The Zero Night

39

The burnt smell of the gunshot lingered on Gavin’s porch. The breeze through the sliding door had done nothing to wash it away.

Stride stared down at the dead body at his feet. He noted the singed wound in Gavin’s temple; the bone, blood, and brain on the carpeted floor; and the fingernail scratches on his hands. The lawyer’s blue eyes were open, his enigmatic stare now permanently fixed on a far-off horizon.

Outside, on the deck, broken glass glittered under the exterior lights. A bullet had gone through the door, shattering it as Gavin and Chelsey struggled for the gun. Another had gone into the ceiling, causing a cloud of plaster dust to settle over the body.

The house was crowded with people. The coroner and her assistant had arrived. The police officers who’d responded to the 911 call were still here, along with half a dozen other uniformed cops, as well as Stride, Maggie, and Guppo. In the corner of the porch, Chelsey Webster sat on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, her body shivering. Blood had sprayed over her face and splattered her clothes. Her eyes were nearly as fixed as her dead husband’s. She stared at Gavin’s body on the floor and didn’t even blink.

Maggie went and squatted in front of her. “Mrs. Webster? I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to ask you to relocate. We need to process the scene. Can we help you get to another room? We need to ask some questions.”

Chelsey didn’t react. Her glazed eyes didn’t move.

Maggie repeated her request, gently, and Stride positioned himself between Chelsey and her husband’s body to interrupt her concentration. Chelsey finally came out of her trance and nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

They helped her to her feet and led her down the hallway to the living room, which was adjacent to the house’s front door. Stride nodded at two police officers to vacate the space. Chelsey didn’t sit down. She walked nervously back and forth between the front windows and the built-in bookshelves.

“We’ll need to take pictures of you,” Stride said. “And we’ll need a swab of your hands for gunshot residue.”

Chelsey shrugged. “Yes, fine, but I’ve already told you that I fired the gun.”

“It’s standard procedure. We’ll also need to take the clothes you’re wearing as evidence, so you’ll have to change into something else. A policewoman will accompany you. After that, you can clean yourself up.”

“I can’t stay here tonight,” she murmured.

“No.”

“I guess I’ll go to a hotel.” Then she stopped as a thought occurred to her. “That is, if I’m free to go. Am I under arrest? You’re not going to arrest me, are you?”

“Right now, we’d like you to tell us exactly what happened,” Maggie said.

“It was self-defense.”

“I understand.”

“Should I talk to a lawyer?”

“That’s entirely up to you,” Stride said.

Chelsey paced more quickly. “Lawyer or no lawyer, I don’t know what difference it makes. I didn’t have a choice. Gavin was trying to kill me.”

“Maybe you’d like to sit down,” Maggie suggested.

Chelsey stopped in the middle of the floor. Her face was distracted. Finally, she took a seat on the sofa near the windows, and she smoothed her long hair with quivering fingers. “We had an argument.”

“About what?”

“Everything. It got out of control. And then he lunged at me.” She shook her head. “You were right. It was him. The whole thing was him. He arranged for the kidnapping. He said he hated me. He wanted me dead.”

“Did he actually confess to the kidnapping?” Maggie asked.

Her words spilled out quickly. “He didn’t need to. I saw it in his eyes. Once I told him what I’d found, once I showed him the gun, the façade fell away.”

“Tomorrow you’ll have to show us exactly where you found it,” Stride said.

She nodded. “Of course. I can do that.”

“Did Gavin say anything else?” Maggie asked.

“He denied it. Well, what else would he say? But I told him about your call. About you suspecting him in Jonah’s murder. I think that was the breaking point. That’s when he knew everything was going to come out.”

“Do you believe it’s possible that Gavin was responsible for Jonah Fallon’s death?” Stride asked.

She looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine. It’s so horrible. But Gavin was desperate about money. He’d lost everything. I suppose he could have convinced himself that the ends justified the means. Susan was going to die anyway.”

“After the accident, did you ever suspect he was involved?”

Chelsey hesitated. “No. But — I don’t know — sometimes thoughts go through your head and you pretend you’re not thinking what you’re thinking.”

“Tell us exactly what happened on the porch,” Stride said. “You confronted Gavin. You argued. What did he do?”

Chelsey took a deep breath in and out. “I was in the chair. He was standing over me. We didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Then he went for the gun and grabbed it. I knew he was going to kill me. I got hold of his wrist and forced his arm away, and he fired. The bullet went through the patio door. Then I swung his arm up, and he fired again, and the bullet went into the ceiling. I was able to get my finger on the trigger, but Gavin is stronger than me, and I’m still very weak from the abduction. I managed to get my foot around Gavin’s ankle. That was what saved me. He lost his balance and fell backward, and I fell with him. As we fell, the gun went off again. This time it was — it was pointed at Gavin’s head. I landed on top of him, and he was dead. I screamed, I just screamed. Then I called 911.”

Stride had heard a recording of the emergency call, including the panicked voice on the phone.

This is... this is Chelsey Webster. My husband’s dead! He was trying to kill me, and I shot him! He’s dead! Send the police, please send them right now!

It was a very convincing performance.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” he asked.

“No, that’s everything. I really need to rest now.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll get a policewoman,” Maggie interjected. “She can go to your bedroom with you. She’ll take pictures and collect your clothes. After that, we can have someone take you to a hotel if you’d like.”

“Thank you.” Chelsey exhaled and closed her eyes, and her whole body seemed to relax. “You’re both very kind.”

Stride and Maggie left the living room together. He waited in the hallway while Maggie located a policewoman, and then they took the stairs to the lower level of the house. The medical and crime-scene teams were still gathering evidence on the porch. The two of them went outside into the cool night air and walked across the back lawn that overlooked the lake.

They stood next to each other.

“What do you think?” Maggie asked.

Her question hung there in the darkness. In Stride’s mind, he kept seeing the image of Gavin dead on the floor.

The blood on his face.

His surprised blue eyes.

“The scene backs up what she’s saying,” Maggie went on. “There was a struggle for the gun.”

“Definitely.”

Maggie heard doubt in his voice. “But?”

“But was Gavin behind the kidnapping? I’m not so sure.”

“Why go for the gun if he was innocent?” Maggie asked.

“Fair point. Then again, why send himself an email from a fake account that leads to his gun?”

Maggie frowned. “To point the finger away from himself? To prove that someone else was working with Hink? He could tell us about the email, and we could go dig up the gun. Gavin could say, ‘See? You guys got it wrong.’”

“And the rest of the ransom money?”

“Buried somewhere else, I assume,” Maggie said. “Gavin couldn’t let us find that. A kidnapper wouldn’t give back the money.”

Stride stared out at the dark mass of the lake. Then he murmured, “A neat little package tied with a bow.”

“Sometimes that’s the way it works.”

That was true, he knew. Sometimes, but not very often.

“Do you believe in coincidences?” Stride asked.

“You know I don’t.”

“Neither do I. Then again, they do happen. Do you remember that case in Anoka County a few years ago? A depressed old woman tried to kill her husband and herself. She wanted the two of them to die together. So she turned on the gas line, and she wrote to her friends to say goodbye. Except in the morning, they were both still alive, and the police arrested her for attempted murder. She went to jail, but nobody wanted her there for long. Not the judge, not the prosecutor, and not her husband. He just wanted his wife back, and she swore she wouldn’t do it again. So they let her go. She came home, and a few hours later, her husband was dead.”

“Jesus,” Maggie said. “She killed him?”

Stride smiled. “No. The coroner concluded that he died of natural causes. But that’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“What are you saying, boss?”

He eyed her in the darkness. The way she said the word had a message for him. “Boss?”

“Yeah. Boss.”

Stride let that sink in for a moment, and then he pushed it aside. “Either Jonah Fallon’s death and Chelsey Webster’s kidnapping are two unrelated events, or else they’re part of an elaborate plot to steal three million dollars. Right? It’s a conspiracy or a coincidence.”

“Earlier, you were pretty sure it was a conspiracy,” Maggie said.

“Earlier, Gavin wasn’t dead.”

“So?”

“So I don’t think a lawyer smart enough to come up with a murder plot like this would be careless enough to let himself get killed at the end of it. If Gavin wanted Chelsey dead, she’d be dead.”

“Does that mean you think the hit-and-run was an accident?”

He let that idea walk through his mind for a moment, but then he shook his head. “No. I don’t. Strange coincidences may happen, but not when we’re talking about that kind of money. This was a premeditated conspiracy. This was murder. But Gavin isn’t our only suspect.”

“He had a hell of a motive to kill Jonah,” Maggie pointed out.

“So did his wife.”

Maggie cocked her head. “Chelsey?”

“She was never a suspect because we thought she was dead. But now? Chelsey is about to walk away free and clear with three million dollars and no husband. That’s a pretty elegant outcome, don’t you think? If Gavin had died in any other way — murder, accident, whatever — Chelsey would have been our prime suspect. We would have turned over every rock to prove that she was involved. But with the evidence in the kidnapping pointing at Gavin, she can simply admit she killed him. An open-and-shut case of self-defense. And that also is a neat little package tied with a bow.”

“Son of a bitch,” Maggie swore. “You think it’s possible she arranged all of this herself? She kidnapped herself ?”

“I think Chelsey Webster is one very cool customer.”

Maggie was quiet for a moment. Down the hillside, the Duluth skyline glittered. “She couldn’t have done this alone.”

“You’re right,” Stride agreed. “If it really was her behind all of this, then she had help. Not only in faking the kidnapping, but in killing Jonah Fallon, too. She’s had a partner from the very beginning.”