Lisa Black - Evidence of Murder

“I’m sorry.” The words left her throat in a choking rush, and she fled to the elevator bank without waiting for absolution. Gulping in huge, deep breaths, she made it to the lobby before the tears came.

“But it’s just his finances,” she protested to her cousin. The Justice Center sat only two blocks from the venture capital firm and she had walked it, putting her hands over her ears for the last half block to protect the thin flesh from the lake air that whipped past the old courthouse in arctic bursts. Now she sat at the desk across from Frank’s, the desk that had been Paul’s. The cracked Formica top held nothing but dust, a stapler, and a bit of overflow from Frank’s work files. Oddly enough this did not affect her. She had rarely visited the plain, brightly lit, and largely impersonal homicide unit and did not look for traces of Paul there. “Can’t you subpoena Griffin Investments to find out if they gave him the money to pay for the factory?”

“No.”

“You can’t just call them and ask, then?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“I did.”

“Tess!”

“I’m establishing Jillian’s frame of mind, and she may have been acquainted with Evan’s financial manager at Griffin. He may even have been her financial manager, for all I knew. The receptionist didn’t find it that bizarre.”

“Unless the receptionist doubles as the firm’s legal counsel-”

“It doesn’t matter, because I didn’t get anywhere. You know why? Because Evan’s financial manager at Griffin is on a second honeymoon in Asia and refused to take his cell phone with him. The receptionist-she found this very romantic-said it was a dream of the guy’s wife but they’d never wanted to spring for it until a generous client gave them the trip as a thank-you. Want to guess who the generous client was?”

Frank pulled at his lower lip. “Evan?”

“That’s my guess too, but I can’t be sure. The receptionist either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell. They left Detroit yesterday , Frank. I had to open my mouth when Evan complained to the coroner about me. He wasted no time in getting this guy out of the country for a few weeks. If I had called Griffin the minute I learned their name-”

“They wouldn’t have told you anything anyway,” Frank stated.

“I know, they probably wouldn’t have…you can’t find out that information somehow?”

“I’m sorry, Tess, but no. This isn’t communist China or something. We have a little thing called civil rights here. Not that I’m always fond of them myself, but if I want to keep my job I have to get something like a warrant . Which, as I believe I’ve explained, no judge is going to give me based on your-what, hunch?”

She had warmed in the interior temperature and now removed her coat. “Means, opportunity, motive. He had opportunity. I want to find out if he had motive.”

“What about means?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“Work harder. We don’t even need motive. Besides, they were married, that’s motive enough.” She gave him the look she had learned from their aunts and he added, “Sorry, but it’s true. Husbands and wives always have motive, anything from a million-dollar insurance policy to a piece on the side to leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. You don’t need motive, you need concrete facts. The kind that will convince a judge that Evan Kovacic murdered his wife.”

“Like what?”

“How about some evidence? Isn’t that your stock in trade?”

“Anything he left on Jillian, hairs, fibers, bodily fluids, is not significant. They lived together. You would expect to find his trace on her and vice versa. That’s the problem with family killings. If he used some kind of weapon, poison, pills, I don’t know what it is and I won’t know if it’s on his property without getting a search warrant to search it, and you say I can’t get the warrant unless I have reason to believe the weapon is there.”

“Welcome to my world.” Frank sipped from a porcelain mug, then made a face as if the coffee had gone cold. “So the body isn’t going to help you.”

“Except for the fact that it was moved. He somehow got Jillian from her apartment to Edgewater Park. Maybe in the middle of a freezing-cold night, so no one saw him. Maybe she was somehow still conscious, so he might not have had to carry her.”

“Then why would she agree to go to the lake in the middle of the night? Especially if it meant taking the baby out in the cold or leaving her alone in the apartment?”

“She wasn’t thinking clearly, perhaps. Even if she had been…Jillian was too sweet for her own good. Evan could have convinced her to go there. He probably could have convinced her to jump in.”

“So that brings us to his car. What did you find on the stuff you stole from it?”

“Two of her hairs and one pink cotton fiber in the cargo area.”

Frank saluted her with his mug.

“But that doesn’t mean anything, as I said. She could have gotten stuff in and out of his car a million times. The only really interesting item is the diatoms in the tire treads. That proves he drove to a location near the lake.”

“Even better.”

“Except that the whole city is on the lake.”

He scowled. “So you stole this stuff and now you’re telling me it’s worthless?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going to get samples of other lakeside parking lots, anyplace he frequents near the water, and see if there’s any difference in the diatoms. I never had marine biology, so I don’t know if diatoms are homogeneous throughout the lake or if different types flourish in different areas. And I didn’t steal it.”

“Yeah, yeah, abandoned property.”

“If I could tie him to Edgewater Park specifically, he’d have no explanation for that.”

“Unless he went there for a walk, before her death or since.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the outdoorsy type.”

“He snowboards.”

“That’s true.” Their sentences had overlapped as the words spilled out; now she slowed. “That’s true. And he’s got a huge bag in his closet for the snowboard. Slender Jillian would easily fit in it.”

“He could have used the board to transport her.”

She tried to picture this. “Only if she were still in the bag; otherwise her arms and legs would overlap it, and they showed no signs of dragging. But it would leave a distinctive track in the snow.”

“We got four inches on Sunday night. It would have covered the tracks.”

“Hefting it over his shoulder would still look less suspicious, I think, but either way I need a search warrant for his house and car.”

“A series of guesses does not constitute sufficient probable cause. Look, I’m glad you’re trying to get back in the game-”

“I’m just doing my job. It’s not a game, and even if it is, I never left it.” This sounded pale and unconvincing even to her, and she avoided his gaze by opening and closing Paul’s desk drawers. Not even a paper clip remained.

“You don’t think you’re overcompensating a little bit for your, um, lack of job enthusiasm during the past few months?”

“Enthusiasm? I work with dead bodies. Exactly how enthusiastic am I expected to be?”

“Okay, forget that. But are you maintaining some sort of objectivity here? At least the possibility that Evan might not have done it?”

“Like you and Georgie?”

“I can admit that nothing is turning up to implicate my Georgie. Can you admit that you are, perhaps, overly sympathetic to this Drew character?”

This stumped her. “Drew?”

“He lives at the edge of the crime scene, he’s squirrelly, and he has a better motive for murder than Evan does. Yet you immediately eliminated him. That’s not like you.”