Brad Meltzer - Dead Even

“Are you from the DA’s office?” Fawcett asked suspiciously.

“Oh, yeah,” Elliott said, pulling a clipboard from his backpack. “Let’s see here – I’m supposed to deliver it to Assistant District Attorney Sara Tate at 80 Centre Street ASAP. She apparently wants it yesterday.”

“They always do,” Fawcett joked. He handed Elliott the sealed envelope.

“Thanks, doc,” Elliott said, putting the envelope in his backpack. “Say hi to the stiffs for me. Tell them they’re really stinking up the place.”

“Will do,” Fawcett said as Elliott left the office.

Two and a half weeks later, a sharp October wind signaled the early arrival of winter. Although wool overcoats began to decorate the urban landscape, there was no other sign that anything was different in the city that never noticed. Sirens were still blaring, traffic was still overwhelming, Chinese food was still being delivered at all hours of the night, and Sara, Conrad, and Guff were still struggling to put together the pieces of the case.

“I got it,” Guff said, waving a stack of papers in his hand as he entered Sara’s office.

“Got what?” Conrad asked, leaning against Sara’s filing cabinet.

“Oh, my good man, do you not know what you thus miss? I have acquired that most honored of all items – the tome of worldly bequests.”

“The what?” Conrad asked.

“His will,” Sara explained, sitting at her desk. “The surrogate court finally agreed to turn over Arnold Doniger’s will.”

“Agreed?” Conrad asked. “You should’ve subpoenaed it from them.”

“You subpoena, I ask,” Sara said. “The result’s the same.” Turning to Guff, she asked, “So what’s it say?”

“You were right about one thing – Arnold Doniger wasn’t lacking in the rich department. If you total all the monetary gifts in his will, he was worth at least seven million dollars. And that doesn’t include his New York City house, his weekend home in Connecticut, or his interest in Echo Enterprises, which I’m assuming is his business.”

“Big deal,” Conrad said. “Half the East Side can go dollar-for-dollar. The real question is, who benefits?”

“That’s the crazy part,” Guff said, handing Sara the will. “We’ve been assuming Claire Doniger hired Kozlow to cash in on her husband, but according to the will, Claire doesn’t get a single cent. When they were married ten months ago, she signed the prenup to end all prenups.”

“But can’t she still take her elective share?” Conrad asked. “From what I remember from law school, spouses can always get a guaranteed percentage, even when they’re left out.”

“Not in this case,” Sara said. “Claire waived her elective share and everything else in her prenup. She doesn’t even get the house they lived in.”

“So you’re telling me Claire doesn’t have a motive to kill her husband?” Conrad asked.

“Not if that motive was an inheritance in the will. Based on this, she doesn’t get a thing.”

“Then who does?”

“Again, there’s no one in particular. The monetary gifts are designated for a dozen or so different charities, the house in Connecticut goes to the local historical society, and the proceeds from selling the New York house are earmarked for Princeton, his alma mater.”

“He doesn’t have any other family?”

“No kids and no siblings. He’s got a few cousins and an aunt in Florida, but all they get is a few thousand. Nothing worth killing anyone for.”

“What about the business?” Conrad asked. “Who gets that?”

“Echo Enterprises is given to the other partners of the firm. My guess is he didn’t want to mix family and business.”

“I don’t believe this,” Sara said, standing up. “How can Claire not be the one who hired Kozlow? It made such perfect sense.”

“Sure it did,” Conrad said. “Except for the small fact that she doesn’t have a motive.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Guff said. “Maybe she had him killed precisely because she didn’t take anything under the will.”

“I don’t know,” Conrad said. “That seems a little shortsighted. Once her husband dies, she loses her home, her security, her entire livelihood. If I were Claire, and I was pissed about being left out of the will, I’d keep my hubby alive and sock away all the money I could.”

“Maybe she simply hated her husband,” Sara suggested. “That’s possible.”

“Now you’re projecting.”

“I’m serious,” Sara said. “Why do we need her to take money under the will? Tons of people kill their spouses for lesser reasons than that.”

“That’s true,” Conrad said. “But when a not-so-wealthy fifty-year-old woman kills her sixty-six-year-old, recently married millionaire husband, there’s got to be a good reason for it. And in all of my years working here, it’s almost always got to do with money.”

“Which is the one thing Claire doesn’t get.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Guff said. “Maybe Claire isn’t involved with this at all.”

“No way,” Sara said. “Claire is definitely involved with this. She’s acted way too weird to not have some connection.”

“Then we need to figure out what that connection is,” Conrad added. “Otherwise, we’re going to have a hard time making this case.”

“So we have the victim, and the cause of death, and the will, and the possible triggerman, but we still don’t have the motive,” Guff said.

“And without the motive, we’re stuck.”

“They know,” Claire Doniger said, fidgeting with her wedding band as her daily juice and jasmine tea sat untouched in front of her. “They definitely know.”

“Don’t get hysterical,” he said. “If they knew, you’d already be indicted as an accomplice. They can’t prove a thing.”

“But how long is that going to last? They keep asking me when they can look through the house. What if they find something that-”

“I told you, I’m taking care of everything. Jared is working right now to make sure that visit never happens.”

Claire stood and nervously started to clear the table. “You’ve been saying that all along. But what if he can’t stop them? What if-”

Grabbing Claire’s wrists, he forced her to set down the teacup and saucer she was holding. He then pulled her toward his chair and onto his lap. “I want you to take a deep breath for me and listen to what I’m about to say: If it were only about the money, I would’ve walked away weeks ago. Do you understand? I don’t like being alone. So no matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do, I’m not letting them take my best prize away from me. You’re the reason I got into this, and no matter the consequences, we’re going to come out of it together.” Holding both of Claire’s hands in his own, he added, “Now tell me who loves you.”

Forcing a weak smile, Claire said, “You do.”

“You’re damn right I do,” Rafferty said. “Damn right.”

Massaging his temples and doing his best to ignore his throbbing headache, Jared stared at his computer screen. For the past two weeks, he’d sought out the firm’s best criminal-defense attorneys. From each one, he tried to learn one more trick, one more hint, one more maneuver to win the case and save his wife.

Even the poster board was getting more attention than usual. Every day, he stared adamantly at the layout of the crime scene. Arriving no later than seven in the morning, he spent the first fifteen minutes of each day playing it through his head. Leaving no earlier than eleven at night, he always took one final look. He catalogued every moment. He indexed every minute. He did everything in his power to visualize every nuance of the crime.