His eyes rolled up toward the left side of his head; he was trying to remember. “Three years? Or four? No. Three. It would have been four, but the divorce came through a week before our wedding anniversary. Three years. Why?”
It was a legitimate question. “I’m trying to establish a timeline, Mr. Powell. How did you meet Rita Masters?”
“I used to work at the country club,” he said, as if that explained it.
“What country club is that?” I asked.
Powell looked at me as if I’d challenged him on the theory of gravity. “The Woodline Meadows Country Club, in Mendham,” he said with an air of obviousness. “The whole Masters family used to come by, and I was working there.”
“In what capacity?”
“I was a busboy.”
It seemed the wrong time to comment on the inherent cliché in the situation of a country club busboy meeting the wealthy daughter of the club’s prominent family, so I did not, but I saw Ackerman stifle a chuckle. Amelia Johnson rolled her eyes heavenward.
“How did the two of you become friendly?” I asked. It was the most diplomatic term I could conjure.
“Rita told me later she always had an eye for me when she’d come to eat at the club,” Powell said with a touch of pride in his voice—highly incongruous for him. “I didn’t realize it at the time; it never occurred to me she’d be interested.”
“Were you interested in her?” I asked.
“I didn’t notice her especially at the beginning,” he said. “I was mostly paying attention to my tables. You know, they really don’t like it if you don’t fill a half-empty water glass, or refold a napkin when someone leaves their seat for a moment. I didn’t want to get fired, so I just watched my tables.
“But this one night, after my shift was over, I walked out the back way—you know, the staff entrance—and there’s Rita, waiting for me. She asks if I’d walk her back to her car, and I say sure. I mean, it was probably a longer walk for her to go all the way around the building to get to the staff entrance than it would have been to go straight to her car, so I figure there’s no way I can tell her no. I’d have gotten fired if she complained.”
“You didn’t want to walk with her to the car?” Lapides asked. I thought it was a legitimate question.
“They didn’t like seeing staff—you know, male staff—with women members,” Powell explained. “You heard about it all the time. But I couldn’t tell her no, either. I guess there was some attraction from the beginning.”
But the walk to the car had become something much larger, and I asked Powell how that had developed. As I spoke, I noticed Ms. Washburn watching the screen intently. She wrote something in her notebook.
“She said she’d been watching me in the dining room, and she wanted to know what it was like to work for all the rich people in the club,” Powell explained. “I told her I really liked the job, even though I didn’t, because I figured I’d get fired if she told my boss I’d complained. We got to talking, and she sort of maneuvered me into asking her to a movie on my next day off.”
“And that’s when you started seeing her socially,” I said. Lapides furrowed his brow at the phrasing, and I wondered if I had somehow used it incorrectly.
“Yeah, we dated for a few months, and then Rita told me she was pregnant,” Powell said.
The impact of that statement was palpable in the room. Ackerman actually rocked back on his heels a bit, and Commander Johnson looked at his shoes, something I had not seen him do at any other time that day.
“I thought you did not have any children,” I said to Powell.
“Oh, we didn’t,” he answered. “That was something she told me so I’d marry her. And it worked. We got married a week later, as soon as we’d had blood tests and everything, in the courthouse in Morristown. We didn’t tell Rita’s mother or my parents until after, because we didn’t want them to try and talk us out of it.”
While this tale was interesting, it was not providing facts that would help answer either of the questions involved in the recent incidents at the institute. So I jumped far ahead. “Did your wife keep in touch after the divorce?” I asked.
Powell looked confused. “You mean, did she call or something?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“After the papers were signed, I never heard Rita’s voice again.”
That did not seem to add up. “How did you learn of your ex-wife’s death?” I asked Powell.
For once, the man’s face showed some emotion, and he seemed to shake the haze of medication or depression that had been his most noticeable characteristic. He looked angry.
“I read about it in the newspaper,” he snarled. “No call from her family, no letter of condolence, nothing from anybody. Just a five-paragraph obituary. I didn’t even get mentioned under ‘surviving.’ It was humiliating.” He slurred the word humiliating a bit, and I began to wonder if Powell was intoxicated.
“Did you know that she had decided to be preserved here at Garden State Cryonics?” Ackerman asked. He clenched his teeth, no doubt bracing himself against the answer causing him either insurance or legal difficulties.
“She had started talking about that right before we got divorced,” Powell responded, and Ackerman visibly relaxed, letting out a large breath. “Came home with a brochure, said something about how she could come back to life if they ever found out how to cure whatever was going to kill her. I thought it was nuts, frankly. I mean, suppose you get run over by a bus. They gonna find a cure for that?”
Ackerman opened his mouth to reply, then apparently thought better of it. I asked, “So your ex-wife was already discussing cryonics with you three years ago, before you separated?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I never gave it much thought. I mean, we were both in our thirties and it seemed like we had plenty of time to worry about what was going to happen when we got old. Maybe they’d find the cure before we got sick, and there’d be no reason to think about this freezing stuff. But we never really got the chance to discuss the whole thing before Rita decided she didn’t want to live with me anymore.”
Lapides had told me earlier that Powell was “shocked” when the detective had called with news of the theft at GSCI. I asked Powell, who appeared to be getting sleepy, whether he’d contacted his ex-wife’s family after her death.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with them,” he said. “You ask me, they’re the reason Rita decided to get a divorce.”
“Did she mention something about her family?” Ms. Washburn asked.
“No. But they didn’t like me from the beginning. Her mother always looked at me like I needed a shower. And her brother pretended to be my pal, but you could see he wished I’d go away.”
That seemed to contradict what Arthur Masters had told us. “Your ex-wife was in touch with her brother while you were married?” I asked.
“Sure. Called him once, maybe twice a week. They were thick as thieves.”
I looked at Ms. Washburn, who seemed as baffled as I felt. It was Lapides who pressed the issue, however. “Arthur Masters said she never spoke to him after you were married,” he told Powell.
“Then he’s lying.”
“You’re sure you’re remembering right?” Lapides tried. “Rita spoke to her brother at least twice a week?”
Powell nodded. “Every week. They got together for lunch every once in a while, too. The mother wouldn’t give her any money—that’s why Rita got the job at the bank—but her brother used to slip her something every once in a while over lunch. I never wanted to … to take it, but Rita said it was family money, and she was entitled to it.”
“Where did you wife work?” I asked him. There wasn’t going to be much more time. Powell’s speech was slowing, and he would not be especially helpful as a witness for much longer.
“At the United Station Bank in Morristown,
” he answered. “She was an officer in the bank by the time she quit working and left me.”
“She stopped working at the same time she filed for divorce?” That didn’t seem to make sense—Rita certainly would have expected less money, not more, when leaving her husband.
Powell nodded too enthusiastically, like an alcoholic trying to be sincere. “Stopped working the day she moved out of the house. Got herself an apartment in Madison. Started going to the country club again. My friends who still work there told me.”
I estimated, based on the tone of Powell’s voice and his half-closed eyes, that only one more question would be answered coherently. “Did you wife ever mention Dr. Rebecca Springer?” I asked him.
“Becky?” Powell said. “Becky Springer? They went to high school together.”
nineteen
I was correct about Powell—after he made that rather amazing statement, he was no longer a credible witness. His responses to questions tended to be off-topic, mostly concerning how much he had come to love his ex-wife and how stupefied he was when she left him. Beyond that, we got very little from him, so Lapides terminated the interview less than five minutes later.
“This question continues to become more perplexing the more we discover,” I told the assembled group. Lapides had checked with his Information Technology expert to be assured that the interview had been saved to a hard drive and a disk for later use. Now the Johnsons, Lapides, and Ackerman stayed behind Ackerman’s desk, while Ms. Washburn joined me in the larger part of the room. I paced; Ms. Washburn stood with her notebook and watched.
“Rita Masters-Powell and Rebecca Springer went to high school together?” Ackerman said. “Does that even mean anything?”
“Not necessarily.” Lapides, doing his best to be the detective in charge of the investigation, stood fully straight and made a great effort to appear confident. “Sometimes things really are just coincidences.”
“I don’t believe that is the case here,” I broke in. “Two women involved in these two crimes, that closely bound, and they had a previous relationship that went back decades. Ms. Masters-Powell knew Dr. Springer well enough in her adulthood that her ex-husband knows the name without having to check, even in what was clearly an impeded state of mind.”
“What about that?” Commander Johnson asked. “Isn’t is possible that Powell was just answering with what he thought you wanted to hear? By that point in the interview, he clearly was not completely awake and alert.”
I checked my watch. It was 5:07 p.m., which meant I no longer had to exercise every twenty minutes. That regimen is observed only from eight a.m. to five p.m., my normal hours at Questions Answered, in order to work most efficiently.
“If he had merely said that his ex-wife knew the doctor, that might have been his intention,” I answered. “But he added the context, that they knew each other since high school. That was not something he could have taken from my question; it was a detail he volunteered on the spot. I believe it to be true, but I imagine that your employee records on Dr. Springer will bear me out, won’t they, Dr. Ackerman?”
Ackerman sat back down at his computer station and readjusted the flat-screen monitor to face him in a seated position. He began to work the keyboard, and in less than a minute, stopped and scrolled down a page on his screen.
“Rebecca attended West Morris Mendham High School,” he confirmed. “I can check the educational records on Ms. Masters-Powell, but they probably show the same school during the same years.”
“Please do confirm it, though,” I said. “We want to be sure of our facts.”
Ackerman began the task, but Amelia Johnson was not willing to wait. “So they went to high school together,” she said. “I went to high school with Queen Latifah. Doesn’t mean we’re tied together in any way, shape, or form. She was just Dana Owens then, anyway.”
“We have some evidence, strictly on the word of Ms. Masters-Powell’s ex-husband, that they saw each other more recently than high school,” I reminded her. “Did Dr. Springer have any family?” I asked Ackerman.
“I told you,” Lapides broke in. “She was divorced and had no children, remember?”
“Yes, but did she have parents, siblings, someone in the area who might have known about her friends? Ackerman?”
“She did go to West Morris Mendham High School, and she was there for two years with Rita Masters,” Ackerman said, answering a question from a few minutes before. “Let me scroll up to her family records …”
“Where is this getting you?” Amelia demanded. “It’s not helping to clear my husband’s name.”
“Mrs. Johnson, our goal here is to arrive at the truth,” I informed her. “If we try to apply the facts to a theory, rather than collect facts and see where they lead us, we will no doubt arrive at an incorrect answer to the question.”
“What does that mean?” Amelia asked.
“We are not trying to vindicate the commander,” I explained. “We’re trying to find out what happened.”
Amelia’s eyes flashed anger, which startled me. It had never been my mission to advocate for the commander; it made no sense that she should expect me to do so. If her husband had indeed participated in either of the crimes being investigated—and there had been no conclusive evidence for either position on that question as yet—I would indeed be foolish to spend my time trying to prove his innocence. It would be like attempting to prove that the Boston Red Sox have won more World Series than the New York Yankees—no matter how much a dedicated Boston fan would like that proposition to be true, the facts clearly prove it otherwise.
But before Amelia could voice her indignation, Ackerman pointed to his screen. “Rebecca didn’t have any siblings, but her father is still living in Mendham,” he said, sounding proud of himself for his ability to look up his business’s own personnel records. “Has he been notified, detective?”
Lapides picked up a clipboard he had placed on a side table and began leafing through the pages clipped to it. After a moment, he said, “Yes. He was advised of the loss this morning.”
“Call him and ask if his daughter was close to Rita Masters-Powell,” I suggested.
Ms. Washburn coughed, which I interpreted as a way of getting my attention. “Maybe we could find a classmate, or a current friend, to ask,” she said. “I think Dr. Springer’s father might be a little upset today.”
I almost protested, thinking that Dr. Springer’s father would benefit from our discovering who had murdered his daughter, but it occurred to me that Ms. Washburn might be applying an emotional context that I may not have considered. Mother often does the same thing for me in certain situations. I have found it best to defer to her judgment in such situations.
“Perhaps so,” I agreed with Ms. Washburn. “Detective, have you found any close friends of Dr. Springer’s?”
Lapides went back to his clipboard. “There’s an Amy Fitzgerald,” he said. “She knew the doctor from medical school; she was an instructor there. I’ll have a uniform get in touch with her.”
“Maybe you could see to it yourself,” I urged. “It would be helpful for you to talk face-to-face to Ms. Fitzgerald, to gauge her reactions, her comfort level answering the questions.”
Commander Johnson’s eyes widened. “Lapides?”
“Yes?” the detective responded.
“No, I just meant … I’m saying, reading a person’s face, getting a feel for whether they’re lying …” The commander seemed to be backpedaling from something he had wanted to say. “It doesn’t seem like those are your best things.”
As soon as the commander began speaking, I turned my attention to Detective Lapides’s face. I’ve made it a priority to learn as much as I can about facial expressions. Their interpretation does not come naturally to me, so a great deal of practice has been necessary—and helpful—for me to read faces. I’m still not an expert, and perh
aps not even as proficient as a person without Asperger’s Syndrome, but I have come far from where I began.
In this case, it occurred to me from Commander Johnson’s tone that he was going to say something derogatory about Lapides, and as his speech progressed, that became more and more evident. Seeing how the detective reacted facially would tell me much about the situation, and about Detective Lapides.
At first, he looked merely surprised. But as the commander continued, the detective’s expression took on an air of sadness—he appeared to concur with Commander Johnson’s assessment of his interrogation technique, and was unhappy about what he saw as a major shortcoming. But by the time Commander Johnson finished speaking, Lapides’s expression had changed.
Now, he appeared purely angry.
“I can handle it,” Lapides said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you worry.”
Since I had seen the detective in action only when he was questioning Ms. Washburn and myself, my experience was limited, and my assessment incomplete. It was entirely possible that Commander Johnson’s expression of contempt was merited, but I could not be certain of that now. Again, it was Ms. Washburn who stepped in diplomatically to defuse the situation.
“Maybe you should bring Ms. Fitzgerald here, so that we can all see how well you do,” she suggested to Lapides. “I’ll bet you can prove Commander Johnson wrong.”
“That seems to be what everybody around here wants to do,” Amelia Johnson muttered.
Lapides took the bait, not having heard Amelia’s comment. “I’ll do just that,” he said.
With a new expression of determination on his face, Lapides turned to leave the room. But before he began walking, I noticed Ms. Washburn trying to catch my eye. She signaled toward Lapides with her eyes, and I nodded. I hoped the intent of the message was the same on both our parts; having worked with Ms. Washburn for just one day, I couldn’t be sure, but every instance so far had shown a rapport that I would have considered extremely unlikely after such a short acquaintance.
1 The Question of the Missing Head Page 12