CHAPTER 51
MITCH TANDY WAS poking around the side of the house, looking for anything out of place. He wanted to find something tangible that could link Jack Morgan to the Molloy murder.
He thought about the glove in the O. J. Simpson investigation, found near Simpson’s property line. The glove was conclusive evidence, but through a freak of prosecutorial incompetence, it had ended up helping the defense.
If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.
The Simpson investigation had been the shame of the LAPD.
Never mind. This was today.
Ten guys from the crime unit were out on the beach. Divers were doing their thing in the shallows, looking for metal. Inside, CSIs were going over the house again.
Jack Morgan was smart, but he wasn’t perfect. And if he’d overlooked anything in his cleanup of the crime scene, Tandy was sure something that could indict him would be found.
Tandy heard Ziegler call out to him.
“I’m over here,” he answered.
Ziegler joined Tandy where he stood inside the stucco fence that separated Jack Morgan’s house from the raging river that was the Pacific Coast Highway.
Tandy asked, “Find anything?”
“No.”
Tandy said, “He leaves his spunk in her. Doesn’t even use a rubber. That’s risky behavior. Like suicidal.”
“Or it’s his brother’s spooge.”
They’d been over this before. The complication of twin brothers with identical DNA. The kind of thing that could introduce “reasonable doubt” into a jury deliberation. When they’d interviewed Tommy, he’d had an alibi for the time of the murder. His wife said he was home. Swore it. Unshakably.
Still, she could have been lying.
“Tommy or Jack. It was one of them. And only Jack has a motive.”
Ziegler said, “What’s that over there?”
“What?”
Ziegler pointed at a disturbance in the mulch at the base of a bougainvillea vine, hidden in the shade of the fence.
Tandy used his foot to push away the pine bark.
For a long moment, they both stared.
“I’ll get the camera,” Ziegler said.
Tandy nodded, stooped down, and continued to stare. This was the evidence they needed. The rush was indescribable. It was why, with all the endless footwork, dead ends, and bureaucratic hassles, he just loved being a cop.
Moments like this one.
The idiot had left the smoking gun behind.