Chapter 68

 

Early the next morning there was a knock on Jim’s office door. 

“Come in,” Jim said.

Fred entered. “Jim, I want to you to meet a couple of friends of mine.”

Entering behind Fred were the two people who had mysteriously disappeared from his couch the previous evening. 

Seated next to Jim was Sergeant Stewart. 

“Are these your CIA friends?” Jim asked.

“No, actually I would like you to meet the Leslie the Great; he’s an exceptional magician, and this is his gorgeous assistant. They perform a host of different complex magic tricks; but their best is their human disappearing act. Maureen once literally dragged me to see his show, but I must admit I was impressed with his disappearing act. I had no idea how he did it. 

“Jim, when I lost my special psychic ability, I felt that it was just a matter of time before Donna would kill Maureen and me. There was no way I could counter her. God knows how many more people would die if she had remained free. 

“So I contacted Leslie, and together we set the stage for Donna. I had one advantage, I knew even with the feeble powers I had that I could still block her from entering my mind. But I couldn’t do much else. Fortunately, she had no idea what I had cooked up for her. I felt that if we could contrive a great bluff, I could convince her that I still retained superior psychic powers. Leslie’s disappearing act provided the coup de grace.

“Of course the fact that we knew Sergeant Lewis had murdered Anderson and Don, but we didn’t disclose it to anyone, helped us feed some false information to him. We knew he would pass it on to Donna. 

“Sergeant Stewart, you helped us immensely by allowing us to keep you confined so that Lewis thought he was home free.”

Stewart said, “Jim, I must admit that I was flabbergasted when you arrested me. But later when you explained your plan when we were alone in my cell, I figured the worst case was that I’d get a few days off from my beat. And in the meantime I had some free, but not too delicious meals on the county.”

Jim said, “Knowing that Lewis was the murderer, and he not having any idea that we suspected him, made him an easy target for surveillance. I didn’t feel too good, Fred, when Donna left her house and we tracked her heading to your house. At that point, I radioed to put Lewis under arrest and we informed the landlady at the same time. We, of course, called you when we found out Donna was heading in the direction of your house.

“But one thing, Fred—when did you first suspect Lewis?”

“Well, actually,” Fred replied, “I initially suspected Slim Woods. However, after Anderson’s murder I started thinking about the events of that night. I remembered I had called Lewis and told him to go to AU to protect Anderson. I contacted him on his cell phone and he said good thing I had called his cell since he was in his personal car, and it had no police radio in it. He said that since he was a distance away from Sarasota, he would have to send Sergeant Stewart there. I was at the crime scene when Lewis arrived. He got no farther than the AU lobby, but his first words were, ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t get here in time to prevent Anderson’s death.’ The guard’s body was in plain sight, but Anderson’s body was back in the medical unit. That was not visible from the lobby, in fact it’s a separate room off the Science Division. Since he didn’t have the benefit of a police radio, there was no way Lewis could have known that Anderson was dead unless he was the murderer. Besides that, the time frame didn’t fit. Stewart said he had arrived at AU just minutes before I arrived, but Lewis had said that Stewart was only a couple of minutes away from the site. When I thought about it, I figured that Lewis must have gone directly to AU; and only after he completed his killings did he contact Stewart. Stewart became the perfect fall guy.

“Oh yes one other thing. Lewis’ fingerprints were all over the trailer where Anderson had been kept captive. Lewis is an experienced homicide detective, so he knew better than to contaminate the crime scene. It was obvious that someone in that trailer had made an attempt to wipe all the prints, but Lewis couldn’t be certain he got them all. Perhaps because they had to leave in a hurry. So, in case he hadn’t succeeded in removing all his prints, he wanted to make sure that our officers believed he had blown it and that he had left his prints at the scene through investigative carelessness.” 

Jim asked, “Who do you believe murdered Mrs. Brown, Donna’s mother?”

“Jim, I first thought it was Donna, because it really didn’t fit that it was a robbery attempt. I couldn’t figure why Donna wanted to murder her mother, though. Then, when I found out about Sue’s relationship to Donna, I concluded she had done it so that we couldn’t link her to Donna.”

“What’s next, Fred?” Jim asked. 

“Now I can retrieve Maureen and the two of us can go back to leading a semi-normal life. However, there is one final thing I must accomplish while I’m at the CIA headquarters.”