Page 65 of The Writer
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
DENISE MORROW ISN’T FAZED. “You just said I couldn’t have killed David.”
“No, I said you couldn’t have killed him while you were at the bookstore between seven fifteen and nine twenty p.m. You did it much earlier.” Cordova motions toward the hallway with his gun. “Back bedroom.”
“Why?”
“Move. Now.” Cordova doesn’t wait for her to reply; he heads down the hall to the room where CSU brought Denise Morrow the night of the murder to process her and her clothing.
Although Denise is in the living room and could easily flee out the door or pick up her phone and call someone, he knows she won’t. He knows she’ll follow him; she can’t help herself. She needs to know what he knows. A moment later she proves him right. He’s standing next to the bed when she appears in the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back. Her cat is behind her, rubbing against the backs of her legs and purring loudly.
“Did you grab a knife? I’d be disappointed in you if you didn’t.”
Her left hand drops to her side, and he sees she’s holding a seven-inch santoku. “A girl’s gotta defend herself,” she says, “and it looks like you found my twenty-two.”
“You don’t need either,” he tells her. “This is just a—”
“A chat,” she says. “An exchange of information.”
“Exactly.”
To reinforce that point, Cordova slips his gun into the holster on his belt. He can get to it fast enough if he has to. Right now, he needs her to listen. “We found trace amounts of wool on David’s body. It was on his clothing, mixed in with the blood. That didn’t make sense. Nothing about this case made sense when I first looked at it, but that in particular, it’s been nagging at me. So when I broke in here tonight, I took a good look around.”
The bed is neatly made. He pats the thick duvet. “CSI set up shop right here, covered this bed with equipment. They probably spent six hours in this room. I can just imagine what was going through your head as you watched them. So close but completely unaware.”
He grips the duvet and tosses it aside, revealing a copper-colored wool blanket. He runs his fingers along the edge until he finds a power cord; it’s tucked neatly behind the bed frame. It’s not just a wool blanket; it’s a heated wool blanket. Cordova stares at it for a moment. “I bet there’s trace on here, but we never bothered to look. Why would we? No reason to. Not in that initial search, anyway. By the time the medical examiner found the wool on David’s body, Geller Hoffman had circled the wagons; there was no way we could get back in here. No judge in his or her right mind would sign off on the warrant—not after that debacle at your arraignment.” He brushes the material, then looks at his fingertips. “I’m honestly surprised you kept it. Then again, with us unable to get back in your apartment for a second search, this might be the safest place for it.” He straightens up and faces her again. “After you killed David, you covered his body with this heated blanket and left it on him until you got back from the bookstore. That kept his body temp high enough to throw off the ME.”
She gently rotates the knife, her fingertips brushing the polished handle. “If that’s true, how did I kill David without getting his blood on me? Your people checked.”
The corner of Cordova’s mouth twitches. “At first I thought you’d handed off whatever you’d been wearing to Hoffman at the bookstore when you changed into the clothing he wore when he killed Mia, but that wouldn’t work. Stabbing someone is a messy business. There’s spatter. It doesn’t just get on your clothes—it gets on your skin, in your hair. CSI would have found that on you. Something would have been visible on the bookstore video footage. I watched it a dozen times and found nothing. Then I thought back to Declan. He’d been up here around six thirty p.m., right after you killed David. In the video we pulled from the subway station, Declan can be seen stuffing something into a trash can. It’s hard to tell for sure but it looks like one of those cheap plastic rain slickers they sell in the museum gift shop across the street. You know, the kind that folds up small enough to stuff in your pocket. He throws away a package of wipes too, blue and white—Clorox, I think. Again, it’s hard to tell. The footage isn’t very clear. The city really needs to replace those cameras. Doesn’t really matter now because we didn’t pull the trash; it’s long gone, lost to a landfill somewhere. The video isn’t conclusive and the evidence is gone. The rain slicker—it covered up your clothing, had a hood to protect your hair, and the wipes took care of the rest.” He smirks, nods at the knife in her left hand. “Nice touch, stabbing David with your right. That must have been tough for a lefty. You were quick about it too, not a bit of hesitation. David didn’t have a single defensive wound.”
Denise Morrow is quiet for a long moment. “Nobody will believe I killed David for cheating with Jeff, Mia, or anyone. Nobody will believe any of this.”
“You killed David for a reason as old as time—it was cheaper than divorce.”
“We had a prenup.”
“Your prenup covered the assets you both had when you were married, which amounts to nearly nothing. It didn’t cover earnings while you were married. And let’s be honest—your book sales were shit until Mia Gomez started selling you intel, and you’d been married for years by then. You had millions of reasons for wanting David dead. Hell, even though he was a doctor, with the discrepancy in your incomes, he probably would have gotten alimony.”
There’s a flicker in her eyes, a crack; small, but there.
Cordova presses on. “You killed David, Geller Hoffman killed Mia Gomez, and it was your idea to mix up all the evidence. Three-card monte, Declan called it. You had Hoffman wrapped around your little finger—he was more than happy to help. Sounds like he was obsessed with you. I bet you didn’t even have to sleep with him; you just planted the notion that you might. Guy like that, it’s enough to string him along. The way we found him…” The words trail off as the image of Hoffman’s body in the closet comes back into Cordova’s head. “I’m guessing it was a You can watch me and I’ll watch you sort of thing. He’d go along with that, right? Perfect for you—no touching, no DNA.” Cordova taps the center of his chest. “The medical examiner found a small round bruise on Hoffman’s chest, right here. I’m thinking you got him in that closet, got the belt around his neck, and stepped on him with one high heel when he was in the heat of things. You kept the pressure on until he suffocated. When he was dead, you spread the photos around to lock in your story with Lucero. Then you got dressed and left.”
She’s been drawing closer as he talks, and she’s only a few feet away now. Her grip on the knife tightens.
“Look, I’m a cop, so I shouldn’t say this, but I’m gonna say it anyway: I don’t care that you killed Geller Hoffman—he was a shitbag. Sounds like David took advantage of you, so maybe in some twisted way, he had it coming. If Mia Gomez tried to blackmail you, she made her own bed too. Hell, even Declan. Dec decided to play with fire. He was a big boy. He knew what that meant better than anyone. I’ve been in this game far too long to get all sanctimonious. People do bad things; bad things happen. I just need to know one thing.” He looks her square in the eye. “Lucero ID’ing Hoffman—that was bullshit, right? You set it up? If I’m going to wash my hands of all this, I need to know Declan and I put away the right guy.”
“You want to know if you planted evidence against the right guy,” she says flatly. “Isn’t that what you really mean?”
He stares at her for a long time, then finally nods. “We’re all a little dirty here. I need to have a clear conscience before I get out of the game.”
Denise Morrow sets the knife down on the nightstand by the bed. Soundlessly, she goes out into the hall. Cordova eyes the knife, then follows. He finds her reaching for a framed watercolor of a purple flowering tree hanging near the bathroom. She takes it off the wall and turns it around. There’s a sheet of paper taped to the back. She carefully removes it and hands it to him.