Read Online The May Day Murders by Scott Wittenburg - Free Book Online

We suspect that her assailant told her to remove
them since there wasn’t any evidence that he’d done it for
her.”
    “ How do you know he raped
her here?” Sam asked.
    “ We found pubic hair and
small traces of semen right here on the floor and nowhere else in
the house. The housekeeper had just cleaned and put fresh sheets on
the beds earlier that day, which made our work a lot easier,” he
added.
    Sam looked around the kitchen, stared
down at the cold linoleum floor and wondered the same thing Roger
had: why here, of all places?
    Roger resumed. “My guess is that he
ordered Marsha to face the counter, place her hands on it like so,
then proceeded to enter her from the rear. We found fresh
fingerprints, Marsha’s, where she’d grasped the overhang of the
counter, so that pretty much corroborates that theory.”
    Sam found it hard to conceive that
Marsha Bradley could allow this to happen without putting up some
resistance. Either she was the most iron-willed woman imaginable,
or there was more to all of this than met the eye … As a matter
of fact, none of this was making much sense the more he thought
about it.
    “ After he was done in here,”
Roger resumed, “Marsha’s assailant apparently ordered her to go
into the living room—why the living room is anyone’s guess. At any
rate, not long afterwards, he strangled her to death. Again, from
behind.”
    “ How do you know she was
strangled from behind?”
    “ The coroner’s report. He
determined from the angle and size of the wound on her neck along
with all that other technical shit that the murder weapon had been
a fairly thin cord of some kind—about the same gauge as ordinary
lamp cord—that had been pulled around her neck from
behind.”
    “ Suggesting that she was
unaware of what the killer was doing—like she was taken by
surprise,” Sam said.
    “ Exactly. You’re really
catching on to all this police work, Watson. I’m proud of you,”
Roger chuckled.
    Sam forced a weak smile, but for the
moment had lost his sense of humor. There was one thing about Roger
Hagstrom that he found annoying at times, and it was one of the
reasons he was there right now with him at the Bradley house. He
didn’t know if it was the effects of alcoholism or just plain
lethargy, but his friend had a real problem with following through
on things. He’d seen it happen on a few occasions before when he
had tagged along with Roger during an investigation. If a crime
wasn’t solved quickly and easily, he tended to just give it up, or
simply let it get away from him. It wasn’t intentional, of course.
It just seemed to sort of happen that way sometimes.
    But this wasn’t an auto theft or a
burglary. This was a murder case—and the victim just happened to be
a very close friend of his and Ann’s. He was going to lean on Roger
Hagstrom all the way through this investigation until the murderer
was caught and convicted—even if it strained their friendship in
the process.
    “ How long was the murderer
in this house?” Sam asked.
    Roger sipped and replied, “It’s hard to
say exactly. Dave left at six-thirty to go to Matt Timmonds’ and
returned at about nine-fifty. The autopsy indicates that the time
of death was between eight and eight-thirty. My guess is that he
didn’t stay long—just long enough to get Tommy out of the way, rape
Marsha and strangle her; all of which could have taken between
fifteen minutes and half and hour—depending on how quickly he
worked, if you know what I mean. Tack that time onto her
approximate time of death and that would put him in the house
somewhere between the hours of seven-forty-five and
eight-thirty.”
    “ Again, a lot of
speculation, I see. What about the lipstick and the message he
left? Where did he get the lipstick, anyway?”
    “ From Marsha’s purse—we know
that for a fact. Her purse was found, opened, lying on the end
table on the other side of the sofa. That was one of the first
indications that the killer