“Yes.”
“Rather than 911?”
“Angus always said, call the person in charge, anyone else is a waste of time.”
“Did you go back into the conservatory for any reason before the police arrived?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“To a bench out in the entry hall near the front door.”
“Did you make any other phone calls?”
“No.”
“What did you do with the gun?”
“I kept it in my hand. When the first officer arrived, I gave it to him.”
“Were you in the conservatory for any reason after the police came?”
“No. They told me there was a lot of blood.”
“When you called Chief Morgan, you told him you’d shot Billy Tate, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“What made you think it was Tate?”
“He looked exactly like Tate in the video they kept showing on TV. The hoodie. The black pants. The mark on his face. And he broke in through the same door Tate used the night he killed Angus. I’d just had the glass replaced.”
“When you were told it was Chandler Aspern in Tate’s clothes, what was your reaction?”
“Surprise.”
“Not shock?”
“I guess you could call it shock.”
“Why would Aspern attack you like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was your last contact with him?”
“We spoke on the phone that afternoon.”
“What about?”
“His legal disputes with Angus. His lease on his side of Harrow Hill. Development rights. Money.”
“Who called who?”
“I called him.”
“Why that afternoon?”
“Why not?”
“What was the purpose of the call?”
“To see if our conflicts could be resolved.”
“How did it go?”
“Not as I wished. I offered to buy back his lease. He insisted on an absurd price.”
“How did the conversation end?”
“I told him what my final proposal was, and that he’d be wise to accept it. He told me I was an ignorant little bitch. I told him if he wanted to have a calm face-to-face discussion, I would be available that evening or the following day. He ended the call.”
“You weren’t too angry at him to make that offer—after being called an ignorant bitch?”
“Business is business. Emotions are for children and actors.”
Morgan touched an icon on his phone and the video ceased, leaving just a freeze-frame of Lorinda—her dark eyes gazing from the screen at the group around the conference table.
“We also have a written statement from her,” said Morgan. “It was taken later, but it’s essentially identical to what you just saw.”
Stryker emitted a low whistle. She was tapping her pen again. “Does the physical evidence support her story?”
“There are no obvious inconsistencies,” Morgan said, adding, “The photographs taken at the scene support what she told us. Do you want to see them?”
“Definitely.”
All eyes returned to the screen.
The initial images documented the site. They showed the shattered glass in the door, the botanical-garden interior, the planting beds, and the paths of yellow stone between the beds.
The next sequence focused mainly on the body, facedown, showing it from different angles. Blood had soaked through the hood and the back of the sweatshirt Aspern was wearing and had pooled on the stone floor around his head. Close-ups of these areas elicited grunts of distress from Greta Vickerz and Martin Carmody.
There were also close-ups of other parts of the body—the hands, on which Aspern wore tight nitrile gloves; the black jeans; the sneakers. Gurney was reasonably sure they were the same sneakers Tate had been wearing in the photographs taken after his fall from the church roof. The design of the uppers, the tread pattern of the soles, even the distinctive fat laces looked familiar.
Another sequence of photos showed the body after it had been rolled over on its back. Aspern’s small black eyes were instantly recognizable, even though they had lost their intensity. Part of his lower chin was missing, and his jaw was shattered. A bloodstain covered the entire front of the sweatshirt, and there was a dark bullet hole in the center of the stain. In a final wide-angle photo, Gurney saw part of the big wood-framed device with overhead pulleys for moving the larger plants, which he remembered from his first visit.
Morgan touched an icon on his phone, and the screen went blank.
“Very instructive, and very convincing regarding Aspern’s break-in,” Stryker said. “Do we also have physical evidence linking Aspern to Tate?”
Morgan looked at Slovak. “Go through the list.”
“The clothes Aspern was wearing are definitely Tate’s,” Slovak said. “We have DNA confirmation from blood and epithelial cells. Next to Aspern’s body we found one of the scalpels Tate stole from Peale’s mortuary—and the bone mallet he used to break the glass. Both of those tools had Tate’s residual fingerprints on them. And when we searched Aspern’s house, we found a container of Linda Mason’s blood in his refrigerator.”
Martin Carmody made a small sound of disgust.
Slovak continued. “We brought in a K9 team to see if we could track Tate—when we still believed he was our killer—but what they ended up finding were pieces of his body buried in the woods near Aspern’s house. The flesh on the face had the burnt gash from the lightning. All the body parts have gone to the ME’s office for final identification and, if we’re lucky, cause-of-death determination.”
Greta Vickerz wrinkled her nose, as though the odor of death had entered the room.
“Then there’s the big one,” said Slovak. “The severed hand we found in a plastic bag in the pocket of the sweatshirt Aspern was wearing has been identified as Tate’s. We believe Aspern was carrying it so he could put Tate’s prints on the conservatory door, and maybe on other surfaces in the house.”
Carmody looked nauseated.
Cam Stryker’s expression revealed nothing. “Has the phone call Lorinda Russell said she made to Aspern been verified?”
Morgan answered. “The carrier shows a call of approximately six minutes from her number to Aspern’s number that afternoon.”
“Do you have Aspern’s phone?”
“Not yet. It wasn’t on his body. We’ve checked his car—actually, all three of his cars—a BMW, a Porsche, and a Mercedes—as well as his golf cart and Tate’s Jeep. We’re still searching his house for it, as well as for anything else that might help us understand his motivation.”
“His motivation—what’s your hypothesis for that?”
Morgan wiped sweat off his forehead. “We haven’t gotten very far with that. Maybe he thought that whoever would inherit Lorinda’s control of the Russell half of Harrow Hill would be easier to deal with. Maybe he killed Angus in the belief that she’d be easier to deal with, then found out she wasn’t.”
“What’s Lorinda’s understanding of the motivation issue? Has she said anything other than what’s in that interview video?”