Treachery in the Yard by Adimchinma Ibe Read Free Book Online Page B

prints in the backyard, going to and coming from the kitchen door.”
    If Thompson had murdered two women, chances were he had not been alone.
    Dr. Lazarus Onwuchekwa, one of our pathologists, was bent over Mrs. Karibi’s body, while the crime scene boys were taking photos. The doctor looked up. “Good day, detective.”
    â€œIs this how you like to start your day?”
    He shrugged. “The pay is good.”
    I checked on the rest of the search, which had been done on the house and grounds. The front door was clean, but there was blood around the back door, and shoe prints in the backyard.
    â€œAnyone talk to the gateman?” I asked Okoro. He shook his head. “Get him here. We need to know where he was when all this happened. And Judge Karibi’s driver, too, I have a few questions for him.”
    I found the judge in a bedroom upstairs, sitting quietly on his bed, an officer in a chair across the room. He looked stunned. “Sorry, judge. I need to ask some questions.”
    He was staring ahead. “Now? Can’t it wait, man?”
    â€œI know. And I am sorry. But it cannot wait, not if we are going to catch whoever did this.”
    He looked at me now. It was not a look I ever wanted to see again. He did not want to say a word—but he was a judge, after all, and
knew.
“I got a threatening call in my office. A man’s voice,telling me that my wife should keep her mouth closed. I told him she had already given her evidence. I was worried, so I came home early. The door was locked. That was not unusual, of course. But no one opened it, even after I knocked several times. Miriam, our maid, should have answered. I got out my keys and had my driver accompany me. At first, the house seemed abandoned. But I heard the television in the living room. I hoped Naomi had gone to the kitchen or washroom. But I found her on the kitchen floor. After that, everything was a blur. I think my driver called the police.”
    â€œDid the phone caller say anything else?”
    â€œJust what I’ve told you. No name; I did not recognize his voice.”
    I like being tough but I could not bring myself to ask him anything else. I left him sitting quietly with the police officer keeping him company. The driver corroborated his story. The gateman had nothing to add except that he had observed a white Toyota truck driving around the neighborhood around ten in the morning. He thought they were probably looking for an address and were lost. There were two men inside. A huge guy was driving, and a younger, thin man was in the passenger’s seat.
    â€œThompson,” I muttered to myself. The gateman must have seen the expression on my face, for fear jumped into his eyes as the realization hit him: the occupants of the white truck must have been the killers. Now that this happened, he had to have been thinking he should have alerted the police about the suspicious men.
    I let that sink in. He looked reproached enough to make me believe he had a lot of guilt weighing on his conscience. He huffed a sad breath and looked at the other officers standing around when I interrogated him. He must have been thinking of arrest. Poor guy. He was miserable. I left him to go find Okoro.
    When I found Okoro, he passed on what the pathologist toldhim. “Mrs. Karibi’s throat was slashed. The maid was hit in the back of the head. Laz said she was hit in the back of her head with a blunt object. Maybe wood, he thought: round, like a small club. Hard to tell exactly what happened, but it looks like the maid was killed first, maybe right in front of the wife seeing how the judge’s wife fell next to the maid, over some of the maid’s blood from the head wound.”
    â€œHer death meant only one thing. She was right about the driver of the white Peugeot 305 being the bomber.” I pulled out a St. Morris and lit it.
    â€œWhat makes you think that?”
    â€œShe saw the bomber. And was