The Perfect Marriage(40)

Stepping into the cold, he saw that the snowfall was roughly the same intensity as earlier in the day. The cars already had a dusting, as did the shoulders of the people who thought it was important enough to stop whatever they had planned on doing that day in the hope that they might see a man leaving the building in handcuffs. Or more likely, based on the ambulance, laid out on a gurney.

It was always easy to pick out the family members from a crowd. Gawkers had an entirely different facial expression. For cops it was like the joke about the chicken and the pig concerning a bacon and egg breakfast. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

He spotted the victim’s spouse at once, aided by the fact that she fit his preconceived notion of the wife of an Upper East Side art dealer—attractive and wearing expensive shoes. Beside her was a man whom Gabriel might have mistaken for her husband had James Sommers not been lying dead upstairs. The man was also attractive and wearing expensive shoes. Between them was a teenage boy who didn’t seem like he belonged to either of them, on account of the fact that he just didn’t read as rich—he was too skinny, with long, unkempt hair and clothing on the grungy side.

“I’m Lieutenant Velasquez. Are you Ms. Sommers?”

“Yes,” the woman, who seemed barely able to speak, said.

“Let’s talk privately.” He steered the woman away. The boy should not hear what he was going to tell her. At least not from the mouth of a cop.

They walked together until they were out of earshot and a police cruiser blocked them from the boy’s view.

“I’m very sorry to tell you that your husband has been killed.”

Jessica Sommers reacted to the news that her husband was dead by bringing her gloved hands up to cover her face. It was a typical reaction, as people often sought to conceal their grief. On the other hand, it also allowed suspects to hide their reactions.

Gabriel always waited at this point, letting the spouse ask what had happened. Sometimes they didn’t do so immediately because they were in shock. But Gabriel always thought it was odd when that happened, and it usually made him think that the real reason they didn’t ask the most obvious question was because they already knew the answer.

Jessica asked a different question when her hands fell away from her face. “Can I see him?”

She wore the unmistakable mask of grief. Everything fallen: her eyes, her mouth, her shoulders. Bereavement didn’t look like anything else. Of course, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be faked.

“Yes. But not right now,” Gabriel said. “It’s a crime scene upstairs. No one’s allowed in.”

She nodded, as if she were hearing him in a foreign language and translating the words in her head. Then she asked the question that most people asked right away.

“What happened?”

“We’re still investigating. But the preliminary conclusion is that it was a homicide.”

She winced at the terminology. Gabriel had used it intentionally because of its vagueness. He wanted to see if the widow would seek more specifics. “How?” would be the most likely first question.

Instead she asked, “Who would want to kill James?”

“I was going to ask you that, Ms. Sommers. The first few hours of an investigation are the most critical, so any information you could give us would be extremely valuable. When did you last see your husband?”

“Yesterday.”

“At what time?”

She started to cry. “No. That’s not right. I didn’t see James yesterday at all. He left for work before I got up, and he went to DC last night. We spoke by phone yesterday. That’s when he told me that he needed to go to DC.”

“What time did you speak to him yesterday?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Five, maybe.”

“Can you check? It’s important to narrow down his time of death. Maybe you have the exact time on your phone.”

She pulled her phone out of her handbag. Gabriel couldn’t help but notice her screen saver was a family portrait.

“It was 4:53,” she said. “That’s when he called me.”

That tightened the time of death by ninety minutes. Of course, that was only true if she was telling the truth. It would not have been difficult for her to have killed her husband an hour earlier, then used his phone to call her own to make it seem as if he were alive at 4:53.

Jessica Sommers certainly looked sincere. On the other hand, Gabriel knew from hard experience that was the worst way to assess a witness’s veracity—by the way he or she looked. Sometimes he thought the most effective interrogations could be done blindfolded.

As if she could read his mistrust, she said, “Ask Reid.”

“Is Reid the man who is here with you now?”

“Yes. Reid Warwick. He’s my husband’s partner on the deal that caused him to go to Washington.”

“And is the boy with you your son?”

“Yes. Owen.”

Gabriel knew that as bad as it was breaking the news to this woman that her husband had been murdered, it was nothing compared to what she was about to go through in the next few minutes when she had to tell her son that his father was dead.

“Why don’t you break the news to your son, and I’ll take a moment to talk to Mr. Warwick. After that, I’d like you to come back with us to the police precinct. You might be able to give us some helpful background information about your husband.”