The Accomplice(77)

“It’s all that and still the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” said Luna.

“You want to stay another night?” Griff asked.

“Do you?”

“I could stay here forever,” he said.





October 15, 2019


Burns was still mulling over her interview with Oslo when she arrived at the station the next morning. Goldman’s jacket was on his chair, but his desk was vacant. She found her partner in an unlit video room, staring at a frozen screen. On the monitor was a blurry image of Sam Burroughs in a hospital corridor.

“Have you alibied the doctor?” Burns asked.

“Not yet. We have him on camera at ten-thirty a.m. in the hospital corridor but nothing earlier.”

“How’d he get into the building?”

“There’s an entrance in back. I’m assuming he used that. Unfortunately, security is having trouble locating a file for Monday morning. That’s either good luck or bad luck for the doc,” Goldman said.

Margot sank into a chair and closed her eyes. “So many suspects and none of them good. I take it you didn’t find anything in the storage unit?”

“Nothing that wasn’t accounted for in the will.”

“So where is the art that she was purchasing?”

“I don’t think she was purchasing art,” Goldman said.

“I really thought we had something.”

“Me too,” Goldman said. “Owen is either unlucky and a murderer or really unlucky and not a murderer.”

Burns, without another word, gathered their files and walked into the conference room. Goldman followed with their coffees. He watched as Margot sorted witness statements into a grid across the table, which ran the length of the room.

“What are we doing, Margot?”

“Let’s blank-slate it today,” she said, cleaning up the dry-erase board.

She passed the pen to Noah because he had far superior writing and didn’t mind the squeak.

“Irene’s dead. What is our evidence?” Margot said.

It took Noah a moment to realize the question was for him. “Uh, we have the 9mm bullet, no murder weapon. But our shooter had to know how to shoot,” Noah said.

“But what does the gun get us?” Margot said.

“Nothing. No one in the suspect pool has a registered gun. There was no gun found near the body or around the cemetery.”

“We need that gun,” Burns said.

“Maybe we should widen the search. Is there a lake nearby?”

Margot shook her head. “We’re not getting the funds to drag every pond in a twenty-mile radius. Since no one had a registered weapon, we wouldn’t be able to connect it to any of our suspects. What about the cemetery—does it mean anything?”

“Victim jogged there regularly.”

“The killer knew her habits?” Margot said.

“He knew them or he learned them,” Noah said.

“We think it’s a he because it usually is, right?” said Margot.

“Can’t rule out a female killer,” Noah said.

“Let’s go over our suspects one by one.”

Noah printed OWEN MANN at the top left of the whiteboard.

“What does Owen get with his wife dead?”

Noah bullet-pointed:

         House



     Some money



     Freedom





“Freedom to do what?” Margot asked.

“To be with someone else,” Noah said.

“But he was already doing that. And according to Luna, Irene knew about the affair. If she divorced him, how does he fare?”

“There was no morals clause in the prenup,” Noah said.

“So, is he better off widowed or divorced?”

“There’s no obvious winner,” Noah said. “He’s better off married. That’s the crux of it.”

“Okay. Who benefits if Irene dies?”

Noah printed Amy Johnson’s name next to Owen’s.

“She kills someone just to be with a guy who’s not particularly wealthy on his own? It’s a stretch,” Margot said.

“Is it?” said Noah. “Remember that crazy astronaut lady? She planned to kill her new boyfriend’s former girlfriend just to get rid of the competition. There was no other benefit, far as I know.”

Margot had a moment of déjà vu. She’d had this conversation before.

“Have we discussed my astronaut theory?” Margot asked.

“I think I’d remember,” Noah said, laughing. “I’d love to hear it.”

“It’s not Amy,” Margot said.

Noah had never liked Amy for the crime, but he wanted to make sure they worked through each suspect to completion.

“She has no alibi,” Noah said. “Said she was home when the murder happened, but she lives alone.”

“The absence of an alibi means nothing. Here’s the real reason: Women don’t typically kill. But when they do, they generally fall into a few obvious categories. You’ve got the sociopath; she kills for a reason—money, love, et cetera. Then there’s the self-defense killer, even if there’s no immediate threat, which is generally a response to repeated abuse or a high-stress situation. There’s also the mentally ill killer. Some kind of altered reality is involved. None of those apply here. If you have a woman who presents as normal in regular society and kills to clear the way for a relationship, which I think this would have to be, that woman is, I argue, a classic type-A high achiever. That’s the kind of woman who works her ass off all the time. That’s someone who believes there’s nothing she can’t accomplish if she sets her mind to it. That’s an astronaut. Amy, on the other hand, attends a second-rate art school. She has no obvious ambitions or plans for when she graduates. If you look at the pictures in her social media accounts, there’s always dirty laundry in the background. She’s a slob. Does that sound like an astronaut to you?”