by Carl Schmidt
“We’ll try to help with that,” I replied. “Tell me everything you can remember about the encounter. What was Stephanie’s state of mind, what was in the room, things like that.”
“It was just an ordinary room with a harbor view. It didn’t look as if she were going to stay there. I didn’t see a suitcase, and the bed was still made. There was only Diana sitting in a playpen. She didn’t have a single toy.”
Curious, I thought.
“There was a diaper bag in the corner. Other than that, the room was empty.”
“How long did you stay?” I asked.
“I got there at four in the afternoon. I was gone by five. The police estimate she was strangled between four and eight. My God, I could be a suspect!”
“Do you think anyone saw you come and go?”
“I have no idea. No one made a fuss. I noticed a security camera facing the elevator, so I insisted on using the stairway. That was fine with her.”
“Was there a camera on the fourth floor?”
“I really didn’t notice. By the time we reached the fourth floor, all I was thinking about was Diana. The staircase is at the end of the hall. There might have been a camera there. I don’t know. In any event, I was pretty much disguised.”
“Oh?” I said. “In what way?”
“I had a scarf wrapped around my neck, and it covered my mouth. I also wore a brown ushanka.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a Russian fur cap with ear muffs. It was freezing. My outfit served two purposes. It kept me warm and incognito at the same time.”
I thought about that for a moment, but before I could reply, Holly interjected, “You dressed to hide your identity. Now that a murder has taken place, your appearance may raise suspicions. If the police see a photograph of you in that outfit, they will do everything they can to trace your arrival and departure.”
At that point, if a pin had dropped in the room, we all would have heard it. None did, of course, so we pretty much heard nothing.
Holly then added, “How did you get to the hotel?”
“I walked. It took about fifteen minutes; the two hotels are not far apart.”
“That may help,” Holly said. “If you took a cab, there would be a record of it. I can assure you that the authorities have already checked with the cab companies to determine who was dropped off and who was picked up during the murder’s timeframe.”
Xavier slumped in his chair.
“One of our primary tasks will be to find out what the police already know,” Holly continued. “If they have a description of you, in disguise or not, it will be in your best interest to come forward with what you know. If they don’t, then we’ll have some time to consider other options.”
“What kind of options are you talking about?” he asked.
“Finding the killer ourselves,” she replied.
No one said a thing for several heartbeats.
“Let’s get back to Stephanie for a moment,” I said. “How did she act? Was she happy to see you? Anxious? Relieved? What was she like?”
“She appeared to be a little stressed and protective of her daughter, but other than that, she seemed fine. At first, I imagined she was expecting an encore on the bed, but when we got to the room, she was pretty much all business. Motherly, even.”
“Did you leave anything behind in room 401 that might place you at the crime scene?”
“I don’t think so. I racked my brain last night fretting over that, but I couldn’t think of a thing. I suppose there might be some trace of my DNA there. Maybe a hair or two fell off my head,” he said, “but in light of what you just told me, that might not be a problem anyway.”
“Oh, yes, it could be a problem,” I replied. “Hair can be examined in many ways. Theoretically, if the police found your hair at the crime scene, it could prove you were there. But, of course, they would have to have some reason to suspect you in the first place. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be comparing your hair to strands left in room 401.”
“Hopefully, that won’t be a problem,” he said.
“Did you have anything to drink while you were in the room?” I asked.
“No, thank goodness. There’d be saliva on the lip of the glass, I guess. No, I didn’t drink anything while I was there.”
“So, tell me, how did you manage to get a lock of Diana’s hair?” I asked.
“I picked Diana up and played with her in my lap for ten minutes or so. I was ecstatic to hold her. I felt certain she was my child. Her hair was fair, like mine. Besides, the original DNA test results were conclusive.”
“There are ways to manipulate DNA,” I said. “Believe me. We’ve seen it happen once or twice.”
“But the child’s DNA matched mine. The test indicated that Diana’s sample was saliva. Do you really think that Stephanie could have captured my saliva, mixed it with her own and then presented it to a lab a year later, saying it belonged to her child?”
“She could easily have saved some of your saliva and put it in the freezer. For that much money, some people will do most anything,” I replied.
Xavier LaGrange stared at me for a moment. Then his gaze drifted through me to the back wall.
“I had hoped the hair sample would settle that,” he said. “I snipped it when Stephanie’s back was turned. I thought she wouldn’t notice, but I guess she heard the scissors, because she turned around suddenly and got very angry. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I wanted to have Diana’s DNA tested again. She never calmed down after that. She yelled, ‘You don’t trust me.’ I said that I just wanted to be sure. She was so upset that I decided to leave.”
“So you left at five o’clock?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“What did you do then?”
“My flight back to New York was cancelled. It had been scheduled for eight o’clock that night. I went back to my room and told the desk clerk I’d be staying for at least one more day. The news of the murder was all over the television by Sunday afternoon. They withheld the woman’s name, pending notification of family, but the report said her body was found in room 401 of the Rutland Arms Hotel.
“I looked online for private investigators and found your name. I remembered hearing about the murder of Maine’s governor over the summer, and the site said you helped solve that case. That’s why I called.”
“From your description thus far, I assume you didn’t see signs of anyone else having been in the room. Is that right?” I asked.
“Right. I didn’t see anyone else upstairs either. There were a few people in the lobby, but no one seemed to notice me.”
“Describe the lobby. Who was there? Think carefully.”
“Let me see,” he said. His eyes glazed over, and then he closed them. “There was a man in a sports jacket at the front checking in. He and the receptionist never looked in my direction as far as I could tell. There was an older woman waiting to catch the elevator. She looked at me briefly, but didn’t seem interested. And there was a guy sitting in the lobby by the front door, talking on his cell phone.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“I only glanced at him. He was maybe forty years old. Average size, I guess. He wore a suit and an overcoat but no hat. I think he had brown hair, or maybe it was a bit lighter.”
“Was there anything else you noticed in the lobby?” I asked.
“That’s about all I remember. I was focused on Stephanie. She’s a beautiful woman.”
“All right, Xavier,” I said. “I’m going to show you pictures of two different women on the off chance that one of them is her.”
He looked startled.
“Sure, I’ll have a look,” he said.
First, I showed him a picture of Tina Woodbury.
“No, that’s not Stephanie,” he replied casually.
I then showed him a picture of Nicole Levesque. His jaw dropped, and his eyes bulged.
“It’s her,” he exclaimed.
“That’s Stephanie Goulet.”
20
Jumping to Conclusions
One afternoon, while my dad and I were fly fishing on Great Pond, he made an interesting observation. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
“Jesse,” he said, “I’m sure you’ve heard the old maxim, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ Right?”
“Many times,” I replied.
“Have I ever said that to you?” he asked.
My dad was famous for asking trick questions, so I didn’t answer him right away. While I was wondering if I’d have to review the entire twelve years of my life before responding, Dad had a strike. And then, while he was bringing in his fish, I had a strike too. It was a double header.
This happens more often than you might think. Sometimes a second bass will follow the first one that gets hooked on the line. The smallmouth is an aggressive fish. In this case, my fish got caught up in the frenzy of his neighbor and took my fly in the rush. I guess you might say, he “jumped to the conclusion” that my fly would be a tasty treat. It didn’t work out all that well for him. Dad lost his fish, but I caught mine.
In the end, they both returned safely to the lake. We never kept any of the fish we caught. My guess is that the bass learned a lesson about jumping to conclusions—at least for a day or two.
After the excitement was over, and our lines were back on top of the water, my dad repeated his question, “So, Jesse, what do you think? Did I ever tell you, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions’?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I’m twelve years old, Dad; I can’t remember everything you ever told me.”
I guess I sounded a bit precocious because he laughed out loud.
“Come on, Jesse. Jump to a conclusion,” he said in a friendly, but insistent, way.
So, I jumped, “No. You’ve never told me that. Not even once.”
“Exactly,” he said with a grin. “And I never will.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“There are times when it’s important to do it,” he said. “It’s in our nature to jump to conclusions. It’s embedded in the divine order of things. In fact, it’s an evolutionary necessity. Animals that didn’t jump to conclusions got eaten.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But didn’t those two fish jump to conclusions when they hit our flies? They concluded those things were food. Look what happened to them.”
Dad howled at that one.
“You’re getting too smart for me, Son. Are you really only twelve?”
“I’ll be thirteen in nine months,” I replied.
“OK, OK. You have a point. But let me explain what I mean,” he said. “We jump to conclusions every day. We have to. Say I’m driving down the road, and I see a car on a side street that starts edging into the intersection. I jump, in fact I leap, to the conclusion that he is going to drive in front of me, and immediately I take some kind of evasive action to avoid a collision. If he doesn’t pull out, there’s no harm done. But if he does, I might save my car and my life at the same time.”
“Well, I guess so,” I offered.
“Let me put it another way. Who’s the greatest physicist of all time?” he asked.
“Albert Einstein,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.
“I believe you’re right. Some of my colleagues would disagree with that, but they are concentrating too much on what happened near the end of Einstein’s life. The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen Paradox blinds them. They forget about 1905, not completely, of course—they can all recount the four startling papers he presented in four successive months of that year—but they just can’t seem to get past how he couldn’t accept the logical conclusions of quantum mechanics in the 30’s and the 40’s. But in 1905, Einstein made four extraordinary discoveries that reshaped physics forever.”
“I hope you’re not going to explain all four to me right now, Dad. I’m still only twelve years old,” I said.
“I’ll spare you the full story, Jesse. But here’s my point. Albert Einstein jumped to conclusions in all four of those discoveries. Sure, he followed each one up with a thorough examination, but he jumped first. Otherwise, he’d never have gotten anywhere. He’d have been a patent clerk for the rest of his life. He jumped, while other, more distinguished, physicists dawdled over the precipice afraid of making mistakes.”
As we continued to cast our lines upon the lake, I thought about what my father had said. It would be another eight or ten years before I became familiar with those four papers and the extraordinary leaps Einstein made in 1905, but I could see what Dad was driving at even then. He wanted me to be brave. He wanted me to throw caution to the wind and do extraordinary things. I’m not as daring as I’d like to be, but everyday I hop a little. Occasionally, I skip. Now, it seemed to me, was the right time to jump…to a conclusion.
• • •
“Xavier,” I said, “here’s what I think.”
Everyone, including Ranger, waited as I gathered myself.
“I think that Diana is not your child. Furthermore, Stephanie is not the mother of the child you held in the hotel room.
“Stephanie Goulet never got pregnant with you. She ran the same scam on a man here in Portland who happens to be a former client of ours. We have video evidence of him paying her a support payment of fifteen thousand dollars. If she were an honest woman, she would have been five months pregnant when you were sleeping with her. She said that she gave birth to his child on New Year’s Day. That was four months after the two of you separated.”
“May I see the video?” he asked.
“By all means,” I said. “You’ll see that we have obscured our client’s face and digitally altered his voice to protect his identity, but you should have no trouble identifying Stephanie and the purpose of their meeting. The photograph I just showed you was taken moments before this meeting last week on New Year’s Day. By the way, she used the name, ‘Nicole Levesque,’ with our client, but we have reason to believe that her real name is—or was—Nicole Shepard.”
Xavier watched the video closely, and his jaw dropped as Father O’Reilly handed her the money. When it finished playing, I continued, “The way I see it, there are two possibilities. Stephanie’s murder was either someone’s reaction to your taking a sample of Diana’s hair, or it was premeditated. I’m betting it was premeditated. Either way, the killer was in on the scam. He, or she, was probably involved from the very beginning. He and Stephanie might even have been partners.”
“Why would she have a partner?” Xavier asked.
“To set up the initial meetings with Johns, to launder the money, to provide her with drugs, and to protect her. There are all sorts of reasons for having a partner for this kind of crime. The drawback, however, is that partners can identify each other.
“There’s a big problem with the theory that the murder was spur of the moment. There are so many ways to get caught. You’d have to leave the premises without a trace. How do you get out of the hotel with a child and a playpen and not be seen? There are security cameras all over the place. No sensible person would commit murder without a planned exit.
“I’m not saying that murder is sensible, but professional criminals plan small crimes carefully. They plan big crimes very carefully. I think we’re going to discover that the killer planned this precisely.
“That leaves us with two plausible scenarios. Either you are intended to take the fall, or the extortion is about to go into overdrive.”
Xavier’s eyes lit up. “Blackmail. God, it keeps getting worse,” he said.
“Well, it hasn’t happened yet,” I replied. “I hope I’m mistaken about all this, but I want you to be prepared.”
“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Jesse,” Angele said.
“Yes dear, that’s exactly what I’m doing,” I replied. “I hope I’m wrong. God knows I could be.”
“I think you’re probably right, Jesse,” Holly said. “Xavier, what you don’t yet realize is that after we t
ook those photographs of Stephanie in the park, we followed her to Massachusetts, where she gave us the slip. But on the following day, we are fairly certain she was informed that we were investigating her fraudulent scheme. She immediately vacated the apartment where she’d been living for the past two years.
“It’s likely she had a partner. We are currently searching for a man of interest. We have a description of him and the make of his car. It could be that he murdered Stephanie Goulet. As partners, she had become a huge risk. If she were arrested, she could identify him as an accomplice.
“You are a big ticket item in their lineup. You’re a Hollywood star and surely a rich man. You questioned the authenticity of your child, Diana. Perhaps he saw a way to up the ante and get rid of a liability at the same time. By murdering Stephanie and turning you into a suspect, he might be thinking his gravy train is about to arrive at the station.
“Like Jesse says, ‘I hope I’m mistaken,’ but that’s what it looks like at this point. If we’re right, however, there’s one thing he hasn’t counted on.”
“What’s that, Ms. Winters?” Xavier asked.
“He hasn’t counted on how tenacious we are. He has no idea who he’s tangling with.”
Holly said that with just enough venom to get everyone’s attention. Angele didn’t say a word, but I could tell she liked it, and Xavier calmed down immediately. A smile wrinkled across his face.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“We could have Diana’s hair sample tested, if you like,” I said, “but there’s almost no chance at all of picking up any of her nuclear DNA. What do you think?”
“It’s worth a try, I guess,” he replied.
“Do you have the original DNA test results for Stephanie?” I asked.
“No, I never asked her for that. I was only interested in discovering if I was the father. I assumed she was the mother.”
“All right then, we’ll submit the samples for a test,” I said. “But first we’ll get a better DNA sample from you right now.”
I opened the drawer and got a zip-lock bag.
“If you don’t mind, unload some of your saliva into the baggie.”