Minot Hacker: Mystery Series (My Murder Mysteries #1) (5 page)

"What makes you say that?" I said.

"John's always been a funny one," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"I don't really know. He never seemed to fit in with the others."

"I know that he's a schizophrenic."

"Really? I didn't know that!"

"You didn't?"

"Well, I've never really thought about John like that."

"Laura, do you remember Monica? She lives just around the corner."

"Oh, Monica! Yes, I do. Me and her were really good friends at school."

"Do you still see her now?"

"Now and then," Laura replied with confidence. "I say hello to her, and that's it."

"She hasn't been behaving strangely, has she?" I asked her, secretly hoping for an affirmative answer.

"No. Like I said, I don't see her much. Monica is somebody who tends to keep to herself. Like me, she is unmarried, and she does not really do much, not like she used to, anyway."

"She used to go out a lot?" I asked, feeling as though I was getting somewhere.

"Oh, yes! I used to see her all the time," she said, "even at somebody's one hundredth birthday party. She went out at four o'clock that day, and stayed out until twelve, when the other party finished!"

"Really?" I asked. It seemed to me that Monica had a rather strange behavior. Although she seemed perfectly normal when I talked to her, she seemed to have an unusual past.

"Yes! And she used to flirt with everyone, in school. Shortly after Richard's death, she just forgot about him and moved on to somebody else."

It was then that it struck me. Monica and Richard (the fourth victim) were an item? Then I thought even deeper –– John said that he wrote a love note to Richard, which lured him into the woods. Was it Monica who wrote that note?

"I need to ask you one more question," I said. "And you might think this is a little bit stupid."

"Not at all," said Laura. "Fire away!"

"Well, do you remember years ago, when Richard Cold was killed?"

"Yes, I do. It was a sad time, with the others dying, too."

"Well, Richard received a note which lured him to his death. Do you remember if Monica wrote that note?"

"Yes. She wrote the note and pushed it through into Richard's locker. Nobody was looking."

"How do you know this?" I asked.

"Well, she told me."

"Did she?" I asked.

"Didn't you know? Monica and Richard were an item!"

"This is news to me!" I cried. "And thank you for your time! Also, I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about this –– not yet, anyway."

"You have my word," said Laura, waving goodbye to me.

Laura had helped a lot. I could not believe what I had heard. In the interview, John said that he was the one who pushed the note through the locker, but I had a witness who claimed otherwise.

I returned to the station and made a few phone calls, just to verify that Monica and Richard were an item just before his murder. I made a few calls to people who were in the same classes as Monica and Richard, and also to Richard's parents, who confirmed that Monica and Richard were indeed dating at the time of his death. Now I suspected Monica more than John, and I strongly believed that Monica had something to do with the murders.

I did not doubt Laura at all. For whatever reason, she knew she’d gotten Monica into trouble. Perhaps she did not want to lie to the police, or she accidentally let it slip about the note, but she was telling the truth, because other people said that Monica and Richard were boyfriend and girlfriend at the time of Richard's death. This was something I needed to think about. Monica had lied in the first place, and I had evidence of that, and I was now ready to put pressure on her. I arrested her for suspicion of the murders, and it was her turn to be formally interviewed.

I entered the room, and she sat as still as a stone. Her hands were not trembling. Her eyes were barely moving. Perhaps she was traumatized about the whole thing, but I knew that was probably not true.

"So, Monica," I said as I walked through the door, "I am going to ask you again. Did you write Richard that love note the day he died?"

"No, I didn't," Monica said with a very firm tone of voice.

"Well, you see, I have a witness who said you did."

"Who on Earth told you that?!" she yelled, showing that she was confused.

"I'm not allowed to say. Now I'm going to ask you this again: what was your relationship like with Richard Cold?"

Monica shrugged. "He was only a classmate," she replied.

I almost laughed, because I knew for a fact she was lying to me.

"You see," I said, "I know for a fact that you are lying to me about that, because I have eight witnesses who will argue otherwise. They say that you were boyfriend and girlfriend until the day Richard died."

"That's bull!" she cried, still attempting to deny things.

"Well, the more you lie to me, the less I trust you," I said. "And to be honest, I have little faith in you now, if any, so you'd better tell the truth, and tell it right now!" I became more and more firm with her throughout the interview.

Monica sat there, silent. Her shoulders were right up, and she dropped them, and gave a big sigh.

"O.k., I'll tell you the truth this time," she said.

I thought in my head: Finally!

"Well, Richard and I were going out with each other. And I was until the day he died. Are you happy now?"

"Did you write the note?"

"I honestly can't remember that! I don't remember little things like that," she said, becoming desperate for me to trust her.

"Well, it’s a big thing, actually. Probably the biggest thing in the whole case at the moment, because whoever wrote that note lured Richard Cold to his death. So I'm inferring that whoever wrote that note is the Minot Hacker."

"I might have wrote it, but I really cannot remember something from twenty years ago!"

"Alright," I said. "But if somebody has said you've written it, and they said they saw you write it, then you probably did write it."

"I understand that. Maybe someone else saw me write the note, and used it to follow Richard to the woods."

"Ah!" I said.

"What?" said Monica, puzzled.

"I did not mention what was in the note!" I cried excitedly, knowing that I had caught her out.

Monica knew that was it for her.

"Please, don't do this," she said. "I promise you, it's nothing to do with the murders."

"But it is," I said. "Otherwise, you would tell me."

Monica knew that she had to tell me the whole truth.

"Well, it's John," she said quietly.

"Has he confessed to you?" I asked her.

Monica nodded.

"I didn't want to say anything," she said. "But just before he came to the station the other night, he told me he was the killer, and how he did it. He told me he was going home. I didn't know he was coming to the police station to confess, though!"

"So, he told you everything about the note?" I asked her.

"Yes! He said he saw me write a note to him, and used that as his opportunity to kill Richard!"

"Right," I said, very interested about the way this story had unfolded.

Now I was back to square one.

"I think I'm done here," I said.

"Can I go now?" she asked me, preparing to get up.

"You do realize that your cousin is still in custody?" I asked her.

"There's nothing I can do for him now, is there?" she asked me.

"No."

"He really is the killer, isn't he?"

I looked at her. Monica was genuinely telling the truth.

"I promise you, I will get to the very bottom of this!" I cried. "And I know for a fact that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Is there anything else, anything at all, that you want to tell me?"

"I can't think of anything at the moment," she replied, her hands together as if she was praying.

"Then you are free to go," I told her.

This was getting more and more puzzling by the minute. So, if what Monica said was true, John was the one who saw her writing the note to Richard, so he used that as his opportunity to kill him. I had more to think about in my bed that night, and of that I was certain.

For now, however, it was time to give John his phone call to someone. About half an hour after Monica went home, John was given his phone call, and I stood right next to him.

He slowly approached the telephone, and I watched him as he dialed the numbers with great care. Staring at the wall, he put the telephone to his ear, and waited not more than two seconds.

"Hello," he said. "Oh, yes, I'm fine. Are you alright? I've been so worried about you. No, I don't know when I'll be home. I don't think they'll ever let me out."

I looked at him, since he was looking at me when he said that.

"I love you, mother," he said suddenly.

In an instant, I grabbed the phone off him, and put it to my ear. I did not say anything, but when I put the phone to my ear, the person on the other end of the line had hung up.

I got very excited now. I had to trace that phone call to make sure that somebody was actually talking to him.

Within ten minutes, another police officer on the team had traced the phone call, and proved that someone was actually on the other end of the line.

"It's Monica," I said. "I just know it's Monica."

"How do you know it's her?" Miranda asked me.

"Because that's the only person he talks to."

I knew that John could have been confused between his mother and Monica, but that also made me believe that Monica could have been pretending to be his mother all along. Either that, or John was just very confused. Either way, I inferred that Monica was on the other end of the line, and Graham and I telephoned Monica and asked her for an alibi. She said that she was at home when that happened, about ten minutes before. This meant that no-one could prove where she was at the time, so we were no further forward with the case. Thinking that this direction of the case had come to its end, I decided to turn back to the mysterious house Monica had mentioned before.

The first thing I knew I had to do was find out who was living in the house in 1992. The only way of doing that was to look at the 1991 census record for who was living there. Since I was on the police force, I was granted access. I knew that by finding out who was living in the house at the time, it would bring me one step closer to finding out what the "bad thing" was that John did.

I was quite shocked by who was living in the house at the time. Two people, named Joseph and Maria Doe, were both in their sixties at the time. I knew from my instinct that these people were related to John, possibly grandparents. So, the next step was to search for John's father's parents. They came up with two different names than the ones in the census record. Then I thought,
brother of John's grandfather?
This led me to do some further research. I searched the birth records for John's grandfather and found out that John's great-grandparents were named Antony and Elizabeth. I then searched for Joseph Doe's parents. Indeed, his parents were also named Antony and Elizabeth. I now had proof that the people living in that mysterious house were John's great-aunt and great-uncle. This meant that John would have been able to visit the house on several occasions. I had so many questions I wanted to answer, but the most important one was,
were these people involved in the murders?
It was a possibility, since they seemed like rather bad people, judging from what John told me. Monica did not know about the owners of the house because she was not related to them – she was related to John because her mother and his mother were sisters.

I did some more research on the internet, and I found out that both Joseph and Maria were now dead, and they had been since the late 1990s. That was another lead gone, I thought. I wanted to know more about these people. I wanted to know more about their personality. Now, the only living person who knew them was John, as far as I knew. I was thinking about talking to him again to find out more about them, but I had something else to do first. I wanted to gather some piece of evidence against these people, something that John could not lie about. If I started to ask him questions, I knew that John might lie about them. At first I suspected Monica of being the murderer, but now, I could not help but feel that Joseph and Maria Doe were the real killers, framing John to set him up and convincing him that his mother was really alive. Perhaps I was going off track a little, but perhaps not.

Then, I had a thought: if these people died over ten years ago, someone might have moved in there by now. Then I thought, is there a chance that John kept going to that house after their deaths? There was only one way to find out.

Within twenty minutes, I found myself back at the house again. This time, I was extra careful not to trip over that hidden lump of metal on the ground. I slowly walked up to the house, quite apprehensive about who I was about to see. What was I going to say to them? How was I going to explain this? I saw that a car was parked outside the house, so somebody definitely lived here, and someone was inside there right now. I knocked on the door and a friendly-looking woman answered.

"Hello," she said, looking slightly confused about what was going on.

"Hello," I replied. "I am Detective Tammy Williams. Don't worry!"

"What's this about, then?" the woman said.

"Well, I know you might be a little bit taken back by this, but I am making an enquiry into the previous owners of this house."

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "I never met them," she said.

"Well, I don't know how to break this to you," I said to her, "but there is a chance that the previous owners of this house were serial killers!"

"What?!" the woman cried. "Did you hear that, Dave?"

"What was that, Sherry?" a man asked in the background.

"This is, well, weird!" she cried.

"I know, but there is one thing I need to ask you, and it's quite important."