Hour Game (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 2)

“But it wasn’t a literal clue. It made me start thinking about the drug that Eddie was given, or rather self-administered.”

“Morphine sulfate,” said Michelle.

“Right. I spoke with a narcotics expert. He told me that an average dose of the drug will knock you out for eight to nine hours unless the person it’s given to is prone to using heavy-duty narcotics. Then its effects would be diminished. Well, Dorothea was just such a heavy-narcotics user. I believe Eddie slipped her the drug around two o’clock that night after they’d had sex. Yet because she’d built up resistance through her own drug use, the morphine’s effects were reduced. In fact, she’d almost fully recovered less than six hours later—before eight o’clock, in fact, the time Savannah came and told her about Sally’s being killed.”

“But she mentioned she was in a fog,” said Bailey.

“And she was, but coming out of it. We just thought she was lying, trying to cover up. However, Eddie couldn’t give himself the morphine sulfate until after he’d killed Sally, not before, say, six o’clock or so. He started to come out of the effects of it around three in the afternoon, about nine hours after he took it, or the normal length of time the drug would render someone unconscious. That could only be possible if he took it after Sally was killed. The seven-hour reference that kept bugging me came from Sally’s being killed less than seven hours after she told me about Junior. That made me start thinking about how long Eddie was knocked out, and it just didn’t add up. Particularly if you believed Dorothea was drugged too, since they recovered at very different times. Even with her built-up tolerance it was far too much of a discrepancy.”

Williams slapped his leg. “Damn, I never even thought of that.” He pointed a big finger at Bailey. “Neither did you.”

King continued. “Conceivably, if the killer wasn’t Eddie, he might have drugged Eddie, but he would have done it well in advance of killing Sally so Eddie would’ve been safely unconscious. He wouldn’t have waited until after he’d killed Sally. What would have been the point? And typically, a murderer wants to get away, not take time injecting a knockout drug into someone for no reason.”

“That makes sense,” admitted Bailey.

“And the seven hours also made me start thinking about something else. If Sally was killed because of what she told me barely seven hours earlier, then my houseboat had to be bugged. How else could Eddie have known about it so quickly? He might have followed Sally to my place and been listening from his car. Anyway, I had to do something about that, so I got this.”

He held up the small device. “It’s a transmitter detector and frequency grabber with a range of one to three megahertz. It also has a sixteen-section bar graph to indicate RF strength so it’ll home right in on the location of the bug.”

“You found the bug but didn’t remove it?” said Bailey.

“No. So long as Eddie thought the intelligence he gathered on it was valid, then I could use that to set him up.”

“It was brave of Harry and Remmy to play along,” said Michelle.

“Neither one of them knew it was Eddie until he spoke. I regret shocking Remmy like that, but I thought burdening her with the knowledge of her son’s guilt beforehand would have been even worse.”

“I was nervous about it,” said Williams. “I mean, we had the place surrounded, but still he could have shot somebody.”

“I was sure he wouldn’t, not when he realized Harry had nothing to do with Bobby’s death. Eddie played fair, I’ll give him that. He killed, but he did so for specific reasons. But, just in case, I had Harry wear the bulletproof vest. It made his suit a little tight, but it was well worth the inconvenience. And of course, having a dozen armed lawmen in the same room didn’t hurt.” He opened his desk and took out another object.

“What’s that?” asked Sylvia, looking at it curiously.

“It’s a cipher disk, a way of decoding encrypted messages. This version was used by the Confederate army during the Civil War. Eddie has one in his artist’s studio.” He moved the disk around. “If you’re just one tick off, like one minute on a watch face, the entire meaning of what you’re saying changes. One tick, that’s all it takes. I’m sure that’s where Eddie got the idea for altering the watch times, depending on the victim. It would appeal to both his creative side and his love of Civil War history.”

“But what I don’t get is, he had alibis,” protested Bailey. “We checked. For instance, when Canney, Pembroke and Hinson were killed, he was attending Civil War reenactments.”

“Yes. But at night the reenactors sleep in their vehicles or else in their own tents. Eddie could easily slip out and no one would miss him. I clocked it on the map. At each murder he was only at most a two-hour drive away. He easily could be back in time to fight the next day.”

Bailey said, “Wait a minute. We found people who’d been at those reenactments. They remembered Eddie’s truck being there virtually the whole time. That’s documented.”

King answered, “I’m sure his truck was there. But his truck also has a tow hitch. I checked. At the two reenactments you’re talking about, he didn’t bring his horse trailer. But he could have towed another car close to the reenactment area and hidden it in the woods. Then he uses that vehicle to get to and from the murders, and everyone would believe he’d never left because his truck was still there. In fact, I think we’ll find out that he had another car hidden somewhere that he used.”

“God,” said Sylvia, letting out a long breath. “We’ve all been so blind.”

“Okay, Sean, you’ve told us how you figured it out, now tell us why. Why did Eddie kill all those people?” asked Williams.

“And in stupid-people language, if you can manage it,” said Sylvia with a smile, repeating the phrase King had used at the morgue when she’d been about to explain the cause of Rhonda Tyler’s death.

King didn’t smile back. “Eddie Battle is a very complex man. And this plan has been forming in his mind for a very long time. I think it all started with the death of his twin brother.”

“Bobby Jr., the one who was born severely retarded,” said Bailey.

“No, Bobby Jr. wasn’t born that way; he was born infected with syphilis. The brain damage came later.”

“Syphilis?” exclaimed Bailey.

King picked up two pictures from his desk. “When Michelle and I were in Remmy’s bedroom, Savannah showed us this picture of the twins when they were infants. She couldn’t tell them apart.” He picked up the other photo. “This is a picture of Bobby Jr. shortly before he died, which Mason showed us. The change in his features, the manifestations of the hydrocephalus and the problems with his teeth and eyes are very apparent. It was passed through to him by his mother when he was in the womb.”