“A diamond tennis bracelet?” Dez looked at Fenway. “Those are expensive.”
“Let’s be clear about this,” Fenway said to Callahan. “We’ve got a murder scene back through there. That’s more important than missing jewelry, no matter how expensive it is.”
Dez crossed her arms. “Unless the theft is related to the murder.”
Fenway blinked. “That’s true. We’ll talk to Ms. Christchurch soon.”
“You want me to take her statement now?” Dez asked. “Or drive Maggie to the sheriff’s office?”
“Sheriff’s office.” Fenway turned to Callahan and gestured to the door of Rocky Portello’s hotel suite. “No one in or out?”
“No, ma’am.” Callahan’s eyes darted quickly down the hall to Christchurch’s room, then back to her face. “Coach Portello’s been in here since he left the crime scene.”
Fenway walked the few steps to the door, took a deep breath and exhaled, then reached her hand forward and knocked.
It was opened a moment later by a trim, athletic white man, about six feet tall, with a walrus mustache and eyes that crinkled at the corners. At first glance, he looked to be in his early thirties, but his laugh lines and the hint of gray hair peeking out from beneath his Neons baseball cap suggested a man closer to his late forties. He wore a black-and-gold T-shirt with the Vegas Neons logo along with gray sweatpants and wore only black athletic socks on his feet.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Fenway showed him her badge. “I’m the county coroner. Are you Mr. Portello?”
“Please,” he said, giving her a slight smile only half-visible under his mustache, “call me Rocky. Everyone else does.” He stepped aside and held the door as Fenway walked in. The suite was a mirror image of Paul Levinson’s room, but the dominant color was a cadet blue, not red; the wallpaper even had the same pattern. “The officer said someone would be here to take my statement. Is that you?”
“Correct.” Fenway motioned for Rocky to sit on the sofa.
“You’re the coroner and you’re taking my statement?”
“In Dominguez County, my office investigates all deaths outside of a hospital or hospice center.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “In the case of homicides, I lead the investigation.”
Rocky sat and breathed out in a long exhale. “I’m a little nervous about finding the, uh—about finding Flash. I—I’ve never seen a dead body before. Except my dad, when he passed away in the hospital. Ashes to dust, right? But this was a lot different.”
“I understand.”
“I’ve never seen—there was so much blood everywhere. I’ve been coaching a long time, you know, so I’ve seen my share of injuries. And there were some nasty ones. One player got tangled up with another player when I was coaching at Western Rockies. I tell you, once you see a bone sticking out of a leg, your perspective on everything changes.”
“I suppose it does.”
“You said you were a coroner, didn’t you? I’m sure you’ve seen much worse. And here I am blathering on about one dead body making me jump out of my skin.”
“It’s not an unusual reaction, Mr. Portello—”
“Rocky.”
“Right, Rocky. It’s common for people to react like that to dead bodies.” Fenway managed a small laugh. “Sometimes I think I’m the one who’s a little abnormal.”
“I get it, I get it,” Rocky said. “So anyway—you wanted to take my statement. I’ve never done this before. Do I just start talking? And where do you want me to begin?”
“Let’s start with this morning.”
“Right. Of course. Well—I woke up, I guess around five fifteen.”
“Around five fifteen? You didn’t wake up with an alarm?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. So it was exactly five fifteen.” Rocky pointed a finger at Fenway. “You don’t miss much.”
“Why were you up so early?”
“It’s the first day of training camp.”
“But I heard the players didn’t have to report until this afternoon.”
Rocky took off his cap with one hand and smoothed his hair back with the other. “True enough, true enough. But we had to get everything ready for the players. We’ve been prepping for a while, of course, the field and the equipment and the locker rooms and eck-setter”—Fenway inwardly cringed at the mispronunciation of et cetera—“but we had some roster changes in the last couple of days. Soukita Manivong announced her retirement last week. Kind of expected, but we still had a roster spot to fill.”
“So you were doing what?”
“Discussing some strategic shifts. We were thinking of changing from last year’s 3-4-3 to a 3-4-2-1, but then I know Flash was thinking about dropping four defenders to the back line with a young keeper.”
“Maggie Erskine.”
Rocky nodded. “I think he’d made up his mind to do it. It’s one of the reasons we traded for Darcy Nishimura.”
Fenway tapped her chin. “Would Maggie think moving to four defenders was an insult?”
Rocky tilted his head. “Maybe so. Don’t get me wrong—Maggie plays the game intelligently. A great keeper in college, for sure—I was an assistant on the championship Shellmont team. But the pro game is faster. Early last year, when we got her into some games, she was timid. She got better as the year went on, but she’s playing against some international superstars, even though the European leagues are stealing more of the AFF players away. But it’s no insult—half the teams in the league play four defenders on the back line.”
“Did Mr. Levinson—uh, Coach Flash—tell Maggie about the switch to four defenders?”
“Sure. I mean, he had no reason to keep it from her. It’s not like she wouldn’t have noticed when we went out onto the field this afternoon.” He chuckled. “We went to the Pickering Trophy game last year, and if we can make a deep playoff run this year with a young goalkeeper, I might’ve had my pick of open head coaching jobs next year. Now with Coach Flash, uh, passing, my future is up in the breeze. We were supposed to have everything together this year. And then Flash goes and does all this.”
“Does all what?”
Portello looked up at Fenway. “Uh—gets himself killed. Sorry, I might sound a little harsh, but believe me, the owners in this league won’t care about my sob story when I’m hunting for a head coaching job.”
“I’ve read up a little on you, Coach Portello. You’ve been Coach Levinson’s right-hand man for over a decade. You don’t think you’ll have the opportunity to step into the head coaching job now? Especially since training camp has already started.”
Portello shifted in his seat. “I suppose. Flash put a succession plan in place, and I was supposed to take over from him at some point. But something like this—it could change everything.”
Fenway noticed Portello’s eyes light up. He talked a good game, but he thought he’d get the head coaching position, even after Coach Levinson’s death. Still, Fenway couldn’t fault him for playing down his chances of getting the job.
Fenway raised her head and found Portello looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry, Rocky, but I think we’ve gotten off track. You said you woke up at five fifteen. What did you do after you got up?”
“Maybe it was closer to five thirty.”
Fenway tilted her head. “I thought you said you got up with your alarm.”
“What? Oh—you know, the snooze button.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, I showered and got dressed, then I went downstairs and got coffee at the Java Jim’s in the lobby. I got one for Coach Flash, too.”
“You usually get him a coffee?”
“No, I don’t, but he was running late, so I thought I’d save some time.”
“What time was this?”
“I was supposed to meet him the lobby at six fifteen, then we’d head to the practice facility. He said he wanted to get the coaches’ review session started by six forty-five, maybe seven.”
“Anyone else meeting you for the coaches’ session?”
“The other assistant coach—Lorraine Sunday.”
“I remember her from the World Cup.”
Portello scoffed. “Been milking her two shutouts for all they’re worth—and then some.”
“So how long did you wait for Coach Levinson?”
Rocky smoothed his mustache. “You have to understand, Coach Flash is methodical. He’s almost never late, and when he is, he has a damn good reason for it. Well—I may not always think it’s a good reason, but he does.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Let’s say it this way: no one else can be late for his schedule, or there’s hell to pay. But if he’s the one who’s late and you point it out, there’s still hell to pay.”
“He didn’t like when others pointed out his mistakes.”
“I mean,” Portello said hurriedly, “it’s not always a mistake. Sometimes, he’s late for a good reason. Something he’s doing for the team. And he took the Neons to the finals last year, so, you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, am I right?”
Fenway nodded.
“So I got his coffee, and I waited.”
“Then you stopped waiting. And you unlocked his door and went inside?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you have his key?”
“Why did I—” Portello blinked. “He and I always take copies of each other’s keys in hotels like this, you know, in case one of us gets locked out, so we don’t have to bug the people downstairs. We stayed in a hotel last year that had an automated check-in. Flash locked himself out of his room, and it was like pulling teeth to get a human to show up to open it. Ever since, he and I have copies of each other’s keys.”
It was a long explanation. Fenway waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. She looked at his face; was he nervous? Or was he just off-kilter, expecting a first day of training camp but instead finding his head coach dead? “What time did you go back upstairs?”
“Well, I’d finished my coffee. I figured maybe he’d want to skip the review session because maybe he’d made his decision last night and didn’t tell me about it. He’s done it before. Or, you know, first day excitement, maybe he’d set his alarm wrong. But I don’t know the exact time when I went upstairs.”
“They probably have it on camera.”
Rocky blinked. “On camera? What do you mean?”
“They always have cameras in hotels nowadays. We’ll figure out what time you went upstairs.”
Rocky nodded, frowning. “Then you must have the killer on camera. Entering the room.”
“We might. Sometimes they don’t have cameras in each of the hallways. It’s becoming more common, though.” Fenway leaned forward. “This might be difficult, but can you take me through what you saw when you came into Mr. Levinson’s hotel room after you decided to come upstairs?”
Rocky swallowed. “I knocked first. I waited a little bit, but I probably tried the key before I should have. I didn’t want to be any later than we already were, you understand.”
“Sure.”
“So—I opened the door, and I called him. He didn’t answer, so I came in and shut the door behind me. And then I saw him on the floor.” He shook his head. “There was blood everywhere. A big—I don’t know—gash, I guess, on the back of his head. I couldn’t believe it was real, you know? It almost looked fake, like a movie set or something.”
“Yeah. I hear that a lot. Did you go anywhere else in the hotel room?”
“Uh—no. I was frozen in place for a few minutes. I don’t know. What are you supposed to do? Should I have checked for a pulse? I know CPR. Maybe I should have done CPR. There was so much blood, and the big gash in his head—he was obviously dead, right?”
“I suspect so. We’ll know more after I get some preliminary information from the CSI team.”
“Anyway, I called 9-1-1. I don’t know how long I stood there. The paramedics came, and then the Asian lady.”
“Asian lady?”
“The, uh, police officer.”
Oh—he was referring to Deputy Salvador.
Rocky ran a hand over his face. “The officer told me to leave the hotel room, but I thought someone should stay with the body. I mean, should I have stayed?”
“You were right to leave when Deputy Salvador asked you to.”
“I was in the room next door,” he continued. “When I heard the paramedics get here, I came out and used the key to open the room again. Was that okay?”
“I’m sure it was a confusing time, Rocky. You were doing what you thought best.”
“And I don’t know if I should mention this, but I must have stepped in the pool of blood while I decided what the hell to do. I don’t really remember it, but I—I got blood all over my shoes. I guess I tracked it onto the carpet in the hallway and in this room, too. I hope this doesn’t count against our cleaning deposit.”
Fenway glanced up at Rocky.
His eyes went wide. “Oh, shit, what a horrible thing to say. My mind’s going in a thousand directions. I apologize.”
“No need to worry,” Fenway said, as soothingly as she could. “But I’ll need to bag up those shoes.”
“I understand. I’ve got another pair, so it’s okay.”
“Did you notice if anyone else was in the hotel room?”
Rocky sat up straight. “There was someone else in the hotel room?”
“I’m asking you,” Fenway said, “if you noticed anyone else there.”
“No, of course not. I think I would have—” Rocky paused. “I didn’t go into the bedroom. Or the bathroom.” He grimaced. “Was there another body in there? Oh no.” He groaned. “Was it one of the players?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, because—” Rocky screwed up his mouth. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but there were rumors Flash wasn’t completely faithful to his wife. And some players may have been, uh, involved with him.”
“Rumors, Rocky? Wouldn’t you be in the best position to know what went on with him?”
He shook his head. “Flash and I were friends, Coroner, but some things he didn’t share with me.”
Fenway nodded. “In my experience, if there’s malfeasance by one person in an organization, other people are usually doing shady things, too.”
“But I—”
Fenway held up her hand. “I’m not accusing you of doing what he did, but our investigation into Coach Levinson’s murder might unearth some uncomfortable truths. Some of them you might not think are relevant. Some of them might put your relationships in jeopardy or mess with your future job prospects if they came out in certain ways. So I’d encourage you, if you know any secrets at all about Coach Levinson, you tell me about them now. Don’t wait until we find it on our own—or worse, the media finds it before we do.”
Rocky’s face creased in concentration. “I mean,” he mumbled, “maybe this is dumb, but I heard the owner had found out Flash was screwing around with players. I thought she might discipline him.”
Fenway tilted her head. “Did you not hear about the press conference this morning?”
Rocky raised his eyebrows.
“Sandra Christchurch announced Paul Levinson was fired as the coach of the Vegas Neons at about eight o’clock,” Fenway said.
Rocky’s shoulders slumped. “So it’s true.” He covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t think it would get so bad. I mean, other coaches have weathered far worse.”
“It’s a different time,” Fenway said.
“And we have a female owner,” Rocky said. “I told—” Then Rocky clamped his mouth shut.
“You told Coach Levinson something?”
Rocky sighed. “I told him she wouldn’t put up with his bullshit.”
“So you knew.” Fenway felt her heart speed up. She tried slowing down her breaths to stay calm.
“I mean, he never out-and-out told me what he was doing. But when I referred to his bullshit, he knew exactly what I meant.”
“So, would you say you were angry with him for what he was doing with the players?”
Rocky flopped back on the sofa. “I didn’t really—I don’t know. I figured he was cheating on his wife. Beyond that, I didn’t know much.”
“Coach Levinson was fired for sexual assault, Mr. Portello.”
Portello leaned back in his seat and smoothed down the sides of his walrus mustache. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know? I find that hard to believe. The owner calls a press conference to fire the head coach and doesn’t tell his staff?”
Portello chuckled. “Sandra Christchurch might be a lot of things, but she’s not that heartless. I got a text this morning around six o’clock asking the staff to come down to the ballroom. She probably told everyone then.”
“And you didn’t make it?”
“I must have been in the shower. I didn’t notice the message until after I found—after I came back here.”
Fenway flipped the pages in her notebook. “I thought you were getting coffee at Java Jim’s in the lobby before you went to meet Coach Flash at six fifteen. That would put you at the coffee stand at about six, wouldn’t it?”
Portello frowned. “I’m sorry, Coroner, it’s been a crazy morning. Yeah, I was probably standing in line for coffee when the text came through.”
“And you didn’t see it.”
“Like I said, no. Not till after.”
“So,” Fenway said slowly, “what would you have done if you had known Coach Levinson had gotten fired?”
“I guess I would have been angry.”
“At who? The owner? Coach Flash?”
“I don’t know.” Portello looked at the floor. “It’s not like a new head coach will keep me on. He was rolling the dice not only with his job but with mine, too. And for what? Some girl less than half his age who never got her daddy’s approval?”
Fenway sat up.
“Sorry—sorry. I didn’t mean to be so harsh.” Portello exhaled loudly. “I walked through my friend’s blood a couple of hours ago, and now I find out his cheating got him fired on the first day of training camp? It’s a little much.”
Fenway paused for a moment. She wanted to call Rocky out—this wasn’t “cheating,” it was sexual assault. But putting him on the defensive would shut him down. Was there anything else she could get from him? Oh—the bracelet. “Just one more thing. Did you see a diamond tennis bracelet anywhere?”
Portello frowned. “A diamond tennis bracelet? The only person I know who has one is Sandra.”
Fenway nodded. “Did you see her with it last night?”
“Come to think of it, no.” He smoothed his mustache. “Lorraine is always complimenting her on it, but I don’t think Sandra had it on at last night’s coaches’ meeting.”
“What do you mean, Lorraine always compliments her on it?”
“I don’t know—Lorraine said it looks nice, that she always wanted one like that. The usual stuff.”
Fenway scratched her temple. “How often did Coach Sunday compliment Ms. Christchurch on her bracelet?”
“Uh—I don’t know. I didn’t keep track or anything.”
“What happened in the coaches’ meeting?”
“We went over our goals for training camp. The players who were fighting for spots on the team, what we needed to accomplish this first week, any concerns with players we might need to cut for salary reasons, that kind of thing. Not much had changed from the last meeting, to be honest.”
“No inkling that Coach Levinson would be fired the next morning?”
Portello shrugged. “Nothing.”
“How was Sandra Christchurch acting?”
“Acting?”
“Nervous, maybe? Like she had something to hide?”
“I didn’t notice.”
Fenway rubbed her forehead. “When you left the coaches’ meeting, did you see anything unusual? Or hear anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you see Coach Flash last night at the bar?”
“No. I was here, studying film of a couple of our new players. I finished dinner around six in the hotel restaurant—”
“Anyone with you?”
“Just the waiter and my laptop. After the coaches’ meeting, I came up here and studied until about ten. I was asleep by ten thirty, easy.”
“Any noises you might remember? You’re right next door to him.”
“I’m a heavy sleeper. I have a white noise machine I bring with me, too. It’s a godsend to have it when we’re staying in some of those downtown hotels when we’re on the road. So no, I didn’t hear anything after I went to bed.”
Fenway stood and handed him her card. “Let me know if you think of anything else. We’ll have someone come bag up those shoes.”
“Are we stuck in the hotel, or can we hold practice? The bus is taking the players to Nidever in a few hours.”
Fenway considered. “I’ll talk it over with my sergeant.”
Fenway walked back down the ninth-floor hallway to Paul Levinson’s hotel room and stepped inside. A sheet had been placed over the body. Melissa de la Garza knelt next to the coffee table, brushing fingerprint dust onto the bottle of tequila.
“Good to see you, Melissa.”
“Hey, Fenway. Nice to see you too. Though it would be great if we ever met under less morbid circumstances.”
“How’s life with Donald?”
“I can tell he’s never lived with a woman before.” Melissa chuckled. “Of course, I’ve never lived with a man, either, so I guess there are some compromises we both need to make.”
“Sure.” Fenway had never lived with a man, either, and for a brief moment wondered what sharing an apartment with McVie would be like. “What have you found so far?”
“I’ve shipped off the golf club and the wet clothing to the lab,” Melissa said. “No usable fingerprints.”
“That’s disappointing. Not that much of a surprise, I guess.”
Melissa shrugged. “Sometimes criminals will touch something after they wipe it down. It’s not unheard of. I thought we might get lucky.”
“What else?”
“The woman who was in here earlier is your prime suspect, right?”
“Maggie Erskine. Right. She was found sleeping in the king bed in there, and those were her clothes soaking wet on the floor of the shower.”
“Right next to the murder weapon,” Melissa said.
“Correct. Erskine admits to being here last night, starting around ten o’clock, and says she didn’t leave. She admits to having sex with Levinson, and I believe she was coerced into it.”
“Coerced?”
“Yes. He’d promise to ease up on hard training exercises or guilt her into agreeing. She told us he’d been doing this since her first year in college.”
“He was her coach in college, too? Shellmont University in North Carolina, right?”
“Correct.”
Melissa frowned. “Sexual coercion—tough to prove.”
“It is.” Fenway paused. “And that means”—Fenway spoke haltingly—“it’s possible that she didn’t think he would ever stop. Maybe she couldn’t convince anyone what he was doing was wrong.”
Melissa nodded slowly. “Gives her motive to kill him.”
Fenway pursed her lips. “When we spoke to her, it seemed like she was blaming herself, or maybe that sex was even consensual on her part.” She scratched her scalp. “But if she was acting—or even if she wasn’t—the nature of their relationship gives her motive. Maybe she’d finally had enough.” Fenway blinked—
—and suddenly she was back on the Western Washington campus, walking in a daze through the sleet on her way to her Russian Lit class the morning after it happened, the anger and confusion and fear coursing through her veins.
“Battered woman syndrome?”
Fenway swallowed hard, coming back to the present. “What?”
Melissa tilted her head. “Are you all right, Fenway?”
Fenway waved her hand. “Yes, yes, fine. It—it’s just me thinking about different angles of the case. What did you say?”
“Battered woman syndrome. That’s not the medical term for it, but it is the legal defense. I mean, it’s sort of old school, but it might still work.”
“It’s possible,” Fenway said. “The owner of the Vegas Neons found out what he’d been doing and fired him. Don’t you think she’d have let him know before the press conference?”
Melissa shrugged. “I don’t know what goes through the owner’s head.”
“If the owner didn’t tell him, I have to believe he knew he was on thin ice.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And yet,” Fenway said, balling her hands into fists, “he still brings her to his hotel room and coerces her into sex.”
“Like he’s flaunting it.” Melissa paused. “I might have snapped if I’d been her.”
“She says she was drunk and asleep. But she might be lying about remembering what she did.”
“What if it is battered woman’s syndrome? Some kind of psychotic break?”
Fenway arched an eyebrow. “She’s been through emotional trauma, so I suppose it’s technically possible, but the chances are astronomical that Erskine had some sort of episode.”
“Still,” Melissa said, “it’s hard to be too sympathetic for the murder victim.” She stood and opened the door to the bedroom, then pointed to the bathroom. “How many bath towels are usually in the bathroom of a hotel like this?”
Fenway shrugged. “I’d have to check with housekeeping, but I think a top-tier hotel like the Broadmere usually provides guests with four of each.”
Melissa walked around the bed and switched the bathroom light on with a gloved hand. “There are four hand towels and four washcloths, but only two bath towels.”
“You’re suggesting two bath towels are missing?”
“The most sensible thing to use to clean up a crime scene,” Melissa said. “You’ll want to keep an eye out for two blood-soaked bath towels.”