I worked this case and did my best but I knew it was over. When my time was up and I handed my badge over to my Lieutenant, I would no longer be a cop. I wouldn’t care if this person confessed to the me one hour later. I wouldn’t care. One minute after 1500 hours I would Helen’s husband and nothing more.
Tomorrow I had to bring my replacement in on the case and sit with him and review all the evidence compiled so far. I’ve known Sean Wilkes for years and he is an extremely capable detective. After I told him all my suspicions and his review of the forensics he took up the active investigation of the case.
Two days and I’m done. Sean Wilkes was now the lead investigator even though I was still the detective of record. I sat in with Sean while he talked with the D.A. about the case and I clarified issues as needed. Of course the blood tests showed our hit man wasn’t a match to the blood found on the box of shells and the trigger, so he wasn’t responsible for killing Beverly and the Canadian fuck. A video from an ATM across the street from Frank’s motel room showed he was guilty of that crime, so he was at least going away for attempted murder and a slew of other charges. Guess he was telling the truth.
He didn’t gain any points for implicating Frank Nelson and Barbara Baxter since the forensics report proved Frank wasn’t the killer. As Barbara Baxter goes, there’s just not enough circumstantial or physical evidence showing she did it.
Detective Wilkes decided to look closer at Barbara Baxter to see if he could find that missing piece. It only took a few hours for him to clear her as well. She had stopped at a Denny’s on the way home from Parkersburg for some food. The date stamp on the receipt showed her there at the time of the murders.
So we had a murderer running free and we had nothing definitive as to who she was. My career was going to end not being able to solve a double murder. That was a negative. However, I was going into retirement by putting a contract killer and the guy who hired him away for a long time. For me that was a positive.
Even if Beverly was a cheating skank, I wanted to solve her murder because the law says she deserved justice. The part that irritates me is, deep down I knew who the killer was. But I knew the law and violating a person’s Constitutional rights, especially when I’m about to retire, wasn’t going to happen. So what could I do?
Frank’s divorce lawyer and his defense lawyer weren’t wrong arguing a number of people had motive to kill Beverly. Detective Wilkes would need to look at the list Frank’s private investigator compiled and see if he could make a case against any of them. I however had the feeling this was going to turn into a cold case and it would remain that way unless the killer made a mistake and handed us the physical evidence needed to convict her.
I looked at the clock realizing my next to last day was done. I went home and hugged my wife. We spent a quiet night together cuddling, both of us hoping the next 30 years would be just like this.