“Yeah, because he wouldn’t,” Rob said. “I knew Lucas. He didn’t jump.”
“When was this?” Owen asked.
“Maybe twenty years ago,” Rob said.
“Twenty years?” Owen exclaimed. “Jesus, will you people lay off the ancient-history bullshit? We have a real case here. Now. Today. Do you have any interest in working it?”
“Yeah, of course we do,” Rob said, bristling.
“Then stop bringing up irrelevant nonsense and focus.”
“Sorry, Chief. You’re right,” Marv said.
Rob looked pissed and Gene grumbled something, but Owen had a case to solve. He couldn’t worry about hurting grown men’s feelings.
“You don’t think she jumped?” Rob said. “Why not? What does the ME say?”
“What the ME says might not be correct,” Owen began.
Seeing the skeptical looks around the table, Owen realized he needed definitive proof to back him up. He pressed the intercom and asked his secretary if a fax had come in for him from a Dr. Michael Chan in Boston. Within minutes, his secretary (and yes, Owen still had a secretary, but that’s because he was the chief) came in and put the report in his hands. Owen leafed through it quickly and immediately found the answer he’d been looking for.
“Gentlemen, this is a report from a highly respected forensic scientist who’s testified in some of the biggest murder cases in the country. I had him take a second look at the autopsy results, because our county medical examiner, believe it or not, has never handled a homicide case in his entire career.”
“We don’t get too many murders around here, Chief,” Marv said.
“You paid for an outside expert?” Rob said. Owen decided to ignore him.
“The county ME,” Owen continued, “noted that no water was found in victim’s lungs, signifying that she was dead before she hit the river. But he drew no conclusion from that fact about the manner of her death, other than to say it was caused by blunt-force trauma to the head. Fine, but then what? We need to know, does that mean someone hit her with a baseball bat and threw her in, or does it mean she jumped and hit a rock on the way down? The county ME didn’t have the guts to make a decision on that. Like a lot of mediocre bureaucrats, he pulled his punches. So I brought in Dr. Chan. Dr. Chan’s report, which I just received, concludes that Kate Eastman was killed by a blow to the head. The conclusion is based on the position of the injury to her cranium. That injury could only have been inflicted by an assailant who was standing behind her and striking downward. The bottom line is, we have a murder case to work.”
“What about crime scene evidence?” Rob asked. “Shouldn’t we be out searching around the old railroad bridge?”
“Why? I’ve now proved to you she didn’t jump. She was murdered. Her vehicle was found abandoned at the boat-launch parking lot off River Road, which is almost a mile away from that bridge you keep talking about, and over difficult terrain. She went missing on Friday night, when it was raining pretty hard. That makes it even less likely that she hiked to the bridge. I believe she was killed elsewhere, moved to the boat-launch parking lot in her own vehicle, then dumped into the river.”
“Where did the killer go after he dumped the body?” Womack asked. “If he moved her in her own vehicle and then abandoned it, he didn’t have a ride.” The asshole was obviously looking to shred Owen’s theory instead of fall in line. Owen knew he had to keep his cool.
“Don’t know,” Owen replied. “Maybe there was an accomplice. Maybe he took a cab for all we know. Feel free to look into that, Rob. I had Kate’s vehicle transported to the state police crime lab for a thorough search and analysis, so if the killer left a trace in there, we’ll find it.”
“If you’re so convinced nothing went down at the bridge, and that she was murdered, then where did it happen?” Rob asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question. One possibility is, she was killed in her own residence. Yesterday, Detective Charles and I responded there to notify the next of kin and request an official identification. We met her husband, a Mr. Griffin Rothenberg. He was passed out drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, and had an ugly bruise on his face that he couldn’t explain, and scratches on the backs of both hands. Scrapings were removed from under the victim’s fingernails, so hopefully we’ll get a match. The state police forensics lab is working with the ME to analyze evidence from the body. Since she was in the water for a while, hair and fiber evidence may be degraded, but we hope not. Oh, and the husband refused to cooperate beyond ID’ing the body.”
“He lawyered up?” Marv said.
“Not even. It’s not like he said he wanted a lawyer present but then he’d talk. He walked out on us. Wouldn’t consent to a search of premises so we could look for evidence that might explain what happened to her. To me, that’s a red flag. What kind of grieving husband doesn’t want to get to the bottom of his wife’s death?”
“It sounds like you already decided the husband did it,” Womack said. “So I guess you don’t have much use for us.”
Owen wanted to punch the guy, but he forced himself to take a deep breath instead. “Not at all. In fact, I have assignments for every one of you. Gene, you’re good with paperwork. I’d like to start working on a warrant application for Nineteen Dunsmore Street. I recognize that we don’t have probable cause yet. But we can lay out what we know so far and make contact with the county attorney to start the process. As additional facts come in, we add them to the warrant application so we can be ready to go as soon as possible. Every minute we delay is another minute Rothenberg could destroy evidence.”
“Yes, sir,” Gene said.
“Rob, you canvass the neighbors on Dunsmore Street and find out if anybody heard anything unusual on Friday night, which is when we believe Ms. Eastman went missing. Screaming, yelling, throwing things, bumps in the night. Anything indicating domestic violence could give us probable cause to search the house, as well as for an arrest warrant. But be discreet. We don’t need to spook Rothenberg and have him skip to Mexico.”
“All right,” Womack said, nodding.
“What about me, Chief?” Marv asked.
Marv was the one in whom Owen had the least confidence, but he had to assign him something or the guy would get miffed.
“Tell you what, Marv. You investigate any prior domestic violence complaints against Griffin Rothenberg. They moved to town recently. Before that, they were in New York. So check both places.”
“What about Keisha?” Marv said. “Can she check New York? Just because she doesn’t bother showing up for the meeting doesn’t mean she oughta get off without an assignment.”
Lazy POS, Owen thought.
“Keisha has plenty to do, all right? She’s out working a lead for me, something I asked her to look into. In fact, here she comes now.”
Through the glass partition, they watched as Keisha Charles yanked off her coat and scarf and dug through her briefcase. She strode into the conference room, bringing with her the bright, cold morning.
“Sorry I’m late, Chief, but when you hear what I found, I guarantee you’ll forgive me,” she said.
“Have a seat,” he said. “Fill us in.”
Keisha took an open chair and rummaged through her folders, picking out one and laying it open on the table.
“Last night you gave me two assignments. First, find out everything there is to know about Kate Eastman’s husband Griffin Rothenberg. So let’s start there. Griffin Rothenberg, Carlisle graduate in economics, is the only child of one Martin Allen Rothenberg, whose name you’re probably familiar with—”
A string of whistles rang out around the table, accompanied by a “Holy shit,” from Rob Womack.
“—because he was prosecuted for a major insider-trading scheme and financial fraud. Rothenberg Capital Partners. Not quite Bernie Madoff scale, but close. His entire company went under, and ten of his closest associates went to jail with him.”
“You know, that doesn’t surprise m
e one bit,” Owen said. “That guy had an attitude, didn’t he?”
“He sure did, Chief,” Keisha said.
“Like father, like son,” Owen asked. “Do you think there could be a connection between Kate’s death and that fraud case?”
“You mean, was the son involved in his father’s crimes? Did the wife know something she shouldn’t? That sort of thing.”
“You never know.”
“I’ll look into it. It could provide a motive.”
“Even if there’s no direct connection, we know Griffin Rothenberg was once a rich sonofabitch, and now he’s down on his luck, living in a dump and drinking all day. That could be a motive, too. Who knows, maybe his wife had money. Maybe he took out an insurance policy. We need to look into all these angles,” Owen said.
“Speaking of angles,” Keisha said, “Maureen, the night dispatcher, told me an attractive blond woman came to pick Rothenberg up last night. She only caught the first name. Aubrey. I think that might be this woman who teaches at the yoga studio in Riverside I go to sometimes. I’m gonna check into it.”
“Good,” Owen said.
“Next, you asked me to find out what I could about the marriage. Smart, Chief. I hit pay dirt.”
She pulled a sheaf of papers from a folder and handed it to Owen. “Kate Eastman filed for divorce from Griffin Rothenberg at the Belle County Courthouse. She filed, not him. That’s a copy of the divorce complaint. Take a look at the date stamped on the top.”
“That’s—it can’t be. Is that this past Friday?” Owen said.
“Yes!” Keisha said triumphantly. “The victim filed for divorce on Friday morning, and the papers were served on the husband at his home address a few hours later. The same day she disappeared. Is that motive, or what?”
“Not only is it motive, that’s probable cause right there,” Owen said. “A woman goes missing the same day she serves her husband with divorce papers, then she turns up with a fractured skull, dumped in the river. The husband has a big bruise on his face and scratches on his hands. That settles it. We’re going to the judge right away to get a warrant on that house,” Owen said, and stood up.
Owen wasn’t about to drag his feet and risk letting that creep Rothenberg get away with killing the lovely Kate. He knew something the others didn’t, something sensational that had been in the ME’s report. He’d kept it on the down low so it didn’t get splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the state. Kate Eastman was murdered on her fortieth birthday, the same day she filed for divorce. And on that day, Kate Eastman was ten weeks pregnant. That bastard had murdered his pregnant wife. Owen planned to lock him up for that crime if it was the last thing he did.
25
The day after he identified Kate’s body from photos at the Belle River police station, Griff woke up on the sofa in Aubrey’s cabin, feeling like he was coming down with the flu. He had a sore throat and burning eyes, his entire body ached, and the left side of his face was puffed up and tender, like he’d cracked a tooth. Griff got up and searched through the medicine chests in the bathrooms and the cabinets in the kitchen and came up empty. How was it possible that in this entire house there was not one godforsaken item that could help him? No furry old Advil at the bottom of a drawer. No vodka stashed in the back of a cupboard. Not even an expired box of mac and cheese that he could mix with water and eat from the pot to try to dispel the chill. Instead he found dried-up toothpaste, old bottles of ketchup and Sriracha, and a half-eaten jar of blueberry preserves in the fridge. He stood at the sink and ate the preserves with a spoon. After that, he still had a growling stomach, and endless time on his hands to mourn what was lost.
That list was long. Griff had no wife, no money, and no friends except Aubrey (who was really more hanger-on than true friend). His phone was out of battery and he didn’t have a charger. He was stranded without a car—didn’t even own a car, since Kate had taken the BMW and now the cops had impounded it. He had no idea when Aubrey was coming back and no way to reach her, since there was no landline that he could see. He had no advisers and no lawyers at a moment when he surely needed them. He didn’t even have religion to comfort him, because he lost his faith years ago when his mother left them out of the blue to go back to Sweden.
This dark moment was always coming for him. Maybe it was where he was fated to spend the rest of his life, or maybe it was a test, the first step on a perilous journey to some other, happier existence.
Griff built a nest of cushions on the floor as close to the woodstove as he could get without singeing his clothes, and lay down on top of it, wrapping himself in an ugly afghan from the sofa. He stared up at the cathedral ceiling and tried to think straight, but drew a blank. The ceiling was made of a raw, silvery wood that Aubrey told him had been salvaged from a historic local barn. That’s how the people were around here—they wanted to tell you about the provenance of the wood in their houses. They would explain how they’d grown the tomatoes you were eating using only organic methods, and that their children went to schools that had no walls, where they made musical instruments from found objects. In a moment of delusion when they first moved up here, Griff thought it might be worthwhile to be a part of that. He’d investigated buying a small organic farm, and when that proved too expensive, getting some chickens for the backyard, though it turned out raising chickens in downtown Belle River was against the law. He’d even talked to Kate about having a child.
Hah.
When Griff’s father’s empire collapsed, the only part he truly minded was seeing his suddenly old and frail-looking father go to jail. That was partly for his father’s sake and partly for his own, because Marty Rothenberg was a surprisingly loving dad, and Griff missed him very much. (His mother was a different story.) The money, on the other hand, he was glad to see the back of. Nobody believed that, but it was true. All the money had ever done was separate him from people, make it hard to tell who actually cared about him and who just wanted something.
Take Kate, for example. He always thought they were exactly alike. They’d grown up together, in the same rarefied air. The doorman buildings on park blocks. The gated communities filled with lavish second homes standing empty till their owners cared to visit. The islands whose runways accommodated only private jets. Naturally they kept bumping up against each other over the years. There were some differences. Her family was merely wealthy, where his had the riches of sultans. But the class difference between them made up for that. Her people came over on the Mayflower. His father was born in Brooklyn, had stubby fingers, and always wore cheap suits to prove he wasn’t ashamed of where he came from. Griff’s fashion-model mother had bequeathed him her blond hair and bone structure, but he had his father’s heart (and short stature). His father was a mensch, a man of the people, and his crimes had been driven mainly by the desire to make other people happy. Nobody else saw that, but Griff did. He saw the good in everyone. For instance, he’d always seen the good in Kate Eastman.
The first time he laid eyes on her was at a middle school dance. People thought they’d met at Odell, but no, it was earlier, just a few months after his mother left. He was in seventh grade at St. Alfred’s and she went to Miss Kent’s, and the two schools held mixers sometimes to justify the expensive dance lessons a lot of the kids still took. He’d been smoking cigarettes in the bathroom with a couple of buddies to avoid talking to the girls, and they got chased out by one of the chaperones. As he stepped back into the dimly lit gym, he had a vision that changed the course of his life. People moved aside like the Red Sea parting, and there was this girl standing alone, bathed in a white light. She was dazzlingly beautiful, and she looked bored. Of course, he later realized that Kate was by herself that night because she thought the other girls in her grade were beneath her. But at the time, Griff was enough of a romantic to believe she was waiting for him. He was a loner in a crowd even then, and desperate for a soulmate. But he didn’t tell her that. Instead he told her that he had a car and driver waiting do
wnstairs if she was up for going to Brooklyn to get a slice of decent pizza.
“Do you have any rum?” she asked. “I’d love a rum and Coke.”
“The car has a mini-fridge. We can probably dig up something.”
They made out in the backseat all the way down the FDR and over the Brooklyn Bridge. The Manhattan skyline viewed out the back window of the car looked so beautiful that it made him want to cry. After that, they were never really apart. Except for weeks and months and years here and there, and all the time she spent with other men. But he didn’t count that.
The years Kate was in Europe were the hardest. He felt robbed of his Carlisle experience because he couldn’t spend that time with her. She never wrote to him and never called, so he stopped trying to contact her directly. Always he was missing her, longing for her, maneuvering to get information about her. When he did hear about her, it was worse, because of course Kate was fine without him. She’d been at some party, or gallery opening, with some handsome Frenchman (and they were always men, much older, sometimes married), and she’d—what?—said something impossibly witty, or looked incredibly chic, dyed her hair pink, or dropped a wad of cash on a crazy bet. She was always doing breathless and exciting things, it seemed, in Paris, without him.
For Griff, there was never anybody else. He’d been imprinted at too early an age. Oh, gaggles of girls chased him, of course; he was extremely rich and not bad-looking, and wherever he went, a party followed, because he paid for it. He never enjoyed it, though. He let other girls blow him to ease the frustration, a few he even fucked, but none of them did he really notice. He resented the loneliness, mainly because Kate’s absence seemed unnecessary. Something unfortunate had gone down at the bridge that night, but couldn’t they have paid the other family off? That’s what his father would have done. Really, was it worth giving up a Carlisle degree and ending up with some useless piece of paper from that place in Switzerland where the louche aristocrats of Europe sent their least promising children? Kate was never able to get a proper job after that, just PR things and fashion stuff through friends of friends, where her looks and pedigree were sufficient credentials. Forget the financial sacrifice; it was a waste of a fine mind. He thought she was one of the smartest people he’d ever met.
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