“Like the hellfire symbols and the Dark Angel messages?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay,” said Stryker, again tapping her pen on the table and turning her attention back to Morgan. “That brings us to Aspern’s ill-fated attack on Lorinda Russell—which I’m having some trouble with. Take me through it. I want facts, not conjectures.”
Morgan smiled. “We’re in good shape on this final piece.”
“We better be, because all we have so far is a collection of reasonable guesses.”
Morgan opened the app on his phone that controlled the room’s video equipment. He touched an icon, and the big screen on the wall came to life. Everyone shifted in their chairs for a better view of it. Even as he swiveled around, PR expert Martin Carmody maintained the steepled-fingers pose of a strategic thinker.
“After Angus’s murder, Lorinda got in touch with a home security outfit, who got the first camera installed and running the day before Aspern’s break-in. So we have a high-resolution record of his arrival on the property in Tate’s Jeep and his approach to the conservatory door, wearing his Billy Tate disguise.”
“In Tate’s Jeep? I thought your department had taken possession of that.”
“We’d found the vehicle on Aspern’s property. Kyra Barstow completed her forensic examination of it on-site, but there was a delay in having it moved to the county impound lot. So Aspern had easy access to it that night.”
Stryker nodded tentatively. “And, according to your new view of the case, he would have had the key?”
“Exactly. He would have taken it from Tate after he killed him.” Morgan touched another icon, and the screen was filled with an image Gurney recognized as the area of lawn between the conservatory and the woods. The image definition in the moonlight was extraordinarily sharp.
“Keep your eyes on the trail opening,” said Morgan.
The front of a vehicle, recognizably a Jeep even in the semidarkness, came slowly into view and stopped at the edge of the lawn.
A dark figure emerged from the Jeep into the moonlight. He seemed to be wearing the same gray hoodie, black jeans, and sneakers Tate had been wearing in the mortuary video. The figure moved quickly across the camera’s field of view toward the house. Because of the angle of the camera and the size of the sweatshirt’s hood, his face was hardly visible. For a second Gurney thought he could see a thick black mark on the side of his cheek.
Morgan looked down the table at Cam Stryker. “His line of movement puts him on a direct path to the conservatory.”
The hooded figure passed out of the frame, and the screen went blank.
Morgan added, “Detective Gurney and I interviewed Lorinda Russell later that night, and the story she told us begins where that video left off.”
“The interview was recorded?”
“It was.”
“Where?”
“In a cottage on the estate.”
“Why there?”
“Mrs. Russell has a phobic reaction to blood. She insisted that she couldn’t stay in the main house until the body and all visible signs of blood were removed. She had the same reaction when her husband was killed.”
“It’s an audio recording?”
“Audio and video—already cued up in the system, ready to go.”
She checked the time on her phone. “Let’s do it.”
The first image on the screen was of Lorinda sitting in one of the cottage’s chintz-covered armchairs, wearing a cream-colored silk blouse that seemed a well-chosen counterpoint to the dark shoulder-length hair that framed her face. She managed to appear both magnetic and untouchable.
Stryker stared at the freeze-frame image. “This is the woman so shattered by the sight of blood that she couldn’t stay in the same house with it?” She looked at Morgan. “Really?”
Morgan shifted in his chair. “Lorinda is . . . an unusual person.”
“An unusual person whose husband was brutally murdered last week, who just came within seconds of having her own throat cut, who just shot a man dead, and she’s sitting there like the queen of serenity.” Stryker opened her palms as if searching for an explanation. “Is she on drugs?”
“Not that we know of,” said Morgan.
After Morgan put the video in motion, the first voice heard on it was Gurney’s, coming from somewhere off camera.
“As I explained, Mrs. Russell, we’re recording this. Please describe in as much detail as you can everything that happened this evening—beginning with where you were and what you were doing when you got your first indication of a possible intruder.”
Lorinda’s unblinking eyes were gazing out of the screen at whoever might be watching the video—the result of the fact that she’d been looking not at Gurney but directly at the camera positioned next to him.
She spoke with a voice that revealed no emotion, no geographic roots.
“It was nine o’clock. I was in the downstairs office. I was about to make a call, and I saw the time on my phone.”
“Who were you calling?” asked Gurney’s off-camera voice.
“Danforth Peale—to let him know that the medical examiner was ready to release Angus’s body, and I wanted to discuss the arrangements.”
“Wasn’t nine o’clock at night an odd time to be calling him about that?”
“It was when the subject occurred to me. It needed to be dealt with. I don’t like putting things off.”
“Did you complete the call?”
“Peale didn’t pick up. It went to his voicemail.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“No. That’s when I heard the glass breaking. It sounded like it was in the conservatory.”
“What did you do then?”
“I went to a cabinet where Angus kept one of his guns. A Glock 9. I took it out, switched off the safety, and went to the conservatory.”
“Did it occur to you to call 911?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Or your groundskeeper? Doesn’t he have an apartment over the garage?”
“He spends his nights with a woman in Bastenburg.”
“Okay. So, you went to the conservatory. What then?”
“At first, nothing. There’s a hallway that connects the main part of the house to the conservatory. I waited there for a minute until my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. I heard more glass breaking. Then I saw someone pushing the conservatory door open.”
“How clearly did you see him?”
“Clearly enough to see that he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and had a black mark down the side of his face. I saw something in his hand—a knife with a short blade. I raised the Glock. I stepped from the anteroom into the conservatory. I told him to stay where he was and drop the knife. He stayed perfectly still for a few seconds, then rushed at me with the knife.”
“You could see the knife clearly?”
“It was shining in the moonlight—the moonlight coming through the glass roof.”
“Go on.”
“I pulled the trigger—twice, I think. He collapsed on the floor in front of me. I backed away. He wasn’t moving. A dark spot was spreading out on the back of his sweatshirt. I couldn’t look at it. The thought of it . . . I . . . I went back into the house. I called the police.”
“You called Chief Morgan directly?”