At Risk

14

Rex’s Guns & Ammo is on Upward Road in East Flat Rock, a good spot for a private meeting because the shop is closed on Sundays. Nice to know that the folks in North Carolina who believe in firearms and camouflage observe the Sabbath.

Sykes and Win sit in folding chairs somewhere between racks of rifles and fishing tackle, a seven-pound bass mounted on the wall giving Sykes the fisheye. Leaning against a glass showcase of pistols is the Henderson County Sheriff, Rutherford, a friend of Rex’s, which is how he came upon the key to let Win and Sykes in so they could have a little discussion about the Finlay case. Rutherford sort of looks like his name, an odd thing about that, a phenomenon Sykes has been aware of all her life.

He’s big and rumbling like a freight train, intimidating and hell-bent in one direction — his. He has reminded them more than once in one way or another that Flat Rock is his jurisdiction, made it clear that if anybody picks up George and Kimberly, “Kim,” Finlay, it will be him, says he needs to understand why they should be picked up in the first place. So Sykes and Win are doing their best to patiently explain the facts of the case, details that became apparent when they stayed up all last night driving here from Knoxville, then holing up in a Best Western Motel, picking apart and piecing together information from a case file that they should have had access to from the start, pages and pages of reports, witness statements, and about a dozen gruesome photographs that make many things disturbingly obvious.

It was Kim who discovered Mrs. Finlay’s brutalized body and called 911 at 2:14 p.m., August 8. She claims she was driving George’s white Mercedes sedan, was out running errands and decided to drop by for a visit. Yet several hours earlier, between ten thirty and eleven a.m., a retired man who lived only a few blocks from Mrs. Finlay’s Sequoyah Hills home saw Kim in the area driving her red Mercedes convertible. When Detective Barber questioned her about it she offered the simple explanation that while she was out and about she stopped in the Sequoyah Hills neighborhood to walk her Maltese, Zsa Zsa, on Cherokee Boulevard, or the Boulevard, as she called it. Nothing particularly suspicious about that, since Cherokee Boulevard was and is a popular place for people, including nonresidents, to walk their dogs. Kim, who didn’t live in Sequoyah Hills, was known to walk Zsa Zsa there daily, depending on the weather, and August 8 happened to be a beautiful day.

In her statement to Barber, she continued to spin her reasonably credible story, claiming she took Zsa Zsa home around noon, checked on George, who was sick in bed with a cold, then went back out in his Mercedes because her Mercedes convertible needed gas and was making a funny noise. On her way to the dry cleaner’s, she decided to drop in on Mrs. Finlay, and when she didn’t answer the door Kim let herself in and had the most awful shock of her life. She went on to tell Barber, very tearfully, that she had been very worried about Mrs. Finlay’s safety. She has all this money and is ostentatious and lives alone, and is naïve, much too trusting, she said, adding that earlier in the week when George and I came by to have dinner with her, we both saw a suspicious-looking black man near her house, staring at it. When we turned into the driveway, he walked away very quickly.

George, of course, verified his wife’s story. George, of course, had a few good stories of his own, including that he was fairly sure his aunt had noticed this same black man several days earlier, just walking up and down the street near her house—loitering, in her words. George was also fairly sure he probably left a hammer on a windowsill in his aunt’s master bedroom, having used it to help her hang a painting, he wasn’t exactly sure when, but not long before it happened. A plausible theory evolved: Mrs. Finlay returned home from tennis or shopping or something and interrupted her assailant, who had gotten only so far as stealing a box of silver coins that supposedly was in plain view on a dresser in the master bedroom.

In one of Barber’s notes, he wrote that when the police arrived, there was water in the tub, a damp towel draped over the side of it, and another, larger damp towel on the bedroom floor not far from where the body was found. He speculated that when the killer heard Mrs. Finlay drive up, he may have hid himself and watched her undress to take a bath, which may have sexually excited him. At the point when she may have had nothing on but her ruffled blue tennis panties, he confronted her, and when she started screaming, he noticed the hammer on the windowsill and used it.

What Barber didn’t entertain, at least not in writing, was the possibility that Mrs. Finlay was in the tub when her assailant appeared, that in fact her assailant might have been someone she knew so well as to allow this person to come into the bedroom, perhaps even talk to her while she was still in the tub or drying off, maybe a close female friend or relative, maybe someone who didn’t always get along with her. It never seemed to occur to Barber that Mrs. Finlay might have been murdered by someone very close to her, the crime then staged to look like an attempted sexual assault that went as far as her tennis panties being pulled down to her knees before her enraged assailant beat her to death.

According to the statement of one of Mrs. Finlay’s tennis partners, Kim and Mrs. Finlay had gotten quite hostile toward each other over the summer, and Mrs. Finlay had begun saying things like Chinese people should work in Laundromats, not marry people like her nephew. Sykes sure as hell would have been on high alert if she had been the detective and someone had told her that, would have zeroed in on all of it, would have connected the dots, decided Kim and Mrs. Finlay pretty much hated each other and maybe when Kim dropped by the house after tennis that day — after yet another shopping spree charged to Mrs. Finlay’s country club account — they got into an argument that went no place good.

“Still sounds mighty circumstantial to me,” Rutherford the sheriff says from beside the showcase of pistols that is propping him up.

“The DNA isn’t circumstantial,” Win replies, and he keeps looking at Sykes, as if to remind the sheriff that the two of them are in this together.

“Don’t understand why they didn’t get the DNA back then. You sure something didn’t get contaminated after twenty years?”

“They didn’t do DNA testing back then,” Win says, looking at Sykes, and she nods. “Just standard serology, ABO typing, which certainly indicated that the blood on the tennis clothing was Mrs. Finlay’s. But what they didn’t test twenty years ago were areas of clothing that might yield other biological information.”

“Like what areas?” the sheriff asks, getting an impatient look on his face.

“Areas that rub against your skin, areas that might have sweat or saliva, other body fluids. Get it from all sorts of things. The inside of collars, under the arms, the brims of hats, socks, the inside of shoes, chewing gum, cigarette butts. We need highly sensitive DNA technology for tests like that. PCR. STR. And by the way, when DNA is contaminated, you don’t get false positives.”

Rutherford doesn’t want to get into it, says, “Well, George and Kim aren’t going to give you any trouble. And like I told you, I know they’re home. Had my secretary call them up, pretend she was collecting money for the FOP hurricane fund. You ever seen anything like all these hurricanes? The Lord Almighty’s unhappy with something, you ask me.”

“Plenty to be unhappy about,” Sykes says to him. “Plenty of ambition, greed, and hatred, the very same things that led to Mrs. Finlay’s murder.”

Sheriff Rutherford says nothing, won’t look at her, has been addressing his every comment to Win. It’s a man’s world, probably explaining why there’s all these hurricanes, punishment for women not staying home and doing what they’re told.

“Before y’all head out,” the sheriff says to Win, “I’d like to clear up the train part, because I’m still suspicious it was a homicide, like maybe there was some sort of organized crime involved, Dixie Mafia or something. And if that’s so”—he slowly shakes his jowly head—“then maybe we should be approaching this different, bring in the FBI.”

“No way it was a homicide.” Sykes is adamant. “Everything I’ve found out about Mark Holland’s case indicates suicide.”

“And what’s everything?” the sheriff asks Win, as if it’s Win who just made that claim.

“Like the fact that when he was married to Kim, she went through his money and was cheating on him, having an affair with Mark’s best friend, another cop. Mark had plenty of reason to be depressed and angry,” she says, looking right at the sheriff.

“Might not have been enough for Barber to run with,” Win adds, “but it should have caused him to ask a few questions about Kim’s character and morals. Which he clearly did, since he contacted the medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill, then stapled a Polaroid photograph of Holland’s remains to the personal-effects inventory from Mrs. Finlay’s autopsy.”

“A personal-effects inventory that had tennis clothes on it? Because the tennis clothes were size six, he made some Sherlock leap to a train fatality?” Rutherford peels open a stick of spearmint gum, winks at Win, says, “Guess I’ll leave my DNA on it, huh?” Then, “Go on.” Chewing. “Go on, then. I’m listening. Hook that up with the train fatality. Hope you can.” Chewing.

“Ten,” Sykes says. “The tennis clothes were size ten.”

“Well, not that I’m an expert on women’s attire, but I can’t see any connection between this poor cop being run over by a train and this dead old lady’s tennis clothes. You implying Detective Barber figured those clothes were too big to fit Mrs. Finlay?” He says all this to Win.

“I bet Barber didn’t notice,” Sykes says.

“Don’t think I would have,” the sheriff says to Win. “How ’bout you?” He winks at him again, chewing.

“Detective Garano’s the one who did notice,” Sykes says.

“Possibly a simpler answer is the bloody tennis clothes were what Barber submitted to the TBI labs for testing,” Win suggests. “He had a copy of it, stapled it to the morgue photo. Tucked them inside his September MasterCard bill, maybe because that’s where the previous month’s charges were listed for his trip to the ME’s office in Chapel Hill. People do things, don’t think about them. Who knows.”

“That sure is the truth,” Sykes agrees, thinking of the case file Toby Huber stupidly stuck in the oven.

“A lot of details never make sense,” Win goes on. “A lot of holes never get filled in. A lot of what is reconstructed probably looks very little like what really happens in those minutes, those split seconds, when a violent outburst ends someone’s life.”

“You some kind of philosopher or something?” Rutherford narrows his eyes, chews his gum.

Win gets up from his chair, looks at Sykes, gives her the signal.

“We just need a little time to give them the happy news, then you can pick them up,” Win says to the sheriff.

At least he said “we,” Sykes thinks. He didn’t have to include her. It’s his case, she thinks, but no matter how often she reminds herself of that, she feels disappointed, depressed about it, resentful. After all those dark places and boxes and phone calls and missed Academy classes and everything else, it certainly feels like her case, and it would feel pretty damn good to tell Kim and George Finlay they didn’t get away with it, that they’re about to find themselves in handcuffs and end up in a very different Big House from what they’re used to — this one with razor wire.

“They’re nice enough folks,” Rutherford says to Win as they walk out to the parking lot, takes a good, long, disparaging look at Sykes’s old VW Rabbit, same thing he did when she and Win first drove up. “Well, call me when you’re ready,” he says to Win. “A real shame locking them up.” Chewing gum. “They’ve never caused any trouble around here.”

“Doesn’t look like they’re going to get a chance to, either,” Sykes says.

A few miles away is Little River Road, where many of Flat Rock’s wealthy residents have big homes and estates, many of them summer homes, many of their owners from the far reaches of New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago.

Sykes pulls her car off the long, unpaved driveway, parks to one side, in the weeds so she and Win can show up with no advance warning. They get out and start walking toward the house that Vivian Finlay’s nephew, George, and his 93 percent East Asian wife, Kim, inherited from Mrs. Finlay after her murder. The well-off couple have been married twenty-two years, their wedding six months after Kim’s first husband, Detective Mark Holland, committed suicide on lonely train tracks in a lonely part of North Carolina.

“Well, I know I would have,” Sykes remarks, carrying on a conversation they’ve been having for the past ten minutes.

“It’s easy to say twenty years after the fact,” Win reminds her. “We weren’t there.”

“You mean you wouldn’t have bothered checking out the tennis reservations?” Sykes says as they walk along the unpaved drive, getting closer to the house where George and Kim enjoy their privileged lives in their lovely home. “You know, just done the same damn thing I did?”

She has to remind Win yet again of how hard she’s worked, of what an amazingly thorough and smart investigation she’s conducted.

“If Barber had done that, he would have realized it wasn’t Mrs. Finlay who used the ball machine that day,” Sykes goes on, has made this point maybe four times now, “not unless she signed in as a guest. All he had to do was ask questions.”

“Maybe he felt about it a little bit the same way I do,” Win suggests. “He didn’t like dealing with a club that would never have him as a member.”

She walks close to him. He puts his arm around her.

“So, she’s going to jail?” Sykes asks, and she isn’t talking about Kim Finlay.

She’s thinking of Monique Lamont.

“Personally, I think she’s been punished plenty,” Win says. “But I’m not finished yet.”

For a moment they are quiet as they walk in the sun, the driveway long and winding, trees everywhere. He can feel the heaviness in Sykes’s heart, sense her pain and disappointment.

“Yeah, you’ve got a lot of unfinished business up there, all right,” she says. “Guess you’ll be leaving after you take care of these two.” She stares in the direction of the house.

“We could use a few good CSIs in Massachusetts,” he says.

She walks with her arm around him, holding him tight.

“You think the box of silver coins ever existed?” she asks, maybe just to change the subject, maybe to get her mind off where Win lives and works, off where he has his life, off how entwined his life is with Lamont’s, no matter how much he denies it.

“Probably,” he says. “I’m guessing Kim grabbed it on her way out the first time, after she killed her, trying to figure out how to stage it to look like a burglary/sex crime, disguise what in truth was probably an impulse crime. Blame it on a suspicious-looking black man. Worked like a charm, especially back then. People used to call the police on my dad. Happened a lot. He’s in his own yard and gets reported as a prowler.”

The sun is hot on their heads, the air cool, the roof of the house visible now, peeking above trees. They remove their arms from each other, walking apart, like colleagues again, talking about the case, Sykes wondering why Jimmy Barber never questioned what happened to Vivian Finlay’s shoes and socks, wondering what Kim found to wear when she made her getaway after stripping off her bloody tennis clothes, wondering a lot of things.

Then the house is right there in front of them, George and Kim Finlay, now in their sixties, sitting in white chairs on the wide white porch, eating lunch.

Win and Sykes stare at the couple on the porch staring at them.

“They’re all yours,” he quietly says.

Sykes looks at him. “You sure?”

“It’s your case, partner.”

They follow the slate walkway, head to the wooden steps that lead up to the porch, where George and Kim have stopped eating. Then Kim gets up from her chair, a stooped woman with graying hair pinned back, dark-tinted glasses, wrinkles that indicate she scowls a lot.

“Are you lost?” she loudly asks.

“No, ma’am, we’re definitely not lost,” Sykes says, she and Win stepping onto the porch. “I’m Special Agent Delma Sykes with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. This is Investigator Winston Garano, Massachusetts State Police. I talked to you on the phone the other day?” she says to George.

“Why, yes.” George clears his throat, a small man, white hair, looks uncertain, pulls his napkin out of the front of his Izod shirt, doesn’t seem sure whether he should stand or sit.

“The murder of Vivian Finlay has been reopened due to new evidence,” Sykes says.

“What evidence could there possibly be after all these years?” Kim says, acts clueless, even tries to look distressed by the memory.

“Your DNA, ma’am,” Sykes says.