“Fuck this guy,” Loren said once they were in the hallway.
“He’s not telling us everything, that’s for sure,” Spengler said thoughtfully. “But I think we should consider the possibility that part of it might be the truth.”
“What are you even talking about?” Loren barked laughter. “You actually believe the bullshit coming out of his mouth?”
“I said some of it might be true,” she said. She started walking, heading back to the bullpen and her desk, and Loren had to hurry to keep up. Pissed him off, his legs moving fast like he’s a toddler trying to keep up with mommy. “Blast the wax out of your ears and pay attention for once in your life, Loren.”
“No way he’s being honest about any of it,” Loren scoffed. “This guy’s a piece of work. He killed his girlfriend and gave his wife a shove off that cliff. And as soon as he realized that was his girlfriend in the morgue and felt the heat under his ass he came up with this story. Desperate times create desperate men, Spengler. Happens all the time.”
“But let’s just say maybe Marie Evans is alive,” Spengler said. “Oh, good. The Evans file was put together like I asked.”
She snagged a folder off her desk and flipped it open, pulled out a photograph of Marie. It was the one Evans had taken on the cliff before she fell, the wind blowing her hair in her face as she laughed. “She was in great shape. Look at her legs. She ran and did yoga, kept herself healthy.”
“It wouldn’t matter if she was goddamn Spidergirl,” Loren said. “That cliff is a hundred feet high, straight up. No way she climbed down, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“But she did get down somehow,” Spengler mused.
“Yeah, straight into the water.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. “But Evans says she’s alive. He believes he’s telling the truth. I don’t need a polygraph to tell me that. I saw it in his eyes. He says he didn’t see his wife fall off that cliff, he doesn’t know how she got down and won’t tell us why he thinks she’s alive—”
“So he knows more than he’s letting on.”
Spengler sighed impatiently.
“Yes, I already said that, Loren,” she said, flipping through the file again. “He’s not just saying she’s alive because he thinks so. He knows she’s alive somehow.”
“You think he’s seen her? Talked to her?”
“I don’t know. But I talked to all of Marie’s friends and her daughters, and there’s something—weird about the whole thing. People were afraid of the things Marie would do. And if she’d found out Evans was cheating and getting ready to leave her for another woman, she might’ve gotten mad enough to plot revenge. Faking her death sounds like it might be right in her wheelhouse. And think how easy it’d be to set him up—she married a guy who’d been suspected of murdering his first wife and was cleared, so he already seems guilty. All she had to do was disappear, and out in the mountains that’d be easy enough. Then she could start over. Their daughters are grown, she doesn’t have a job or any other family, nothing holding her down here. Except her marriage.”
Loren stared at her, frowning. But Spengler saw something in his eyes, deep down. The beginnings of belief, or maybe it was a memory rising to the surface.
“This still sounds like ten pounds of bullshit to me,” he said, troubled. “Why go to all the trouble? Just file for divorce and be done with it.”
“That’s a good question,” Spengler said, still flipping through the case file. “But maybe she wanted it to hurt.”
Spengler handed him another sheet of paper. It was the coroner’s initial report on the body that’d been pulled from the river. The woman who Evans claimed was Riley Tipton.
“Cause of death appears to be blunt force trauma to the skull,” Spengler said. “Traces of chrome were found in the head wound, possibly from a golf club. Maybe a baseball bat.”
Loren looked at her.
“Evans’s secretary said Marie had stopped by to pick up his clubs. She was getting them engraved.”
“Okay, so we might have the weapon and we have the motive,” Spengler said. “Where’s the suspect? If she did manage to get down off that cliff, I’d think she’d be long gone by now. Halfway across the country and never looking back. We might never be able to find her.”
“So let’s pull her cell phone records, take a close look at their bank statements. See what purchases she’s made in the last six months, or if she’s done a lot of cash withdrawals. Not that I think this shit is likely. And we’ll have to go back out to the cliff ourselves and take a closer…”
Loren trailed off, his eyes jumping back and forth in their sockets. He looked like a man desperately trying to think of a word that was on the tip of his tongue and very quickly slipping out of reach.
“Loren?”
“Shut your cakehole for two seconds, Spengler,” he said. “I’m trying—oh, man.”
He pushed past her, practically running for his office. She was right behind him. Every person in the bullpen turned to watch, but neither of them noticed.
“Where is it?” Loren said, pushing the papers around on his desk. A stack went flying, scattering in every direction. “I don’t think I took it home—”
“What are you looking for?”
“Ah, here it is,” Loren said, pulling a small plastic evidence baggie out from under a stack of books. It had about an inch of dirt and gravel along the bottom.
“What is this?”
“There was blood under that cliff,” Loren said. “One drop of it under the ledge, away from the river,” Loren said. “I collected it when we were there but forgot to turn it in. But if Marie did fake her death, I have an idea how she might’ve done it.”
“How?”
Loren shook his head. His eyes were glittering with excitement. It was the hunt, Spengler thought. It was on.
“I’m not exactly sure, but I have some ideas. Let’s head out there first thing in the morning. Tonight let’s have all the phone records pulled, all the financials. For both of them. Location pings on their cell phones for the last few weeks and credit card transactions. There’s gonna be something there, I’m sure of it.”
“What about Evans?”
Loren waved his hand dismissively.
“Let that asshole cool his jets in holding. We can keep him here for forty-eight hours, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”