The Cat Woman

They never solved the murder.

Though the crazy woman at number nine said it was the husband.

This was ruled out in the early stages of the investigation.

At some point, they did talk to the woman at number nine.

She said the cats had left for a spell, then they came back.

The detective ignored her and left, no report was needed.

The case went cold.

It was later on when rechecking statements that the address of number nine came up.

The detective was asked to explain.

He said the woman at number nine just kept going on about the cats. She was obviously loopy.

On re-interviewing her, the senior detective asked her to explain.

She said the cats had left because the deceased was pregnant, but they came back when she wasn’t pregnant.

So, what you’re saying is, she lost the baby.

No, she didn’t lose it, she had to get rid of it.

Why did she have to get rid of it?

Because he couldn’t have children.

Alarm bells went off. Christ, this was delicate. He couldn’t possibly go back to the station and put this forward as new information, they would give him to the boys in white coats. But something told him to go with it, he could put it down to a tip-off. This also meant two suspects, possibly three.

Getting the body exhumed would be the last resort.

Getting the abortion clinics to part with information would be tricky, but it was a murder investigation, after all.

He had a gut feeling about this woman. She was careful, had to be. He didn’t think she would use her own name, he also reckoned she would go out of state. This brought its own problems, but he had connections, and he would use them.

Her photo was shown, and in the third clinic recognised.

Things went fast after that. The boyfriend was found. He was married. It was a long term affair. He was ruled out.

The husband had a watertight alibi, but was brought in for questioning. They knew he hadn’t killed his wife, but that meant nothing. The senior detective just put a simple question to him. If your wife had told you about the baby, would you have brought it up as your own?

That was enough to break him. He confessed to having her killed, the killer has never been found.

Had she been killed two months later, he would have escaped the death penalty of lethal injection and been jailed for life. The death penalty was abolished that July.

He was the last to die in that state by lethal injection.