Every case is an uphill struggle, but this one more than most.
    Defense attorneys always start with their legal back to the wall. A client would not have been charged with a crime had not the law enforcement system gathered enough evidence that the prosecutor is confident guilt can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
    Prosecutors hate to lose; it makes them look bad. If they don’t bring charges, they can’t lose, so they only bring them when winning seems close to a foregone conclusion. Juries instinctively believe that it’s far more likely than not that the prosecutor is