Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(23)

“Conrad Carter,” Phil rattled off now. “Thirty-nine years old. No criminal history. No living family.”

“Shit,” D.D. said.

“Worked for a major window corporation. Already talked to the head honcho. Guess what?”

“Everyone liked him, no one knew him well,” D.D. intoned.

“Exactly. Guy worked out of his home. Had an excellent reputation for sales. Kept up on his quotes, bid sheets, on-site specs. Manager had nothing bad to say about him. Then again, he saw the guy once a month at management meetings. He didn’t even know Conrad and his wife were expecting a baby until he heard it on the news.”

“Pregnant wife accidentally shoots husband. Three times,” D.D. muttered. “Press is going to have a field day with this one.”

“So much for open-and-shut,” Phil agreed. He yawned.

She glared at him.

He shrugged. “Hey, I was the one working the scene half the night. Sergeant.”

“And I was fighting an evil canine for the safety of black boots everywhere. We all have our problems.”

Phil smiled. He was used to D.D. in this mood, was probably one of the only detectives who could handle her, which is why she liked him so much. And missed her original investigative squad terribly. Managing sergeant her ass. Who wanted to sit at a desk all day anyway?

“Wait, there’s more,” Phil said now, in his best TV infomercial voice.

“Should I be sitting down?”

“You’d only pop back up and pace. Before moving to Mass, Conrad lived in …” Phil dragged it out.

D.D. closed her eyes, already seeing the answer. “Florida.”

“Yep.”

“Same state as Jacob Ness and where Jacob kidnapped Flora.”

“Yep.”

“Jacob and Conrad could’ve known each other prior to meeting with Flora at the bar.”

“It’s possible,” Phil agreed.

D.D. shook her head. She could not believe this case was spinning so far out of hand. “Okay, what do we know of Conrad? Don’t suppose techs have anything back on the computer?”

Phil gave her a droll look.

“Cell phone?” she tried.

“Can’t find it.”

“Can’t find it? What does that mean? Everyone has a cell phone, especially a guy in sales.”

“Agreed. Except we don’t know where his is.”

“You ping it?”

“No, we were waiting for it to walk home on its own.” Phil gave her that look again. Sometimes, his mood matched her own. “Of course we pinged it. Nothing, nada. Wherever it is, it’s shut off. Carol contacted the mobile carrier. Working on getting their copies of texts, voice messages now.”

D.D. studied Phil. “You think Conrad hid his own phone? Turned it off, stuck it somewhere before his wife shot him?”

Phil shook his head. “Guy didn’t even get his hands up.”

“Someone took it,” D.D. said.

“That’d be my guess.”

“The wife? She hides his phone, shoots up the computer? What exactly is she trying to hide?”

Phil shrugged. “You heard her lawyer. We have an eight-minute gap. It’s possible someone else shot him, that person grabbed the phone, that person ran away.”

“Please. One shooter runs away just in time for the wife to return home—”

“Or her arrival is what scared him away—”

“At which point, Evelyn enters her own home, discovers her husband’s murdered body and … doesn’t dial nine-one-one, doesn’t run to the neighbors for help, doesn’t scream for the police. No, she picks up the same gun and fires a dozen rounds into the laptop?”

“The mysterious-first-shooter theory loses something right around this point,” Phil agreed.

“We need to know everything there is to know about this couple,” D.D. repeated.

Phil shrugged, yawned again. He probably had been up all night. Welcome to homicide.

“Old-school,” D.D. announced. “If we can’t trace Conrad through electronics, then what about personal files, credit card receipts, banking info?”

“Neil’s digging through it now,” Phil reported. The youngest member of their original three-person squad, Neil had joined the force after serving years as an EMT. He used to be the one in charge of autopsies, but lately he’d been expanding his wings. With D.D.’s promotion out of the unit, and Carol Manley’s entry into the squad, he was also no longer the rookie, which seemed to suit him.

“Nothing extravagant has jumped out yet, Neil said. Lotta charges to Lowe’s, as you might expect from a couple with a fixer-upper. Between Conrad’s sales job and Evelyn’s teaching assignment, they pulled in low six figures. Not bad. ’Course, Boston’s an expensive town. Two cars, taxes, mortgage, cable, cell phones. They weren’t drowning, nor were they living in the lap of luxury.”

“Life insurance policy on the husband?” D.D. asked.

“Hundred grand. That we know of. People have killed for less.”

D.D. nodded, but she also registered Phil’s lack of enthusiasm on the subject. A hundred grand might be a lot of money to some people, but for Evelyn Conrad, who’d grown up in a multimillion-dollar home in Cambridge while attending the finest private schools and socializing with the city’s best and brightest, a hundred thousand wasn’t enough.