LITMIR.BIZ

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had a boyfriend. As in singular. Write her name, write prostitute on the first line beneath her name, but put a question mark behind it.”

      “You want strict outline form, Roman numerals, that sort of thing, Ms. Sunshine, or do I just wing it?”

      Jade finally smiled. “I’m giving orders, aren’t I? I’m supposedly very good at that, being bossy, Jolie says, although I’ve never really noticed. Sorry.”

      “All right. And I’ll be sorry that I’m not very good at taking orders and do what you want, even as I add a second line—mother of dead baby, question mark.”

      “That’s out of order,” Jade said, and then bit her lip. “No, no, that’s good. Now let’s go back to more on Tarin as Tarin, not as prostitute or as anybody’s mother. We know from her autopsy report that she had extensive dental implants, high-quality work.”

      “Unusual for a street prostitute, correct,” Court said as he wrote on the pad. “And thanks again to Jessica and Matt and to one intimidated dentist Teddy found just before he died, we now know that Joshua Brainard, mayoral candidate and husband of the late Melodie Brainard—who, it turns out, is your father’s supposed victim—paid for that extensive dental work.”

      “Which still totally blows my mind,” Jade admitted as she turned over pages in the Fishtown

      Strangler file. “The connection is definite, easily proved with the dentist’s records, and Brainard has to know that. You’d think he’d be running scared, not running for mayor. But now we get back into conjecture. Like, Tarin wasn’t a prostitute at all. Like, her boyfriend was the very wealthy, handsome Joshua Brainard, just out of grad school, married, and up-and-coming-man-about-town back then, Philadelphia’s fair-haired son now.”

      Court consulted Jessica’s notes. “While talking about Joshua Brainard, we have to take into consideration that he and his father were present at the gravesite when Tarin was buried. Jessica and Matt got the tape from her studio archives and there they were, front and center. Them, and a few prostitutes. We think we might know why Joshua was there, but how do you explain the prostitutes?”

      “A show of solidarity? They assumed Tarin was one of them, because all the previous Fishtown Strangler victims had been working girls?” Jade shrugged. “And the Brainards were there because Daddy Brainard was a member of the mayor’s commission pulled together to help solve the Fishtown Strangler case. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. And to be fair, the rest of the commission was also there.”

      “But that doesn’t explain Joshua. He wasn’t on the commission.”

      “He was lending his father moral support, or at least I’m sure that’s what he’d say if anyone asked. I don’t know why he was there, Court. Maybe because he was Tarin’s married lover. Maybe he paid for her dental work and fathered her child and then killed both of them because Tarin was suddenly more inconvenience than potential life partner. Maybe because he’d figured out that with his looks and Daddy’s money and position, he had a big future in politics. He didn’t need the baggage, Tarin didn’t want to go away quietly, so he chose a more permanent way of saying farewell to young love. That’s the conjecture part.”

      “Mixed with the facts. Like the dental implants.”

      Jade toed off her shoes and tucked her feet beneath her on the couch. “Here’s another fact. With Clifford Brainard as one of the commission members, sonny boy would have had access to anything his daddy brought home from the office. Like, for instance, how the other women died. Right down to the brand of rope used to tie up his former lover, beat her, rape her and then strangle her—and, by the way, strangling someone isn’t easy. It takes time, lots of up-close-and-personal time, so strangling someone is actually pretty rare, rare enough to brand a killer. Strangling someone you once loved, someone who bore you a child, takes a special sort of sadistic bastard, Court. Except…”

      “Go on.”

      “Matt told me something a few days ago,” Jade said, frowning. “And he took the medical examiner’s one-page summary out of Tarin’s file so Jessica wouldn’t see it and go ballistic, so don’t bother looking for it. According to the medical examiner, Tarin wasn’t raped and then killed. She was killed—strangled—and only then assaulted sexually with a foreign object. Like, you know, the other victims were raped, so Tarin had to appear to have been raped, as well, to keep with the MO. Which is why Matt and I weren’t as surprised as the rest of you when the Fishtown Strangler denied that Tarin was one of his victims.”

      Court sat up straight. “What?”

      Jade nodded. “I know, I know. It sounds crazy. The other victims were raped perimortem—we know that from their autopsy reports, just like we know from Tarin’s that she’d given birth not too long before she died. Maybe a couple of months,

      Matt told me. Making it possible that she’s the mother of the Baby in the Dumpster.”

      “You really think Joshua Brainard murdered Tarin White in a copycat killing?” Court frowned and then held up his index finger, as if asking her not to answer him yet as he was still working it all out in his mind. “If there was any physical evidence left behind by the rapist, that evidence couldn’t differ in Tarin’s case, correct? So he couldn’t rape her. He couldn’t take that chance. But she still had to appear as if she’d been… violated.”

      “Exactly. And one other thing. Herman Long-street is a nonsecretor, meaning they can’t get a blood type just from bodily fluids. That was in the police files from the get-go. You can fake a lot of things, but you can’t fake that. So first Joshua kills her and then he sets the scene, simulates the rape. According to Matt, the police weren’t all that concerned with the victims back then, as the killings were still going on and all the victims were assumed to be prostitutes. If they’d found a suspect, if a case had gone to trial, then the discrepancy in Tarin’s autopsy would have immediately become apparent. But there never was an arrest.”

      “You’re sold on this, aren’t you? That Joshua

      Brainard murdered Tarin White and made it look like she was one of the Fishtown Strangler victims.”

      “He killed Tarin and the baby. Don’t forget that poor baby. And yes, I do believe it. Because then the rest makes sense. Think about it, Court. Teddy was investigating all these cases for years, right? He’d pretty much solved the Vanishing Bride case before Jolie and Sam took it over. I love Jolie, I really do, and I’m proud of what she did, being a complete amateur detective, but she and Sam really fell into solving that case. Teddy even had the plane ticket so he could go see for himself if he was right.”

      Court shook his head. “No. We’re back to the Vanishing Bride case? Sorry, I’m not getting where you’re headed on this.”

      “I’ll explain. Why wouldn’t Teddy have gone flying off the moment he thought he’d figured it all out? I mean, after all the years of chipping away at these cold cases, he finally makes a breakthrough on one of them. He had to be over the moon with his success, so why wait to see if you’re right? Why make airline reservations a week or more out?”

      “Because he thought he was also close on another case? Or even better, on two other cases that had suddenly rolled into one?” Court said, and Jade wanted to kiss him. He was so smart.

      “Where was Teddy seen the night he was killed? At Joshua Brainard’s house, right? Teddy wouldn’t have gone there looking for Joshua, because Joshua had some speaking thing going on in Kensington, and Teddy would have checked that out easily enough. No, he went there at that time, at night, expressly to see Melodie Brainard without chancing that Joshua would also be there.”

      “All right. That makes sense.”

      “I know, scary sense. What did Brainard tell Jolie? That Teddy had been stalking Melodie for a couple of weeks, right? The card Matt found in one of Teddy’s shirt pockets, the one with the dentist’s name on it? Teddy had been to see that dentist around two weeks before he died. That made the connection for him. After

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