by Mike Markel
“Her son?”
“I don’t know what it was, but Austin could communicate with the boy. Not with words. It was something deeper. The smile on that boy’s face when he was with Austin was remarkable to behold. I don’t think even Suzannah had that connection with him. Her whole body was just filled with joy—that’s the only word for it—when she saw her two boys together. That’s what she called them: her two boys.”
“You said ‘for one thing.’ You had another reason she didn’t kill Austin?”
“Yes. This is very simple, but very profound, and very true. Suzannah is not about hatred. Or pain. She is about love.”
“Really?” I prepared myself for the bullshit.
“I know that for a fact. When my husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, now some nine years ago, and then passed, five years later, Suzannah was the only one in the department—the only one, period—who made an effort to befriend me. I understand that I have a somewhat prickly personality. Suzannah saw right through that. She made a sincere effort to reach me. I’m not talking about cards and flowers and all the rest of the empty gestures. I’m talking about friendship, about caring. I’m talking about commitment. She befriended me. Our souls are now joined together.”
I paused a moment. “So, about those reference letters, when she was coming up for tenure?”
Frances Hamblin frowned and fluttered her hand, as if she were shooing away a gnat. “As a scholar, Suzannah is negligible. I am well aware of that. And if this were a serious university with talented students, she would never have been hired in the first place. But this is Central Montana State, and Suzannah is a terrific asset to this university. She is a wonderful teacher, and she does more for our students in one week than I have done in three decades. I feel no remorse at all for my role in that incident.”
“You mean that incident when she phonied up a reference letter?”
Professor Hamblin looked confused. “I have no idea what you think she did, and I do not intend to provide you with any more salacious gossip. Suzannah Montgomery is a loving, wonderful person who could never hurt another soul. She is with me now, as I speak, as she is with me at all times.”
My phone rang, the muffled sound coming from my big leather shoulder bag. “Excuse me a second.” I walked out toward the entryway so I could take the call. I pulled the phone out of my bag and looked at the screen. It said Rawlings Police Department.
“Seagate,” I said.
“Detective, this is Sergeant Hamilton. We know you got a possible missing person. We got a message from Montana State Police. They’ve got a car in the reservoir. And a driver.”
“Know what kind of car?”
“Not yet.”
“We dispatch anyone?”
“Harold Breen left about five minutes ago. Robin is out at another crime scene. And we’ve got two uniforms there. We’re working on getting the tow truck over there.”
“What part of the reservoir?”
“The boat launch.”
“Okay, thanks, Sergeant. Miner and I will head over.”
I ended the call and went back into the room, where Ryan was chatting the professor up about Melville. He looked up at me to get a read on the phone call.
“We have to go, Professor. I want to thank you for taking the time—”
“Yes, yes, et cetera, Detective.” She leaned down hard on her cane and slowly rose from her chair. “I recommend you turn your attention away from the trivial matter of infractions of silly rules and concentrate instead on making sure she is safe.”
“I appreciate the advice, Professor. We’ll let ourselves out.”
Getting into the Charger, Ryan said, “What’s up?”
“There’s a car in the reservoir. Driver inside.”
“That all you know?”
“Yeah.” I steered us out of Ravensmere, out past the steel gate that swung open at a stately pace. We headed toward State Road 19, which would wind along the river about eight miles, where it connected with the reservoir. The river was running high and fast, the reservoir near capacity from spring runoff. This winter we’d gotten more than our usual snowfall, and the township had opened the irrigation canals a couple of weeks early to take some of the pressure off the reservoir. The Greenpath was flooded in a number of spots, with the river lapping at the tops of boulders that bordered the riverbank and pooling around the cottonwoods and other scraggly trees that lined the banks on both sides.
“Was Professor Hamblin telling us she was having an affair with Suzannah Montgomery?”
I turned to him. “Yeah, I think that’s what she was saying. What did she say: ‘our souls are joined,’ some horseshit like that?”
“That was it.”
“Well, if you got a PhD, I think that means you’re fucking her.”
“Well, now you’re just being reductive,” Ryan said.
“I still don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re oversimplifying a complicated situation.”
“By reducing the joining of the souls to sex?”
“Exactly.”
“But there was sex?” I said.
“As a detective, I’d have to say we have no evidence to draw that conclusion. But if you reduce the complex spiritual relationship—the joining of the souls—to a merely physical relationship, as if they were two dogs or pigs, then you’re being reductive.”
“So they were getting their rocks off, plus feeling good about themselves because they weren’t just a couple horny old babes fucking like they used to when they were young.”
“I wouldn’t use that vocabulary, but yes, I think that’s the point.”
“You could’ve been a professor.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
We passed the Hilltop Inn, perched on the top of a bluff overlooking the western edge of the reservoir, which terminated in the huge concrete wall with the three big circular spouts that fed the river. A half-dozen serious Harleys sat in a row in the parking lot at the Hilltop. There were always a half-dozen serious Harleys there. Inside, the bulky bikers with do-rags on their bald heads played pool and listened to Creedence and Skynyrd on the digital jukebox while they drank Coors and Old Milwaukee. I was fine with them, mostly because they didn’t run drugs or girls and when they got cranky they just beat up each other, not any civilians. Plus, the owner was good about not letting them walk out of there shitfaced and get on their cycles.
We made it to the access road that served all the mechanical gear that operated the gates controlling the water that fed the river. We snaked our way along the edge of the reservoir, the water looking cold and black under the cloudy sky. In the distance, I could see a couple of fire trucks with boat trailers half-submerged.
I parked us off to the side, behind Harold Breen’s van, and Ryan and I walked down toward the concrete ramp. The ramp was about thirty yards wide and extended fifty yards into the reservoir, with floating docks on either side. But with the water this high, only about ten yards of the ribbed concrete was visible. A dive-team van was parked on the ramp, its boat trailer mostly submerged. Sixty or seventy yards away, the red rubber dive-team raft was bobbing in the slight chop of the water. One guy was in the raft, another in the water nearby, his head just visible above the surface. I saw a line going off the front of the raft, down into the water.
“Good morning, Harold,” I said to the Medical Examiner.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. He was wearing a thin green nylon jacket, his big gut sticking out the front. “And good morning to you, too, Ryan.”
Ryan acknowledged the greeting and said, “All we know is there’s a car in there. You got anything else?”
“Nothing useful,” Harold said. “A guy in a little boat saw the outline of a car, called it in. Said he thought he saw a person inside.”
I said, “So the divers haven’t told you anything?”
“They just went in a few minutes ago.”
A second diver broke the surface near the raft. The two divers flopped their way into the raft, and the third guy started the outboard, pulled in the anchor, and aimed the raft at the ramp.
It took a half minute for them to get to shore. One of the divers and the pilot stayed with the raft, straightening it out and hooking its bow to the trailer winch. The other diver walked over to us.
He had already left his tanks, fins, and other gear in the raft. Still, he walked slowly and laboriously in the heavy-duty rubber dry suit that looked like it weighed at least fifty pounds.
“I’m McDevitt.” He was breathing a little hard.
“I’m Seagate, this is Miner. You know Harold Breen, the ME?”
“Yeah,” McDevitt said. “Good to see you all.”
“What you got down there?” I pointed out toward the water.
“A car and a driver.”
“What kind of car?”
“It’s an SUV. Lexus.”
“White?”
“Near as I can tell.”
“Driver?”
“White woman. Middle aged.”
“How long will it take to get the car out?”
McDevitt shook one leg, then the other, as if he was trying to get the blood flowing again. “It’s sitting right-side up on the bottom. I can attach a cable, run it back here to shore. The truck should be able to pull it out within an hour.”
“Harold, how long will you need to tell me how she died?”
“Anywhere from one hour to one week. Depends.”
“Can you start this afternoon?”
“I can start this afternoon. Can’t say I’ll finish this afternoon. But I’ll let you know what we’re looking at.”
Chapter 35
“This is how she died,” Harold Breen said, using a pencil to lift the hair off Suzannah Montgomery’s right temple.
It was a loose-contact wound: the muzzle was resting lightly against the skin when the pistol discharged. The skin encircling the entry wound was blackened. Outside the circle were the characteristic reddish-brown dots that showed us she was alive before the bullet penetrated her brain. I turned to Robin, the Evidence Tech. “Can I see the gun?”
She shook her head. “No gun.”
I paused. “No gun?”
“We tore the SUV apart. And we searched the ramp and the brush on either side.”
“Were the windows on the SUV open or closed?”
“Everything was closed except for the front passenger window, which was open about four inches.” Robin reached over the corpse and pulled up the upper lip. “Look at this.”
“What am I looking at?”
“You see the gums on the right side of her mouth?”
“Yeah.”
“Now look at the left side.”
“Okay, what?”
“She was left-handed.”
“How do you get that?”
“Most people, the gum recedes more on the side opposite their handedness.”
I stepped back a little to see what she was talking about. “You mean, they brush harder on the opposite side?”
“That’s it,” Robin said. “Plus, her watch was on her right wrist.”
“Okay, she was left-handed,” I said.
“Most suicides use their dominant hand when they blow their brains out. I’d expect her to shoot herself with her left hand.”
“Ryan?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe she was lefty but she used her right hand because the window got in the way.” He paused. “I do find it interesting that we didn’t recover a weapon.”
“The diver said the SUV was right-side-up, right?”
“Yes, he did,” my partner said.
“Robin, when you looked at the SUV, did you see any evidence it rolled over once it was in the water? The roof scratched or anything?”
“No, it rolled in, kept going for a while. The transmission was in Drive. I think the engine was on, and it was driven into the water. It kept going for a few seconds until it stalled out, then it kept rolling a little bit. But it didn’t flip. If you’re asking whether the pistol fell out the passenger window, I don’t see that happening.”
“If she shot herself,” Ryan said, “the pistol would either still be in her right hand or on the seat or the floor. It would still be in the Lex.”
“What do you think, Harold?” I said.
“All I know is she was alive until a bullet penetrated her brain. Then, less than a minute later, she was dead.”
Ryan turned to me. “You want to ask the divers to go back in? They’ve got a hand-held sonar that can find a gun.”
I paused a moment to think. “Not sure what the pistol’s gonna tell us. If it’s in the water, not likely it’ll have any prints left on it. Let’s start by getting the round. Harold, could you pull the round out?” He nodded. “And Robin, you try to see if there are any striations that identify the gun.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Ryan, let’s go upstairs and see if the Montgomerys had any weapons registered.” I turned to Robin and Harold. “Thanks, guys.”
Back at our desks, Ryan said to me, “The Montgomerys don’t have any permits.”
“Which doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Very true,” Ryan said.
“What are we missing here?”
“Let’s pull back a little,” he said. “We’re thinking about which hand she used to shoot herself—and what happened to the gun. Why are we ruling out murder?”
“We’re not ruling out murder. We’re just starting with the most obvious explanation, which is that she killed Austin Sulenka, who she was screwing, and she knows we’re onto her. Who do you see wanted to kill her?”
“It’s not Frances Hamblin.”
“No, what with their souls joined together.”
“Her husband,” Ryan said. “He finds out she’s screwing Austin. Or Frances Hamblin.”
“I don’t like it.” I shook my head. “Aaron and Suzannah have a long history of lying—all the way back to when they lived in South Carolina, where he says he’s never been. Her doing some recreational fucking—for all we know, they video it for their private collection.”
“Aaron killed Austin, or the two of them killed Austin. Aaron finds out Suzannah is going to plead to it, leaving him on the hook.”
“Still don’t like it,” I said. “Why does he kill her out at the reservoir?”
“So he doesn’t leave any evidence at the house. Doesn’t have to dispose of the body.”
“Aaron’s out shooting his wife in the head. Where’s Adam?”
“His sister’s watching him,” Ryan said. “Or he’s at his school.”
“How does Aaron get home to call us about his wife being missing?”
“In his own car.”
“So both the family cars are out at the reservoir? How’d he convince her to drive her Lex to the reservoir?”
Ryan scratched at the corner of his mouth. “You know, it’s a lot easier to ask questions than to answer them.”
“I repeat my question: what are we missing here?”
“It wasn’t suicide,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“I get why Suzannah doesn’t want to shoot herself in the house. But there are plenty of places within walking distance of campus—right on the river—where she could kill herself and not be discovered for days. Why would she drive out to the reservoir, put the car in Drive, and shoot herself in the head?”
“What’s the problem?”
“For one thing, the car’s still worth twenty-thousand bucks.”
“Nah. You’re going to kill yourself, you’re not worried about the Blue Book on the car.”
“I would if I were trying to make things easy on my husband and my two kids.”
We sat there for a while. I was certain we didn’t understand how and why Suzannah Montgomery killed herself—or got herself killed. If you’ve never been a cop, you’d be surprised how often you sit at you
r desk, knowing you don’t understand something but not knowing exactly where you went off track or how to get back on it.
Ryan’s phone rang. “Miner,” he said. He listened for a little bit, then said, “Thanks very much, ma’am.” He stood up and started putting on his suit jacket.
“Where you headed, partner?”
“We’re going out to visit May Eberlein.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she missed her defense this morning.”
I got up and hoisted my big leather bag onto my shoulder. “You don’t want to miss your defense, I guess.”
“No,” Ryan said as we hurried out to the parking lot. “You really don’t.”
It took us about seven minutes to make it out to the house where May Eberlein rented the apartment upstairs.
“I’ll check the apartment,” I said as I rushed around the side of the house to the metal stairs. “You get the key from the landlady.”
I climbed the stairs and knocked hard on the door. There was no glass on the door, and no window to look into the apartment. I ran back down the stairs and circled the house, looking for her car. There were a couple of spots at the end of an unpaved driveway on the side. All I remembered about May’s car was that it was a small red Japanese thing. The dark green Buick behind the house would be the landlady’s.
I rushed back out front, where Ryan was finishing up with the landlady. He held the key up. “Doesn’t know where she is.”
Back up the metal stairs. Ryan opened it up. I called out to May, but the place was empty. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, food in the refrigerator. In the living room, a set of student essays was sitting on the coffee table, next to a few books.
I headed into the bedroom. The closet door was open. I looked in. It was empty, just a couple dozen cheap metal hangers hanging on the rod. I scanned the rest of the room. No shoes. No nothing. “She’s gone,” I said.
Ryan was down on the floor, looking under her bed. “No suitcases,” he said.
“Did the landlady say anything about where she might be?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t know anything.”
