“I’m just kidding,” Ron told him when he saw the serious look on Jack’s face. “I don’t give a shit what people think. You know that.”
Then he was back to being a jokester again.
“Henry, I’d drop him now. No percentages in being a friend of this guy. You can pick him up again when he moves back down to Pigeon Creek or wherever it is that he lives.”
Henry laughed. Ron could make everybody laugh eventually.
“I’m just helping him decide not to take the case,” Henry said. “Then I’m outta here.”
“Everybody’s a jokester,” Jack said as Ron and Henry continued laughing. It was good for all of them because if Jack did take the case, they were all going to feel the pressure—Ron maybe worst of all.
When Ron left, Jack got down to business with Henry.
“I found something, something real substantial in Felton’s case files.”
“What is it?”
Jack went into his bedroom and came back with some papers.
“This is the coroner’s report. Take a look at the description of the knife wounds on the woman’s torso.”
Henry’s eyes scrolled down to where Jack was pointing. He read the description out loud. “The entry wound is approximately one-quarter inch wide at each entry point and extends into the body approximately three and a half inches again at each entry point.”
“It’s the same description for the man’s torso,” Jack said.
“So it was the same knife used on both.”
“Exactly. And what kind of knife does that entry wound describe to you, Henry?”
“Probably a stiletto. Maybe a dagger although a dagger might be in excess of a quarter of an inch wide.”
“And you know the murder weapon they used to convict Felton with?” Jack asked excitedly.
The light went on in Henry’s head. “A bowie knife. It couldn’t possibly have been a bowie knife. It’s at least an inch and a half or two inches wide. They convicted him with the wrong murder weapon.”
“That’s right.”
“Wait a minute, Jack. That just doesn’t make sense. Somebody would have had to figure this out on the way to trial. Somebody would have had to see that this evidence doesn’t add up. I mean the coroner would have had to blow the whistle.”
“You’d think that would be the case unless they were all in on it.”
“That’s kind of hard to believe: Everybody agreed to set this guy up. It’s crazy.”
“Not if you think it through and I’ve been thinking about nothing else for days now. Let’s say just one person believes Felton is the murderer and goes about setting him up.”
“Okay.”
“He’s got Felton’s fingerprints. The investigative file says that two officers on the task force surreptitiously obtained his prints from a cigarette case earlier in the investigation. By the way, one of those officers was Danni.”
“Okay.”
“And he knows the killer used a bowie knife with a gargoyle handle when he tried to kill that girl who got away, Stacey Kincaid.”
“You’re way ahead of me, Jack. I don’t know all these facts.”
“Trust me, Henry. They’re true. And a bowie knife meets the MO of some of the other murders as well.”
“Okay, I accept everything you’re telling me. Keep going.”
“So he searches and finds the exact knife and buys it. When he gets called to the next murder, he plants the knife in the bushes outside the apartment before he even goes in so he doesn’t know he’s planted the wrong murder weapon.”
“This is too much, Jack. You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. Nothing ever happens like this or at least I’ve never heard of it. What about the fingerprints? How does he get the fingerprints on the knife?”
“You can transfer fingerprints, Henry. You can do it with Scotch tape as long as you have the fingerprints you’re trying to plant. And the cops can do it another way: They can just say these are the prints we found on the knife. I don’t think that happened in this case because too many people would have had to be involved.”
“You already told me the whole damn criminal justice system was involved,” Henry said.
“Not at first. In the beginning it was perhaps only one man. Then the scenario changed. They had Felton in custody and the killings stopped. A couple of months passed. Everything was back to normal. What would you have done if you were the prosecutor and you suddenly discovered the evidence didn’t match up? Would you put somebody you were sure was a serial killer back on the streets to kill again? Would you put your