His story was so contorted that even his attorney rolled his eyes. His arrogance was going to be the downfall of him. It was almost at the end of the trial that his attorney finally approached the DA for a deal. He was willing to tell the whole story if she would take the death penalty off the table. The DA offered life without parole. She made sure it was going to settle all right with Logan before she offered the deal. Logan just wanted the bastard convicted. He knew someone like Winegardner wouldn’t last very long in a maximum security prison.
Winegardner confessed to the DA that he had known about the tactic of Sharon Lewis for almost two years before Ryan got involved. He had even talked to her in person on several occasions and he had tried to buy her off, but she didn’t want just money. In the end she even demanded to be on the honor roll. She needed it for her future plans. All she had to do was graduate and both the he and University would be through with Sharon Lewis.
And then along came Ryan. Ryan stood up to her. He was either stupid or had a lot more guts than the other professors. Lewis still had another semester to go and he didn’t know if he could keep it under wraps much longer. She had even emailed him with threats of exposure if he couldn’t get Ryan to change his mind. She was becoming a greater liability with each class she took. He decided to get Pratt to help him.
He had enough on her to have her dismissed several times over so it wasn’t very difficult to convince her it was in her best interest to go along with his plan of getting rid of Sharon Lewis once in for all. It was no problem for Pratt to get Lewis into bed. She was a total slut.
It looked like it was all going to work out once they got rid of her. He had been able to knock her unconscious and he took her back to his work shed behind his house. She was so smug and sure of herself, even while he had her captive. She never quit threatening until he went to work on her with the mallet.
He slowly broke as many bones in her body as he could. He wanted her to suffer as much as possible. She wouldn’t be quite so smug when he got through with her. Her last defiant act was to try to spit in his face. For that, he slit her throat. He wrapped her in plastic, loaded her in the trunk of his car and disposed of her body in the woods at the edge of town.
It was done and he could get on with the business of the University but then Adriane Thompson started in. She came to Pratt’s house and started spouting off that she knew about her and Lewis.
Pratt panicked and called Winegardner. After he got her calmed down, he told her to get Thompson to come back over to her house and he would take care of it. He was in the closet, watching the two women, just getting ready to attack Thompson when Marcia Burton showed up at the door. He couldn’t do anything at that point except watch the show that they put on. He wanted to get Thompson out of the picture but it would have to wait until a later date.
It was going to be necessary to get rid of her if they were going to make this all disappear. As a cross-dresser, he frequently went to gay and lesbian bars. On one such trip, while dressed in drag, he ran into Harvey Landgrave and was able to buy a gun. He was sure that no one would ever recognize him so he didn’t worry about the purchase. He then had Pratt to go to Thompson’s apartment and kill her, making it look like a suicide. He was to get Burton out of the way by offering her money. For fifty thousand dollars, she was more than willing to take a vacation. If Pratt hadn’t botched the job, they would have gotten away with it. Burton would have her money and she wouldn’t talk. If she tried to blackmail him then he would take care of her as well. He was sure she had no idea who he was anyway.
Pratt was starting to come unglued after she killed Thompson, at least in his mind. She was the last loose end. It was simple; he would have to get rid of her as well. After he killed her he would plant the knife and hopefully all of this would fall on her doorstep. If it didn’t go so well, he had other plans in the works. He had been sending money to the Cayman Islands for the past two years.
When it became apparent that detective Logan wasn’t just going to solve the murders the easy way, he knew it was time to put his emergency plans into action. He hated to give up his position but he had no intention of going to jail.
He transferred the rest of his savings, sold most of his valuable items, including a stamp collection worth three-hundred thousand and made plans for his escape.
Logan had screwed those plans up as well. He had almost made it. It was just bad luck that caused him to get caught. That and Logan.
* * *
Dr. Ryan received a pacemaker and went back to teaching at the University after a long rehabilitation. He and Robin became engaged and the two girls couldn’t be happier. They invited Logan and Randy to the wedding. Marcia Burton had all charges dropped and she moved and no one knows where she went.
Randy Nelson decided after much thought to go back to Missing Persons. Both the Captain and Logan were sorry to see him go. They had worked well together. Logan looked over the file once more, signed off on the contents and finally closed the file on the ‘Blonde Deception’ case.
THE END
BLONDE DECEPTION - The Logan Files Page 24
