Jesse had a lot of thoughts whirling around his head and all of them revolved around JR. Things just were not adding up and the more he looked the more he saw. JR had lied, but did that make him a murderer?
Jesse grabbed a pen and a scrap piece of paper – maybe if he put in in writing it would all make sense.
He started to make a list of the key information from JR's statement.
JR
1 – He had been planning to leave the country but at the last minute decided it would be wrong to miss the opportunity to see his Uncle Stuart, and so returned to the Chandler Mansion to say his farewells.
2 - He had gone up to his room to freshen up and when he was coming down the stairs he saw the Jane Doe assailant walking in through the front door a gun in her hand.
3 – He acted on instinct, rushing back to his room to get his gun and then used the secret tunnels to sneak up on the attacker.
4 – When he got there he was too late to stop her and so he took her down before she could hurt anyone else.
5 – Marissa's injury had been an accident. He never meant to cause her any harm.
Jesse drew a ring around point number one and put a tick next to it; Dixie, Tad and Jamie all confirmed that JR had been at the airport and had been ready to leave Pine Valley.
Jesse scowled at point number two and put a large cross through it. He had spoken to Jackson again about the night of the shooting. Jackson remembered clearly the woman walking passed him into the party. She'd been clutching a handbag and he remembered thinking she was a member of waitressing staff and was probably going to get into trouble for being late. He had seen no sign of a gun. He had also seen no sign of JR who was supposedly watching from the stairs. Cara, Winifred, Randi and Scott all mentioned in their statements that the woman pulled the gun from her handbag as she entered the room. This fact was further corroborated by the handbag itself which was found in the parlour beside the assailant's body.
No, point two was an outright lie – which made point 3 a lie as well. If JR hadn't run to get the gun that could only mean he already he it on him! He also hadn't run through the tunnels to save the day. The two empty bottles of whiskey beside his duffle bag covered in JR's fingerprints were evidence to his rather longer stay in the tunnels. He'd claimed at the interview he'd had to have a couple of drinks after the event to steady his nerves, but the officer in duty had written in his notes he had suspected JR was drunk. The lie about running to the rescue well may have been to cover his drinking, but that didn't answer the question of why JR was carrying a gun.
Jesse looked hard at point 4 – he didn't know what to think. JR's actions certainly brought down Jane Doe, but the question still remained about the order of the bullets. Jesse had read the statements over and over and it was definitely the last shot that had hit Marissa. JR had been drunk, but if he could accurately shoot the assailant five times without a single miss, why would one bullet miss by so much? And why of all people did it hit Marissa?
This brought Jesse to point 5 and that was the stickler – was it an accident? There was obviously hostility between Marissa and JR and from what he could gather it had to do with custody of their son AJ, and Marissa's relationship with Bianca Montgomery of which JR did not approve. Marissa had also stated JR's drinking problem as a concern when she had recently taken out a restraining order against him. In fact on the day of the shooting there had been an APB out on JR for breaking the order not once but twice. Jesse had been surprised to read in the arresting officer's notes that he had let JR off with just a caution – solely in honour of his heroic actions in taking down the gunwoman. No JR and Marissa were defiantly having problems - JR certainly had a motive for wanting to hurt her.
Jesse underlined the last point three times. There was clear means and motive for an attempted murder, but you couldn't arrest a man without proof. The only question is where was he going to find it?