John Lescroart - The Suspect

And besides, he'd heard enough. "But as the officers pulled up, they distinctly saw you pounding on the door, trying to get into the car."

Conley licked his lips. "Well, yes," he said. She had accidentally locked him out, and he'd become frustrated with the situation, but the cops were wrong if they thought they'd seen him attack her, and he had no idea where the garage door opener had come from. Roake must have brought it-got it from Stuart, perhaps.

"Well, no, sir," Juhle said. "I'm afraid that won't work either. In fact, the officers didn't just happen by. They were watching the house. And so was I."

"The house is a murder scene. I assumed it must have been under some kind of surveillance."

"Actually, no, though. That wasn't it. In fact, Gina Roake had her investigator call me up earlier in the night. He asked me to come on down to Stuart Gorman's place and wait for you and Gina to drive up in your car and stand by." Juhle's statement seemed to shake something loose in Conley, who hesitated slightly, his mouth open to refute a charge that Juhle hadn't quite made. "The idea was that she could open Gorman's garage door from your car."

Another small but obvious hit. Quick as a bird, Conley looked away, blinked, looked back. "Why would she want to do…? How was she going to do that?"

"She thought you'd programmed your car so you could get in and out of the Gormans' garage without leaving your car on the street. And also, of course, so you wouldn't be seen coming and going. Or else so that people, at a glance, would assume it was Stuart, as Bethany Robley did." "Who's she?"

"The neighbor across the street. She saw your car open the garage on the night Caryn Dryden was killed."

"Well, no. That wasn't me. It couldn't have been me. I wasn't anywhere near the house that night. I was at an event for Greenpeace, I remember. She must have planted that garage door opener."

"You remember that specific night, do you? Among all those events you go to?"

"I happen to remember that one, yes. I mean, after hearing about Caryn, the night stuck in my memory."

"So you were never at Caryn's house on that Sunday?"

"No. Of course not."

"But you know, as it turns out," Juhle said almost apologetically, "and you might not have noticed with all the excitement, but Gina did open their garage tonight from inside your car. That was our signal to come running. And she had a tape recorder in her purse, so we know whose idea it was to go to the house." The inspector's blood was starting to run high, but it would not do to show anything. Helpful, courteous to a fault, he went on. "You're certain you weren't there on that Sunday?"

"I told you that. No, of course not."

"But you'd been there recently, at least?"

"Not even that. Lexi and I didn't see them socially. I haven't been to their house in several years."

Sadly, Juhle shook his head. "I'm afraid that's not going to do, sir. Even if it isn't your fingerprint on the one large shard of broken wineglass we found-and I think it is-some of your fingerprints are going to be somewhere in the house, don't you think? Probably in the bedroom. The problem was, we didn't have your fingerprints in the criminal database the last time we looked. And now, of course, that won't be a problem. Same thing with the blood we found in the garage. With your DNA sample, we're going to get a match, aren't we? God," Juhle said, "this is thirsty-making work. Can I get you a Coke or a water or something? I'll be right back."

Juhle walked out the door and crossed the homicide room to get a couple of paper cups full of water. On the way back, he looked in to check the video screen again. The camera was camouflaged into the wall and Conley, though he probably suspected that he was being filmed and/or recorded, couldn't know for sure, and that uncertainty would help to keep him off-balance. His head was whipping from side to side, up to down, as though searching the room for a place to hide or escape. Juhle watched until that stopped and Conley rested his head down upon his open palm.

Coming back into the interrogation room, Juhle pushed the water across at his suspect. "I don't know if you realize it, sir, but at the hearing, Gina Roake made a damn good case for the fact that Caryn might not have been killed at all. Somebody being there at her house on Sunday doesn't necessarily mean that they killed her. It might very well have been an accident. I can understand why you wouldn't want it to come out that you were there. Maybe you really weren't having an affair. Maybe it was just a harmless business meeting, but you were afraid of how it would look. This is really important now. I can't imagine that you would have killed her, but you have to tell me what happened."

The lifeline thrown, Conley stared at it for a long moment, then made a reach for it-the only move he had left. "All right. But it was early in the day. She was a wreck about her invention. You know about that, don't you? The Dryden Socket. She wanted my advice about what she should do."

Same as with Gina, Juhle noticed-a woman needed his advice. Maybe Conley's creativity was drying up under the stress. "So in fact you did go by on that Sunday?"

He nodded. "I think it was sometime around noon. She was very much alive when I was with her, of course." Changing the tone, working the story to try to fit the new facts, he went on, "I couldn't very well admit I'd been over there that day. You understand that. I mean, the day she was killed. But it was all business."

"You weren't anywhere near the hot tub with her?"

"No. We never left the kitchen and living room. Look, Inspector, I know what you're thinking. I even know what it looks like. But we weren't having a physical relationship. The plain fact is that Stuart was jealous of me, and I had to try to keep him from ever seeing us together. She had a key to the back door of my office. I only came by her place when he wasn't home. But I had a great deal of business and even some personal issues with Caryn-okay, I'll admit that-but nothing more. Nothing inappropriate."

Juhle slowly took his paper cup of water and lifted it to his lips. Putting it down, he sighed, hoping to convey his reluctance to vocalize what had to come next. "Mr. Conley," he said, "that shard of wineglass with the fingerprint on it that I mentioned? It was under the hot tub. And your car pulled into the garage at eleven thirty that night."

Juhle knew that Bethany Robley had identified the car as Stuart's during the hearing. But he'd also been at the untaped portion of her interview with Gerry Abrams when the assistant DA had reminded her that Stuart's license plate said ghoti, and if it had been Stuart driving his car, that's what she must have seen.

Conley sat with Juhle's damning words for a long time. Juhle could almost see him conjuring with the various escape possibilities as each new set of facts tightened the noose. Now Conley nodded, settled on his next course. "Okay. All right. We… we were… shit. Intimate. All right. It wasn't anything I planned. It just happened."

Juhle said nothing.

"I don't know what happened to her that day," Conley went on. "It must have been some kind of accident after I left. She fell against something. I know she'd been drinking, she'd taken some pills. That combination, with the hot tub, it can be dangerous by itself. But I swear to God, she was alive when I left."

"She stayed in the hot tub?" "She must have. Yes."

Juhle had his hands linked on the table in front of him. The clock on the wall told him they'd been at this for over an hour. On the one hand, it seemed to him as though it had been five minutes, but on the other, half a night. And now, he knew, it was coming to an end. "Mr. Conley. Sir," he said, "the neighbor across the street saw you leave the house at twelve forty-five. Caryn was already dead at twelve forty-five. Which means if you do the math, and I have, that you either killed her or were someplace else in the house and she died. Maybe you fell asleep, came downstairs to find her dead, and panicked?"