Fingerprint in blood

“I’m sure there’s a reason we’re doing this now…in the middle of winter with the lake completely frozen over,” Jonathan said with an anger to his voice, he looked out over the lake it was one solid sheet of ice three inches thick.

“You don’t seem to get it,” the police lieutenant said with a sternness. “We believe the killer killed Ms. Fielding and hid her body somewhere below the water’s surface.”

“And without the body, there’s no murder.”

“Oh, no,” the lieutenant waved his half-lit cigar in Jonathan’s face, “we know it was a murder, and the man who claims did it we have in custody; he so as much as admitted to it. However, we can’t make the murder charges stick without the body.”

“Same thing,” Jonathan said.

“Oh no, there is a difference, a big difference, we have a confession, one which I don't think rings true,” the lieutenant sucked on the cigar as he looked out over the iced over water, he didn't want to give out too much of what he already knew this early in the game, “listen, the lake is on your property, all we need to do as far as you’re involved is to get your permission to bring some equipment in and drill a hole big enough for the divers to go down through the ice and recover the body.”

“As if you know exactly where the killer put the body in that lake,” Jonathan smiled, “it’s a big lake, it could take several tries before your divers just happen across where the body is.”

The lieutenant screwed his face up. “Oh, no! We know EXACTLY where the body is right down to the last foot.”

“HOW?”

The lieutenant smiled like a bulldog trying to force on a smile, but it only showed up as a snarl. “That, my friend, would be telling.”

“Fine,” Jonathan said, “you have my permission to bring in whatever equipment you need to bring in to recover the body. But why can’t you guys wait for a few days for the lake to thaw. The body will still be there, and the icy water I’m sure will keep it preserved for that long.”

“Granted,” the lieutenant said, “it will on both accounts. But you see, my bosses are sticklers, they want at least my part of the investigation to be over by the end of the day. Besides,” the lieutenant looked straight down from the dock they were standing on, “I don’t think you’ll have a good night’s sleep knowing that there is a dead body exactly 10 feet below where we’re standing.”

“Wait--.” Jonathan gulped, “You mean to tell me that the body is here, right under this very dock?”

“Yes, and that’s the thing that puzzles me. Ms. Fielding’s house is clear on the other side of the lake, so why would the killer bring the body over here when there are a couple of miles of water for them to dump her body in.”

“But why here?”

“You tell me!” The lieutenant said as he began to walk back to his car, a 1955 Peugeot with all original parts, “in the meantime I’ll tell the men they can begin to drill the hole that will recover the body from underneath your dock.”

Jonathan waited for the lieutenant to give instructions to the men who were with him, then he went inside. The place was cleaned immaculately, and the blood was gone, but the knife he used to kill her, he was never able to recover. He was sure that when he killed Ms. Fielding over by the patio door he left the knife there. He found it; it was kicked under the couch. He looked up before he reached for it and saw a shadow on the floor.

“Just one more thing,” the garbled voice of the police lieutenant said.

“What is it, Lieutenant,” beside the knife, a TV remote had fallen to the floor, he leaned down to pick up the remote, and as he did he nudged the butcher knife further under the couch. Then made it rather obvious that he was holding the remote by turning the TV on with it.

“They say that in order for them to recover the body, they might have to disassemble a part of your dock.”

“For what reason?”

“I don’t know why, something about the imagery showing that the body went partially underneath the dock, or something of that nature.”

“Lieutenant,” Jonathan responded, “whatever it takes for you to recover the body and get the hell off my property!”

“OK,” the lieutenant waved his hands in the air as he walked out, but he saw the knife that was under the couch to be sure, “I’ll leave you alone.”

“You know,” Jonathan followed the lieutenant out the door to the deck outside the patio door, “you have your killer, you’re…however long it will take those men to drill that hole and recover the body. Why, pray tell do you need to pester me?”

“Am I pestering you?” The Lieutenant seemed apologetic. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be, it’s just that…well, I just needed to kill some time while they recover the body out from under your dock, and…well--.”

“Kill time somewhere else,”

The lieutenant moved farther down the docks to watch the men recover the body.

“That man is so infuriating!” Jonathan mumbled to himself. He closed the patio door, reached down, and picked up the knife, wishing he would have found it two days ago when the lieutenant began to pester him. Jonathan thought he had gotten rid of the lieutenant, but the discovery that the body was under the frozen lake came to light and the lieutenant began to pester him anew.

Funny thing was, the knife wasn’t there when he had the place cleaned, otherwise he would have found it then, because he had all of the furniture moved, and was glad the lieutenant wasn’t inside the house before just a few minutes ago. Then it hit him; to his knowledge the lieutenant wasn’t in the house, but that man would be sneaky enough to enter the house.

Jonathan took the knife out into the kitchen and began to run it under hot water, with a little effort and scrubbing, the blood began to wash off.

“I hope you don’t mind--.” The voice was sudden and cut sharper than the knife did when he cut himself from being scared out of his skin.

“What the fuck…” Jonathan looked the lieutenant in the eye, as he applied pressure on the cut he got on the palm of his hand, “…do you want?”

“Oh, you better run that under cold water right away, those things are sharp.”

“No shit Sherlock!”

“Actually, it’s Columbo.”

“Sherlock, Columbo or Magnum…I don’t care what the hell your name is, what do you want?”

“Well, it’s about the knife.”

“What about the knife?” Jonathan looked at the knife, all clean and shiny, no signs of blood on it anywhere, except for where he was bleeding out.

“It’s not the murder weapon.”

“I know it’s not the murder weapon,” Jonathan barked, “I was using it to cut something in the other room the other day and forgot to bring it back in.”

“That’s not what I mean,” the lieutenant said, “you see we already have the knife you used to kill Ms. Fielding.”

“What. Are. You. Talking. About?”

“The knife you used to kill Ms. Fielding I found the other day and took it away as evidence, don’t worry we have all the information we need from it; Ms. Fielding’s blood will be a match for the blood we found on the knife. And don’t worry about if she lost a lot of blood, there will still be blood inside her body, it very rarely ever ALL bleeds out.”

“THIS is my knife, I should know!”

“Yes you should know,” the lieutenant looked out at the icy lake, there was a body dangling over it, “and I’m so glad I was able to switch out the two knives without you knowing about it, because you probably would have destroyed the only concrete evidence we had against you.”

Jonathan looked at the knife in his hand. “What? You said you had the killer in custody, and he confessed.”

“I did say that lie,” the lieutenant said, “didn’t I? And while that knife you are holding isn’t the actual murder weapon, we have it with your fingerprints all over it, with a predominant thumbprint on the actual blood itself…very intriguing how that worked out.”

“OK, why would I be stupid enough to put Ms. Fielding’s body in the water only 100 feet away from my house?”

“Oh, that’s easy, you see the lake runs out just a few yards down into the ocean, normally the waterflow would have washed the body out to sea where we never would have recovered it, but you had no idea that the lake would freeze over just a few hours later, trapping the body in the exact spot where you dumped it.”

Finally, the lab tech, who was called onto the scene came into the house, he had done a preliminary blood match at the scene. “Lieutenant, we have a match.”

The lab tech had the knife he used to kill Ms. Fielding in a zip-lock bag, there it was, his fingerprint on a spot of Ms. Fielding’s blood, just as the lieutenant said.