Witch House by Dana Donovan Read Free Book Online Page A

investigation.”
    “What, you think she is lying to you?”
    “No, I happen to believe she is telling the
truth, but this is an ongoing investigation and she may still have
information pertinent to the case.”
    “Do you think when Adam called, he told her
to provide him with an alibi?”
    “No,” I said, giving it more thought than it
probably deserved. “I suppose if he needed her as his alibi he
would have talked to her about it before now.”
    “But?”
    “But what?”
    “I don’t know. I thought I heard a but
coming.”
    “Did you, now?”
    “Yes.”
    I smiled at that. Carlos really knows me
better than anyone else does. I only wish that Lilith knew me half
as well. “It’s the money,” I said. “I can’t shake the feeling that
it is still out there somewhere and that Adam knows it. I think he
and his father were planning to dig it up together.”
    “If that’s the case then maybe somebody else
thought the same thing; only something went wrong last night and so
that someone killed Landau.”
    “Yes, but what someone?”
    “I don’t know, a silent partner maybe, an
accomplice that had been waiting for him to get out of prison all
these years.”
    I was about to challenge that notion on the
grounds that Landau would have been worth more alive than dead to
anyone like that, when Carlos got the call from Spinelli that we
were waiting for.
    “You got it?” he said, after listening to
Spinelli’s opening sentence. “Great.” I could tell from his end of
the conversation they were talking about Stephanie Stiles. Carlos
pulled out his notepad and started writing. “What is it again?
Ah-huh, yes, okay. Thanks.”
    I waved to get his attention. “Ask him about
the lawyer.”
    He held his finger up to stop me. “Okay,
good. Got anything on the lawyer?” A short pause followed. “Yeah?
Oh?” Another pause. “Really? I’ll tell him.”
    He hung up, and without looking at me,
scratched something down on his notepad. “Well?” I said.
    “This is interesting.” He punctuated the last
of his notes with a dart-like jab to the paper. “Paul Kemper was
Landau’s attorney at his trial.”
    “What is so interesting about that?”
    “Nothing, except that the court considered
Landau a non-violent offender, since he only drove the get-a-way
car and was unarmed when apprehended. The eyewitness that put him
at the scene of the crime also identified Johnny Buck Allis as the
man who pulled the trigger on the armored truck driver, although
she said that the driver shot first.”
    “That may be, however it is still murder when
committed in the act of a felony.”
    “I know that. My point is this; even though
the court did not consider Landau a violent criminal, it sentenced
him to twenty years in Walpole, a level six super max facility
typically reserved for the hardest of hardcore prisoners like
Richard Reid, the so called Shoe-Bomber.”
    “And Albert DeSalvo.”
    “Yeah, the Boston Strangler.”
    “But just as strange, is why didn’t Kemper, a
highly regarded up and coming hot-shot lawyer, object to the
Walpole sentencing? He should’ve pushed for incarceration at a
level four facility like Bay State Correctional.”
    “Or a level three like South Middlesex.”
    “I think it’s something we should ask him.
Did Spinelli get you Stephanie Stiles’ address?”
    “He did, but don’t you want to hear the other
interesting tidbit he had for us?”
    “There’s more?”
    Carlos held his notepad close to his chest as
if guarding a killer poker hand. He stole a glimpse at it and then
came up smiling. “Guess who the arresting officer was that caught
Landau leaving the burning cabin that day.”
    I shook my head. “I give up.”
    “Ronald Powell.”
    “Sergeant Powell?”
    “Yeah, only he wasn’t a sergeant back
then.”
    “We just saw him this morning.”
    “I know.”
    “Do you think he knew who Landau was?”
    “I don’t see how he couldn’t. He was right
there when you found his prison