“I know. I’m sorry. Were you able to type it?”
Vince nodded. “AB-negative.”
A strange mix of emotion passed through Louis. The excitement of knowing he was closing in on Brian was tempered by the knowledge that one more person was going to get hurt by all this. He still had to face Scott.
“Louis, you want this too?” Vince was holding out the papers.
“What is it?”
“Kitty’s updated autopsy report. You want to take Scott Brenner his copy?”
Louis nodded, taking the report from Vince. He opened it, then saw Vince moving out of the corner of his eye.
“Wait a minute, Vince.”
Vince turned, throwing his arms out. “Louis, Louis, Louis. Unlike the rest of the people around here, I have a life. Let me live it.”
“Just tell me, did you find anything new?”
“Yeah, one thing,” he said. “We found clay in her hair.”
“In her hair? Why didn’t the mortician wash it out?”
“Well, she had the blunt trauma wound on the back of her head. I guess whoever did her couldn’t get it all.”
“Clay,” Louis said slowly. “Why the hell would she have clay in her hair? Did she get it in the dump?”
“I doubt it,” Vince said. “It had traces of silica quartz and vinyl acetate mixed in. It wasn’t clay, like dirt. It was like what they use for cement work.”
“Cement work?”
“Yeah, you know, the stuff they use to stick tiles on the wall.”
Louis was quiet, thinking.
“One more thing,” Vince said. “Remember I told you I thought that the head wound was not what killed her? I was right. She died from the stab wounds and she almost bled out. She was very dead by the time the body was moved to the dump.”
“So wherever she was killed, there was a lot of blood,” Louis said.
“It would have left a mess, I would think.”
Vince started away. Louis rubbed his brow, trying to think. This couldn’t be all there was.
“Vince,” Louis called. “If she was already dead when the killer put her in the landscapers’ dump, how did she breathe in the fertilizer?”
Vince turned. “What fertilizer?”
Louis flipped through the report as he walked to Vince. “Here. Right here, the potassium monopersulfate.”
Vince took the report and looked at the listing. “Who told you this was fertilizer?”
“We looked it up.”
“Well, potassium is in fertilizer, but when you add monopersulfate to it, it’s a different chemical compound.”
“What is it used for?” Louis asked.
“Pools. They use it to chemically balance swimming pools.” Vince handed him back the report. “I’d guess your girl probably went swimming just before she was killed and took some water into her lungs.”
Louis ran a hand over his brow. Shit, one little mistake.
Vince mistook his contrition for fatigue and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Louis, give it a rest. Go home.”
Louis nodded, folding the report. He watched Vince disappear down the hallway and leaned back against the cool wall. He was thinking about Brian and he was seeing the Brenner house. Not as the rotting place it was now but as Kitty must have seen it twenty years ago. A beautiful mansion where she could swim in a moonlit pool, pretending she was Lady Kitrina Jaspers.
He knew now what had happened. Now he just had to find a way to prove it to Mobley.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Louis searched O’Sullivan’s for Mobley and when he didn’t see him, he looked at his watch. Mobley had said eight o’clock. Where was he?
Then, through the smoke and bodies, he saw him sitting in his usual booth in the back. The glass in front of him was empty and Louis stopped at the bar before going back. Sticking his manila folder under his arm, he carried Mobley a scotch and water and brought a Heineken for himself.
Mobley looked up at Louis as he sat down, but then his gaze dropped to the fresh scotch. He picked it up, downing nearly all of it in one swallow. His face looked drawn, and there was something in his eyes Louis couldn’t quickly place.
Two men came by the table, heading toward the restrooms. Mobley looked up at them.
“Hey, guys,” he said.
They kept walking.
Mobley’s eyes drifted down to the glass in his hands. It hit Louis at that moment that what he was seeing in Mobley’s face was the sting of exclusion. And maybe even a little fear that he wasn’t going to survive this.
Mobley drank the last drop of scotch and settled back against the booth. “Okay, what was so damn important?”
“I know who killed Kitty and I know where,” Louis said, sitting down across from him.
Mobley eyes narrowed. “I just got the damn case reopened and you’ve got it all solved.”
Louis put the folder on the table. “I think Duvall sold Jack Cade out in 1967,” he began. “Sometime during the investigation and trial, Duvall latched onto Brian Brenner as a suspect-”
“Brian Brenner? Give me a fucking break, Kincaid.”
“Stay with me for a minute. I think Duvall was afraid of the fallout if he accused the sixteen-year-old son of the city’s most prominent family of murder. So he went to Senator Brenner and struck a deal to protect Brian. Jack Cade got twenty years in prison and Spencer Duvall got rich.”
Mobley stared at Louis. “You got proof of this supposed deal?” he asked.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” Mobley said. He motioned to the waitress for another drink.
“The vaginal semen sample taken from Kitty was AB-negative blood. Brian Brenner is AB-negative.”
“How do you know that?”
Louis hesitated. “How I know isn’t admissable. You’ll have to test him yourself when you arrest him.”
“Arrest him? What are you talking about?”
Louis searched through the folder and pulled out Kitty’s original autopsy report. “There was potassium monopersulfate in Kitty’s lungs. Vince told me it’s a common pool chemical. Kitty’s friend Joyce told me Kitty liked to go swimming at night. Then when Vince did the second autopsy he found silica quartz and vinyl acetate in her hair. That’s a cement mix they used to put up tiles.”
“So?”
Louis pushed another paper across the table.
“What’s this?”
“A building permit. I went over to the planning department and pulled it. It’s for the Brenner house on Shaddlelee Lane, specifically to renovate the pool cabana.” Louis pointed to a date. “It was pulled by Leyland Brothers Construction November 1, 1965.”
“Kitty wasn’t killed until April 9th of the following year, right?” Mobley asked.
“Maybe the work got stalled or something. We can call Leyland Brothers to find out. But that isn’t what’s interesting. Look at this.” Louis slapped a second permit in front of Mobley. “A new permit was pulled for the same job by a different contractor, Delacarpini and Sons.”
Mobley was looking at the date on the second permit. “April 30, 1966.”
“I think the cabana was still under construction when Brian killed Kitty there,” Louis said. “That’s why she had cement powder in her hair. And then, after Brian dumped Kitty’s body, the second permit was pulled and the cabana work was completed.”
Mobley looked up at Louis.
“Maybe Brian got scared and told his father. That’s why Charles Brenner made the deal with Duvall to set up Cade and then he hid the evidence by bringing in new workers to finish the cabana.”
Mobley was rubbing his temple, looking at the permit. “I was in that house once, for a party in high school,” he said quietly.
“Brian’s been trying to sell it,” Louis said. “He knew this might all come out if Cade brought suit against Duvall.”
Mobley looked up. “So you think Brian killed Duvall too?”
Louis nodded. “Duvall was treated for depression right around the time of the Cade trial. I think he always felt guilty about what he did, and when Cade got out and threatened to sue him, it all came back.” Louis paused. “Maybe Duvall was going to come clean, maybe he even told Brian. Brian had no choice. His father wasn’t around to clean up his mess this time.”