Mischief 24/7 Read Online Free PDF Page B

boy would have had access to anything his daddy brought home from the office. Like, for instance, how the other women died. Right down to the brand of rope used to tie up his former lover, beat her, rape her and then strangle her—and, by the way, strangling someone isn’teasy. It takes time, lots of up-close-and-personal time, so strangling someone is actually pretty rare, rare enough to brand a killer. Strangling someone you once loved, someone who bore you a child, takes a special sort of sadistic bastard, Court. Except…”
    “Go on.”
    “Matt told me something a few days ago,” Jade said, frowning. “And he took the medical examiner’s one-page summary out of Tarin’s file so Jessica wouldn’t see it and go ballistic, so don’t bother looking for it. According to the medical examiner, Tarin wasn’t raped and then killed. She was killed—strangled—and only then assaulted sexually with a foreign object. Like, you know, the other victims were raped, so Tarin had to appear to have been raped, as well, to keep with the MO. Which is why Matt and I weren’t as surprised as the rest of you when the Fishtown Strangler denied that Tarin was one of his victims.”
    Court sat up straight. “What?”
    Jade nodded. “I know, I know. It sounds crazy. The other victims were raped perimortem—we know that from their autopsy reports, just like we know from Tarin’s that she’d given birth not too long before she died. Maybe a couple of months,
    Matt told me. Making it possible that she’s the mother of the Baby in the Dumpster.”
    “You really think Joshua Brainard murdered Tarin White in a copycat killing?” Court frowned and then held up his index finger, as if asking her not to answer him yet as he was still working it all out in his mind. “If there was any physical evidence left behind by the rapist, that evidence couldn’t differ in Tarin’s case, correct? So he couldn’t rape her. He couldn’t take that chance. But she still had to appear as if she’d been… violated.”
    “Exactly. And one other thing. Herman Long-street is a nonsecretor, meaning they can’t get a blood type just from bodily fluids. That was in the police files from the get-go. You can fake a lot of things, but you can’t fake that. So first Joshua kills her and then he sets the scene, simulates the rape. According to Matt, the police weren’t all that concerned with the victims back then, as the killings were still going on and all the victims were assumed to be prostitutes. If they’d found a suspect, if a case had gone to trial,
then
the discrepancy in Tarin’s autopsy would have immediately become apparent. But there never was an arrest.”
    “You’re sold on this, aren’t you? That Joshua
    Brainard murdered Tarin White and made it look like she was one of the Fishtown Strangler victims.”
    “He killed Tarin
and
the baby. Don’t forget that poor baby. And yes, I do believe it. Because then the rest makes sense. Think about it, Court. Teddy was investigating all these cases for years, right? He’d pretty much solved the Vanishing Bride case before Jolie and Sam took it over. I love Jolie, I really do, and I’m proud of what she did, being a complete amateur detective, but she and Sam really fell into solving that case. Teddy even had the plane ticket so he could go see for himself if he was right.”
    Court shook his head. “No. We’re back to the Vanishing Bride case? Sorry, I’m not getting where you’re headed on this.”
    “I’ll explain. Why wouldn’t Teddy have gone flying off the moment he thought he’d figured it all out? I mean, after all the years of chipping away at these cold cases, he finally makes a breakthrough on one of them. He had to be over the moon with his success, so why wait to see if you’re right? Why make airline reservations a week or more out?”
    “Because he thought he was also close on another case? Or even better, on two other casesthat had suddenly rolled into one?” Court