Page 28 of Sharp Force

“What do you remember about the night your husband was hit?” I underline the name Trad Whalen.

She tells me that Rowdy was jogging in a reflective vest with a running light around his chest. Suddenly, he heard an engine roaring up on him. Next thing he remembered was waking up three days later in the ICU after being put into an induced coma.

“I’m very sorry. How terrible.” I’m writing down what she’s saying.

“He didn’t die but may as well have, if you want me to be honest.”

She exhales a shaky breath, dropping the crumpled napkin on the coffee table.

“After that he was in constant pain and not himself in any way,” she goes on. “He couldn’t get past it. That someone would run him down and not bother stopping. A part of him really believed the person did it on purpose. And maybe whoever it was would decide to finish him off one of these days.”

“Did he have anyone in mind?” I ask.

“The government. That’s as much as he would say, and he was always looking over his shoulder,” she replies. “He got increasingly self-destructive, not caring about the consequences.”

“What about life insurance?” I think of what Marino mentioned.

“It’s a good thing Rowdy had a policy or I’d spend the rest of my days paying off his debts,” she says bitterly.

“Do you know the amount of coverage?” I’m curious to see if she’ll be truthful.

“He told me it was a lot. Five million or something,” she replies. “I’ve never looked at the paperwork and had nothing to do with him setting it up. I don’t even know who the broker was or the name of the company. Hopefully, all the paperwork is in Rowdy’s safe. I guess I need to get a locksmith here.”

CHAPTER 10

Acuckoo clock hangs above the mantel, the time nearing eight p.m. Gusting wind howls like unhappy spirits, lightning brightening the curtains. The roads must be terrible, and I’m grateful Marino is driving. I wonder what he and the twins are talking about down the hallway.

Reaching into the manila envelope again, Reba pulls out her husband’s wedding band, the broken gold chain with the crucifix, then his Rolex watch. She gently clinks them down on the coffee table, sighing often, not saying anything.

Next, she shakes out his credit cards, and cash that’s going to be damp and smell like disinfectant. Reba leans back, wilting on the sofa, staring at the expensive jewelry as if in a stupor.

“The police wondered if someone followed Rowdy to his fishing spot,” she says in a faraway voice. “Maybe someone tried to rob him, and he fell off the pier and drowned.”

“I don’t believe he drowned,” I reply.

“How can you be so sure?”

“There are ways to tell.” I won’t go into detail about the autopsy.

She doesn’t need to hear that I used a centrifuge to spin down tissue from her husband’s lungs. I made slides of that and his gastriccontents, examining them with the microscope on my workstation’s countertop inside the autopsy suite.

I didn’t see any sign of the microscopic algae called diatoms. Their presence would confirm that he inhaled and swallowed river water.

“Do you recall what Rowdy had for dinner the night he disappeared?” I ask her.

“I made chili. He and the boys love my chili.”

“Anything else?”

“Coleslaw,” she says. “And cornbread. As you might have inferred, he had quite the appetite. After the hit-and-run, he didn’t exercise and gained more than a hundred pounds.”

I remember what I found in Rowdy O’Leary’s stomach when I cut it open. The ground beef, the bits of kidney beans, onion and cabbage are consistent with his last meal. Digestion would have been slowed by his excessive intake of alcohol. I suspect he hadn’t been on the pier very long before dying.

“What time did he eat?” I ask.

“Well, he was into eating early. It was around four-thirty.”

“And what time did he leave the house to go fishing?”