It's Always the Husband

by Michele Campbell

  With the state police handling the technical side, Owen was free to focus on documents. He liked documents. There weren’t enough of them in narcotics cases. Maybe you’d get a slip of paper that said “Chino, 20 kilos,” with a cell number on it, but nothing that required a man to solve a puzzle, to use his brain. He was looking for anything that gave Rothenberg a motive, or put him near the River Road boat launch on Friday night, when they believed she disappeared. Phone records, a bus ticket in a coat pocket, a receipt from a gas station. Anything. Or an insurance policy on Kate’s life with Rothenberg named as the beneficiary. Wouldn’t that be nice? Owen walked the first floor, looking for a desk or filing cabinet or anything, even a junk drawer where they stashed their paperwork. The house was a jumble of rooms, poorly organized, musty and dark, not at all the sort of place he imagined Kate living. She belonged in that mansion in the picture, not in a dump like this. Rothenberg must’ve really hit the skids if this was the best he could do. Hell, Owen could’ve done better for Kate himself, and he’d never come within a hundred miles of the kind of money that guy had.

  In the kitchen, where he and Keisha had interviewed Rothenberg just the afternoon before, Owen went through the drawers and came up empty. Then he opened the pantry door and stopped and stared. Owen’s pantry had about ten boxes of cereal, a few cans of beans, maybe some spaghetti. This one was full to the brim with the most amazing stash of booze he’d ever seen outside a bar. Owen rummaged through it, the bottles clinking as he read the labels. There were many types of artisanal gin and some very expensive vermouth. Bourbon, both Kentucky and local, as well as five kinds of scotch, including a famous single malt that cost a pretty penny. Dark rum, white rum, and cachaça. Liqueurs and cordials in every flavor, brandy and cognac, margarita mix and Bloody Mary mix and simple syrup and bitters. You could throw a party for a hundred people and not make a dent in this haul. Owen wondered what the total price tag was. If Rothenberg could afford a liquor cabinet this extravagant, maybe he wasn’t hurting so bad after all. Maybe he had money stashed. Lightbulb—maybe he had money stashed, and he used it to pay for a habit that was maybe booze, but maybe something more. Could there be drugs in the house? The answer to that, in his experience, was there always could. Owen didn’t have enough to lock Rothenberg up for murder. But if he found drugs, he could sure as hell lock him up for that, and he’d get the breathing room he needed to make the murder case at his leisure.

  Owen dialed the state police for what felt like the tenth time that day, and requested dispatch of a canine team. He hated going to them with hat in hand, but this town had no goddamn resources, and if he borrowed from the overtime fund again, someone was bound to find out. He swallowed his pride and asked the state police for another favor. Owen was not about to let a possible drug arrest of Rothenberg fall by the wayside just to save face.

  When they told him it would take an hour to get the canine there, Owen photographed the booze (you never knew what might come in handy at trial) and went back to searching for documents. Eventually he located a screen porch off the kitchen that he’d missed on his first walk-through. The storm windows were up, but as Owen stepped down to the porch, the temperature dropped a good twenty-five degrees. If Kate was his, he would’ve spent a Saturday insulating the porch so she didn’t have to sit in the cold. Presumably a guy like Rothenberg had never heard of Home Depot and couldn’t swing a hammer to save his life.

  The desk in the corner was covered with papers. Owen switched on the desk lamp and started wading through them. It was a freaking bonanza. Phone records, credit card bills, bank records, correspondence. Rothenberg hadn’t gone digital yet, apparently. Owen sorted them into piles. The bank records and credit cards were key, because Owen needed to be able to prove that Rothenberg profited from his wife’s death. He found the October statement for a joint checking account, which showed a dangerously low balance, less than was needed to pay off the credit card debt he found in their bills. Now that he had the account numbers, he would subpoena every record he could get his hands on, and if there was a financial motive, he would find it.

  Owen moved a sheaf of papers and under it discovered a shiny silver laptop. He knew better than to lay a finger on it himself. An expert needed to retrieve the data under controlled conditions. (Another expense he’d have to find the money for somehow.) His hands twitched with excitement as he sealed the laptop into an evidence bag for chain of custody. There was bound to be something on there to sink the husband. Sexts with a girlfriend. Google searches for how to dump a body. Directions to the River Road boat launch, or something else Rizzo hadn’t thought of yet. Computers solved cases, because people were stupid. Owen couldn’t count the number of times he’d searched a guy’s phone and found it loaded with pictures of drugs and guns and cash. Which, okay, maybe meant drug dealers were especially stupid. But no—it was the rich, stuck-up assholes like Rothenberg who felt so far above the law that they’d never bother to destroy evidence of their crimes.

  Next came the desk drawers. He yanked open the top right-hand one and stopped, breathless. This was Kate’s drawer. A small tray held pink paper clips, hair elastics, a lip gloss, matches from a bar in New York City, a pack of Marlboro reds. (Did she smoke? He didn’t remember that from the bar.) It was just the sort of stuff a woman would keep in her handbag. He’d thought about the handbag before, of course. It was missing. They were hoping to find it in this search, but so far they hadn’t. Something was wedged under the tray. Owen moved it aside and pulled out a small red-leather date book. It was a dainty thing, with gold edging on the pages and a red silk ribbon marking Friday’s date. Friday, her fortieth birthday, the last day she walked this earth. He had to sit down in the desk chair. She’d written “40” in black ink at the top of the page, surrounded by little lines that looked like fireworks exploding. And below that, in a bold, slanted hand, in the space for seven o’clock: “Bday dinner at Henry’s w/ J&A.” Henry’s? Was that the name of a person, or did it refer to Henry’s Bistro? He’d send Keisha down there with a subpoena for their reservation book to find out.

  His walkie-talkie squawked.

  “Yo, Chief. We got something here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Master bedroom.”

  “On my way.”

  He’d looked through the bedroom before the forensics team showed up, but it had been a cursory search, to get a feel for things. He thought he would’ve spotted something major, but that’s why you brought in the crime scene team. They were the experts.

  In the bedroom, Owen found the team leader and another guy hunched over the laundry hamper, clothing scattered on the floor at their feet. They turned when he walked in.

  “Get a load of this, Chief,” the team leader said. “Matthews found it wadded up in the bottom of the basket.”

  The team leader stepped aside. Laid out on the top of the hamper, Owen saw a men’s shirt, purple-check, with a Brooks Brothers label. The left-hand side was marred by a large spatter of dried blood.

  Owen grinned and clapped the team leader on the back. “Thanks, bro. I think you just solved my case.”

  28

  Griff woke from a troubled sleep. Thoughts of Kate rushed in, and it took a couple of minutes before he could breathe again. The last thing he remembered was Aubrey feeding him soup and promising to find him a lawyer. She’d neglected to bring any booze, however. He hadn’t had a drink since Sunday and it was—what, Tuesday? Wednesday? He wasn’t feverish any longer. His mind was clearer than it had been in a while. That was not necessarily a good thing.

  In the quiet of the cabin, he heard the soft lapping of the lake against the dock. A ray of light from the picture window pierced his eyes, irritating them. The sunlight forced him to sit up; otherwise he might not have found the will. He felt Kate in it, calling him outdoors. Pulling the afghan tight around his shoulders, Griff stepped out onto the back deck, and the cold enveloped him. It was a damp, blustery day, with a taste of snow in the air. Was Kate o
ut here? He saw no hope in this dead landscape. The sky was silver, the lake was black, and the bare trees made ugly slashes against the sky. All around, piles of wet leaves gave off the sickly-sweet smell of death. Maybe that was her message to him.

  He was staring at the lake, thinking about Kate’s body in the freezing river, when the phone in his back pocket rang, making him start. Aubrey brought him a charger, he remembered. He pulled the phone out and saw that it was Jenny calling.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Griff. I can’t believe I reached you. I tried so many times.”

  “My phone was dead,” he said, and his voice was dead, too.

  “Are you all right?” Jenny asked.

  The question was so surreal that he couldn’t answer.

  “Griff?” she said.

  “No, Jenny. I’m not all right.”

  “Everybody’s been looking for you. A lot is going on. I can’t get into it over the phone. When the medical examiner’s office couldn’t get in touch with you, they had to call Kate’s brother to make arrangements for her body.”

  “Her brother? Why?”

  “Because they couldn’t find you, and Keniston was in the hospital.”

  “Oh. Kate said he was going in for tests.”

  “Well, he has cancer, so they talked to Benji Eastman instead, and Benji called me, trying to find you. I arranged for Kate to be moved to the funeral home in town, but now the funeral director wants to meet with you.”

  “That’s terrible about Keniston.”

  “Yes it is. But Griff, where the hell have you been?”

  “At Aubrey’s cabin, at the lake.”

  Jenny made an annoyed noise. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me that.”

  “I haven’t been feeling well. She was letting me rest,” Griff said.

  “There’s no time for that now. I hate to be blunt, Griff, but if you don’t show your face, it looks bad. You need to make your wife’s funeral arrangements, or else people might draw the wrong conclusions.”

  He paused. She was implying that people thought he killed Kate. If that’s what they thought of him, why was Jenny even bothering to help him? He wished she would leave him to his fate.

  “Are the police—?” he began.

  “Are they what?” she asked. But he let the question lie there.

  “Let’s talk in person, all right?” she said. “Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you. We’ll go to the funeral home together.”

  She hung up before he could say no. It would take her half an hour to drive to the cabin from Belle River. Griff had no car to make his getaway. But he found that he no longer wanted to run. He didn’t want to die either. It hadn’t occurred to him before Jenny’s call, but Kate was still here, not just in his mind, but in body. He could see her, touch her, talk to her, say the things he’d been longing to say but thought he’d never get the chance to. Maybe if he said them, he would be able to go on. There was a small part of him that still imagined a future.

  Suddenly Griff couldn’t wait. He went back inside and tried to take a shower, but the water that came out of the shower head was ice-cold and rusty, so he settled for washing his face. That bruise was fading, and the swelling on the left side of his jaw had gone down. He was ravenously hungry. He made scrambled eggs and wolfed them straight from the pan. By the time he was done, Jenny’s minivan was in the driveway. She honked. He threw the pan in the sink and ran out.

  The road down from the lake was narrow and winding, and for the first bit Jenny concentrated on her driving. Once they hit the highway, she stepped on the gas, and glanced over at Griff with concern.

  “Nobody told me you two were splitting up,” she began.

  “It came as a surprise to me, too.”

  “You asked me on the phone about the police,” she said. “They think it’s suspicious that Kate went missing immediately after filing for divorce.”

  Griff shrugged. “I don’t know why they think that. She served me with papers and then she took off. She wasn’t about to come back home like nothing happened. I assumed she left town.”

  “Well, you were wrong. She didn’t go off on some Caribbean cruise. She turned up dead. Aren’t you worried they’ll come after you? Because you should be.”

  “I have no control over what the cops do. Aubrey told me they already searched my house.”

  “Anything I say about that, I’d be disclosing confidential information.”

  “Don’t tell me then. I don’t want to put you in a bad position,” Griff said.

  “I’ll do it, Griff. I just want you to understand, you can never say I told you.”

  “Honestly, Jenny, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what happens next. I just want to see Kate.”

  “I have a contact inside the police department. He called me a little while ago with the results of the search. You should know, the police found a shirt of yours, with bloodstains on it.”

  He leaned back in the passenger seat and closed his eyes. “It’s not Kate’s blood. It’s mine. I didn’t kill her, Jenny. I loved her.”

  “I know that.”

  He opened his eyes. “But somebody killed her?”

  “The chief of police thinks so. He’s a royal terror. I wish I could control him, but I can’t. Honestly, he’s focused on you, Griff.”

  “Figures.” Griff shook his head in disgust. Fucking cops. “What about you? What do you think?”

  Jenny sighed. “Personally, I hope it gets ruled a suicide. That would be best for everybody. Let her rest in peace.”

  He didn’t contradict her. By the time they reached the funeral home, it had started to snow, in sharp, icy crystals that struck the back of Griff’s neck and chilled him to the bone. The funeral home was new construction, meant to look quaint and New Englandy with white-clapboard siding and green shutters, but inside, smelling of cheap carpeting and air freshener.

  “Who picked this place?” Griff asked.

  “It’s the only funeral home in town. Once the medical examiner released her body, she had to go somewhere.”

  “It’s so bleak,” he said, and his voice caught.

  “You don’t have to do the service here. We can do it at a church and go straight to the cemetery, then do a reception at my house, if you like.”

  “Mem Church?” Griff asked.

  Memorial Church, in the center of the Quad, with its soaring transept and stained-glass windows, was where Carlisle held its sacred events. Graduations, swearings-in, weddings. Griff had wanted to get married there, but Kate wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If you think that’s what she’d want,” Jenny said, reading his mind.

  Of course Kate wouldn’t want that, but Griff wanted it on her behalf. She should’ve graduated. It was a travesty that she didn’t. Let her at least have a Carlisle funeral.

  “She wasn’t an alum,” Jenny said, “but Keniston could probably arrange it. He’s getting released tonight, and Benji’s driving him up here in the morning. It’s only—”

  “What?”

  “The press has their teeth in the story, Griff. If you hold the funeral in the middle of campus, it could turn into a circus. I’m even worried they’ll show up here.”

  “I’ve been through worse,” he said with a shrug, thinking of his father. “You just ignore it.”

  “Kate’s in there,” Jenny said, nodding toward a side room. “I’ll wait in the lobby. I’m sure you want some time alone with her.”

  It was the only thing he wanted.

  As Griff stepped into the room and caught sight of Kate lying on the bier, his breath left him. They’d dimmed the lights, so the space seemed candlelit, almost romantic, and she looked so beautiful. He approached her reverently. The undertaker had done a remarkable job. She was herself, except with a heavy sheen of pale foundation makeup, which Kate never wore, and carefully brushed hair, where Kate’s hair was free and wild. Otherwise, it was just Kate, looking fast asleep. Jenny must have selected the outfit. She w
ore her favorite dress, a chic black sheath by a famous designer that hugged her figure, from the days when they could afford to spend thousands on a single item of clothing. Griff gazed down at her, ignoring the faint chemical smell that pervaded the air. He’d expected to want to throw himself on her body, to rant and rave, but instead he felt calm and light. He felt peace and joy. Until he touched her.

  He drew his hand back as if he’d had an electric shock, but it was just the opposite. The life force had left her. Her flesh felt cold, plastic, inert. Like a refrigerated doll. Like she was dead. Only in that moment did it become real, and he sank to his knees beside her and sobbed.

  “Why?” he shouted, through his tears, then remembered where he was. This place could be bugged. The cops might be listening.

  “Who did this to you?” he said aloud. “Was it him? Or did you do it to yourself?”

  He went to sit in a nearby folding chair, staring at her in the oppressive silence as an Eagles song played in his head. And the storybook comes to a close, gone are the ribbons and bows. Their love affair had been a storybook, to Griff at least. But if he was honest, they’d only had four or five good years before things went downhill, followed by nearly a decade of a slow, agonizing unraveling. But Kate was Kate. What could you do? He never stopped loving her.

  Their best times were in New York, those first few years. There was a moment, after rehab, after they got married, when he truly believed she’d changed. Her guilt over Lucas was the cause, but if it helped manage her demons, he’d take it and be grateful. At some point in Paris, Kate had added a fourth star to that tattoo inside her wrist. Griff would come upon her sometimes, sitting quietly with a faraway look in her eyes, tracing that fourth star with her finger. He never asked her if it represented Lucas; he never let on he noticed it at all. But he knew. The guilt seemed to do her good. Kate took Griff up on his offer of an introduction to his friend who ran the charity, and for a while she volunteered in a shelter for homeless kids. She went so far as to write away for brochures on master’s programs in social work.