The Match

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hester pointed to a chair. “Sit over there, please,” she said to Oren Carmichael. “Wilde, you sit over here next to me.”

Oren Carmichael moved to one side of the long conference table, Hester and Wilde on the other. They were in a glass-enclosed office atop the Manhattan skyline. This office was mostly used for legal depositions, and Hester had made sure that Oren sat where the deponent normally did. Wilde didn’t think this adversarial positioning was by accident.

“I need you both to listen to me,” Oren began. “We have a murdered cop—”

“Oren?” It was Hester.

“What?”

“Shh. Tell us why Wilde was being followed in the park.”

“Wait,” Wilde said, “he hasn’t told you?”

“Not yet. He just said it was bad.”

Wilde turned to Oren. “How bad?” he asked.

“Bad bad. But first I need you to tell me—”

“You don’t need anything first,” Hester snapped. “You broke my attorney-client privilege—”

“I told you, Hester. I didn’t break—”

“You did, damn it.” Wilde heard something different in Hester’s tone. The usual defiance was there, of course, but there was also a deep sadness. “Do you really not know what you did?”

Oren winced at the tone too, but he pushed through it. “I need you to listen to me. Both of you. Because this is huge. We have a murdered cop—”

“You keep saying that,” Hester interjected.

“What?”

“You keep saying ‘murdered cop.’ Murdered Cop. Why does it matter that he’s a cop?”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Why is a cop’s death more important than any citizen’s?”

“Really, Hester? That’s where you want to go with this?”

“Law enforcement should do their best for everyone, regardless of position or status. A murdered cop shouldn’t be any more a priority than any other citizen.”

Oren turned both palms to the ceiling. “Fine, cool, forget he’s a cop. It’s a murdered man. Happy? You” — he spun toward Wilde — “found the body.”

“I told you what I knew last night,” Wilde said.

“Correct,” Hester added. “And when was that exactly? Oh right, now I remember — right after your cop buddies kidnapped and tortured my client” — she raised a hand to silence him — “and don’t you dare tell me Wilde’s a friend, not a client, or you’ll regret it. By the way, I wouldn’t get so comfortable, mister. You’re an accomplice to what those men did to Wilde.”

That stung and it showed on Oren’s face.

“You are, Oren,” Hester continued, not letting up, and she looked heartbroken. “You can make a bunch of excuses, just like any criminal, but you gave them the information that led to the kidnapping and the assault. By the way, how did they know we’d be at Tony’s?”

“What?” Oren straightened up in his chair. “You don’t think—”

“Did you tell them?”

“Of course not.”

“So why were cops after Wilde in Central Park?”

“They weren’t cops,” Oren said.

“So who were they?” Wilde asked.

“FBI agents.”

Silence.

Hester sat back and crossed her arms. “You better explain.”

Oren let loose a long breath and nodded. “The ballistics came back on Henry McAndrews. He was shot with a nine-millimeter handgun. The Hartford tech guy put the report in the national database, and they got a hit. Another murder with the same gun. Check that, another recent murder.”

“How recent?” Wilde asked.

“Very. In the last two days.”

Wilde stayed on it. “So this would have been after Henry McAndrews?”

“Yes. The same gun that killed Henry McAndrews was used in another murder. But that’s not the headline.”

Hester gestured for him to continue. “We’re listening.”

“The victim,” Oren said, “was an FBI agent named Katherine Frole.” He looked at Hester. “So it’s not just a ‘murdered cop’ anymore. It’s also a murdered federal agent. In Fantasy Land, it might not make a difference that two law enforcement officers were gunned down, probably by the same killer. They should be treated the same as if two Average Joe Citizens were killed. But in the real world—”

“What connects them?” Wilde asked.

“As far as we know? Not a damn thing, except that both were shot in the head three times with the same gun.”

“Their work didn’t overlap?”

“Not as far as anyone can tell. McAndrews was a retired cop from Connecticut. Frole worked in the Trenton FBI forensic office. So far, the only anomaly is, well, you.”

Hester asked the next question in her most lawyerly tone. “Do they have anything linking my client with either Henry McAndrews or Katherine Frole?”

“You mean besides the fact that he broke into McAndrews’s house and found the body?”

Hester put her hand to her chest and faked a gasp. “How do they know that, Oren?”

He said nothing.

“Do they have his fingerprints? Do they have witnesses? What evidence do they have that my client—?”

“Can we drop this, please?” Oren asked. “Two people have been murdered.”

Hester was about to counter, but Wilde put a hand on her arm. The pissing contest between the two of them was becoming a distraction. He wanted to move this forward.

“What about Peter Bennett?” Wilde asked.

“Ah,” Oren said. “That’s the other reason why I wanted to see you.”

“How’s that?” Hester asked.

Oren flicked his gaze in her direction. They made eye contact and for a few moments, it was just the two of them. Wilde could feel it. He almost wanted to leave the room. These two had found love and now there were fissures, and while they were all dealing with bigger issues right now, Wilde still wanted to make that all right.

Still holding Hester’s gaze, Oren said, “I promised Wilde last night that I would look into Peter Bennett.”

Hester nodded slowly. “Go on then,” she said, her voice softer. “Tell us.”

Oren blinked and turned his attention to Wilde. “From what you told me, Peter Bennett naturally became a person of interest in Henry McAndrews’s murder. I reported what you said to the lead homicide detective on the case, a guy named Timothy Best. By the way, I don’t think Best had anything to do with what happened to you last night. Hartford PD is not handling the case, and he’s state. McAndrews’s murder was out of their jurisdiction, plus conflict of interest.”

Wilde nodded. He didn’t care about any of that right now. “And Peter Bennett?”

“I was helping him dig into Peter Bennett, but when the ballistics came in with the match to Katherine Frole, the FBI stepped in big-time. So last night before we talked, only you were looking for Peter Bennett. Now so are the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Connecticut State’s top law enforcement agency.”

“Have they found anything yet?” Wilde asked.

“Yeah, a lot.”

Hester snapped again. “Get to it already.”

Oren put on his reading glasses and took out a small notebook. “You mentioned Peter Bennett’s last Instagram photo at Adiona Cliffs.”

“Yes.”

Oren read in a monotone: “Three days before the photograph was taken, according to flight records and passport control, Peter Bennett flew from Newark Airport to French Polynesia. He stayed at a small hotel near the Adiona Cliffs for two nights. On the morning that photograph was taken, he gave his backpack and clothes to a hotel housekeeper and told her that they were hers. He paid his hotel bill, checked out of the hotel, and hired a taxi to take him to the base of the mountain. The taxi driver saw your cousin walk up the path toward the top of the cliffs.”

Oren snapped his notebook shut. “And that’s it.”

“What do you mean, that’s it?” Hester asked.

“No one has seen Peter Bennett since. There has been no sighting as far as we are aware. There is no indication that he ever came back down that path. His passport has not been used. His credit cards and ATM have not been used. He hasn’t been on any flight manifest or border-cross list.”

“Is there a working theory?” Wilde asked.

“In terms of Peter Bennett? The FBI believes that he did indeed commit suicide.”

“Or he faked it,” Hester said.

“The FBI doesn’t think so,” Oren said.

“Why not?” Hester asked.

“Besides what I already listed? Two more things: One, Peter Bennett settled his estate before departing. We spoke to his financial guy, an advisor named Jeff Eydenberg at Bank of USA. Eydenberg wouldn’t talk at first because of confidentiality, but the feds rushed through a warrant. Once that was secured, he cooperated, in part because he was worried about his client too. According to Eydenberg, Peter Bennett came in on his own and split the estate between his two sisters. Right now, it’s all held in escrow because his divorce to Jenn Cassidy isn’t final. But this Jeff Eydenberg met with Peter Bennett in person. He said Peter looked down and depressed.”

Hester thought about that. “Still could be the act of a man who is faking a suicide.”

“Anything’s possible, I guess.”

“You said there were ‘two more things.’ What’s the second?”

Wilde answered that one. “No suicide note.”

Oren nodded. Hester looked confused.

“Hold up,” Hester said. “Why would no suicide note make you think it was suicide?”

“If you wanted to fake a suicide,” Wilde said, “you’d definitely leave a note. If Peter Bennett went to all the trouble of posting that picture and taking care of his estate and flying to that island all to fake a suicide, it would be logical that he would have left a note in his own handwriting to seal the deal.”

“I see,” Hester said. Then: “But then I have another question. Either way, if he faked it or if it was real, why isn’t there a suicide note?”

Wilde had been wondering that himself.

“If you read his last post on Instagram,” Oren said, “there kind of is one.”

“What did he write?” Hester asked.

Wilde took that one. “‘I just want peace.’”

They all sat there.

Hester said, “A friend of mine used to quote Sherlock Holmes a lot. I don’t remember the exact words, but it warned that you shouldn’t theorize before you have facts because then you twist facts to suit theories rather than the other way around. In short, we don’t know enough.”

“Exactly,” Oren said. “Which is why you two need to cooperate with the FBI now and get ahead of this.”

“You know everything now,” Wilde said. “There is nothing I can add.”

“I know. But they insist. They won’t let go until you do.”

Hester said, “In other words, they’ll illegally harass my client.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I’m a lowly small-town police chief,” Oren said. “The FBI doesn’t confide everything in me.”

“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean,” Hester said.

“It means I think there’s something else, something big, something they aren’t telling me.”

“And yet you’re suggesting we just waltz right in there and talk to them?”

“I think you have two choices,” Oren said, again turning his attention to Wilde. “The first is, you go in and cooperate with your attorney present.”

“And the second?”

“You run.”