by Gregory Ashe
“Is there a key?” Hazard asked. “We’ll need to secure the study as best we can.”
One by one, the remaining guests shook their heads. Then Meryl said, “Oh, wait. There is a key. The—well, I don’t know what you call him. The caretaker, the host, the guy in charge of the event, he had some keys that he showed Benny. I think he said he was leaving them in the laundry room in case we needed them.”
“Fine,” Hazard said. “I’ll see about that.”
“In the meantime,” Somers’s said, his voice taking on a firm, commanding tone that somehow blended with its normal ease, “Let’s all go down and join Benny. Right now.”
To Hazard’s surprise, the remaining guests filed past them and down the hall. Columbia lingered for a moment, licking her upper lip as she studied the two detectives before slowly joining the procession.
Somers let out a breath. “Maybe you should guard them.”
“Not if you want anyone left to question,” Hazard said grimly. “I’ll go see about the study.”
“Please?” Somers said, his eyes big and pleading.
Hazard didn’t answer; he just trotted back towards the stairs.
“You owe me,” Somers called after him.
Hazard found the keys exactly where Meryl had said, and he took them and headed back towards the entryway and paused. Something wasn’t right, and he wasn’t sure what it was. He took a step towards the front door. The sun had risen almost halfway across the sky, and now a fat beam of sunlight poured through the high windows. It fell across the entryway, illuminating clumps of snow along the floor.
That was it, Hazard realized. A trail of snow led through the entryway, stopping at the stairs. Hazard considered it for a moment and then moved closer to examine it. Already the snowy shoe prints were beginning to melt. In a matter of minutes, the snow would be nothing more than water.
A prickle ran up Hazard’s spine. The only people in the house who had been outside were he and Somers. And Hazard’s last trip outside had been five or ten minutes ago—much too long for the snow to still be solid. These tracks were still semi-firm. The snow had been deposited recently, while Hazard and Somers had been escorting the other guests to the dining room. It took Hazard only an instant to realize what this meant: there was someone else, someone they hadn’t yet met, at Windsor.
SOMERS HELD A MUG OF COFFEE in his hand and studied the remaining guests, who huddled together at the end of the dining room. In daylight, the room lost some of its grandeur; sunlight revealed the fading woodwork, the scratches in the floor, the faint stains on the table linens. Cold ash choked the fireplace, and Somers shivered, remembering how close he and Hazard had come to death the night before.
The warm coffee helped, some. It helped even more that Somers had brewed the coffee himself, allowing none of the guests to help with the preparation. In the daylight, poison seemed like a distant possibility, but there was something about this house, about its pseudo-Victorian architecture, its faded glory and the superficial efforts to restore it, that made Somers think of secret doors and madness and buried secrets. He kept the coffee pot close and decided that he wasn’t being too ridiculous.
It had been half an hour or so since Hazard had gone upstairs to examine the study; it might take all day for Somers’s partner to process the room, depending on how many fingerprints he found and how much other evidence he needed to bag, tag, or otherwise document. It was, Somers thought, maybe the most interesting Thanksgiving in his thirty-four years, but definitely not the most enjoyable.
And while his partner worked on solving the case, Somers was relegated to glorified babysitting. It had been Somers’s own idea, of course, but somehow that made it worse because Hazard hadn’t objected. Hazard hadn’t even pretended to want Somers to process the crime scene. Even if Hazard hadn’t intended anything by it, the message was clear: he might trust Somers to watch his back, but he preferred to do the real police work himself. Hazard thought John-Henry Somerset would best spend his time making sure these spoiled yuppies didn’t tear each other’s hair out. At least, that’s how it was starting to seem to Somers as he sat in the dining room, stewing.
But stewing wasn’t really in Somers’s character, and a plan of action presented itself, and he felt the worst of his irritation slough away. Turning towards the gathered guests, he called, “Leza, would you come over here for a minute?”
Leza gave her colleagues a long look before drifting down to sit across the table from Somers. She wasn’t exactly a pretty woman; Somers put her age at the low forties, and time had scrawled lines around her mouth and eyes that she was doubtless trying to hide with various creams and powders. More than her age, though, it was the false note in her whole presentation that made her unattractive. Somers couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was there: something about Leza Weaver was off. Something was off about all of these people, but with Leza, it slid to the surface from time to time, and it left Somers feeling like he was trying to see through drying paint.
“Well,” Leza said, stirring her coffee slowly and then slipping the spoon between her teeth, her dark-red lips tensing around the metal. Her eyes studied Somers, and then she lowered the spoon. “We’re all alone in a very cold house. I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how to stay warm.”
“Ms. Weaver—”
“Miss Weaver.” She leaned towards him, letting the robe slip lower on her shoulders. “What are you? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Barely more than a boy. I could give you the ride of your life. Things you’ve never even heard of.”
In spite of his best efforts, Somers’s eyebrows shot up, and he coughed slightly. “I don’t think that would be appropriate. Not considering the circumstances.”
“Of course,” Leza said, and she seemed to remember—how had she forgotten?—where they were. “Terrible thing, really.”
“Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“Not at all.” She waved a hand at the other guests. “They’re dying to hear what we’re talking about, you realize.”
“Let’s speak quietly, then.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Could you tell me about finding Mr. Strong?”
“It was horrible.” The words lacked Leza’s normal buoyant flippancy, and Somers guessed they were the closest thing to genuine he’d heard from her. “I opened the door, and there he was—God, he didn’t even look like Thomas at first, and I thought it was some part of the game, really tasteless, and then, I don’t know, the smell, and I—well, I screamed. Ta-ta feminism, but I did, I just screamed my head off. I’m not going to feel bad about it.”
“You shouldn’t. It’s perfectly normal.” Somers paused. “What made you open Mr. Strong’s door?”
“Because he asked me to.”
“Excuse me?”
Leaning forward, dropping her voice, Leza said, “Detective, I hope you were serious when you said you can protect me.”
“We’ll do everything we can.”
“I may know who the killer was.”
“Really? Why didn’t you mention this when we spoke earlier?”
“A lady likes to be pursued, Detective.” Leza drew a small phone from her pocket, touched the screen, and extended it towards Somers. “And I was still in shock. Once I started thinking about it, though—well, you’ll see. You mustn’t breathe a word of this, not until you’re sure it’s safe.”
Somers studied the screen. On it, a text message appeared from Thomas Strong. It had been sent at 9:30pm, the night before, and the message was brief: Leza, plz check in tomorrow morning. About to have the showdown with Col. Probably need to start paperwork in the morning. Document everything.
“Who is Col?”
With a sniff, Leza slid her gaze towards Columbia. At the moment, the dark-haired woman was speaking to Adaline, their heads together. “Thomas was . . . opinionated. He refused to call her Columbia. Just Col. It was as close as he would get.”
“Why?”
“He thought the whole thing was a joke. Not very forward-thinking, Thomas.”
“What whole thing?”
“Columbia. The name. I mean, it’s one thing if you want to grow out your hair and wear a dress. These are Thomas’s words, mind you, not mine. But he’d always say it was just a game ‘those’ people liked to play.”
Somers felt pieces tumble into place: Columbia’s husky voice, the shape of her face and jaw, her hands, her shoulders. “Columbia is trans?”
“She—he—was Colin up until about six months ago. It’s been costing a fortune in insurance premiums; Thomas wanted the company to have the whole upper-crust, premium package feel, and he made the mistake of choosing a plan for the executives that covered transitioning. Colin seized the opportunity, and Strong, Matley, Gross started hemorrhaging money when we had to renegotiate premiums.”
“Was this an issue between Mr. Strong and Miss Squire?”
“Oh, Thomas might have said something about it at first, but you know, nobody really took what he said to heart. He was a grump, that’s all.”
“Excuse me, but that text message didn’t sound like it was leading up to a pleasant meeting.”
Leza’s lips compressed and whitened. “No. It didn’t.”
“And you don’t know what they were meeting about?”
For a long moment, Leza didn’t answer. Then, slowly, she said, “I can guess. You understand I’m only seeing one side of things. I’m in HR, and I don’t have a head for numbers—or tech—like the rest of them. I’m older than them.” She bared her teeth. “Thomas and I were the only ones over forty.”
“The meeting?”
“Strong, Matley, Gross is an investment firm, and it has some proprietary technology that it uses to plan those investments. I don’t really understand it. Benny could tell you more, or Columbia, or even Meryl, but God only knows if they would—it’s all top-secret. Anyway, Thomas has been planning on selling the firm.”
“What did everyone think about that?”
“We were thrilled. We were all going to be millionaires.”
Somers frowned. “What’s the catch?
“The catch is that Thomas started acting . . . erratically. He’d post wild predictions on Facebook and Twitter. Started making investments that failed drastically, and then he’d win one or two and recover most of the money.”
“Isn’t that the nature of investing?”
“Maybe for some firms, but not for Strong, Matley, Gross. I told you: proprietary technology. Until recently, Thomas was used to picking only winners.”
“What happened?”
“No one knows. At least, no one will say. Thomas started shutting himself up in his office for days. Literally—he wouldn’t come out. Adaline would take food into him. She’d carry out jars of pee—or worse. He was . . . obsessed. Or deranged. And then it leaked.”
“The pee?”
Leza burst out with a small laugh, and the sound was shocking in the dismal atmosphere. Benny and Columbia threw furious looks at Leza; Meryl and Adaline jumped as though they’d been pricked with pins. Leza, ignoring her colleagues, leaned closer to Somers and said, “Not the pee. The story. Someone in the firm told a reporter at the Wall Street Journal about Thomas’s behavior, and once the article came out . . .” Leza spread her hands.
“Your value dropped.”
“Like a lead balloon inside a lead elephant.”
“So removing Mr. Strong—”
“Well,” Leza said with a languorous stretch, presenting her large breasts for Somers’s inspection, “let’s just say everyone’s chances of being a millionaire have gotten a lot better.”
Somers considered this information for a moment. “And you think Miss Squire might have confronted Thomas about his behavior?”
“Columbia is the CFO. She, better than anyone, knew how much Thomas’s behavior was costing the company. If she challenged Thomas, though, he wouldn’t have hesitated to toss her on the street.”
“You believe that’s what he was going to do?”
“I assume that’s what he meant by asking me to start the paperwork—termination paperwork, along with some ungodly severance package, I’m sure.”
“Is there anyone who might hold a personal grudge against Mr. Strong?”
“As far as I know, he didn’t have much of a personal life. He came out of the tech industry, Silicon Valley, all that. This firm was his baby.”
“No partner? No children?”
“Let me put it this way: when he locked himself in the office, the only one who noticed was Adaline.”
“What about her?”
Leza tried to cover a smile with one fist. “You’re kidding.”
“I witnessed Mr. Strong treating her poorly last night.”
“Poorly? That’s a mild way to describe it. Thomas used her like the last piece of tissue paper in a cholera epidemic. He wasn’t actually awful until recently, when things started to change, but he always used her hard.”
“Did she ever express how that made her feel?”
“Look at that sweater,” Leza said, a slight sneer tugging at her lip. “The woman hasn’t expressed anything since 1993. But if you mean did she complain, then no. Not exactly. Adaline is more of a weeper, if you know what I mean. Lots of sobbing in the copy room, always asking me if I have a tissue or time for a mug of tea.”
“As head of HR, you didn’t step in?”
“The job was to assist Thomas. Adaline did it wonderfully. If she didn’t want to deal with his temper, she could always find other work.”
Somers let his eyes drift towards Adaline. The small, plain woman with her messy curtain of hair and her lumpy sweater sat listening to Columbia. Columbia’s angular face was fixed with intensity as she whispered to the other woman. Somers found himself considering Adaline. There was something . . . coiled about the woman. A kind of compressed force, hidden under the surface, that could explode outwards at any moment. It made Somers think of a cartoon booby trap, like a piece of flooring over an enormous spring that might launch an unsuspecting character into outer space.
But the text message from Thomas Strong pointed to a different suspect: Columbia Squire. The trans woman seemed oblivious to Somers’s gaze; instead, her attention was still focused on Adaline as she continued to whisper, her knuckles white as she gripped the arm of her chair, her face painted with desperation.
What, Somers wondered, was Columbia Squire so worried about?
AFTER A QUICK SEARCH OF THE HOUSE, and failing to turn up any other sign of the unnamed person who was at Windsor, Hazard hurried back to the study, determined to preserve as much of the crime scene as he could.
It had taken Hazard almost three hours, but he had finished—as best he could—documenting the crime scene. On several sheets of paper, he had transferred latent fingerprints he had picked up from Strong’s desk and chair. He had also dusted the window and the door. The whole process, if it hadn’t been so serious, would have felt juvenile—Hazard had been forced to improvise with ground up graphite and charcoal dust, applied with a makeup brush stolen from the hall bathroom. In addition to labeling the prints, he had also photographed them in place before transferring them to the tape. It was, he hoped, enough to preserve evidence that the killer might try to destroy.
Without samples, a database, and a lot more training, though, Hazard felt like he had reached his limit with prints. He had noticed only two points of interest: someone—most likely the killer—had tried to wipe both Strong’s phone and his laptop clean of prints. The efforts had been mostly successful; apart from a few smudges along the computer’s case, there were no recoverable prints.
The rest of the room showed no signs, though, that any effort had been made to destroy evidence. A layer of dust lay on the shelves, and a feather duster sat in a desk drawer, but the killer had either not thought it necessary to wipe down the remaining surfaces or had simply not had the time. The feather duster, limply bedraggled, looked rather pathetic as Haz
ard shut the drawer.
When he had finished with the prints, Hazard used Somers’s phone and called Dr. Kamp, the official medical examiner for Dore County. Kamp, however, was a notorious drunk, in spite of his once-brilliant mind and his formidable education. In Hazard’s first case with the Wahredua PD, Kamp had been so intoxicated that he had been of absolutely no use. The little forensic evidence Hazard and Somers had been able to use had come from Hazard’s own, self-taught knowledge.
As the phone began its fourteenth ring, Hazard had the sinking suspicion that, once again, he was going to be on his own. Disconnecting the call and returning Somers’s phone to his pocket, Hazard examined the body in front of him. Hazard had neither the tools nor the equipment to accurately measure Thomas Strong’s core temperature. Even if he had, Hazard worried that the open window had accelerated the cooling process and made it difficult to calculate an approximate time of death.
When Hazard touched Strong’s neck, he found the flesh cold and stiff. Rigor mortis had set in, which meant Strong’s death had occurred several hours before. The body, Hazard remembered, had been stiff when he had shifted Strong’s corpse to look for an exit wound. At a rough estimate, that meant that Strong couldn’t have died any later than two or three in the morning—and likely much earlier, closer to ten or eleven at night.
Hazard peeled back Strong’s trousers cuffs and his socks, examining the lividity of Strong’s lower legs and feet. After death, blood had pooled there when the heart stopped pumping. More blood had settled at the bottom of Strong’s arms. These were good signs that Strong had not been moved after death.
In addition, tiny spatters of blood marked the edge of Strong’s desk, as well as the backs of his hands and his sleeves. While the wound had not been large, there had nevertheless been some blood spatter when the bullet—or bullets—pierced Strong’s chest. More evidence that Strong had been killed exactly where he was right now.
Hazard gave the room his full attention. A small trashcan had been moved, slid along one side of the desk. A clean rectangular space stood out in contrast to the tiny flecks of blood that marked the surrounding floor. Why? Hazard wasn’t sure. There were, unfortunately, no incriminating notes left behind in the trashcan, only a handful of gas station receipts recording the purchase of various candy bars and energy drinks, as well as a blank sheet of memo paper that read From the desk of Thomas Strong and two pieces of crumpled, blank paper—the kind used in a copy machine or a printer. Hazard held each page to the light, searching for impressions or other incidental marks, but he found nothing. He bagged the papers to take with him.