“TV?” she asked. “Was it or any lights on when the officers arrived?”
“TV was off, all lights had been turned off-”
“Print the switch plates?” D.D. interrupted.
“Duh,” Griffin informed her drolly. “Nada. Perp was definitely wearing gloves and, less quantifiable, but I’d say knew the house. Felt comfortable there. It’s like he showed up, did the deed, then tidied up. Turned off lights, mopped the floor, wiped down the kitchen for all we know. But the scene was tidy. Except for the dead body, of course.”
“So maybe there had been a struggle,” D.D. challenged. “Maybe Randi put up a helluva fight, and that’s why the perp cleaned up afterward.”
“Maybe. No signs of trauma on the body, though. No defensive wounds, no bruising. All in all, it’s like someone walked in, put his hands around her neck, and that was that.”
“You’ve said he a couple of times. So you’re thinking a male attacker?”
“ME’s best guess. It’s not easy to manually strangle someone. Takes a bit of muscle but also finger strength. Randi was an average-sized female, five five, hundred and twenty, did Pilates four times a week. In theory, it would take someone bigger and stronger to overpower her so quickly.”
D.D. pursed her lips. “And Jon Menke?”
“Weasel,” Griffin muttered. “Six feet, one ninety, physically fit, spent four to five mornings a week at the gym. Apparently, he felt a doctor should look the part. We learned his female colleagues appreciated that.”
“A ladies’ man?”
“Definitely not monogamous.”
“Did Randi know?”
“Apparently part of the cause for the divorce. The other part being that he liked to beat the shit out of her.”
“Document it?” D.D. asked sharply.
“Oh yeah. To give Randi some credit, she did her homework before leaving the bastard. Called a hotline, got some advice. She’d filled an entire safety deposit box with photos and walk-in clinic reports before dialing up the lawyer and making a break for it. And trust me, Menke was pissed off about that. His wife not only left, but got him branded as a wife beater while nailing him for alimony. Yeah, Menke had every reason to want her dead and was fully capable of getting the job done.”
“Except…” D.D. drawled out.
“Alibi,” Griffin supplied. “A cocktail waitress, mind you, some pretty young thing who probably saw his pecs, his paycheck, and his Porsche and promptly forgot things like his history of domestic abuse, but they were in a bar and several regulars backed their claim. In the end, we couldn’t break it.”
D.D. thought about it. “You said he had a history of smacking his wife around?”
“Yep. Fat lips, black eyes, a wrecked knee where apparently he’d kicked her.”
“Sounds like a guy who had trouble managing his temper.”
“Yep.”
“But, the homicide scene…”
“Looks like the work of someone fully in control,” Griffin agreed. “Which was the second problem with pursuing Menke. On the one hand, it just felt right to nail him for something. On the other hand, this something didn’t feel like his kind of something. He would’ve trashed the place. Not to mention, according to our criminologist, wife beaters who become wife killers almost always disfigure their spouses. Shoot them in the face, stab them five dozen times. It’s a personal, frenzied, dehumanizing attack. This…this was cold-blooded. More akin to murder-for-hire, which became our next theory.”
“Oooh,” D.D.’s eyes widened. “Menke paid someone to take down his too-good-for-her-own-good ex-wife.”
“Yeah. My theory. Real winner at the time, and maybe still the best theory, but we could never find a money trail. Now, the feds were investigating Menke for health care fraud at the time, and the money trail there was long and convoluted. Lot of suspicion that he was dealing prescription drugs on the side, which would’ve given him access to both cash and a certain ‘clientele’ we could never prove. So murder-for-hire remains the most likely scenario, in my mind.”
“Did you ever get him for fraud?”
“Feds got him. Small potatoes though. Could only prove the tip, not the iceberg. But it was enough to have his medical license revoked, plus he’s serving three-to-five in a Club Fed somewhere. You can contact a Boston FBI agent, David Riggs, if you have more questions. He ran the health care fraud investigation.”
“When you pressed Menke about his wife’s murder, how’d he take it?” D.D. asked. “Get hostile on the subject, or smug?”
“Moral indignation. He was totally over her, how dare we suggest otherwise.”
“Ah, moral indignation. Always a nice choice for a wife beater. Taking the high road.”
“Well, he was a doctor you know.”
Both D.D. and Griffin lapsed into silence. “No physical evidence at the scene?” she tried again.
“Only evidence was lack of evidence,” Griffin assured her.
“What do you mean?”
“Most homes have fingerprints. How odd that this one didn’t.”
“So the killer really did clean up afterward.”
“Stone cold and handy with a sponge. I’m still thinking murder-for-hire, and this guy has quite the résumé.”
“And the second murder?” D.D. tried. “In Atlanta?”
“Don’t know the details. Only heard after the fact from Charlie, plus some Atlanta Feebie, Kimberly Quincy, gave me a buzz. She’d heard there might be a connection between Jackie Knowles’s murder and a Providence case and was curious. She commented that the Knowles scene was equally pristine. Other than the dead body and all.”
D.D. frowned. She didn’t like it. “They gotta be connected,” she muttered now. “I mean, how many clean murder scenes have you seen in your day?”
“Counting Randi’s: one.”
“Exactly. So they have to be connected. But how?”
“Question,” Griffin corrected, “is who? We knew Randi had at least one enemy-her ex. But what about Jackie Knowles? Who had reason to want her dead?”
“Murder-for-hire suggests money,” D.D. said immediately. “But two different victims from two different families rules out inheritance.”
“Please, Randi wasn’t getting that kind of alimony. She had thirty bucks in checking, that was it. Look,” Griffin took a deep breath, “I gotta run in a minute, but for what it’s worth, when I heard about the Atlanta scene, I went back to the area hotels. Tried to see if maybe a mutual acquaintance of Randi and Jackie might be in town. They grew up together, right? So maybe a neighbor, classmate, friend.”
“Charlie yada yada Grant,” D.D. guessed.
“Not that I could prove, but maybe she paid for a room with cash…You know how it is.”
D.D. nodded. She did know how it was. “She found me, you know.”
“Charlie something something Grant?”
“Yep. She’s living in Boston now. Running from her neighbors, classmates, friends.”
“Three days until the twenty-first,” Griffin murmured.
“Yep. She wanted to meet me in person. She hopes, if she doesn’t survive the twenty-first, that’ll make me try harder to solve her murder.”
“Shit,” Griffin drawled.
“My thought, exactly.”
Griffin said, “You should call Atlanta. Try the Feebie. She seemed all right. Wish I could help you more, especially given the time line…”
D.D. agreed. Three days to solve two cold cases that hadn’t yielded any leads in the past two years…“So,” she asked briskly. “If you were me, who would you be on the lookout for?”
“Someone physically strong, mentally patient, good with his words, better with his hands, and absolutely positively soulless. Probably above average computer skills as well-the Internet being every stalker’s new best friend. Conversely, I’d tell Charlie that as long as she’s running, stay off the net. Logging on these days is like sending out smoke signals: Here I am. And mine the connections. How many people really knew all three women? In fact, here’s a thought-have you checked out Facebook? Sometimes there are pages in memoriam, you know, in honor of Randi Menke and/or Jackie Knowles. See who’s posting, then track them down. Might give you a start.”