CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Captain Dunham was shouting from down the hall. “We got her! We got her! Demi! Get in here!”

When Demi Kofatos reached his office doorway, he was red in the face and pointing at his desk phone. “Just got off with the lab. Dead lady’s blood is on a fuckin’ knife from Nora Carleton’s house. Hah hah, we got the bit—” he began, but stopped. “We got her now.”

Demi slid into a chair facing the captain’s desk. “Which knife, sir?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, looking down at a note on his desk. “Lab guy said it was Exhibit A27, so you’ll know where it was found. He said it was a kitchen-type carving knife, consistent with the victim’s neck wound. Boom. That pain-in-the-ass hedge fund lawyer is goin’ down.”

Demi stood. “I’ll look at the search reports right now.”

“You don’t seem excited, Detective,” Dunham said. “Why is that?”

“Well I don’t know exactly what this means yet, sir.”

“I’ll tell you what it means. It means this case is cleared and a cell door will be closing on, excuse my language, Ms. Rich-Bitch Carleton.”

“Got it, sir,” Demi said quietly as she turned to the doorway. “I’ll follow up.”

She was back in five minutes, gently rapping on the door frame. “Come in, come in,” Dunham said, looking up. “Whataya got?”

“It was a carving knife, all right,” Demi said, looking down and reading from a document in her hand. “A Wüsthof Classic nine-inch hollow-edge carving knife. And it was found with a bunch of other knives and serving forks and spoons in a drawer in the Carleton kitchen.”

Demi flipped through the document’s pages. “But there were no other Wüsthof knives recovered.”

Dunham squinted at her. “Why’re you telling me that?”

“Well,” she answered, “I just looked it up. Hundred and seventy bucks for that one knife on Amazon. Why would it be thrown in a drawer with all kinds of other stuff? And when she already has one of those countertop knife holders with a whole set of other knives in it?”

“You’re her lawyer now?”

“No, I’m just a detective and it seems very odd. Why the hell would she keep the murder weapon in her own kitchen? If this is the actual murder weapon, then it must’ve been out there on the Sound that night. So why doesn’t the murderer just drop it in the water? Seems really dumb to me and Ms. Carleton may be a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them.”

“Look, I know you haven’t done a lot of murder cases, but, believe me, people who’ve killed other people do all kinds of stupid shit. Something about taking a human life fogs the brain. So let’s not get our own brains fogged here by overthinking it. This is great evidence for the case against our prime suspect. Murder weapon in the perp’s house. Ka-boom.”

Demi started to go, but stopped and turned back. “So is our theory, sir, that Nora Carleton brought her own knife to the killing and then returned it to her kitchen? Or that she used a knife she found someplace else and still brought it back to her kitchen?”

Dunham was beet red now, his voice loud. “This is the picky-ass shit I was worried about when you came on board, Detective. Overthinking, going with your gut feelings, and thinking you know better than the rest of us. Again, murderers do strange stuff. Now, get outta my office and reach out to the fuckin’ State’s Attorney and make sure they have this. Then tell them we’re ready to slap the silver bracelets on Nora Carleton. Rich people can’t be above the law in Westport, ’cause they’re all rich.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“Yes sir,” Demi said quietly as she turned into the hallway.

An hour later, Demi turned into her office doorway to find Captain Dunham sitting at her desk. He was red again, the lines on his face branching vividly.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked sharply.

“Out checking something, sir.”

“What?”

“I ran by the victim’s house to see if she had Wüsthof knives. She does, or did, rather. She had a butcher block set of these fancy knives. One is missing. Looks to be the nine-inch knife we found in Nora Carleton’s kitchen.”

“Did you call Aileen Shapiro, as I ordered?” he asked coldly.

“I did, sir.”

“When?”

“Just now as I drove back from Helen Carmichael’s house.”

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Dunham said. “You know how close you are to an insubordination charge? When I told you to call her, I didn’t mean an hour later, after you’d finished working for the defense.”

“Sir, I’m not working for the defense. I had a hunch and played it out. Now we know the murder weapon, which was in Carleton’s kitchen, came from the victim’s house. That’s important to developing our case.”

Dunham was calming down. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “What did Shapiro say about arresting Carleton?”

“She said she’s not ready for us to do that yet.”

Dunham almost shouted. “What the fuck? We gotta make an arrest here.”

“And I told her you would want to speak with her about that, sir, so I expect you’ll hear from her shortly.”

“Damn right,” Durham snarled. Her desk chair squeaked loudly as he stood up and walked angrily down to his office, slamming the door behind him.