"That's quite a stretch, isn't it?" Mary reached into the center of the table and picked up the printout of Darnton/Darning's photo from the computer archives.
"It's consistent with Steere's personality."
"True, but it's not enough. If Steere killed intentionally, it has something to do with Darnton, if he is Darnton. Because he's Darnton, not because he's homeless." Mary scrutinized the photo for the umpteenth time and mentally compared it with the gruesome autopsy photos. "I bet Heb Darnton is the same man as Eb Darning. He'd be the right age, about fifty-one, fifty-two. Does it look like the same man to you, only older?" She slid the photo across the table to Judy, who caught it midway.
"He didn't age well, did he?" Judy asked, studying the photo. "You got a theory? Go with it."
"Let's say Darnton— Darning— is the man in the photo," Mary said tentatively. "He used to be a guy with a job, but now he's homeless. It happens every day. We know he was alcoholic, the neighbors told us that. Let's say he started drinking after he left the bank teller job and went downhill from there. Lost his job, his girl. Grew a beard."
Judy set down the photo, thinking aloud. "So you think this has to do with Darning?"
"Maybe. Maybe it wasn't a chance meeting between Darning and Steere. Maybe they knew each other."
"That's even dopier than what I said." Judy screwed up her large features, and Mary raised her hand like the Pope.
"Hear me out. Put together what we learned. Let's say Steere didn't know the traffic light was red. If he didn't, his actions don't make any sense, right?"
"Right. Unless he was really blitzed, which he wasn't, according to his blood tests."
"Besides, Steere's a big guy. He can absorb a lot of booze." Mary sipped coffee from her mug, more for courage than caffeine. "Steere's stopping under the bridge doesn't make sense unless you assume he wanted to meet Darning. They could have arranged to meet under the bridge. Assume Steere was stopping regardless of the light, to kill Darning. Then he made up the whole carjacking story."
"The carjacking was a lie?"
Mary shook her head. "Not a lie, a setup. Work with me. Remember, it's not a chance meeting." Although Mary was only thinking aloud, she felt her pulse quicken. "Steere was driving a new Mercedes. Two weeks old, right?"
"Let me double-check." Judy rose and went to the third accordion file. She flipped through the manila folders until she found the right one, yanked it out, and opened it up. "Here we go. The bill of sale for Steere's new car. It was three weeks old. $120,000! Wow!"
"What did he trade in? Bet it didn't look like the Snotmobile." By that Mary meant her ancient BMW 2002, the only chartreuse car ever sold.
"Look at all this stuff." Judy was agog. " 'Air-bags, leather-covered steering wheel and gear lever, speaker blanking plates integrated on the left and right side of the dashboard—' "
"Jude, what did he trade in?"
"I wonder what a blanking plate is. How could I graduate from law school and not know what a blanking plate is?"
"Judy! The trade-in."
Judy flipped to a series of long white documents and screwed up her face in triplicate. "Oh, here. Jeez. He traded in a Mercedes sedan. An S500. V-8. It says 'Five-Sitzer, four Turen.' "
"How old was the trade-in?" Mary craned her neck to read the document. "How many miles on it?"
"Half a year old. It had fifteen hundred miles on it." Judy looked up and the two associates locked eyes.
"It's not as if Steere needed a new car, is it?" Mary felt an ominous churning in the pit of her stomach and it wasn't the coffee. Suddenly the brief didn't matter and neither did her job. "What if Steere planned this whole thing? What if he bought the car to make the carjacking more plausible? What if Steere arranged to meet Darnton— Darning— to kill him? That's murder. Premeditated murder."
Judy cocked her head, skeptical now that Mary's expression was turning so grave. "You mean Steere used the new Mercedes as bait?"
"No. I mean Steere intended to kill Darning for some reason and bought the car in advance of that— to make the carjacking more plausible."
"Wait, wait, slow up. You're serious about this?"
Mary nodded. "It fits, doesn't it? It's consistent with what we found. Maybe Steere is a murderer." It made Mary sick to say it. "And we defended him. We probably got him off."
"Mary, wait." Judy shook her head. "Just because Steere bought a new car doesn't mean he's a murderer. Rich people do stuff like that all the time. An impulse purchase."
"A convertible? A white Mercedes that cost as much as a house?"
"So he's a show-off, and it was almost summer."
"Judy, he bought the most conspicuous car in history and drove it through the worst neighborhood in history. In the middle of the night. Isn't that suspicious? I mean, if you wanted people to believe you'd been carjacked, you'd go out and buy a car that was flashy enough to steal. Steere was making it look like random street crime when it was really murder."
Judy flopped back in her swivel chair with a sigh. Her lower lip puckered with concern. She was sorry she'd started all this, with the color blindness. She worried Mary was seeing murder mysteries because of her past. "But how could the D.A. prove this?"
"I don't know, they're a good office. Maybe they found some sort of after-discovered evidence. Your tax dollars."
Judy's eyes narrowed. "You still have a motive problem, Mare. Why would Steere want to kill Darning?"
"I don't know." Mary paused, then brightened. "Maybe there's a motive and we just don't know it yet. We don't have enough information. If we find the connection between the two men, we find the motive."
"What connection? There is no connection. One is at the bottom of the food chain and the other is at the top."
Mary blinked as the answer struck her. "What is the connection between a rich man and a bank employee? Get a clue. It rhymes with money."
Judy considered it. Maybe it wasn't completely nuts, or paranoid. "Wait a minute." She got up and searched the Steere file again, checking each accordion. "What bank did Darning work in?"
"PSFS. The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. They're out of business now, but they still have the neon sign on top of their old building. You know the sign."
"PSFS? Sign? No."
"It's on the building, on the east side of town. It's huge, you can't miss it. It's a historic landmark now. You know it."
"Didn't we just have this conversation?"
"Forget it." Mary's headache returned. It was too late to be working. What a job. Mary remembered the plastic PSFS passbook she had as a child, in trademark tartan. It had an inky little S that stood for Student Account. Where was that frigging passbook now? Maybe she was rich and didn't know it. Then she could quit.
"Here it is." Judy had flipped to the back of a thick document and handed it to Mary. "Steere's most recent tax return. It shows all his bank accounts, even under his corporate names. None of them are at PSFS." Judy flipped through the other returns in the folder. "Even as long ago as five years, nothing says PSFS."
Mary read down the list on the tax form. Her heart stopped midway. "Steere has two accounts at Mellon Bank, for $100,000 combined. Now why would he leave that much money in an account that earns almost nothing?"
"What's the difference? Mellon Bank isn't the one Darning worked in."
"Yes, it is. Mellon bought PSFS about five years ago."
Judy blinked. "For real?"
"Mellon came out of Pittsburgh in the eighties and started buying up all the Philly banks, including Girard, which was a real Philadelphia thing. My mother won't bank at Mellon because they had the nerve to buy Girard."
"Odd."
"My mother?"
"No. I love your mother. I like your mother better than you do."
But Mary was thinking. "Maybe Darning rose up in the ranks at the bank, and there was some finagling with Steere's accounts or something. Bribes. Embezzlement."