Slow, deep breath. “You were saying.”
Montrose sipped his beer. “That’s it.” Another swallow of beer, this one more substantial. “I said my piece, and that was that.”
“Why bring this information to me now?”
Another quick slug. “Because I believe it was a setup and maybe finally someone will do something about it.”
“You believe Charles Holmes is innocent?” Quite possibly innocent was a poor choice of words.
“Innocent?” He laughed. “The man is pure evil. He’s not innocent by any stretch of the imagination. But I don’t believe he killed Lance Legard. I believe he was hired by someone, or maybe he was covering for them. Either way, that someone needs to be behind bars with Holmes.”
Finley sipped her beer again, took her time, relished the distinct fizz. “The scenario doesn’t fit with his known MO, is that what you’re saying?”
At the time of Legard’s murder, Charles Holmes didn’t have a known MO. It wasn’t until all the evidence came back—connecting his DNA to five other crimes, two of which included murder—that he was labeled a repeat, nonserial homicide offender. He hadn’t sought out his victims. One victim had tried to rob him. The other was a man who’d attempted to have sex with Holmes’s then girlfriend. He confessed to all once the evidence was put in front of him.
That said, Charles Holmes had all the earmarks of a sociopath. He even had the traumatic childhood to blame for his antisocial personality disorder.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Montrose confirmed. “The chances of him out of the blue deciding to take a joyride with the dead guy he’d just killed—it doesn’t work for me. He was too careful about protecting himself in his previous crimes. Why the sudden lapse in judgment with the Legard murder?”
As careful as Holmes had been about not getting caught in the past, he had left DNA at those previous crime scenes. A hair at one. A couple of blood droplets at another. Prints at three others. No big deal in his opinion. Since he hadn’t been caught, he wasn’t in the system. No witnesses. Nothing to fear.
“You’re suggesting he wanted to get caught that last time,” she offered.
“It’s the only reasonable explanation,” Montrose insisted. “If he wanted a joyride in a Jag, why not steal the car while the owner was asleep or at work? When he was pulled over by that state trooper, he hadn’t taken a single step to cover up what he’d done. The body, the blood . . . his prints. All right there. He wasn’t high or inebriated. He was stone-cold sober. Why? Unless he was covering for someone else or paid to take the fall?”
Finley couldn’t argue with his assessment. “You weren’t allowed to put this scenario into the file?”
Montrose moved his head side to side. “No.”
Finley moved on to her next question. “Do you have suspicions as to who the actual murderer was?”
“Sophia Legard. She would have done anything to get rid of her husband to protect her daughters.”
Finley leaned forward, her anticipation getting the better of her. “Did Mrs. Legard say something to you or your partner to suggest she felt her husband posed some threat to their daughters?”
Montrose stared at her for a long moment before he spoke. “She said she thought her husband was sexually abusing their daughters.”
Finley sat back again, absorbed the impact of his words. “Your partner, the chief, the DA—no one believed this information required additional investigation?”
“Passing along that information is why I was suspended.”
Finley’s fresh outrage petered out a little as confusion took the lead. “Why would you be suspended for relaying potentially direction-changing information provided by a person of interest in a case?”
He stared at his nearly empty bottle. “Because it was my word against hers, and Sophia Legard said I was lying.”
Well, hell. He said, she said was never a winnable situation. “Why would she share this information and then call you a liar?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she lost her nerve.” He shrugged. “Decided she didn’t want to drag her daughters through the mess of it. Or maybe she thought I was getting too close to the real truth. I was the only one Olivia had opened up to even a little. The kid seemed afraid of her mother and her twin. I think the mother was worried her daughter might tell me more than she should. Could be she was confident Holmes was going down and adding another layer of ugliness to the situation seemed unnecessary. Whatever the case, Sophia Legard swore I was lying, and I almost lost my job. The chief let it slide with a suspension as long as I never repeated my story. So I didn’t.”