Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  The details of murder, the small ones, were the most piercing. Beth’s fingernails had been lacquered pearl white, her toenails hot pink. A rainbow had been painted on the nail of her left index finger, the colorful lines slightly wobbly as if she had done it herself. She had dressed to please someone, most likely her killer, in sexy underwear, and he had torn off her bra and panties, wrapped the lacy waistband so tightly around her throat that it had left deep, purple-red impressions.

  The coroner had examined her hair and fingernails, the orifices of her body, and the surface of her skin. Trace evidence had been collected—including hair, fibers, dirt, and soil—and analyzed. There had been no DNA found under her fingernails—the head injury had disabled her to an unknown extent and could have prevented her from fighting back.

  Reid thought of the deep scratches on Pete’s back. They hadn’t been made by Beth. Dental impressions had been taken of her mouth; the deep bite marks on Pete’s shoulder were not a match either.

  No semen had been found during the course of the autopsy.

  She had been covered with bruises, as if she had been battered around the head and shoulders and the forearms, perhaps during a struggle before the killer had landed the head wound. Her legs had also been bruised, including her thighs.

  Full-color autopsy photos revealed U-shaped bruises on her shoulders and chest where her killer had knelt while choking her. Her blood had settled in postmortem lividity on her left side. Although she had died on her back, the killer had posed her facing the window. Perhaps that was the position she had slept in, and he had known it. The medical examiner would testify to clear-cut classic signs of strangulation—fractured hyoid bone, petechial hemorrhages in her eyes—if the killer was ever brought to trial.

  Some sadistic murderers choked their victims to the point of death, then released the ligature and brought them back to consciousness, giving them hope of life, repeating the sequence over and over. Reid didn’t believe Beth’s killer had done that. The sureness of the marks showed that once he had started, he’d worked hard and steadily to bring about death.

  It had taken minutes for Beth to die. The killer had administered a devastating blow to her head. Then he had used his hands, and then he had twisted the ligature around her neck. Beth’s adrenaline would have been pumping. The coroner had questioned whether she had fully lost consciousness after the head wound. To some extent, she would have felt terror and the atavistic instinct of fight or flight. She would have had ringing in her ears, vertigo, cyanosis, drastic weakening of her muscles. She had bled from her nose and ears. The salt of her tears had crystalized on her eyelashes. Her hands would have involuntarily clenched. She would have been aware of the baby struggling inside her.

  One or more seizures would have occurred. Her heart would have continued beating for several minutes. At or before the moment of death, she would have lost control of her bladder and bowels.

  Reid turned to the section on Matthew. He had died from lack of oxygen. He would have lived slightly longer than Beth. His heart would have continued circulating oxygenated blood for over a minute after his mother stopped breathing.

  At six months, Matthew had been considered viable—if delivered, he could have lived on his own. That meant that by killing Beth, the suspect had committed double, or capital, murder. In the years before Connecticut’s death penalty statute had been repealed, the murderer, if convicted, could have been sentenced to death by lethal injection.

  Reid looked through the file for information on Matthew’s DNA. He was surprised not to find it. Dr. Garcia, the state medical examiner, was very thorough. Reid would have expected to find a paternity test here. Not that there was any question about Pete being the father, but still, for the sake of trial, if and when it came to that, Reid liked having every base covered. It was the kind of detail a defense lawyer like Mac Green could attack.

  He picked up the phone and rang the ME’s office. Sally Driscoll, Dr. Garcia’s assistant, answered.

  “Hey, Sally. It’s Conor Reid.”

  “How’re you doing, Conor?”

  “Everything’s good. I’m just looking at the Beth Lathrop autopsy, and I don’t see paternity results for the child.”

  “Huh, let me check,” she said.

  Reid hung on the line, receiver pressed to his ear. His coffee had gotten cold, but he drank it anyway. He heard music playing through the line, as if Sally had a radio on at her desk.

  “Conor, did you request a paternity test?” she asked.

  The question was a punch in the gut. “No,” he said. “But I never do—I always assume it’s protocol.”

  “Dr. Garcia said you didn’t make the request, so he didn’t perform one,” Sally said. The music had been turned down, and her tone had become more formal. Reid pictured Humberto Garcia in the same room, perhaps glaring at her in his famous, heavy-browed way.

  “Okay, thanks, Sally,” Reid said and hung up. He tapped a pen on the page of Matthew’s autopsy conclusions and thought about it. A test would have been pro forma, would have been nice to have one, but they didn’t need it. Not really, anyway. But the lack of it made Reid’s stomach churn—it was his fault for not specifying.

  Reid didn’t want to leave Kate without answers. He had driven past her loft last night, seen the windows lit up and warm against the dark. The last few days, he’d gone to the Groton-New London Airport, where she kept her Piper Saratoga, and watched planes take off and land. He told himself it was meditative, a way to clear his mind and let ideas about the case come in sideways.

  Now, sitting at his desk, Reid considered the lack of DNA and believed that indicated a staged, rather than authentic, sexual assault. Sideways, he told himself. He still wanted Pete for the murder, but he was determined to stop focusing on any one suspect and not rule anyone out.

  The bedroom had been full of fingerprints: Beth’s, Pete’s, and Sam’s, of course, but also Kate’s, Lulu’s, Scotty’s, and Isabel’s. There were also several made by an unknown person. Most of Beth’s friends’ prints had been in the seating area, where a sofa and two chairs were arranged by a fireplace, where French doors opened onto a small balcony overlooking the distant beach and sea. It would make sense for Beth and her friends to sit there, enjoying the view. But he would check on that.

  He had looked at sex offenders in Southeastern Connecticut and found one of real interest.

  Twenty years ago, Martin B. Harris had been an astronomy professor at a community college in Baxbury. He had been married with two children. There had been a string of home invasions in the suburbs around the school. The crimes were violent, sexual in nature, but not always rape. The victims were white women ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-eight.

  The attacks always occurred early in the day, mostly during the summer. They took place in the woman’s house, on her own bed, and the scene was always strewn with lingerie—some owned by the victim, but most of the racier pieces brought by the perpetrator. DNA was everywhere, but it didn’t match anything the police had on file.

  Harris was arrested on a fluke. A witness had seen a blue Toyota driving away from the scene of one of the attacks, and she reported that it had a Baxbury Community College parking sticker on the bumper. Investigators scoured the college parking lots and found plenty of blue Toyotas. The owners were painstakingly cleared. But during one interview, a student reported that he sometimes parked his car next to his astronomy professor’s, and he noticed Dr. Harris almost always had a Frederick’s of Hollywood bag in his back seat.

  The police arrested him in his classroom. They had warrants for his home, office, and vehicle and found trophies taken from every home he had entered. His DNA matched. He had a penchant for black lace underwear and always brought some to his crime scenes, in case his victims had other taste.

  He’d accepted a plea deal for fifteen years. His wife had divorced him and taken the kids. The college had fired him.

  Reid read through Harris’s parole records and saw he had be
en released from prison two years ago and was living in a residence hotel in Silver Bay—one town over from Black Hall. He checked in with his parole officer once a week and was subject to unannounced drop-ins.

  Reid called Robin Warren, Harris’s parole officer, to give her a heads-up that he’d be stopping by Osprey House to question Harris.

  “Thank you for letting me know,” she said. “May I ask, why is he of interest to you?”

  “The Beth Lathrop case,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “That was a terrible thing.”

  “So you know the details?”

  “Those that have been made public, of course,” she said.

  “Did you think of Harris?”

  She paused for a long moment. Reid had worked with her before, found her to be thoughtful and thorough, an excellent officer studying for a master’s in psychology. She had lived in Zimbabwe as a child, and her accent was elegant and formal.

  “I saw similarities with Mr. Harris’s past crimes,” she said. “But no, I did not think of him in relation to this case.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He willingly undergoes anti-recidivism treatment. He takes two testosterone-suppressing drugs, and he goes to therapy once a week.”

  “What kind of therapy?” Reid asked, feeling weary. Psychological, and even drug, treatment for sex offenders was controversial at best.

  “I hear that tone in your voice,” she said with a hint of amusement. “Police officers are not inclined to believe it works. But it does. His doctor works with him on imaginal desensitization.”

  “Right,” Reid said. “Get those dirty pictures out of his mind.”

  “And thoughts. And desires to act.”

  “What about actual pictures? Does he like pornography? And how hard is it for him to stay away from Victoria’s Secret?”

  “Possession of any of those items would constitute a parole violation. And he would return to Ainsworth,” she said.

  The prison where Harris had been incarcerated.

  Warren asked if it was okay if she was present when he interviewed Harris, and he said sure. He grabbed his jacket from the hook behind his office door. The drive took twenty minutes, including a stop at a drive-through Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and a plain cruller. He burned his mouth on the coffee and scarfed down the cruller just before pulling up to Osprey House.

  The big, sprawling yellow Victorian building had a wide porch and a large cupola, and a hundred years ago, it had been a resort hotel. Now it was the land of broken toys: people whose luck had run out, who were trying to hide from a spouse or the law, who were trying to kick drugs or wanted an anonymous place to take them, who had lost their driver’s licenses and enjoyed the fact that cheap booze was just a two-minute walk away, whose income didn’t cover anything nicer than a tiny bedroom with a microwave and a shared bath down the hall.

  “Hey, Paul.” Reid waved to the manager sitting in the front office behind bulletproof glass. They had met on many occasions. Quite a few of Reid’s frequent flyers—people who often seemed to wind up in trouble with the law—found their way to Osprey House.

  “What’s up, Conor?” Paul O’Rourke asked, coming out to shake his hand. He was in his midfifties, with white hair and a bristly mustache, bright eyes, and a ready smile. Reid knew that his job was hard and that he was as much a bouncer and social worker as hotel manager.

  “I’ve come to see Martin Harris,” Reid said.

  “Ahh,” Paul said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Considering it’s not yet 4:00 p.m., you should find him at least semicoherent.”

  “Enjoys a drink?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Does he get belligerent?”

  “Braggadocio after he’s had a few—you know, how he used to be a professor, and he’ll fight anyone who says he wasn’t. To look at him now, you’d never believe he was. But mostly he keeps to himself.”

  “Has there ever been an incident? A woman complaining about him?”

  Paul shook his head. “No. We’re aware he’s on the SOR, but we’ve never had a problem with him.” He pointed at the stairway. “Room 408.”

  Reid walked up four flights. He wasn’t surprised that Paul would keep track of residents on the sex offender registry. The stairwell smelled antiseptic, trying to cover stale cigarette smoke and ancient vomit. Every few weeks the morgue was called here to remove a body—mostly overdoses, some accidental and some suicides. The walls were soaked with the sadness of lonely people drinking themselves to death in their small rooms.

  When he got to the top floor—the fourth—Reid walked slowly down the dark hall. Music and talk radio came from behind closed doors. There were eight rooms, two bathrooms. He heard a shower running. Room 408 was at the end on the right. Reid listened for a moment. Silence.

  He rapped loudly. Music and talk radio in the other rooms stopped. There was something about a loud knock that announced a cop.

  “Mr. Harris!” he said, knocking again.

  After a moment, the door inched open. A short, stout bald man peeked out. He looked bleary eyed and was in a white-ribbed undershirt and baggy, faded blue boxers. He stank of last night’s vodka.

  “Yes?” he asked. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Detective Conor Reid. Are you Martin Harris?” Reid asked.

  “I am,” he said, rubbing his eyes as if trying to wake himself up.

  Reid heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Robin Warren entering the hallway. She was about forty, dressed in a stylish off-white suit and matching heels. She wore her long dark hair braided around the crown of her head. She and Reid nodded to each other.

  “Robin, what’s this about?” Harris asked.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about Beth Lathrop,” Reid said.

  Harris had a strong, instantaneous reaction. He gasped, covered his mouth with his hand.

  “I read about that,” he said.

  “Did you know her?” Reid asked, all his senses activated as he watched the emotions cross Harris’s face.

  “No, I just felt sorry for her. And her family. Who would do that? Kill her and the baby?”

  “Did you ever want to kill one of your victims?” Reid asked.

  “Oh my God, no!” he said.

  “Do you mind if we step into your room?” Reid asked. “And look around?”

  “That’s fine,” he said, glancing at Warren. “But you’re not supposed to search, right, Robin?”

  “He can, if there is reasonable suspicion,” Robin Warren said in a kind voice.

  Reid stood in the room, barely big enough for a twin bed, bureau, closet, and microwave set on a countertop. The walls were blank except for a few postcards tacked above his bed. The wastebasket was half-full of empty nip bottles. Cans and cartons of chili, mac and cheese, and tuna, classic food pantry/soup kitchen fare, were stored on top of the microwave.

  Piles of books covered the floor—Reid glanced and saw titles by Carl Sagan and textbooks about stars and planets; self-help books titled Take Charge of Your Life NOW; The Past Was Never Your Friend; Say Hello to the Present (Your Greatest Gift); Turn Those Inner Demons into Angels!; and, most surprisingly, three novels by Danielle Steel.

  “What are your ‘inner demons’?” Reid asked.

  “Normal ones!” Harris says. “Everyone has them.”

  “Okay,” Reid said. So far he was just standing there, turning in a tight circle, seeing what was obvious to the naked eye. He hadn’t opened a drawer or the closet door.

  “I am very upset about this,” Harris said. “I haven’t done anything. Ask Robin! So how can you possibly say there’s ‘reasonable suspicion’?”

  Reid leaned close to look at the postcards above Harris’s pillow. There were five, all tourist shots of towns in Connecticut. Vineyards in Stonington, docks in Mystic, the ferry in Hadlyme, and Main Street in Black Hall.

  The shot of Black Hall showed the big white church and the Lathrop Gallery.

 
; “You like Black Hall?” Reid asked, lightning shooting down his spine.

  “I like all those towns,” Harris said, sounding nervous. “They’re beautiful. They have dark skies, perfect for seeing stars. Places I would like to live, buy a good telescope, and get back to my profession, when I get off parole.” He paused as if waiting for a question that never came, then clarified. “Astronomy. That is my profession.”

  “Been to the Lathrop Gallery?” Reid asked.

  “No, never.”

  “I asked if you knew Beth Lathrop,” Reid said.

  “And I said no!”

  “How about her husband? Pete Lathrop?”

  “No!”

  Reid straightened up. “Well, Mr. Harris,” he said. “This is what they call reasonable suspicion. I’m going to call for some Silver Bay police officers to take you to the station. And then we’re going to search your room.”

  “Robin,” Harris wailed.

  “Just do what he says,” she said sternly.

  “I need a drink before I go,” Harris said, sounding on the verge of tears.

  “That will have to wait,” Reid said, snapping on latex gloves, staring at the postcard of the gallery, his heart beating faster, knowing he was about to see what Harris had hidden in his drawers and what was written on the back of the postcard.

  25

  There were often late-afternoon thunderstorms at summer’s end, but today’s weather looked clear and fine for the flight to Cleveland. Kate stood on the tarmac, greeting David Stewart, a regular client, who had a board meeting. An elderly man with sharp blue eyes and a full head of white hair, he and his wife summered on Fishers Island.

  “Hello, David,” she said, and they shook hands.

  “Kate, I haven’t had a chance before now to tell you we’re so sorry about your sister. Lainie and I are heartbroken.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “She was an extraordinary woman.”

  “You knew Beth?” Kate asked, surprised.

  “Yes, she and Lainie both volunteered on Thursdays at the New London soup kitchen.”