Page 75 of The Smart Killer
“And the letters found at his house and his confession. Let’s not forget that,” Porter added, cutting him off, wishing to make it clear that they had good reason to look in his direction.
Noah shot him a glare. “Well, that’s the thing...” Porter offered back a confused expression. McKenzie leaned in; his curiosity piqued. “What if Alejandro wasn’t responsible?”
Porter squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“You think he was the scapegoat?” McKenzie asked.
“Maybe. Or just the connection we’ve been searching for.”
Porter screwed up his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Murderers are rarely random. There is something that ties them together. Something that allows us to build a profile. We’ve been trying to find a connection between all these deaths. None of the families knew each other. None of them worked for Lakeridge. There doesn’t appear to be any animosity towards them. So why them? Of course, it made sense to think that it was related to Alejandro after he was caught spying on these exact homeowners. But now my father has received one of these letters. At first, I thought it was because he was tied to Alejandro’s arrest. But he wasn’t involved in the arrest of Alejandro, nor was Luke, nor was Ray. And as you said, Hughdoesn’t live in a Lakeridge neighborhood. So, what connection ties my father to these other three?” He paused, allowing them to think it over before continuing. “The smart home system. What if our perp has no connection to the people but to the system itself — the company.”
McKenzie frowned and said, “You think he’s trying to sabotage Lakeridge?”
Porter leaned back in his seat. “You have lost me.”
Noah sighed. “Okay, let’s go back to Alejandro. What do we know about him?”
“He was a tech for Lakeridge. He installed the systems. He was fired for spying on the video feeds of families. He got sent away for 53 months and then released,” Porter said.
“He liked to watch,” McKenzie added.
“Right on both counts. Alejandro knew how that system worked. He knew how to access it with authorization and without. Now, if the motive was to kill these families out of revenge, why go to all the trouble of sending letters to warn them ahead of time?”
“To toy with them,” Porter said. “Some murderers get off on the fear they instill before they commit murder.”
“Okay, but what if he wasn’t toying with them, and he genuinely felt remorse for what he had done before he got sent away?”
There was a pause as they mulled it over.
“Then he would have had to know beforehand what was about to happen to those three families,” McKenzie said.
Noah pointed at him. “Exactly. His words before he died were… ‘They didn’t deserve to die. I couldn’t go to the cops. They wouldn’t have believed me. I wanted to warn them beforehegot them.’” He paused. “Beforehegot them. Alejandro knew they were targeted and who was behind it.”
“So why not just say his name?” Angus asked.
“Well, that’s the thing, I don’t think he knew.”
Porter ran a hand over his head and groaned. “Look, I know where you’re going with this, Sutherland, but we all saw Alejandro’s psych file. The guy was a looney toon. Hearing voices. Diagnosed as having a split personality disorder.”
“No. His psychologist suggested he be assessed for a potential split personality disorder. That doesn’t mean he had one. That might have just been an opinion. For all we know, the psychologist may have misunderstood. It happens all the time. Last night, while I was at the hospital, I spoke with his mother. I spoke with people at his local church. I even spoke with those who saw him daily in jail. There was no indication that he was anything but normal.”
Porter laughed. “I hardly think spying on people is normal, Sutherland.”
“You know what I mean. Allow yourself to entertain the idea that he wasn’t speaking about himself in the third person but was actually talking about someone he knew had targeted these people. Someone close to him who also knew about his past, his religious upbringing, his remorse, and his need to be forgiven, and played on it. We heard Alejandro say, ‘Hesaid we would come knocking.Hesaid it would end this way. But I thought if I warned them. If I sent the letters, I would be forgiven for my transgressions.’ That tells us a lot.”
Porter leaned forward into the conversation. Even his mind was beginning to consider the possibility. Any detective worth his lick of salt considered all theories. “Okay, but even if that was true, that would imply this person told Alejandro of his intentions. Why would anyone take that risk?”
“Maybe he thought Alejandro wanted revenge. And maybe Alejandro initially did. But what if he changed his mind? He’d been out of prison for over a year and a half before the first family was murdered. Why would he wait? He’d alreadywaited years. Why not just murder them immediately? I think it was because it wasn’t him who committed the crimes. I think Alejandro was trying to stay on the straight and narrow, to do right by his mother, his church, and his faith. But after the first murder, he couldn’t go to the cops with what he knew because he knew everyone would see him as the most obvious suspect, so he decided to warn the next families through letters.”
“I don’t know about this, Sutherland,” McKenzie said. “I know you have an instinct for these things, but even this is a stretch; I mean, even if that’s true, why would our guy target those three families?”
“To deflect attention away from himself. Those were the families that Alejandro had spied on. He makes the perfect scapegoat.”
“I’ll go with that, but how does your father fit into all this?”
“Well, I don’t think it is my father. In fact, I don’t think the focus was any of the families. I think our guy is targeting the company. A form of sabotage. I’m just not entirely sure why right now.”
