Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(34)

“No statute of limitations on murder,” Phil murmured. He twisted around, got to the business of backing down the driveway into the street without taking out any overly aggressive newspeople.

The days were short this time of year; the sun had set while they were inside the house, interviewing the family. Fortunately, the huge spotlights and the blaze of flashing media cameras helped light their way.

“So who shot her father?” Phil asked.

“Evie claims she doesn’t know. She and her mother walked into the scene. Her mother convinced her to take the blame, rather than risk an investigation that might tarnish the man’s ‘legacy.’ Still sounds fishy to me. Who discovers their loved one’s body and doesn’t immediately call nine-one-one? Opts for let’s play make-believe instead?”

“The mother’s scary,” Phil stated. He shuddered slightly.

“Really, because she seemed quite taken with you. A wealthy widow, and a rather well-preserved model at that.”

Phil gave her a look. D.D. already knew the score. Phil was madly in love with his childhood sweetheart and longtime wife, Betsy. Their marriage was one of the few things in life that gave D.D. hope.

“She’s scary,” Phil said again.

D.D. smiled, turned to studying the view out the window. They’d cleared the reporters now and were cruising through Cambridge, past row after row of gorgeous Victorians and historic Colonials, all decked out for the holidays with shimmering icicle lights, garland-wrapped bannisters, impeccably decorated shrubs. In an enclave this wealthy, D.D. had no doubt the inside matched the outside, towering Christmas trees covered in delicate antique ornaments, decked-out staircases, pots of overflowing greenery. She and Alex were still working on a Christmas tree. Given the modest size of their home compared to the staggering amount of Jack and Kiko’s energy, they’d probably have to put up their tree the night before to have any hope for it to still be standing on Christmas morning.

“How much money can one dead math professor be worth?” D.D. muttered. She hadn’t really thought about it at the time. Everyone said Earl Hopkins had been a genius, let alone he was a tenured Harvard professor. That had seemed worthy of the grand home. But all these years later, he was gone, and to judge by the kitchen renovations alone, the family’s lifestyle hadn’t suffered. Half a million in life insurance didn’t go that far. Did that mean there were other sources of income, more tangible benefits of Hopkins’s brilliance his wife hadn’t wanted to risk to a murder investigation? Phil was right: There was no statute of limitations on homicide, which meant Evie’s changing story line raised all sorts of interesting questions. Though despite what she might have intended, they still centered mostly on her and her mom.

“My partner and I were the first to interview Evie and her mother,” D.D. said now, gazing out the window. “At the time, she had blood spatter in her hair and tested positive for GSR on her hands. That kind of physical evidence has gotta mean something.”

“Did you ask her?”

“Sure. In her new and improved memory, she walked in when the blood was still fresh. It dripped down on her from the ceiling. Then she picked up the shotgun and checked the chamber, which would contaminate her hands with GSR. The GSR can go either way. But the blood evidence, I’m less convinced.”

“I worked a scene once,” Phil provided. “Kid was arrested standing in his best friend’s apartment, covered in blood, holding a shotgun. His friend’s body was slumped in a chair, missing most of its head. Kid was arrested for murder, of course. His story: He’d gotten a call from his friend, claiming he was about to commit suicide. The kid had run right over, heard the shotgun blast, and raced inside just in time to find his friend’s body. The blood was from all the spatter dripping down from the ceiling.”

“The verdict?” D.D. asked.

“Forensic experts proved the friend was telling the truth. The directionality of the spatter on the ceiling indicated the shotgun blast had blown up, while the directionality of the spatter on the friend revealed the blood had dripped down. Friend was exonerated. And I believe they still cover the case at the academy. You should ask Alex about it.”

D.D. nodded. Given that her husband Alex’s specialty was blood evidence, she’d definitely run Evie’s new and improved story by him. And while suicides by long guns weren’t as common as suicides by pistols, they did happen, meaning Evie and her mom might have been right to worry about the results of a full-on death investigation.

“Here’s the problem,” D.D. said now. “I can pull the file, but my memory of the Hopkins case is that we didn’t exactly work it to the letter. We had a body. We had a confession. We had a witness, and we lacked any evidence of motive. Everyone said Evie loved her father, et cetera, et cetera. At the time, all the elements matched the given story line of a terrible family tragedy, versus any whiff of something criminal. Let’s just say the senior detective, Speirs, took a more efficiency-based approach to his case management. Close the ones you can, so you have the hours to work the ones you can’t.”

“Versus your own obsessive, take-no-prisoners approach?” Phil asked.

“How Speirs and I ever survived five years of working together, I’ll never know,” D.D. agreed. “Except I was the rookie, and in the beginning, everyone gets to do as they’re told.”