by Jason Pinter
“Smart,” Moreno said. “And cold blooded. Not sure cold blooded makes for a healthy marriage, but hey, I’m not judging.”
“So, your initial thoughts?” Serrano asked.
Moreno replied, “Well, at this point, given the abnormally high blood alcohol content and the victim’s messy personal life, it would be hard not to chalk this up as a suicide. If the pregnancy was unwanted, that may have been the last straw.”
“Let’s be thorough,” Tally said. “The toenails bother me. And I want to talk to Nicholas Drummond.”
“Nicholas Drummond walked away from that marriage with a heap of Constance Wright’s money,” Serrano said. “The man already got paid. Why kill her now?”
“The pregnancy . . . that gnaws at me,” replied Tally. “Presumably Wright knew. But we’d have to get a court order to see her emails and texts. If Wright was already walking the razor’s edge, and she didn’t want the child, that could have been enough to push her over. Or perhaps she did want it, Drummond didn’t, and that’s your motive.”
“If it was even Drummond,” Serrano said.
“If it was even Drummond. Still, it shouldn’t have come to this,” Tally said. “Never cared much for that wackadoo family of Wright’s—or for Nicholas Drummond himself. Always seemed like the kind of guy who hated being overshadowed by his wife. But damn, this woman had a good heart. She didn’t deserve what all those people did to her.”
Serrano nodded absently. Then the cell phone clipped to his waist began to ring.
“Don’t tell me,” Moreno said, rolling his eyes. “That’s the theme from . . .”
“Lord of the Rings,” Serrano replied. “One ringtone to rule them all.”
“See? This is what I deal with on a daily basis,” said Tally.
Serrano ignored them. He answered his cell and said, “This is Serrano.”
“Detective Serrano, this is Wanda Bremmer from Ashby 911 dispatch. I have something you need to hear.”
“Detectives don’t respond to 911 calls,” Serrano said brusquely. She must have been new.
“I understand that. But trust me, you need to listen to this,” she said. “I’m patching you through. This person called 911 twenty-six minutes ago. I wouldn’t normally forward along a 911 call, but . . . you need to hear it, Detective.”
“All right,” Serrano said, exasperated. “I’m listening.”
Serrano heard a crackling sound as a recording began to play. Then a voice began speaking. It was a distorted male voice. Deep, husky, and robotic. The caller had clearly used some sort of voice modification tool.
“This message is for Detective Serrano of the Ashby PD. It’s regarding the body found at the Albertson Bridge last night. He needs to know this was not a suicide. I know the victim’s identity has not been released to the press, but it was Constance Wright. Constance Wright was murdered. And I can prove it. Keep listening and I’ll explain. Please forward this entire recording to Detective Serrano.”
Serrano listened to the rest of the message, his eyes growing wider with each word spoken. When the recording was over, Wanda Bremmer came back on the line.
“Detective? Still there?”
“Still here.” Serrano’s hands were trembling.
“You all right, John?” Tally said.
“Do you have a digital file of this call you can forward to my cell?” Serrano asked Bremmer. “Send it to this number.”
He gave Bremmer his cell number. “Sending now,” she said.
When Serrano received the file, he turned to Hector Moreno.
“You both need to hear this. Hector, I need to know if what this caller says is accurate from a medical standpoint.”
Serrano pressed play and put the phone on speaker. The three of them listened in silence. Finally, Moreno said, “I’ll need to confirm the calculations, but if they hold up, the caller is right. There’s no way Constance Wright could have committed suicide.”
CHAPTER 6
“My ex-wife is a raging bitch.”
So that’s how this evening is going to go, Rachel thought.
The man sitting across the table from her was named Adam . . . something. She didn’t remember his last name. Had he even given it to her? A coworker had asked if he could set Rachel up with a buddy, and against her better judgment she’d agreed. And so far the evening had been only slightly less painful than a root canal without anesthesia.
Adam was in his late forties, divorced, with three kids in high school and an ex who lived across the city in the Edgartown district with her new husband. His hair plugs were poorly done, resembling doll hair more than human, and the bloodshot eyes and the spider veins crossing his nose indicated a serious drinking problem. His lower lip seemed to be perpetually curled downward in an irritated manner, as though he’d just tasted unexpectedly cold soup.
Her coworker would need to atone for this setup sin.
For months, Rachel’s friends had been pressuring her to “get back out there,” as though she were a ballplayer nursing an injury. Yes, she was lonely. Eric and Megan were her life, but she’d be lying if she said there weren’t nights she missed having a warm body to curl up next to, someone to watch movies with, to talk to about issues not related to state capitals and bedazzled toilet unicorns. Someone to touch her in a way that she missed desperately.
But seven words in, and Adam had already proven he wasn’t going to be that guy.
So what now? They hadn’t even ordered food yet. Rachel had booked the babysitter for another two hours. If she walked through her front door an hour and a half early from a date, she’d feel like the saddest person alive.
She’d grin and bear it, she decided. Not because there was a chance Adam might salvage the date but because the restaurant had a fantastic wine list and the best rack of lamb in Ashby, and damned if she was going to deprive herself of a good meal. She could tune him out and just enjoy dinner.
“Did you hear what I said?” Adam asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Rachel responded. “This wine is delicious.”
“You have great taste in wine. And you must have great taste in men, considering you’re out with me.” Rachel took a large gulp of her Bordeaux and offered a fake smile.
“Do you have any plans after this?” Adam said. He was beginning to slur his words. He must have pregamed before the date.
“Plans? Well, let’s see, I have two children at home, a teenage babysitter, and three baskets of laundry that won’t do themselves. So, no. Clubbing is not on my itinerary for the evening.”
“But let’s say you got home a little late. Your sitter wouldn’t mind, right? You could throw her an extra few bucks.”
“Define a little late.”
“Say . . . tomorrow morning late?”
Adam snorted and laughed. Then he reached across the table and put his hand on hers. She immediately computed the force needed to pierce his metacarpal bone with her dinner fork.
Instead, she removed her hand from the table and placed it on her thigh. Adam snickered, as though laughing at her reaction.
“You know,” she said, “I’m having second thoughts. I think I might go—”
“Rachel Marin?”
Rachel looked up. A tall man with dark-brown hair graying at the temples and a very serious look on his face was standing beside their table. She recognized him immediately. A black woman, about five six with braided hair and a look on her face that said You think he’s serious, don’t get me started stood next to him.
They both held Ashby PD badges.
“That would be me,” she replied. “Or, she would be I? Can I help you?”
Adam looked at the cops and then at Rachel and then back again.
“Listen, Officers,” Adam said, “I’m up on my child support this month. Ask Lisette, not that the bitch would ever admit she uses my money to pay off her asshole new husband’s mortgage.”
The cops ignored him.
“Ms. Marin, I’m Detective Serrano with the Ashby Police Department. This is
my partner, Detective Tally. We’d like a few words with you.”
“Can I ask what this is regarding?”
Tally said, “I don’t think you want to have that conversation here.”
“I’m sorry, did I miss something?” Adam said. I’m betting you ask that a lot, Rachel thought.
“Apologies, sir,” Serrano said, “but we need to speak with Ms. Marin. Alone.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Rachel said.
Adam was scowling at Serrano, peeved that his surefire score had been interrupted. Serrano scowled back. The detective’s scowl was better. Adam looked down and stared at his shoes. That made her happy.
Serrano turned back to Rachel.
“We need to ask you about a strip mall outside of Peoria off of I-74.”
Rachel’s heart began to speed up. That was quicker than I expected.
“Listen, Magnum, P.I.,” Adam said. “We’re in the middle of dinner. You can’t just walk in here and—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Rachel was out of her chair. She tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
“For the wine,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “I paid for a hotel room!”
“And I paid for a babysitter,” she replied. “Looks like neither of us got our money’s worth.”
When they stepped outside, Rachel said, “All right, Detectives. I get to ask the first question. How in the hell did you find me so fast?”
CHAPTER 7
Rachel, Serrano, and Tally sat in a corner booth at the Starburst Diner off Wedgewood Lane. A cup of dark-roast coffee sat in front of Rachel, untouched. Tally was nibbling on an order of fries, and Serrano had already finished a bagel with scallion cream cheese.
“You realize you just ate breakfast,” Rachel said, nodding at Serrano’s plate. “That was breakfast food. It’s 8:00 p.m. When do you eat dessert, seven in the morning?”
Serrano ignored the comment. He took out his cell phone and placed it on the table between them. He opened to a file marked “911 call—Albertson,” put the phone on speaker, and pressed play. A robotic voice began talking.
“This message is for Detective Serrano of the Ashby PD. It’s regarding the body found at the Albertson Bridge last night. He needs to know this was not a suicide. I know the victim’s identity has not been released to the press, but it was Constance Wright. Constance Wright was murdered. And I can prove it. Keep listening and I’ll explain. Please forward this entire recording to Detective Serrano.
“Based on where Constance Wright’s body was found at the base of the Albertson Bridge, it is a mathematical impossibility that her death was self-inflicted.
“The pedestrian walkway on the Albertson Bridge is 152 feet from the water based on current sea levels—or in this case, the iced-over river. From that height, in a free fall from the walkway, a body would reach the ground in somewhere between 5.5 and 5.6 seconds, increasing in velocity as it descended and then hitting the surface of the ice at a speed of approximately 122.8 miles per hour.
“At the approximate time of death, which I cannot know with absolute certainty without a thorough medical examination, the wind was coming from the northeast at around 11 miles per hour. Not insignificant.
“Per video and photographs from the crime scene, Wright’s body was found 18 feet from the bridge. If the height of the bridge is the y-axis and the distance of the body from the bridge the x-axis, then the total distance the body traveled was just over 153 feet.
“Given that the body was found on the western side of the bridge, 18 feet from the base of the bridge, and the wind was blowing northeast to southwest at 11 miles per hour, it is a mathematical impossibility that the body landed in its final resting spot of its own accord. To do so, the victim would have had to take a literal running start prior to jumping. The pedestrian walkway on the Albertson Bridge is uniformly 3 feet across, not nearly enough space to get any sort of momentum, which would be needed to reach a distance of 18 feet from the base and leaping into 11-mile-per-hour wind.
“There is only one way a body from that height could have reached that distance on the x-axis in that wind: momentum. And the only way that momentum could have been achieved is by force.
“In short, Constance Wright was thrown from the walkway on the Albertson Bridge. I am confident that your medical examiners will come to the same conclusion.
“Godspeed, Detective.”
The call ended. Serrano put the phone back in his pocket. Rachel sat there. Then she took a sip of coffee. Then another.
“Siri definitely doesn’t do that on my phone,” Rachel said.
“That’s you on the tape, isn’t it, Ms. Marin?” Serrano replied.
“I’ve been told I have a deep voice, but still—”
“Ms. Marin.”
Rachel finished her coffee and pushed the mug aside. “Least you can do is buy me a beer. If I get home, and I’m not even slightly tipsy, my sitter will think the date was a bust. Which it was. But I digress. How did you find me?”
“We get to ask the questions,” Serrano said. “Why did you say the victim was Constance Wright?”
“Because it is,” Rachel replied. “Neither of you have refuted that. And looking at your faces, I know it’s true.”
“The victim’s identity has not been released to the public.”
“I’m not ‘the public.’”
“Ms. Marin, the victim’s family has not yet been notified. If anything was to leak—”
“Don’t worry; I’m not saying a word to anyone. I could have called the press, but I called you. As for how I know it’s Constance Wright, let’s just say it was something of a personal nature.”
“All right, Ms. Marin,” Tally said, “911 traced the call to a pay phone outside a strip mall near Peoria. Obviously voice recognition was out due to your Mr. Roboto impression. So we took a ride out there.”
“There were no usable fingerprints on the phone,” Serrano said. “Not surprising. Middle of winter, people wear gloves. But we did find trace residue from a disinfectant cloth, as though someone had wiped the phone down before and after using it. We also found several fibers matted to the disinfectant. Wool, dyed beige. Can I see your gloves, Ms. Marin?”
Rachel didn’t move.
“That call came in at 7:42 this morning,” Serrano said. “Mr. Chow’s restaurant next door to that pay phone was closed. No luck finding any witnesses there. But the Cash Money next door was open. The security camera inside the door, unfortunately, only had an obstructed view of the pay phone.”
“But we did speak to the owner,” Tally continued. “A Mr. Gunther Downs, who told us he shooed away a group of teenagers who were skateboarding outside right around the time the call came in to 911. Mr. Downs told us the kids were recording themselves doing stunts and that the same kids have been there every morning the last few weeks. In fact, they’re there so often he knew their names.”
Serrano said, “We cross-checked those names with addresses in the vicinity—these kids would be home for winter break, and they’re all skateboarding or walking home, not driving—and found the amateur director who’d been videotaping the stunts. Lucky for us, he still had all the videos on his cell phone. Even luckier for us, for two whole seconds, the camera caught somebody using the pay phone. You can’t see their face, but he or she is wearing thick beige gloves. The recording also picked up unobstructed views of several cars in the parking lot. We ran all the plates, and only one was registered to a resident of Ashby.”
Serrano cocked his finger at Rachel and pulled an imaginary trigger.
“We went to your house,” Tally said. “A young woman named Liesl Schilling said you were on a date and told us where we could find you.”
“We can also subpoena the GPS tracking on your phone,” Serrano said, “and place you at that strip mall at the time the call was made. But I don’t think that’s necessary. At least not right now.”
Rachel offer
ed a faint golf clap. “Solid police work, Detectives. Unfortunately now my sitter definitely knows tonight’s date was a bust.”
“Our apologies if we ruined your evening with Prince Charming,” Tally said.
“More like Prince Charmin,” Rachel said. “Get it?”
Neither detective laughed.
“Man, cops are a tough crowd. Anyway, you saved me two hours of my life I would never get back. Now, let’s assume for a second that is me on the tape. Why am I here? Calling 911 isn’t a crime.”
“No, it’s not,” Serrano said. “And if you don’t want to be here, we can bring you right back to Prince Charmin.”
“No!” Rachel said, grabbing Serrano’s wrist. He glared at her. She removed it. “I just want to help. I know Constance Wright’s death wasn’t a suicide. I know it. Like you know your own face. I’m positive.”
“Based on this equation on the tape?” Tally said. “We’ll let the medical examiner confirm whether or not you’re correct.”
“He already did,” Rachel said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
Serrano and Tally remained silent.
“Let me ask you one question,” Rachel said. “Was Constance wearing heels? Or flats?”
Serrano hesitated, then said, “Heels.”
“And I’ll bet she was found without her purse as well.”
Serrano and Tally exchanged glances.
“Why do you say that?” said Tally.
“A woman leaves home without her purse, presumably planning to off herself. She figures she doesn’t need her wallet, keys, or credit cards where she’s going. Just her and fate. So if she thinks that far in advance—why on earth would she go out wearing heels in eight-inch snow and eleven-mile-an-hour winds? I’m willing to bet she’d also done some personal grooming recently. Shaved her legs. A mani-pedi, perhaps.”
“Who are you?” Serrano asked.
“Rachel Marin,” she responded. “Mother of two. Legal secretary. At your service.”
“But how do you know all this? Why does a legal secretary know the velocity of a falling human body? Or that a victim wearing heels might point to homicide?”