Keisha barged into Owen’s office and told him to pull up CNN on his computer.
“Is it about the kid?” he asked.
The lead story on the front page of the Register had Owen’s stomach in knots. The star forward of the high school soccer team had been clipped by a TV truck yesterday. The kid would be fine, but he had a fractured tibia and would be out for the season, just as the playoffs were starting.
“No, it’s about Rothenberg, about the murder. You need to see this,” Keisha said.
Owen went to CNN, turning the monitor so Keisha could see. They were livestreaming a press conference straight from the steps of the Belle County Courthouse. Leonard Walters, the big-shot lawyer from New York, was speaking to the press about the Rothenberg case.
“I know that guy,” Rizzo said. “He represented the kingpin on my biggest drug cartel case. What’s he doing in this town?”
“You’re not gonna like it, Chief.”
Leonard Walters sported the standard lawyer’s winter uniform of dark wool overcoat with a sober gray scarf tucked under the collar. It made an impressive contrast to his snow-white hair as he spoke into a bank of microphones.
They had come into it in midsentence.
“—pregnant with another man’s child. Ask Chief Rizzo whether the autopsy found evidence of that! What are the police hiding? Naturally when Mr. Rothenberg found out about his wife’s affair, he became extremely angry, but he did not take his anger out on his defenseless, pregnant wife. No, he went after her seducer, a married man, a father of three, a doctor at the hospital in this very town, by the name of Ethan Saxman. The two of them got into a fistfight at the Pinetree Inn on Thursday night. Mr. Rothenberg was merely defending his wife’s honor. The gentleman standing beside me is the night manager at the Pinetree Inn, Mr. Rajit Singh. He was an eyewitness to that fight, and will speak to you momentarily to corroborate everything Mr. Rothenberg says. He’ll tell you Mr. Rothenberg was bleeding from a cut on his lip—which explains the blood on his Brooks Brothers shirt. He’ll also tell you that when Mr. Rothenberg left the premises, Mrs. Rothenberg was safe and sound, left alone in this other man’s company. I discovered this evidence with one phone call. Why didn’t Chief Rizzo find it? Or did he, and decided not to tell you because it’s bad for his case? Ask the chief whether a DNA test was already conducted on the bloody shirt. It was, but he won’t tell you the results, because they undermine his attempt to frame an innocent man.”
Keisha grabbed the mouse and clicked pause. “Is that true, Chief? It’s Rothenberg’s own blood on the shirt?”
“So what? Killing someone is a violent business. Rothenberg could’ve hurt himself going after his wife.”
“If you knew it was his blood and not hers, why didn’t you tell me that?”
“It doesn’t make him innocent.”
“You’ve been saying she was pregnant, but did you know it was this other guy’s baby?”
“We don’t know that yet. The ME sent samples to the FBI lab for fetal DNA testing, but it takes weeks to get the results.”
“What if it is, though?”
“Why is that a problem for the case? If Rothenberg’s wife was pregnant by another man, his motive to kill her was even stronger.”
“But you knew Dr. Saxman was in the picture, and you didn’t say anything to anybody?”
“He shows up in her phone records, that’s all I know,” Rizzo said, with a defensive shrug.
“How much were they calling each other? Enough to know he wasn’t treating her bunions?”
“Look, I haven’t even gotten all the phone records I subpoenaed yet, all right? I didn’t know anything specific. And what’s your point, anyway?” Owen asked.
“My point is, there’s another viable suspect here, one we should’ve been investigating all along.”
“Keisha, do you know what the leading cause of death for pregnant women is in the United States? It’s homicide by husbands and boyfriends. I kid you not. Go look it up.”
“Yeah, but Saxman was her boyfriend, so why are you fixated on the husband? Hold on a second. Saxman. That name’s ringing a bell.”
“We interviewed his wife. He’s married to the yoga teacher,” Rizzo said.
“Not because of that. Wait here.”
Keisha got up and ran out of the room.
“Shit,” Owen muttered, and kicked his desk.
If he lost Keisha, if she went over to the other side and started working against him, that would make his life harder. But it wouldn’t change Owen’s mind. He was sorry to learn that Kate had become involved with this other man, but he wasn’t surprised. Her marriage had been miserable. Owen remembered the rage in Rothenberg’s face as he pounded on the plate-glass window the night of the storm. Rothenberg was the classic jealous husband, willing to murder his wife rather than let her go. He killed her, Owen knew it in his gut. If Keisha couldn’t see it, he’d work the case on his own.
Keisha was back, with a pink message slip in her hand. “Chief, we had a call to the tip line yesterday on this Dr. Saxman. This is no coincidence.”
“What does it say?”
“The caller was a female, chose to remain anonymous, and was using caller ID block,” Keisha said, reading from the slip of paper. “She advised us to search a vehicle belonging to a Dr. Ethan Saxman, and we’d find evidence of the murder. She gave the make and plate number of the car. We’ve had hundreds of calls to the tip line, and haven’t had time to follow this one up yet. Do you want me to get started working on a warrant?”
“You’re accusing me of jumping to conclusions, yet you’re ready to go after the doctor just because Rothenberg’s lawyer says so. That tip could’ve been called in by Leonard Walters’ secretary, for all we know.”
“I’m simply suggesting that it’s our job to investigate all leads,” Keisha said, drawing herself up huffily.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but with our limited resources, we don’t have that luxury.”
“Don’t we owe it to the town to try?” Keisha asked.
“This town wouldn’t know a murder investigation if it jumped up and bit it in the ass. We owe the victim justice. That’s what we owe. The town has been nothing but an obstacle to achieving that. Did you know Rob Womack is passing information to the mayor behind my back?”
Keisha shook her head. “Last time I checked, Chief, the mayor was on our team.”
“Come on, Keisha. Tell me you don’t see it. These people are conspiring against me. They’d rather see me lose my job than catch her killer.”
“Small towns are rough. You have to go that extra mile before people accept you. And no offense, Chief, but you’ve made some decisions that rubbed people the wrong way.”
“They can’t stomach an outsider telling them how to run things, that’s the problem.”
“Yeah, well you could make more of an effort to get along. I read the paper this morning. People are pissed about the traffic accident, and they’re starting to question the investigation. Why not make a show of good faith? Tell them you’re reassessing your case and looking at other suspects.”
“My case is fine, thank you very much,” Owen said, his mouth setting in a grim line.
The nerve of this kid, after he got her the job. Did she have some kind of problem with him? She’d complained about how he asked her to take the notes in the interviews. Was it that? He was only trying to train her. Kids these days, they wanted to run the show from day one, whether they were ready or not.
“What do you have to lose, Chief? Bring Rothenberg and his lawyer in for an interview. Ask them to provide us with a rundown on all the evidence that they claim exonerates him. Then we check it out and see if he’s telling the truth. Meantime, I’ll look into this doctor, and his relationship to the victim. I’ll get a warrant on the car. I know it seems far-fetched, but it does happen sometimes that you get the wrong guy. Maybe we rushed to judgment on this one.”
“Yeah? And what do you think happens if I’m wrong?”
“If we’re wrong, we need to say so,” she said.
“And then the mob screams for my head.” Owen tossed the newspaper across the desk at her. “You saw this crap. I’m trying to run a murder investigation, and I’m getting second-guessed because of some goddamn soccer championship. That’s what I’m dealing with here. I have to stand up to it. The second I show weakness, I’m done. And if I’m done, you’d better watch your back, because without me here to protect you, you’re next.”
Keisha shrugged, and it could have meant one of two things. A, justice must be served no matter the negative repercussions for our own careers. Or B, you’re the one with the problem, not me, so why should I give a shit? Owen tended to think it was the latter. So much for loyalty, and this freaking job. All he wanted was to do right by Kate Eastman. If he cut a corner here or there, he did it in the interests of justice. But nobody seemed to appreciate that. If they didn’t value his efforts, then maybe they didn’t deserve his service. He wished he could go back to his old job, with real cases and real cops to work them, but it had been filled, and besides, he had to think of the kids. He had another option if things here became untenable. His cousin in Wisconsin was CFO of a big company that made the fluorescent lights that were used in department stores. They were looking for a new chief of security. It paid significantly more than Owen was making as chief of police, and his cousin had kids his own kids’ age. Wisconsin was cold in the winter, but no colder than this hellhole.
The only thing holding him back from quitting was the desire to solve Kate’s murder and put her smug psychopath of a husband in jail for good. Unfortunately, that was proving to be a harder task than he’d anticipated, and he was starting to think it might not happen. He was confident he could make the case against Rothenberg eventually, if given sufficient time and resources. But that was the problem. The resources were sadly lacking. And now, with the kid getting hit by the van, Owen felt the town turning against him, and his time running out. Maybe this case was destined to be his white whale. All the best cops had them, if they’d been on the job long enough. Those cases where you knew in your heart who did it, but for whatever reason, you couldn’t prove it. The ones that got away, they haunted you forever. Would Kate turn out to be that for him?