Page 41 of Investigate Away
“I just appreciate you hearing me out,” Jag said. “I was hoping Jack Marlo would be here by now.”
“He just went to the head,” Albert said. “There’s fresh coffee if you want it.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Jag poured himself some swill and made himself comfortable at the far end of the table. He flipped through some active homicide files that Albert had pulled for him, but nothing was remotely like the Trinket Killer.
The sound of boots scuffing down the hallway caught his attention. Jack Marlo entered the conference room. “Hey, Jag. Good to see you.”
“You as well.” Jag rose and shook Marlo’s hand. “Were you able to find anything?”
“Not a single cold case in Seattle that fits the Trinket Killer’s patterns,” Marlo said. “I widened the search and went to other offices in the state with similar parameters and got a few hits. I don’t think they match. At least not with what we know about our killer.”
Albert leaned against the table. “Yeah, but we’ve been banking on our killer being a man. The profile changes when we make it a woman.”
“And we think she knew at least two of the victims intimately,” Jag added. “Both of those victims had secret relationships. Callie is digging into the other victims’ past love lives.”
“But they weren’t all gay,” Marlo said.
“It’s an angle, and with these new trinkets showing up at my doorstep, I need to check everything no matter how absurd.” Jag tossed three coins he managed to pick up at the store so the rest could be logged into evidence. “So, my theory is we’re about to hit round three of the Trinket Killer’s cycle. What I need to find is round one.”
“I pulled up every cold case that I could find,” Marlo said.
“Yeah, but maybe we think we solved it.” Albert held up his index finger. “I pulled this file this morning. I made the arrest. It was rock solid, but I’ve always wondered if maybe we made a mistake.” Albert tossed another file on the table. “Hendrix was also found guilty of murdering his neighbor. The DNA on that nailed his ass. He even copped to it, but to this day, he swears didn’t kill the other girls.”
“When was this?” Jag asked.
“My first year as a beat cop. I chased him in a stolen vehicle. After the arrest, we found a couple of mood rings, and that’s what this killer would leave at the scene,” Albert said.
“How many kills?”
“Three in one year. All white girls between eighteen and twenty, and they all went to the same college and lived in the same dorm.” Albert stood behind Jag and tapped one of the reports in the folder. “The man I arrested was the janitor at the school. It was believed the girls, all cheerleaders, teased him or emasculated him, and he got his revenge.”
Jag remembered that case. It had an entire college community on edge for a year. “Were the girls stabbed?”
“The first one was hit in the head a few times,” Albert said. “The other two were stabbed. There should be pictures in there. First victim was found on the school grounds. The other two were in parks.”
“Like all of mine.” Jag flipped through another page and tapped a pen against his temple. He pulled out all the images of the dead bodies. Each one had a mood ring placed on their left ring finger.
The marriage finger.
Interesting.
Especially when the man sitting in prison for the crimes was an older man.
“Why did he kill his neighbor?” Marlo asked.
“She rejected him. And she does look a lot like those girls, which is why we were able to make the stretch,” Albert said. “But to this day, he swears he was wrongfully incarcerated for three murders.”
“Do you believe him?” Jag asked.
“I didn’t at the time,” Albert said. “Because at the third crime scene, which was the neighbor’s, the victim was clutching a mood ring. And let’s remember, I wasn’t a detective back then, so it was not my case. But when you asked to see all this, I started examining all the evidence again, and it turns out Armstrong logged in the mood ring for that crime scene.”
“Fuck,” Jag mumbled. “Armstrong mishandled a lot of my evidence and DNA.”
“And then killed herself,” Marlo added, shaking his head. “She handled a lot of evidence. I wonder how many she tampered with and why.”
“We might never know the answer to the latter question,” Albert said. “But this house is pulling all the cases with Armstrong’s name on it. Now what’s really interesting about what I’ve dug up so far, is that procedure was followed to the letter on every case, except the Trinket Killer and the ones we just mentioned.”
Jag peered over the file. “Are you saying you think Armstrong is connected to the Trinket Killer?”
