Time of Death

48

Peter Everett opened his door slowly and let his arm fall limp at his side. His hair was standing on end, his eyes red, his pupils like pinholes.

‘You must have been a very nervous man over the past few weeks,’ said Ren.

It threw him. ‘Nervous?’ He stared at her. ‘Why would I be nervous?’

‘Can I come in?’

He nodded.

They went into the living room this time. He gave Ren the sofa and stood leaning against the bureau opposite it, his arms and legs crossed.

‘Please sit down.’ Ren gestured to the seat across from hers. He sat down.

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘Let’s do this.’ She slid a photo across the table between them.

Everett’s eyes shot wide. He frowned.

‘You know who that is,’ said Ren.

‘Uh…yeah. It’s…Judge Hammond’s wife. Trudie.’

Ren nodded. ‘It is.’ She let the silence between them stretch to minutes. He had stopped looking at the photo after his first quick glance. But Ren could sense, behind his eyes, rapid traveling thoughts.

‘I won’t show you a crime-scene photo,’ said Ren.

Tears welled and disappeared into his eyes. In seconds.

‘Tell me,’ said Ren. ‘I know, but tell me.’

Another long silence.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Everett. ‘Tell you what?’

‘I’m not playing this game with you,’ said Ren. ‘This back-and-forth thing. What happened to Trudie Hammond? And do not respond with any variation on “Tell you what?” or “How would I know?” I don’t want to hear it. I don’t have the time or the patience.’

Everett’s hand had a tiny tremor when he lifted it again to rub his forehead.

‘Douglas Hammond moved from the area three months after the murder. You and Lucinda moved within two.’

‘Wouldn’t you have?’ said Peter. ‘The whole place had changed. We didn’t like the idea of bringing up our daughter on a street where someone had been murdered. Especially when the killer hadn’t been caught. And as for Douglas Hammond moving, well, he had even more of a reason.’

‘Anyway,’ said Ren. ‘I’m looking through the file and thinking about all of that and how there was something missing. I don’t know if you know much about cold-case investigations, but the main bummer is that you’re working with, in this case, a twenty-seven-year-old file and the limited homicide experience of the investigators. It was quite a thin file, all things considered.’

Everett had no idea where she was going.

‘What we did have, wrapped in a brown paper bag — God bless Detective Whoever — was Trudie Hammond’s nightgown…’

Something was slowly dawning on Peter Everett.

Ren kept going. ‘So I figured, maybe those blood stains weren’t all Trudie Hammond’s. There may have been blood stains from the killer; the vase used to beat her to death had shattered, so he may have gotten cut himself. Back then, they didn’t have the means to test for DNA and determine who the blood belonged to. So I sent the nightgown to the lab…and, no, it was all just Trudie Hammond’s blood.’

Everett appeared to be relaxing.

Not so fast. ‘But what the lab did find was semen stains. On the back of her nightgown. There was so much blood, that no one had paid any attention. And even if they had, Douglas Hammond said he’d had sex with his wife that morning. I might have overlooked that semen stain too, but I believe with a cold-case file you take what’s there and do everything you can with it. Especially something that the original investigators didn’t. So, what the hell, I ran it anyway. And it turns out, it wasn’t Douglas Hammond’s semen. But there were no signs of rape, so consensual sex was had.’

‘I don’t need to hear the details of Trudie Hammond’s death,’ said Everett. ‘Or her file. Or the stains on her nightgown.’

‘Oh, you do,’ said Ren. ‘Back to Helen Wheeler. You’re dating her. She is murdered. The judge who is trying to access her patient files is killed. You used to know him.’ Ren paused. ‘How did you meet Helen Wheeler?’

‘At a benefit.’

‘When?’

‘In September last year.’

‘Had you ever been a patient of hers?’

‘What? No. Psychiatrists are not allowed to date-’

‘Are you for real?’ said Ren.

‘Look, we met at a benefit. We dated. It went from there…’

‘This all seems a little coincidental.’

‘Well, it’s not. Not to me.’

‘So, you didn’t come as a patient to Dr Helen Wheeler and, in therapy, reveal to her that you killed Trudie Hammond? Something that you were afraid Douglas Hammond would find if he accessed the files? The newspapers reported that investigators were looking at the possibility that a patient had killed Dr Wheeler, so…’

‘What are you talking about? This is ridiculous. I did not kill Trudie Hammond. Nor was I ever Helen’s patient. And I barely knew Douglas Hammond. I swear to God.’

‘You may not have known him…Most men would rather not know the husband of the woman they’re sleeping with.’

Everett froze.

‘Did you not see that’s where I was going with the DNA thing?’ said Ren. ‘I had the lab run the semen stain against the sample you gave for the Helen Wheeler investigation. I got a match. It’s black and white. Either you used Trudie Hammond’s nightgown to-’

I can’t stoop that low.

Everett swallowed hard. He said nothing. In the silence, Ren could not take her eyes off him. She treated times like these, pauses from the guilty, as a form of meditation, one of the few times she could be still yet keep her mind on work. It wasn’t healthy meditation, she knew that. It wasn’t as serene as looking at a flickering candle or a statue of Buddha. She snapped out of it when Everett raised his head.

‘Lucinda and I were married two years. I was…young, starting up my business, working out of the house. Douglas Hammond was working as an attorney…the whole time. Trudie was…home.’ He hung his head. ‘I guess I can skip the romantic “how-we-got-together” part. But it wasn’t just loneliness and it wasn’t just sex.’

Here we go…‘OK.’

‘We would get together during the day in one another’s houses, whatever.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ren. ‘Where was your wife…?’

‘Oh God, my wife,’ said Peter. ‘She was…wonderful. She was…most men would give their right arm to be with Lucinda. I tried so hard for her to be all that to me, but-’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t even know why. Lucinda was beautiful, bright, generous, kind — she still is — but you need more than that, don’t you? I mean, you could forgo some of those things if you had that special thing with a woman. That in definable thing that I never believed in until I met Trudie. I loved the ground she walked on.’

‘That would be beautiful to hear…’

Everett looked up at her, thrown.

‘…if I didn’t know how the fairytale ended,’ said Ren.

Everett bowed his head again.

‘Let me ask you, were you planning to leave your wife?’

He shook his head. ‘It was too early for that.’

‘Because you had a fledgling business that her family money was paying for?’

Everett blushed.

At the money part.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘So, you would meet Trudie, how often?’

‘Every day.’

‘And on one of those days-’

‘Douglas came home early and walked in on us.’

Whoa…Douglas Hammond came home before Trudie was killed?