Marino popped a Nicorette in his mouth as soon as he landed in the passenger seat of the department-issued Impala.
“So how’s that quitting thing going, Guy?” Marino’s first name was Gaetano, but everyone, including his partner, Heather Hall, called him Guy.
“I’m officially an addict. A nicotine junkie. Even with this gum, I give it another three days. Five, max, before I break. I’m a weak man, Hall.”
Hall knew from experience that her partner was anything but weak. She would never agree to partner with someone who was weak.
“So what’d you get from the husband before he showed up at the house?”
“Nothing that didn’t line up with everything the wife said. Recently married. Super happy. All rainbows and unicorns. I did ask whether it was normal for her to nap so long in the middle of the day, and he said she’d been having problems sleeping lately. Stress or something. I pushed him hard to see if there was a glimmer of doubt there about the wife, but he didn’t give up a thing. I Googled her. She’s got a big career. I hinted around that maybe she wasn’t so happy about suddenly being saddled with a kid to babysit.”
“Sounds real subtle,” Hall said.
“Hey, I’m in withdrawal. What can I say? But I may have come on a little strong, because I got the impression if the guy could’ve thrown a punch over the phone, he might have taken his shot. That was not an idea he seemed willing to entertain.”
“Same with the wife. The way she describes it, Charlie could be teaching classes on how to be a doting single father.”
“Widower father,” Marino added. “Look, I know nothing about in-laws or parenting or having a kid, but if your kid went missing, wouldn’t you tell his grandparents?”
Hall made a point of moving into the right lane once the light changed and slowing her speed. “First of all, don’t ever say anything about my sunshine Milo going missing, even as a hypothetical. And second? In my case, Frank’s parents would be leading the charge of the search team, but that’s just our family. They don’t live all the way in Oregon. And plenty of in-laws have bad blood. Like the husband said, those things can be complicated.”
They didn’t need to spell out the possibilities they were entertaining. A dad or a stepmom had no motive to abduct a child who was already living at home with them. If Charlie Miller or Melissa Eldredge had anything to do with Riley’s disappearance, it was to remove her from the picture entirely. Hall imagined her own son, Milo, the miniature Houdini in training. Even after everything she had seen in this job, she would never understand how someone could hurt a child.
“You still think we made the right move playing it low-key with the brother?” Guy asked. “He strikes me as the black sheep of the family, a beach bum type.” They had already run Michael Eldredge in the system. His record was clean, but it wouldn’t pull up any complaints that might have been filed against him in the Caribbean.
“You know how Melissa Eldredge made a name for herself, don’t you?”
“Like I said, I Googled her. Some wrongful conviction case, right?”
“Wrongful in whose eyes?” Hall asked. “The defendant’s name was Jennifer Duncan. She was a struggling fashion model who married up—way up—to a real estate developer named Doug Hanover, who was killed by his own handgun at their carriage house in the West Village. Jennifer called nine-one-one, but then wouldn’t answer any questions at the scene, acting like she was in a state of shock. The investigation found proof that Jennifer had met with two different divorce lawyers in the previous month. If the couple got divorced, she’d be left with almost nothing under their prenuptial agreement. But under the current terms of the will? She got everything. The state built the case almost entirely around motive and the physical evidence at the scene, mostly the blood spatter. The jury agreed she was the one who pulled the trigger.”
“You learned all that today?” He was continually impressed by Hall’s photographic memory for case details.
“Nope. I got really into true crime stories while I was on maternity leave, which is when Melissa Eldredge swept in and claimed that Jennifer was actually a battered woman. By that time, she had been in prison for three years.”
“So she didn’t admit to shooting her husband, but when that didn’t work, she claimed self-defense?”
“It’s a long story, but basically, the prosecution messed up. Jennifer’s defense lawyer asked the state for any evidence that the husband had used violence in prior relationships. Well, turns out the guy’s ex had called the office years ago looking for help getting a restraining order. But when the prosecution team contacted the lady, she said it was all a misunderstanding and denied the abuse. The prosecution decided not to disclose any of this to the defense, and that’s how Jennifer got her conviction tossed. The irony, though, is that Melissa Eldredge was a lawyer on the prosecution’s side of the case during the original trial.”
“So she used her own mistake to attack the conviction later?” Marino asked.
“Exactly. She said she was a junior assistant and assumed the head honchos knew better, but the decision always bothered her. After she was in private practice, she decided to represent Jennifer. And once the woman was out of prison, they ran around together on cable news and daytime talk shows. Jennifer inherited all of her dead husband’s money. Even the guy’s kids got nothing. And now Melissa’s practically a celebrity—which brings me back to your original question. She was already ordering us around about Amber Alerts and helicopters. How do you think she would have responded if we started asking her brother hard questions?”
“But she has to realize the family needs to be eliminated as suspects,” Guy said. “It’s just part of the drill. Finding the girl’s got to be the top priority.”
“What did the scorpion say to the frog? It’s in his nature. That woman’s a lawyer, and, in my experience, they don’t like it when their own are questioned.”
“So, when do we have a go at him?”
Just as they didn’t need to spell out why a parent might harm a child, they did not verbalize the dark motives a man of Mike Eldredge’s age might have to find a way to be alone with his sister’s young stepdaughter.
Hall shrugged. “For now, we’re just keeping an eye on him.”
“And how are we going to manage that?”
“See the gray Volvo SUV six cars up? That’s Mike Eldredge in his sister’s car. You didn’t notice I’ve been following him since he left the house?”
It wasn’t the first time Marino was certain his partner was good at her job.