Right now all I had was her being in the wrong place with the wrong person at the wrong time. Even the hit man said she stayed in the car. If I can prove Frank was the killer, then she could be charged with being an accessory after the fact but that was about it.
The next morning I hoped the latest forensics report had two items that would wrap up this investigation and I could retire with on a positive point, finger prints and a DNA match from the blood found in the shotgun shell box lid would do it.
Of course it wouldn’t turn out that way. There were no usable prints on the box or on the shot gun trigger and the blood didn’t match any DNA on file. The lab techs were able to type the blood and distinguish it as belonging to a female. That was the good, the bad was there were no other distinguishing markers. Even the blood type was extremely common, Type O+.
A DNA match would have wrapped this case up nicely but with the absence of that, I needed evidence from another source implicating one of the other players. Then I I could get a court order for the courts to demand a sample for DNA testing.
It was obvious the killer used rubber gloves. They did however cut their finger on the edge of the box of shotgun shells leaving just a small amount. The cut wasn’t bad enough to tear the glove away from the finger so it was exposed to whatever they touched.
Since this investigation started, there has been only one female implicated and she did not have a cut on her finger. That’s what was missing on Barbara Baxter’s finger. If she was my killer, she would still have evidence of the wound from the box edge. It was still too recent to have healed completely. As we all know, paper cuts don’t heal quickly.
I looked over the interviews from the officers who questioned the patrons at the restaurant where Beverly and her lover dined before they were killed. All who witnessed the two love birds thought they should have been hosed down with cold water. One woman especially was very displeased with the disgusting display the lovers put on that night. This patron voiced their displeasure quite vehemently, as noted by the officer who took her statement. According to the officer’s report, she used some very colorful language as to how the adultering fornicators should be punished.
The woman mentioned in the report is well known to everyone in the department and extremely well thought of. I know her as well and I noticed she has had a Hello Kitty Band Aid on her index finger since the night of the murders. That itself meant nothing to my investigation. There had to be evidence showing her involvement with the killings or that put her at the house the night of the murders. No judge would give me a court order just on speculation. Hell, according to the contract killer, no other woman besides Barbara Baxter was in the neighborhood that night.
I had to either get lucky or accept that I couldn’t solve this one in time. But you can only build a case against an individual with evidence and we had absolutely nothing pointing toward this person. My gut was telling me this person was our killer, but all I could do was follow the evidence.