If Ken had murdered Sandra, not only shouldn’t I go alone, but I needed to be better prepared to talk to him.
I texted Hal to have him run a background check on Ken, and crossed my fingers that he’d be able to get me something useful in time. If Ken secretly had some weird fetishes, a lot of past relationships that ended badly, or a criminal record, I’d know better how to approach the interview.
Even though I’d read the medical examiner’s report myself, I also wanted Mark’s trained eyes to look it over and make sure I hadn’t missed or misunderstood any of it. I called him and told him I’d wait to eat as late as necessary to have dinner with him. It was eight o’clock before his text came saying he was on his way. He picked up our favorite fish-and-chips dinners from A Salt & Battery since our meal from there from last weekend went cold.
The dogs met him at the door with a level of wagging and wiggling that I didn’t even get.
Mark handed me the food and stopped to give out ear rubs to the dogs. He moved more slowly than I was used to seeing, and day-old stubble covered his chin, as if he’d been too tired this morning to get up in time to shave.
I opened my cupboard door to grab plates for the food, but closed it again. Using plates meant washing plates. As much as it would have been nice to pretend this was a meal we’d cooked, I didn’t have the energy, either.
“Table or the couch?” I asked.
“Table.” Mark eased his way through the dogs, who seemed intent on blocking his path. “If we sit on the couch, I won’t stay awake long enough to go over the case files with you.”
Mark had the same confidentiality constraints on him that I did when I worked a case and couldn’t reveal what a client told me. Because of that, I didn’t normally ask for too many details about his job, but it seemed like he was working an unusual number of hours lately. “I haven’t seen anything in the paper that would leave a lot of bodies in the morgue. What’s going on?”
“I had a fire victim come in where the chief wanted confirmation on whether the victim had died in the fire or before. Then that consult I told you about turned out to be more complicated than I thought. There’d been a complaint against a nursing home about an unusual number of deaths, and the other ME wanted me to go over his autopsy reports to make sure we didn’t have an angel-of-death situation. Obviously, we had to do that as quickly as possible. And Chief McTavish dropped another load of old cases on my desk to look through. He’s sure now that former Chief Wilson wasn’t working alone, and he thinks he’s closing in on who his associate was.”
He wouldn’t be allowed to tell me what he’d found out in any of those cases. Part of why we worked so well as a couple was that I understood that, and I wasn’t intimidated by the parts of his life that he had to keep from me because of his job. I knew he felt the same about what I had to keep confidential when I was working with a client.
Mark chewed a French fry so slowly it almost seemed painful. “Other than the obvious, how was your day?”
I’d already updated him on all the new information—at least the parts I was at liberty to share—involving Dean’s case and the situation with Anderson.
There was one thing I hadn’t mentioned yet—our purple elephant, the one both of us seemed to be ignoring at all costs. It’d been weeks since we’d brought it up in more than passing.
“A call came in after I talked to you earlier.” I pushed my last bite of fish around. “From DC.”
Mark double-dipped his next fry in the ketchup. “And what did they say?”
No question about who’d called. There’d only been one call I’d been waiting on. “The job at the DA’s office is mine if I want it. They said what put me above the other candidates in the end was my experience as a defense attorney because it’ll help me identify ways the defense counsel could cast doubt on the cases I’d be handling.”
Mark nodded and dipped the already-saturated fry again. “How’s Stacey feeling? Has she managed to sort all the baby items?”
Whether it was that he was too tired tonight to deal with it or whether he hadn’t had time to think about our decision with his busy week, he clearly didn’t want to go into it now. I let it slide, and we instead spent the rest of our meal talking about how Stacey set up the room she’d be using for the baby. I showed him the pictures she’d texted me the day before.
The color came back into his cheeks by the time we finished supper. He smiled at me, his dimples peeking out. “I think I just needed time with you to recharge.”
Maybe the research position in DC would be better for Mark than staying here in Fair Haven. He’d have regular hours.
But I wouldn’t. Working as a prosecutor meant long hours and heavy caseloads.
I laid a hand on top of the pile of files. “I don’t know how restful it is when I’m dropping another case on you.”
Mark collected up the take-out containers and tossed them into the trash. “It’s not the work that tires me out. I love the work. It’s having so many cases where it seems like we’re not going to find answers.”
That I could understand. I scooted around the island and wrapped him in a hug. He leaned into me like he could borrow some of my energy. I would have gladly given him some if it worked that way.
He kissed my forehead. “Show me this case.”
I laid the autopsy report out in front of him, along with the pictures. I’d slowly worked myself into being able to look at all of them.
I gave Mark time to go through it. When he finished reading, he pulled the pile of pictures closer and flipped slowly through them.
“No mention of defensive wounds at all, and it doesn’t look like there was a struggle. Is that part of what’s bothering you?”
Even tired, he didn’t miss a thing. “If someone put a plastic bag over my head, I’d fight them. It doesn’t seem like she put up a struggle at all. Did she have a sedative in her system?”
“Not according to this report, and he did test for it.”
I edged one of the pictures of Sandra closer to me. My head felt disconnected from my senses, but I forced myself to look again.
It didn’t even seem like she’d tried to rip the bag off her face, and there weren’t any bruises on her wrists suggesting she’d been restrained.
I shoved the picture away again. “It can’t have been some weird form of suicide. They didn’t find a roll of duct tape in the room.”
“Let me see the police report on the scene.”
I handed Mark the folder. He pulled out the report and ran his finger down the page, as if it were the only way he could guarantee his eyes would focus.
If I’d ever doubted he loved me, I couldn’t after this. Only love would bring such a tired man out here tonight to read more paperwork when he was supposed to be done for the day. It’d be so nice once we were married and living in the same house.
“Here.” Mark jabbed a finger at the page. “It doesn’t explain the lack of defensive wounds, but it’s possible her killer smothered her with a pillow until she lost consciousness and then finished with the plastic bag. There was saliva on her pillow in about the shape and size I’d expect if someone pressed the pillow over her face or her face into the pillow.”
I leaned closer. He was right. “How did I miss the connection?”
“I only thought of it because the ME’s report mentioned a cotton fiber in her mouth.”
Partially smothering her with a pillow first would have been quieter. It raised another question, though. Why not finish the job with the pillow?
“I think the report said no signs of sexual assault. Can you double-check?”
Mark flipped back. “None.”
I slumped in my chair. Thank goodness. This case was dark and frustrating enough without adding that element to it.
I walked to the couch and picked up a pillow, turning it over in my hands. “The lack of defensive wounds is still a problem. How hard do you have to push a person’s face into a pillow to smother them? If she’d been asleep, could someone have done it without waking her?”
Mark shook his head. “Doubtful. Not unless she’d taken a heavy sleeping pill, and we’ve already established she didn’t have sedatives in her system. Besides, she’s still wearing her shoes and she’s wearing jeans.”
She still had her shoes on? I came back to Mark’s side and glanced at the picture, paying attention to her feet this time.
He was right. Sandra still wore her shoes and jeans. I’d been so focused on the plastic bag over her face and the seeming lack of a struggle that I hadn’t paid close enough attention to her clothes. She wouldn’t have gone to bed fully clothed and wearing her shoes, especially since the knees of her jeans were stained with what looked like mud. Besides, she’d left food on the counter. No one bought groceries and then went to bed, leaving them on the counter to rot.
I felt like I was running on a treadmill with this case, exhausting myself and getting nowhere.
I moved the picture closer to me. It wasn’t only Sandra’s knees that were muddy. The bottoms of her shoes were as well. Had she gone out in the rain, after dark, to cut the flowers in the vase on the kitchen counter?
I slid the pictures of the kitchen closer to me as well. If the flowers had been wet when she brought them inside, they were long dry by the time the police arrived to take pictures. Sandra had laid out the items she’d purchased on the counter next to the vase.
To me, it looked like more than a regular grocery run. It looked almost like she’d been prepping to cook. She’d laid out strawberries, mini angel food cakes, whip cream, t-bone steaks, haricot vert beans, packages of fresh herbs, and baby red potatoes. They all rested next to a cutting board and a knife.
A knife she could have defended herself with if someone broke in.
I pointed out the knife. “I think she knew her attacker.”
“It could be the man you think she was having an affair with,” Mark said. “This looks like she was preparing a special meal. Maybe this guy was into kinky foreplay and things went too far.”
The food I’d eaten felt like it soured in my stomach. That would explain why she hadn’t fought back and why she seemed to have been face down into her pillow at first. “But if it was an accident, why wouldn’t he have stopped and waited for her to wake back up? Or why not just leave her there? He didn’t have to put a plastic bag over her head and kill her.”
Mark shook his head and shrugged.
I hadn’t really expected him to have an answer. But at least I had what I needed. I now had a workable theory about how Sandra died—one that I could use tomorrow when I spoke to the man she’d been cheating on Dean with.