Defensive Wounds (20 page)

“What happened?”

“She wasn't interested in a broken-down cop's crappy apartment either. Or a cop. Or a black cop. Or a guy who didn't drive a Beemer, I don't know.”

“Harsh.”

“She was good at harsh. Once she mocked out the spelling errors in my partner's report. So okay, cops aren't hired for their literary abilities, but she kept on it until she convinced the jury that he didn't know a bloodstain from a glass of orange juice.”

“She did that to me, too,” Frank admitted. “At least mine was only a deposition. Made me paranoid about
i
before
e
for a while.”

“Yeah. So I hope you wrap this up here—or just get all these lawyers out of my hotel, that would be fine, too—so my job can go back to telling unruly guests when to quiet down. But if you do find who killed Marie Corrigan, give me a minute with him before you slap on the cuffs.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want to shake his hand.”

While the records of live juveniles—such as fingerprints, affidavits, and court proceedings—are kept strictly separate from the adult files, the records of
deceased
juveniles are not segregated in any way. Privacy has become useless to them, and since all autopsy reports and attendant information are considered confidential, there's no reason to consider the medical examiner's records on children any
more
confidential. So, as a frequent visitor to the records department, Theresa could find the file on Jenna Simone's homicide as easily as she could the record of a fifty-two-year-old heart-attack victim.

She set it on the small reading table crammed to one side of the records office, under the watchful eye of two secretaries. Both women had worked there long enough to settle into firmly defined and complementary personality profiles. One was a jumbled mass of curly hair and sweetness, always with at least fifteen disjointed files and a bowl of candy on her desk, who knew all the people in the building, their children, and their pets and would ask after the welfare of each one upon every visit. The other sat sternly, impassively, her desk bare except for one file at a time and a framed photo of her daughter, who, on the lone occasion Theresa dared to glance at it, appeared as stern as her mother. Attempts at small talk were met with a stony silence. Theresa often wondered what each would be like if she had a different office mate, if each woman hadn't been assigned such an extreme to play off. Would the stern one relax a bit? Would the grandmotherly type allow herself to get snappish once in a while?

Theresa opened the file. She acted only out of idle curiosity, she told herself; no crisis or even worry existed. Rachael did not date this boy, merely worked with him. It could all be a mistake; Sonia had briefly met him at a younger age, and surely William Rosedale could not be that uncommon a name. Frankly, Theresa should be working on the evidence gathered from around Marie Corrigan and Bruce Raffel as the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County paid her to do, instead of indulging her own overprotective tendencies. But her gaze fell on an eight-by-ten glossy photo of Jenna Simone, naked, dead, her hair soaked in a dried red liquid, her face blotted out under this coating of her own blood. And Theresa forgot all about the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County.

The girl lay on the floor of a stylish living room, furnished with gray Berber carpeting and charcoal leather couches. Pale gray sheers covered the window next to the edge of a fireplace. The girl's body rested in between a coffee table, its picture books still spread out in a real-estate agent's vignette, and an overstuffed sofa. Facedown, head turned slightly to the right, legs spread, her left hand disappearing under the couch and her right flung out, fingernails digging into the thick carpet as if trying to gain traction, to crawl out from under the force that had battered her skull. Something in bright turquoise had been tossed under the coffee table, probably her shirt, and a dark blob near her feet appeared to be her pants.

The blood had formed a pool underneath her head, soaking into the carpet and spreading out, with a series of dots and blobs around it—on the carpet, the sofa, and even the coffee-table books. Just like Marie Corrigan. Just like Bruce Raffel.

Why don't I remember this?
Theresa wondered again. She checked the date—June 27, three years prior.

Oh.

She had been home from work on June 27, three years prior. She had been home from work for most of that July, too, because her fiancé had just been killed during the investigation of a bank robbery at the Federal Reserve.

At least that explained why she had no memory of such a brutal murder. She had no memory of the rest of that summer.

Theresa shrugged and went back to the file. The autopsy report came next.

It was not lengthy; it didn't need to be. Jenna Simone had been a perfectly healthy sixteen-year-old until someone took a blunt object to her skull. She had not been a virgin prior to the attack. Small tears indicated rape, but no sperm was found and no DNA obtained. She'd been struck three times on the back of the skull with something thin, straight, and hard. No weapon had been submitted for comparison, the doctor noted—not as a comment on the investigation but because it might be years before the case came to trial and the pathologist would need an answer when the defense attorney asked why the wounds had not been compared to a weapon. By then it would be hard to remember any theories about what could have caused the wounds when time and many more autopsies came in between. So the doctor had also noted that the fireplace poker had disappeared and that a rod of such size and strength could have been used to cause the defects in the girl's cranium. Theresa instantly saw the prosecutor's problem: The suspect was present, but without the weapon. If he'd gotten rid of the poker, why not get rid of the body? If the body would be too difficult to dispose of, why not keep the poker and invent a story about a bushy-haired stranger who'd invaded his home in a botched robbery, found William passing out, and a vulnerable Jenna? A story that wouldn't fool a five-year-old but couldn't exactly be
dis
proved either. Men had beaten a murder charge with less. Perhaps William really had been in a drunken haze, unable to summon up even a slightly good plan to cover up his guilt—and yet able to make the weapon disappear.

There were no other wounds on her body, no bruises, nothing but one chipped fingernail. Jenna had not been drunk. Normally the toxicology results would be in a separate report, but since the case had gone to trial and the results had become part of a public record, they remained in the file. Jenna Simone had had a small amount of alcohol in her system, equivalent to perhaps one beer, and no other narcotics or stimulants.

Next came only a single page of laboratory notes, written in Don's neat handwriting. He had examined the victim's clothing—the DNA analyst had picked up Theresa's slack while she'd been lost in a funk. Westlake PD had submitted four items: a turquoise shirt with thin straps and a built-in shelf bra; a pair of blue denim jeans, Tommy Hilfiger size four boot-cut; a pair of silky purple panties, no tag; and a pair of high-heeled leather sandals with black-and-white leopard-print uppers. These were worn but clean, with no bloodstains. The panties were free of blood and negative for semen. The jeans—how did teenagers stay so preternaturally thin? Theresa wondered; in her youth no one under the age of eight would have fit into a size four—were also unstained. The turquoise top had smears of blood, but no evidence of semen. All items had been taped for hairs and fibers and submitted to the hair/fiber analyst—Theresa, in other words. So she did not feel surprised when she turned to the next report to see her own handwriting, somewhat less tidy than Don's.

She had included a micrograph of matching carpet fibers and finally felt a glimmer of recognition at the gray, trilobal threads. Of the hairs found on the body, one was consistent with William, one with his mother, and one, short and black, matched no one. No conclusions could be drawn from this, as the body lay in the suspect's own house and not in an isolated location—meaning that Theresa assumed the Rosedales had as many guests and visitors in their home as any other family. A wealthy family, probably quite social … How much had that changed? Had their friends stood by them, or did the incident cause a bit of coolness in the country club's locker room?

That concluded the reports. Two thick packets of photographs had been left in the file, most likely printed up for the prosecution's review or at the pathologist's request. Since the M.E.'s office had gone to digital instead of 35-millimeter, photos were stored and accessed through the computer network to save the cost of actually printing them. But some doctors still preferred to work with prints instead of their computer monitor, or the prosecutors tried to save money by asking the M.E.'s office to print the photos.

Theresa skimmed through the autopsy photos with determined professionalism, making no connection between the raw flesh on the steel table and her own daughter. Not even a glimmer. Not even when she viewed the bare white bone of Jenna Simone's skull, pieced back together for the photographer like a jigsaw puzzle.

The other packet, much thinner, contained photographs of the clothing, each item front and back. No surprises. The bloodstains stood out in sharp relief against the bright blue, a large blotch at the hemline and then a series of three and a half lines under the right armpit. Something like Marie Corrigan—blood on the shirt only. As if the bludgeoning had been inflicted before the clothing had been removed. But if both females and their killer hadn't been in the process of removing clothing, then what had provoked such a fatal argument? Because the women wouldn't even consider removing it? Or because both killers didn't even try to persuade them?

A surprisingly brief newspaper clipping gave her only a few additional facts: Jenna had had no current boyfriend and had met up with her girlfriends at the dance. A friend of William's had confirmed that they'd arrived at the dance together but then he'd lost track of William. William's car was found in the school parking lot.

And there the file of Jenna Simone's death ended.

Theresa moved to the cabinet and placed the folder back in numerical order.

The case could not be more open and shut. And yet William Rosedale had walked out of the courtroom a free man. How?

One person might have some insight. And, happily for her, he worked right upstairs.

She pushed the file drawer to close it, then grabbed it again as a name caught her eye. It closed on her right thumb, not enough to bruise but enough to hurt like the dickens. She pulled out the new file with her left hand and read the name on the tab.

Cases were filed by number, not name. Only one and a half months after Jenna Simone's murder, Ellie Baker Britton had died. The first wife of her lawyer nemesis.

Frank slammed the door of the Crown Vic just a little too hard, and the sound rattled his eardrums. He'd developed a headache after the day spent inside the hotel, the air a little too stuffy, the witnesses a little too reticent. He needed to go home, where a shot of Jack Daniel's and some satellite TV cured most ills. Maybe two shots.

The house in front of him had high windows, an impeccable paint job, and columns. Actual freakin' columns, white and tall.

Maybe three shots.

“We're in the wrong line of work,” his partner, Angela, observed from the other side of the car.

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“Meat Loaf.”

He blinked at her for a moment before making the association. They had fallen into a habit of throwing out snatches of song lyrics as a challenge for the other to identify. It gave them something to do in the slow moments, when other detective teams might talk about sports, politics, or their personal problems. Angela didn't follow sports, Frank ignored any politics that didn't immediately affect him, and Angela kept most of her personal life to herself. Frank thought he did, too, but sometimes suspected that he simply didn't
have
a personal life to keep.

Dennis Britton, on the other hand, probably did. He certainly had the house for it.

His sweeping three-story mansion in Gates Mills backed up to the Chagrin River, surrounded by oak trees, a five-car garage, and a smaller home that may once have belonged to servants and probably still did. Frank couldn't picture Britton spending the weekend trimming the bushes or washing the windows. Frank couldn't picture Britton without a suit and tie.

An older BMW sat on the pristine driveway, next to a current-model Corvette. Hers and his, Frank guessed. Old money and new. Or maybe just old. No need to spend your own salary on your toys when your wife comes from one of the richest families in the country.

Angela sighed.

“Stop it,” he told her. She gave him a quizzical look, and he expounded, “Neither of us is looking forward to this, and we should be. Here's our chance to put this asshole on the hot seat instead of him doing it to us. We should be breathing fire, not all depressed and intimidated. The man's at the top of our list for two brutal murders, and we're not leaving here without answers. Right?”

She smiled. “Right. Should we give some sort of tribal yell, or say ‘hike' or something?”

Frank looked up at the high windows. “We'll skip that part for now.”