Sue squatted, wrapped her hands around the metal, and lifted it a foot. “With difficulty,” she admitted. “It would have been hard for me to move it here and get it in place. Getting it back would have been even harder. We’re looking at a homicide rather than an accidental death, aren’t we? And that 911 call suggests….”
“I’m not ready to even speculate on that yet,” said Ray. He turned around and glanced around at the house, the garage, their own two vehicles. “So now this whole place is a crime scene. Do you want to start in the house or the garage?”
“The house,” answered Sue quickly. “I’ll be able to see what’s changed since the last time I was in there.”
An hour later they emerged, Sue holding the door as Ray gingerly carried a Macintosh computer in gloved hands. Sue, holding the keyboard and mouse in a clear plastic bag, opened the back of her Jeep and made room for the machine and its appliances between the cases containing her investigative equipment.
“That’s an unexpected find,” said Ray.
“He didn’t have the computer more than a few weeks, but it was already starting to disappear in the clutter. Any open space in that dump of a house would be like a vacuum. Looks like he made room on that table to look at the contents of the hard drive, then didn’t use it again. I shudder to think how long a thorough search of that place will take.”
“Let’s look in the garage. Then we’ll go back to the office and develop a plan for the next steps.”
Sue followed him along the gravel drive, weeds encroaching on the uneven surface. Struggling a bit with the heavy garage door on an overhead track, Ray pushed it open.
“Plates are three years out of date,” said Sue, slipping sideways through the debris.
“Why bother keeping up to date if you don’t have an operator’s permit?”
“There’s that. Too bad the people who write the laws are clueless about the folks that break them.” She bent and looked at the right rear tire. “I bet these bald Eagles match my plaster casts.” She paused for a moment. “One more thing to process. We’ve got the computer and the probable vehicle. Too bad we’re a day late and a perp short.”
“Great wit for someone who’s sleep deprived. Now if you could only tell me about the phantom cell?”
“I think we’re just looking at the top of the proverbial iceberg. This case gets more and more complicated.”
“I wonder if you can find any residue of burned skin on that sauna stove?”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Sue said thoughtfully. “I’ll need to make some phone calls and send some emails.”
40
Ray read Sally Rood the boilerplate from a laminated card. Then he identified himself and Rood, and gave the date, time, and location of the interview. He glanced up at one of the two ceiling cameras as he finished, then settled his gaze on Rood.
“Thank you for coming in,” he said.
“Like I had a choice,” she responded. “So there’s this cop at my hotel room at seven in the morning. I’m sure my new boyfriend is sitting there now, wondering what kind of woman he got mixed up with.”
Rood’s face was flushed, her body tense. To Ray, she smelled of soap and shampoo, cigarettes and coffee.
“The SOB wasn’t even going to give me a chance to shower.” She crossed her arms fiercely over her chest. “What’s this all about anyway? Is Jim claiming I stole something on my way out? Your deputy was with me the whole time.” She made a face. “That asshole doesn’t have anything worth taking, and if he did, fat chance you could find it in that dump.”
“Jim Moarse was found dead in his sauna this morning.” Ray let the words sink in.
Rood stared blankly, her defensive stance drooping. She clenched her arms again. “Jim and that damn sauna,” she sneered. “When he was really drunk, he liked to climb in there, said the heat was ‘purifying,’ that he never had a hangover the next day.” She laughed, but her fingers were making white marks on her arms. “He liked to drag me in there with him, but he couldn’t keep his hands off me. I don’t like being pawed. It was one of the things we argued about, one of the many things.” She relaxed slightly and lifted her chin. “So I’m sorry he’s dead, but what does it have to do with me?”
Ray slid his notebook into a more central position. “I need some general information,” he said. “Where were you last night?”
“I sure as hell wasn’t with him, if that’s what you’re asking. You followed me down 22 almost to town yesterday. And that’s where I was. I didn’t come back up here to God’s country.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was hanging out with a friend.”
“Where?”
“In town.”
“Doing what?”
“What people do when they hang out.” She lifted her hair off her neck with one manicured hand and laughed at him.
Ray kept his gaze steady. “Can you be a bit more specific?”
“Like are you trying to establish if I have an alibi? Is that it? Okay, I’ll play the game. I met someone in town. We had lunch, walked around. We got a room at the Park Place, had dinner there, and late in the evening we had drinks in the bar up at the top. Get a copy of my hotel bill; it’s all there. And the city cop that was pounding on the door of our room before dawn will tell you…I guess he figured out that I was there because my car was in the parking lot.”
“The room was registered in your name?”
“Yeah, my name, credit card, my plate number.”
“Does your friend have a name?”
“I don’t want him involved. Like, he’s getting a divorce, and him being with me would just make things worse.”
“That shouldn’t happen. His name is?”
Rood narrowed her eyes, staring him down. “Okay, it’s Dan Ellis. He’s a lawyer from downstate. Wyandotte.”
“After you left Moarse, did you go back there again?”
“No.”
“Did you contact him again by phone, text, e-mail?”
“No.”
“Tell me more about your relationship with Moarse?”
Rood crossed her legs, opened her purse, and closed it again. “God, I wish you could smoke in here. Anyway, there’s not much to tell. I met Jim the summer I was waitressing. He was sort of a fun guy and a big tipper. In the fall I was looking for a new place to stay. I’d been sharing an apartment with three other girls, and that wasn’t going so well. Jim offered me a room, no strings attached.” She uncrossed her legs, re-crossed them. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, looking directly at Ray. “At first things were okay, fun, but that didn’t last too long. I figured out pretty quick that he had money trouble and was going down fast. Of course, the worse things got, the more he drank.”
“What was his occupation?”
Rood snorted. “Like half the men I’ve met up here, he said he was a builder.” She shrugged. “And I guess that was true, or at least it had been once. Jim talked about this formula he had. He’d buy lots cheap at tax sales and build inexpensive homes—bi-levels, half story down and a half story up. He told me that he and his crew, a couple of guys, could throw one of those together in a few weeks, and he cleared about 20 grand on each building. Then, boo hoo, the housing market fell apart, and his bank cut off his credit line. By the time I moved in, he was running out of money. And all the so-called friends he’d screwed along the way wanted their money. They were pissed. People were always coming by, calling, sending letters.”
“Did he ever mention Al Capone or buried treasure?”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “Pretty funny. He could have used a little buried treasure. He was desperate.”
“Can you give me any names of friends?”
“Who knows? Like I said, what friends he might of had were super pissed. The two of us ended up completely isolated out there. He didn’t have money to take me anyplace, and he refused to drive that stupid old Jeep of his anywhere—except in the middle of the night. That’s a lot of fun. He acted like I was his chauffeur or something.”