“You’re up,” Martin said seemingly arbitrarily, coming in and gripping one of her shoulders.
Hunter walked in and John Dunn came out. She took a seat at the table beside Kyle Samuels, the sheriff’s detective, and nodded hello.
“Mr. Champlain, Amy Hunter, Maryland State Police. I’d just like to ask a couple of follow-ups.”
His face softened with cordiality even as his eyes gave her a quick once-over. It was warm in the room. Hunter caught a trace of expensive cologne. She glanced at her notes.
“Sir, I just want to clarify, we need to ask these questions: You said it didn’t surprise you that your wife had gone to the bluff at Widow’s Point to watch the sunset this evening. She went there frequently, you said?”
“Sporadically.”
“Sporadically. And she would take pictures of sunset there?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes the Bay. Or the trees. That’s correct.”
“Okay. And you’re aware there’s no evidence of a camera or a cell phone at the scene.”
“No, they just asked me that,” he said, his eyes turning, with a flicker of annoyance, to the other detective. “I’m guessing it fell in the Bay.”
“In fact, your wife didn’t normally use a camera, did she? She used her cell phone as a camera, isn’t that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“And as I understand it, a lot of her artwork came from photos she’d taken on her phone, isn’t that right?” His eyes gave her another quick up and down. Hunter cleared her throat and checked to make sure her shirt was buttoned properly. “And sometimes, she’d take pictures of people when they didn’t know it.”
There was a tiny delay in his response. “Sometimes.”
“Was that ever a source of friction between you?” Hunter asked.
“Was that—?” Crinkles formed around Champlain’s eyes and then he smiled; for an instant she saw something he didn’t want her to see. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Didn’t you argue earlier this week about a particular photo she’d taken on her cell phone?”
The other detective squared up his papers perpendicular to the table.
“Say that again,” Champlain said.
Hunter felt her heart accelerate. She said it again.
“No.”
“Hadn’t you and your wife been arguing in recent days, sir? And hadn’t one of those arguments been about a photo on her cell phone?” Champlain watched her evenly. He said nothing. “And during one of those arguments, hadn’t you said that if you wanted to, you could make her disappear and no one would ever find her?”
He looked at the other detective, who was making a subtle sound in his throat. “No,” he said.
Hunter was about to ask him about the necklace when Martin came into the room, waving a folder as if something had just come up. He handed it to Kyle Samuels and touched Hunter’s shoulder. Meaning she was relieved.
She looked back before closing the door. Champlain gave her a shrewd, wide-eyed look. It could’ve meant anything.
“ ‘Two questions’?” Martin said. He looked like a dad about to upbraid his teen daughter. “Can you put that in writing, about the photo?”
“Of course.”
Gerry Tanner came into the room a few minutes later and sat down. The three of them watched the interview in silence for a while, jotting notes.
“If he’s not guilty, he’s a good actor,” Tanner said, to Hunter.
“Even if he is guilty,” she said. In fact, the whole thing resembled a performance, Hunter was thinking. When Champlain let his guard down, his wife’s death seemed an inconvenience more than anything else—than a tragedy or a personal loss.
“He’s cooperating,” Tanner said, after Martin left the room, “but he wouldn’t turn over his phone. Did you hear that?”
“Why?”
“Claims confidential business transactions. He gave Dunn his business manager’s name.”
“What is it?”
Hunter wrote it down and filed a mental note to ask Dunn about this. She stayed for the remainder of the interview and then, after Tanner left, she stayed while state police investigators recorded interviews with Joseph Sanders, Elena Rodgers, and Sally Markos, all of whom had worked for Champlain.
Sanders, Champlain’s driver and “assistant,” was a large, gruff-speaking man with a beat-up-looking face who seemed to struggle with some of his sentences. He had been out fishing alone in his runabout that afternoon, he said, then stopped at a bar called the Harbor Loon, at about 7 P.M., to have “a couple” beers. He was “off duty” today, he said three or four times.
Elena Rodgers, a personal assistant to Champlain, was an athletic-looking woman in her late thirties, wearing a dark windbreaker and a slightly sullen expression. She had been in her room at the Old Shore Inn all afternoon reading, then joined her boss in the private dining room at Kent’s Crab House several minutes past nine. It was a “business meeting slash dinner,” she said. Rodgers was terse and businesslike and several times flashed a look of impatience—an upside-down smile—as if disgusted that the detectives had found it necessary to interview her.
Sally Markos, Champlain’s house cleaner, was a dark, waifish-looking woman with frizzy shoulder-length hair. She couldn’t get through more than a few words without crying, a response that became almost theatrical at times, Hunter thought. She’d been home with her husband, she said, watching television tonight. She named the shows: Wheel of Fortune, followed by Jeopardy and back-to-back episodes of Forensic Files.
None of the interviews was very useful, although something about Sanders’s story felt off. The detectives picked up on that, Hunter noticed. Some of it may’ve been that he was drinking and had to sober up to talk with them. But there was a discrepancy in his recollection of times—when he’d arrived at the bar, when he’d left—that sounded as if he was spontaneously trying to invent an alibi. And when this discrepancy was pointed out, his face colored and he said, “I can’t remember exactly.”
It was past midnight when Amy Hunter swiped her badge into Homicide. Inside was a reception desk and four small offices—one for Tanner, one for Fischer, one for her; the fourth was open, used as a conference room and sometimes by their supervisor, Henry Moore. She was surprised to see that Tanner and Fischer were both still here. Tanner’s door stood wide open, Fischer’s about two inches. It was only a couple of minutes before Tanner was in her office.
“The alibi seems to check,” he said, resting a hip on a corner of Hunter’s worktable and opening his worn-out leather notebook. “We’re pulling highway surveillance.”
“Alibis are sometimes overrated, though.”
“Yeah.” Tanner studied her. “Why, what are you thinking?” Hunter shrugged. “You think the husband did this.”
“I think it’s possible he was involved. Whether he was here or not.”
Tanner waited for more, staring with his long wooden face. He had a spiel he gave about how cheap opinions were. My daddy used to say you ought to have a license before they allow you to carry an opinion. It was ironic considering how much he liked to hear other people’s opinions.
“Sanders’s story had problems.”
“I know,” she said.
“You think he was involved?”
Hunter shrugged. “What do you think?”
“Maybe Champlain arranged it?” he said. “Made sure he was out of town when it happened?”
“Why, though?” she said.
“The usual, I guess. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall. D-I-V-O-R-C-E?” He spoke each of the letters, like in the song. Tanner’s voice had a wide, expressive range, but his face never changed. The effect could be slightly comical. “Save him a ton of money if she had an accident before that happened.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe,” Hunter said. “Except I don’t know that they were at that stage in their marriage. I don’t think they were.”
“Speculation.”
“I know. It’s too early for that. We’ll know more when we hear from the M.E. There was a broken nail,” she added. “Something under her other nails, might be skin cells.”
“Lump on the back of her head, too, right?”
“Yes. Although she may have just hit her head on the way down.”
“That’s what the sheriff’s saying,” Tanner said. “Of course, maybe it was an accident.”
“Maybe.” Hunter gave him a cursory smile. “But I don’t think so.” Tanner stared, expecting her to say more. But Hunter wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Several minutes after Tanner left for the night, giving her his “Hasta la Vista,” Fischer emerged. He filled his coffee cup with cooler water and then leaned against Hunter’s doorway.
“How’s Geronimo?” he asked. Gerry Tanner’s real name was, in fact, Geronimo, although no one called him that. Hunter shrugged, knowing better than to get between them. Fischer was a fitness and organic food nut, half Cuban, half African-American. He was one of the most meticulous and focused investigators Hunter had known. But, unlike Tanner, he wasn’t a people person. He was great at sorting through information, finding a story in piles of data.
“What can I do?” he said.
Hunter had been waiting for him to ask; she was as pleased to give Fischer an assignment as he was to receive it. Fischer readied his pen to write on his steno pad.
“I’d like to know more about Champlain’s whole setup here.”
“ ’kay.”
“Who he’s with and why. Backgrounds on everybody. Sanders is his bodyguard, supposedly, Elena Rodgers his personal assistant. There’s a part-time housekeeper named Sally Markos. Where are they from? Can we run checks on all of them?”
“ ’course.” Fischer was writing.
“I’d like to pull security tapes, too, anything we can find for the past week.”
“M’kay.” Where Tanner would’ve asked “Why? What’re you thinking?” Fischer just listened and jotted notes.
Hunter told him then about the necklace she’d discovered on the beach. “It’s possible she was fighting with someone and, in the process, the perp ripped off her necklace. There seemed to be scrapes on Susan’s neck and upper right arm. I didn’t have a chance to ask her husband about the necklace, but I will. In the meantime, let’s see if it turns up in any surveillance pictures.”
“M’kay.”
Afterward, Hunter sat at her desk, trying for some time to fit the details of Susan Champlain’s death into some kind of pattern that made sense. She couldn’t. She printed out a photo of Susan, the only one she’d found online: taken four years ago, at a fund-raiser, with her new husband, “Philadelphia developer Nicholas Champlain.” Hunter cut Nick Champlain from the picture and tacked the image to her corkboard. She printed a second one to take home. Something maybe to replace the one in her head—Susan Champlain’s body contorted on the beach, in front of a gallery of onlookers, before the partition went up.
She was driving out of the parking lot at last when Henry Moore’s number came up on her phone.
“Wow,” she said. “Surprised you’re calling so late.”
“I wouldn’t be, except I just saw you leave the building.”
“Oh. You’re still there?”
“Getting ready to leave.” That was odd.
“Why so late?”
Moore sounded tired. He was a brusque man with a soft center, who often skipped over the niceties. “I was talking with Dunn. I’m told we’re not getting directly involved in this one. They’re going to push that it was an accident.”
Hunter felt her heart begin to beat faster. “Not surprising, I guess.”
“Not surprising.” She suspected Moore had talked, too, with State’s Attorney Wendell Stamps; Stamps was the silent arbiter in Tidewater County, where too many competing agencies worked the same turf. “Except,” he said, “I think we probably should be involved.”
“I do too,” Hunter said. Good. She listened to him breathing. There was a saying she’d heard years ago: homicide investigation is God’s work. It came back to her at times like this. “Why, what are you hearing?”
“Nothing specific. I think there’s another shoe that’s going to drop.”
“Literally,” she said.
“What?”
“I mean, there’s literally another shoe,” Hunter said. “They only found one of Susan Champlain’s sandals.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Hank Moore chuckled. “I was thinking figuratively.”
“I know.”
“It’s late. Let’s talk in the morning.”
“All right.”
LOOKING UP FROM his laptop, Luke followed the thin white line of surf that traced the shoreline down to Widow’s Point, where it suddenly vanished into darkness. The early-morning air was cool and unsettlingly quiet, the moon veiled by drifting clouds. Unable to sleep, Luke had come out onto the back deck to sip a glass of bourbon and to ponder his Sunday sermon. Falling was no longer a feasible topic.
Yesterday, Susan Champlain had come to him asking for help. Luke had advised her to rely on faith, to surrender her fears and troubles to God. Ask and he will reveal himself to you. He’d prayed with her, and for her, and quoted lines from Psalm 37, the psalm of patience. The next evening, Susan Champlain was dead.
Luke knew he wasn’t supposed to explain that. Tragedies happened every day for no evident reason, the result of cruel or random violence, indiscriminate disease, other people’s carelessness. “Why does God let them happen?” was for many people the defining question, the simplest and most persuasive argument against the existence of God. There were good answers in Scripture, but not the sorts of answers people wanted to hear. The good answers required patience, and the long, slow learning of a new language, a language of faith. There were better questions, too. Better than, “Why does God let them happen?” But that was a question that never went away; and on nights like this, when the tragedy felt personal, Luke even found himself, against his better judgment, trying to answer it.
He surfed through the local news again, seeing that there was a short item now on the Channel 14 website: “Tidewater PD Investigates Fatal Fall.”
An unidentified woman died tonight in an apparent accidental fall from the bluff at Widow’s Point in Tidewater County. The woman was discovered on the beach by a couple walking their dog at around 8:30. Details are pending.
The bulletin was followed already by a couple of anonymous posters: “RIP.” And: “Sad story. Supoosely the lady’d been drinking?” Which drew another reply: “SUPOOSELY? WHOSE been drinking?”
Luke glanced again at the darkness where Susan had fallen, thinking about the famous passage from James 4:14, comparing life to “a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Maybe that would be his sermon.
Realizing he hadn’t checked e-mails for several hours, Luke called up his AOL account. Perhaps Susan Champlain had responded during the day, he thought. But she hadn’t.
He logged on to his church account, checked e-mails and spam, for something else to do.
And there it was, in spam: an e-mail from SWilkins79. Sent to him at 2:47 P.M. that afternoon.
Wilkins was Susan Champlain’s maiden name.
Luke’s heart began to race. He clicked open the e-mail, and read the brief message she had sent him: Pastor Bowers, I’ll call this aft. Thanx for listening. These are the pix. Please keep in STRICT confidence until we can talk. SC.
There were three photo attachments with the e-mail, which was probably why it had been kicked into spam.
Luke clicked on the first: side view of a large, paint-chipped Victorian house. T
he second was a mangy field of weeds; in the distance a chain-link fence and a basketball hoop, beyond it some buildings.
The third he recognized right away: it was the image she’d shown him from her phone. The empty wooden room, two men talking, a mirror, a slant of sunlight.
Moments later, the screen door squeaked, startling him. Sneakers’s toenails clicked enthusiastically onto the porch. Just behind him was Charlotte in her silk bathrobe and flip-flops. She hadn’t turned on any lights.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Her nose twitched and she made a face, detecting the bourbon. “Come to bed.”
“Can’t sleep.”
Charlotte leaned down so her face was touching his. Her skin felt warm and smooth.
“That’s the photo,” she said.
“Yeah. She sent it to me at church this afternoon. I just now found it.”
“How about that.” She straightened up, breathing in the air. Luke looked down at the line of surf again, to the darkness at Widow’s Point. “You better send it to Hunter,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.”
He looked at the clock on the bottom of the screen. “Probably too late to call her now.”
But, of course, it wasn’t.
Chapter Nine
Amy Hunter looked more disheveled than usual Thursday morning, wearing a wrinkled blue men’s shirt, tails out, faded jeans, work boots, her dark medium-length hair sticking up in back. A can of Diet Coke was on her desk, two empties in the recycle can.
It was seven and a half hours since Luke had discovered Susan’s images in his church e-mail account, and he was now looking at them blown up on the three monitors in Hunter’s office at the PSC. The FBI had them, too, she said; she expected she might hear something back later in the day.
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