Owen Rizzo had handled plenty of murder cases, but never one where he knew the victim personally. He hadn’t known Maggie Price long or known her well—known Kate Eastman, that is. But the intense evening they spent together had stayed with him to the point where he wasn’t entirely objective when it came to working her case. It didn’t matter, though. He could recognize and make allowances for his own bias. Owen was a better investigator blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back than any of the men who worked for him. But they might not see it that way, and he didn’t need them questioning his judgment, so he was careful not to let slip that he had a personal interest in the case. Especially given how personal his interest was. In the few short hours they spent together, Kate had gotten under his skin.
His task this Monday morning was to rally his troops, such as they were, and they weren’t much. These guys were better at finding lost dogs than solving crimes. But you went to war with the troops you had, and if the troops were weak, then the commander better be strong. For starters, Owen needed to make them understand that this was indeed a murder case. The forensic evidence left room for doubt—though not really, not if you knew what you were looking for. A woman might fall into a river by accident, or she might decide to end her life and jump of her own accord. Then again, somebody might bludgeon her with a rock and throw her lifeless body into the water. Those three scenarios might produce similar-looking head injuries, so that the local coroner (who, Owen learned to his shock, hadn’t autopsied a single murder victim in his entire career) couldn’t tell the difference. Owen had appropriated money from an overtime fund to pay an independent expert to review Kate’s autopsy report. (That was his prerogative as chief, and he saw no need to run that decision by anyone.) He was expecting a fax any minute that would back up his strong feeling that Kate didn’t kill herself, or carelessly fall into the Belle, but rather that somebody violently ended her life. Like maybe that lying drunkard of a husband of hers, whom Owen had the pleasure of meeting yesterday in the flesh. The guy clearly hadn’t remembered him from that night at the bar, but Owen remembered him all right.
Owen walked into the conference room at nine on the dot on Monday to find his three male officers lounging around shooting the breeze and eating doughnuts from a box that he’d paid for out of his own pocket. (He wasn’t above using food to get their attention.) His lone female detective, Keisha Charles, was out working leads already, as she should be. She was the only one he trusted. But then, he’d hired her himself, so he’d have at least one officer familiar with modern investigative techniques. Keisha was supremely qualified—graduated from Carlisle in criminal justice, aced the state police training, got picked to go to Quantico for extra training with the FBI. She also happened to be the daughter of a fine narcotics detective from the Bronx who, yes, all right, happened to be a good friend of Owen’s. The hire hadn’t sat well with the rest of the department, since it used money that had previously been allocated for a secretarial position. As far as he was concerned, they could type their own damn reports. And if Pam What’s-her-name lost her job—well, no harm, no foul. Rob Womack had gone behind Owen’s back and spoken to the mayor about that decision. When Owen made clear he wouldn’t brook any interference or second-guessing, the mayor wisely solved the problem by hooking Pam up with another position, which actually paid her more. So there was really nothing to complain about, and they should let it go already.
As Owen took the seat at the head of the table, Gene Stevens shoved the Dunkin’ Donuts box across to him.
“Saved you the last cruller at grave risk to my own safety, Chief. You don’t ever want to come between this guy and a doughnut,” Gene said, pointing at Marv Pelletier, who laughed so hard his beer belly jiggled. They were Mutt and Jeff, those two, Marv short and round and Gene tall and spare, and they gloried in the foolish chitchat.
“Look who’s talking. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but he ate half the box,” Marv said.
“What’s this about, Chief?” Rob Womack asked. “We heard you caught a floater last night. Is that true?”
“Can we please not refer to her in a disrespectful manner?” Owen said.
“Sorry,” Womack said, his jaw setting. “A her, you say? So it’s a girl, then?”
“A woman. Yes.”
“We don’t get too many females jumping,” Gene said.
“Who says she jumped?” Owen said.
All three of them looked at him with surprised expressions.
“Come on, get real, Chief,” Womack said.
There they went, leaping to conclusions already. When Owen originally pondered this move, he’d worried that he or the kids wouldn’t like the town, or that he’d find the job boring. None of that turned out to be true. Instead the problem was the friction between him and the men—only the men; Keisha was great—under his command. He simply couldn’t get them to conform to his standards for what good police work looked like. Of his four full-time, non-traffic-patrol officers, Marv Pelletier and Gene Stevens were the biggest pains in his butt. They spent their time carping about how the former chief ran things better and how the town and the department were going to hell. Worst of all, they were competent with paperwork but lax with actually getting their butts on the streets, which meant they were either lazy, or cowards. Fortunately they were both near retirement age. This guy Rob presented the opposite problem. Rob was young and ambitious, a musclehead type with a starched uniform and a spic-and-span cruiser who’d been passed over for the chief’s job when they hired Owen. He was borderline insubordinate, and regularly told Owen how they did things around here rather than doing what he was told. None of this was a great setup for working an important case, a case Owen cared about more perhaps than any other in his career.
“She jumped, Chief, I guarantee it,” Rob said. “The kids love to jump off the old railroad bridge. They do it on a dare, and they don’t always come back up.”
“Not too many girls do it, though,” Gene said. “Girls are too smart for that shit.”
“Local girl, or Carlisle?” Marv asked.
“She wasn’t a girl.” Owen flipped open the case file. “Victim is Katherine Elizabeth Eastman, aged forty, Nineteen Dunsmore Street—”
“Faculty Row,” Marv and Gene said simultaneously.
“What?” Owen asked.
“Nobody calls it Dunsmore Street, it’s Faculty Row,” Marv said. “Used to be, the college actually owned the houses and they’d give ’em to the profs as part of their compensation package. Now they’re all private, but they’re still orange on the inside. Orange being the Carlisle color, see?”
“Yes, I know that, Marv,” Owen said.
“So what’s her Carlisle connection?” Rob asked.
“I don’t know that she has one,” Owen said.
Owen hadn’t forgotten Kate telling him in the bar on that rainy night how she’d disappointed her father by not graduating from Carlisle. But if he repeated that, his officers would know he’d met her.
“No Carlisle connection?” Marv said.
“Who knows?” Owen replied. “That’s not the question that should leap to mind when you respond to the scene of a death.”
“Around here, it should be,” Marv said. “Nineteen Dunsmore. Keniston Eastman owns that place, if I’m not mistaken. The Eastmans are a big Carlisle family, Chief, one of the biggest. You got your Eastman Commons. Your Eastman Field House. The Eastman Wing at the hospital. You don’t want to mess with that family without talking to the general counsel’s office first.”
“General counsel of what?”
Marv and Gene looked at each other like, Who the hell is this guy?
“Of the college,” Marv said. “You know if we ever arrest a Carlisle kid, we give the GC a heads-up as a courtesy, right?”
“Chief Dudley mentioned that. I couldn’t believe it was true.”
“Oh, it’s true. I know you got your pride, Chief, but trust me. It’s not worth pissing off the college just to mark your territory. If you’re telling me you pulled a Carlisle kid from the river, that’s huge. You’d better call the mayor, too. She doesn’t like to get blindsided.”
Owen made a dismissive gesture. He would call the mayor in his own good time.
“Wait a minute, Kate Eastman,” Rob Womack said, and slapped the table.
Owen turned to Rob. “You know her?”
“Kate Eastman was the girl who was with Lucas Arsenault the night he died, am I right?” Rob said.
“With who?” Owen said.
“Local kid,” Marv said. “Jumped off the bridge in the off season, as I recall, just like this female jumper you got here. It was a big to-do when he died. Nobody wanted to believe a local boy would be that stupid.”
“Yeah, because he wouldn’t,” Rob said. “I knew Lucas. He didn’t jump.”
“When was this?” Owen asked.
“Maybe twenty years ago,” Rob said.
“Twenty years?” Owen exclaimed. “Jesus, will you people lay off the ancient-history bullshit? We have a real case here. Now. Today. Do you have any interest in working it?”
“Yeah, of course we do,” Rob said, bristling.
“Then stop bringing up irrelevant nonsense and focus.”
“Sorry, Chief. You’re right,” Marv said.
Rob looked pissed and Gene grumbled something, but Owen had a case to solve. He couldn’t worry about hurting grown men’s feelings.
“You don’t think she jumped?” Rob said. “Why not? What does the ME say?”
“What the ME says might not be correct,” Owen began.
Seeing the skeptical looks around the table, Owen realized he needed definitive proof to back him up. He pressed the intercom and asked his secretary if a fax had come in for him from a Dr. Michael Chan in Boston. Within minutes, his secretary (and yes, Owen still had a secretary, but that’s because he was the chief) came in and put the report in his hands. Owen leafed through it quickly and immediately found the answer he’d been looking for.
“Gentlemen, this is a report from a highly respected forensic scientist who’s testified in some of the biggest murder cases in the country. I had him take a second look at the autopsy results, because our county medical examiner, believe it or not, has never handled a homicide case in his entire career.”
“We don’t get too many murders around here, Chief,” Marv said.
“You paid for an outside expert?” Rob said. Owen decided to ignore him.
“The county ME,” Owen continued, “noted that no water was found in victim’s lungs, signifying that she was dead before she hit the river. But he drew no conclusion from that fact about the manner of her death, other than to say it was caused by blunt-force trauma to the head. Fine, but then what? We need to know, does that mean someone hit her with a baseball bat and threw her in, or does it mean she jumped and hit a rock on the way down? The county ME didn’t have the guts to make a decision on that. Like a lot of mediocre bureaucrats, he pulled his punches. So I brought in Dr. Chan. Dr. Chan’s report, which I just received, concludes that Kate Eastman was killed by a blow to the head. The conclusion is based on the position of the injury to her cranium. That injury could only have been inflicted by an assailant who was standing behind her and striking downward. The bottom line is, we have a murder case to work.”
“What about crime scene evidence?” Rob asked. “Shouldn’t we be out searching around the old railroad bridge?”
“Why? I’ve now proved to you she didn’t jump. She was murdered. Her vehicle was found abandoned at the boat-launch parking lot off River Road, which is almost a mile away from that bridge you keep talking about, and over difficult terrain. She went missing on Friday night, when it was raining pretty hard. That makes it even less likely that she hiked to the bridge. I believe she was killed elsewhere, moved to the boat-launch parking lot in her own vehicle, then dumped into the river.”
“Where did the killer go after he dumped the body?” Womack asked. “If he moved her in her own vehicle and then abandoned it, he didn’t have a ride.” The asshole was obviously looking to shred Owen’s theory instead of fall in line. Owen knew he had to keep his cool.
“Don’t know,” Owen replied. “Maybe there was an accomplice. Maybe he took a cab for all we know. Feel free to look into that, Rob. I had Kate’s vehicle transported to the state police crime lab for a thorough search and analysis, so if the killer left a trace in there, we’ll find it.”
“If you’re so convinced nothing went down at the bridge, and that she was murdered, then where did it happen?” Rob asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question. One possibility is, she was killed in her own residence. Yesterday, Detective Charles and I responded there to notify the next of kin and request an official identification. We met her husband, a Mr. Griffin Rothenberg. He was passed out drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, and had an ugly bruise on his face that he couldn’t explain, and scratches on the backs of both hands. Scrapings were removed from under the victim’s fingernails, so hopefully we’ll get a match. The state police forensics lab is working with the ME to analyze evidence from the body. Since she was in the water for a while, hair and fiber evidence may be degraded, but we hope not. Oh, and the husband refused to cooperate beyond ID’ing the body.”
“He lawyered up?” Marv said.
“Not even. It’s not like he said he wanted a lawyer present but then he’d talk. He walked out on us. Wouldn’t consent to a search of premises so we could look for evidence that might explain what happened to her. To me, that’s a red flag. What kind of grieving husband doesn’t want to get to the bottom of his wife’s death?”
“It sounds like you already decided the husband did it,” Womack said. “So I guess you don’t have much use for us.”
Owen wanted to punch the guy, but he forced himself to take a deep breath instead. “Not at all. In fact, I have assignments for every one of you. Gene, you’re good with paperwork. I’d like to start working on a warrant application for Nineteen Dunsmore Street. I recognize that we don’t have probable cause yet. But we can lay out what we know so far and make contact with the county attorney to start the process. As additional facts come in, we add them to the warrant application so we can be ready to go as soon as possible. Every minute we delay is another minute Rothenberg could destroy evidence.”
“Yes, sir,” Gene said.
“Rob, you canvass the neighbors on Dunsmore Street and find out if anybody heard anything unusual on Friday night, which is when we believe Ms. Eastman went missing. Screaming, yelling, throwing things, bumps in the night. Anything indicating domestic violence could give us probable cause to search the house, as well as for an arrest warrant. But be discreet. We don’t need to spook Rothenberg and have him skip to Mexico.”
“All right,” Womack said, nodding.
“What about me, Chief?” Marv asked.
Marv was the one in whom Owen had the least confidence, but he had to assign him something or the guy would get miffed.
“Tell you what, Marv. You investigate any prior domestic violence complaints against Griffin Rothenberg. They moved to town recently. Before that, they were in New York. So check both places.”
“What about Keisha?” Marv said. “Can she check New York? Just because she doesn’t bother showing up for the meeting doesn’t mean she oughta get off without an assignment.”
Lazy POS, Owen thought.
“Keisha has plenty to do, all right? She’s out working a lead for me, something I asked her to look into. In fact, here she comes now.”
Through the glass partition, they watched as Keisha Charles yanked off her coat and scarf and dug through her briefcase. She strode into the conference room, bringing with her the bright, cold morning.
“Sorry I’m late, Chief, but when you hear what I found, I guarantee you’ll forgive me,” she said.
“Have a seat,” he said. “Fill us in.”
Keisha took an open chair and rummaged through her folders, picking out one and laying it open on the table.
“Last night you gave me two assignments. First, find out everything there is to know about Kate Eastman’s husband Griffin Rothenberg. So let’s start there. Griffin Rothenberg, Carlisle graduate in economics, is the only child of one Martin Allen Rothenberg, whose name you’re probably familiar with—”
A string of whistles rang out around the table, accompanied by a “Holy shit,” from Rob Womack.
“—because he was prosecuted for a major insider-trading scheme and financial fraud. Rothenberg Capital Partners. Not quite Bernie Madoff scale, but close. His entire company went under, and ten of his closest associates went to jail with him.”
“You know, that doesn’t surprise me one bit,” Owen said. “That guy had an attitude, didn’t he?”
“He sure did, Chief,” Keisha said.
“Like father, like son,” Owen asked. “Do you think there could be a connection between Kate’s death and that fraud case?”
“You mean, was the son involved in his father’s crimes? Did the wife know something she shouldn’t? That sort of thing.”
“You never know.”
“I’ll look into it. It could provide a motive.”
“Even if there’s no direct connection, we know Griffin Rothenberg was once a rich sonofabitch, and now he’s down on his luck, living in a dump and drinking all day. That could be a motive, too. Who knows, maybe his wife had money. Maybe he took out an insurance policy. We need to look into all these angles,” Owen said.
“Speaking of angles,” Keisha said, “Maureen, the night dispatcher, told me an attractive blond woman came to pick Rothenberg up last night. She only caught the first name. Aubrey. I think that might be this woman who teaches at the yoga studio in Riverside I go to sometimes. I’m gonna check into it.”
“Good,” Owen said.
“Next, you asked me to find out what I could about the marriage. Smart, Chief. I hit pay dirt.”
She pulled a sheaf of papers from a folder and handed it to Owen. “Kate Eastman filed for divorce from Griffin Rothenberg at the Belle County Courthouse. She filed, not him. That’s a copy of the divorce complaint. Take a look at the date stamped on the top.”
“That’s—it can’t be. Is that this past Friday?” Owen said.
“Yes!” Keisha said triumphantly. “The victim filed for divorce on Friday morning, and the papers were served on the husband at his home address a few hours later. The same day she disappeared. Is that motive, or what?”
“Not only is it motive, that’s probable cause right there,” Owen said. “A woman goes missing the same day she serves her husband with divorce papers, then she turns up with a fractured skull, dumped in the river. The husband has a big bruise on his face and scratches on his hands. That settles it. We’re going to the judge right away to get a warrant on that house,” Owen said, and stood up.
Owen wasn’t about to drag his feet and risk letting that creep Rothenberg get away with killing the lovely Kate. He knew something the others didn’t, something sensational that had been in the ME’s report. He’d kept it on the down low so it didn’t get splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the state. Kate Eastman was murdered on her fortieth birthday, the same day she filed for divorce. And on that day, Kate Eastman was ten weeks pregnant. That bastard had murdered his pregnant wife. Owen planned to lock him up for that crime if it was the last thing he did.