The Christmas Killer Read Online Free PDF

a nightclub in Indianapolis, with a Miss Penny Stokes.’
    ‘We was clubbing all night,’ added Sonny.
    ‘You weren’t clubbing all night,’ said Jake.
    ‘No, man. After we finished clubbing, we went back to her place.’
    ‘And were you doing a bit of dealing at the club?’ asked Jake. Sonny had a heavy rap sheet, lots of priors including possession and possession with intent. Speed, weed, blow – it didn’t matter to him. He had served time for an aggravated burglary rap. He had been out a little over a year.
    Jake nodded to himself. Sonny was certainly violent – but sadistic? He didn’t see it.
    And I’ve been wrong before.
    ‘Are you arresting my client for murder or forpossession?’ asked Vincennes, his tone telling them not to mess around.
    ‘We need this Penny Stokes’s address,’ said Mills.
    Sonny shrugged. ‘Sure.’
    It took them until after nine to locate Penny Stokes, but the story checked out. Stokes confirmed that Sonny had been with her all night, only leaving at six thirty in the morning, when he got up to go to his job at the city sanitation department.
    By nine thirty Jake and Mills were back at their desks in a small cubicle at the end of the detective bureau, drinking coffee and eating drugstore sandwiches.
    ‘You still like him for this?’ Jake asked.
    Mills paused over his sandwich and when he answered, he spoke slowly.
    ‘I don’t know. The alibi is holding, but we have nothing from the club. I’ll go over myself in an hour with his picture.’ He took a bite and carried on with his mouth full. ‘Let’s say he killed Marcia at midnight, dumped her, and got to this Penny girl by two. She loves him, or she’s scared of him, so she alibis him for the night.’ He swallowed his mouthful and shrugged. ‘I think we got the right man.’
    Jake couldn’t dispute the logic. Forensics would throw light on it, he hoped – and with the low temperatures this time of year, Marcia’s time of death might not be so easy to determine.
    Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred …
    He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. ‘But we don’t have enough to hold him tonight.’
    Mills threw back a sigh at Jake like an echo. ‘And the sonofabitch knows it,’ he said. ‘It’s on us to build the case, I guess.’
    Knowing they wouldn’t get any more by tomorrow, they cut Sonny loose. His home was still a crime scene, sealed by forensics, so he had to nominate a friend to stay with and give the police the address. They were not surprised when he chose Penny Stokes and Cherry Orchard.



9
Tuesday, 13 December, 12.10 a.m.
    When Jake got home, he was too frazzled from his shift to feel his usual irritation at the garish red reindeer on the roof of the house next to his. His own home was in darkness, which was no surprise. He crept into the kitchen like a burglar, flicking the light switch. He opened the fridge, feeling a pleasant sense of relief when he heard the clatter of beer bottles.
    Just the one
, he told himself.
    He took out a Miller Lite and brought it over to the table. He popped the top as he sat down, taking a long swig. And as the cooling liquid flooded through his chest, he began to go over the day.
    The case should have been an easy one. Sonny – a violent criminal on probation – had obviously killed his girlfriend, probably in anger but maybe with a more complex motive. Prison can change a man. Maybe a distressing episode or two in the showers. Rape, humiliation – a lunkhead like Sonny surely didn’t have the psychological capacity to withstand such an experience. It might explain why he was cheating on his girlfriend, filling his time with an extra woman, lookingto reassert his manhood now that he was back on the outside. Had he confided in Marcia, perhaps? Had she thrown it back at him, prompting a new kind of rage and violence in Sonny?
    Would such a sequence of events be enough to push a man like him to the madness of the man who had murdered Marcia?
    Jake rubbed his