“He knew them or he learned them,” Noah said.
“We think it’s a he because it usually is, right?” said Margot.
“Can’t rule out a female killer,” Noah said.
“Let’s go over our suspects one by one.”
Noah printed OWEN MANN at the top left of the whiteboard.
“What does Owen get with his wife dead?”
Noah bullet-pointed:
House
Some money
Freedom
“Freedom to do what?” Margot asked.
“To be with someone else,” Noah said.
“But he was already doing that. And according to Luna, Irene knew about the affair. If she divorced him, how does he fare?”
“There was no morals clause in the prenup,” Noah said.
“So, is he better off widowed or divorced?”
“There’s no obvious winner,” Noah said. “He’s better off married. That’s the crux of it.”
“Okay. Who benefits if Irene dies?”
Noah printed Amy Johnson’s name next to Owen’s.
“She kills someone just to be with a guy who’s not particularly wealthy on his own? It’s a stretch,” Margot said.
“Is it?” said Noah. “Remember that crazy astronaut lady? She planned to kill her new boyfriend’s former girlfriend just to get rid of the competition. There was no other benefit, far as I know.”
Margot had a moment of déjà vu. She’d had this conversation before.
“Have we discussed my astronaut theory?” Margot asked.
“I think I’d remember,” Noah said, laughing. “I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s not Amy,” Margot said.
Noah had never liked Amy for the crime, but he wanted to make sure they worked through each suspect to completion.
“She has no alibi,” Noah said. “Said she was home when the murder happened, but she lives alone.”
“The absence of an alibi means nothing. Here’s the real reason: Women don’t typically kill. But when they do, they generally fall into a few obvious categories. You’ve got the sociopath; she kills for a reason—money, love, et cetera. Then there’s the self-defense killer, even if there’s no immediate threat, which is generally a response to repeated abuse or a high-stress situation. There’s also the mentally ill killer. Some kind of altered reality is involved. None of those apply here. If you have a woman who presents as normal in regular society and kills to clear the way for a relationship, which I think this would have to be, that woman is, I argue, a classic type-A high achiever. That’s the kind of woman who works her ass off all the time. That’s someone who believes there’s nothing she can’t accomplish if she sets her mind to it. That’s an astronaut. Amy, on the other hand, attends a second-rate art school. She has no obvious ambitions or plans for when she graduates. If you look at the pictures in her social media accounts, there’s always dirty laundry in the background. She’s a slob. Does that sound like an astronaut to you?”
Noah scribbled a single bullet point under Amy’s name.
Not an astronaut.
“Moving on,” Noah said. “The murder had to be premeditated. It was too clean.”
“Maybe,” Margot said. “Or it was a random shooting.”
“For the hell of it, are there any astronauts in the mix? And does your astronaut theory apply only to women?”
“No,” Margot said. “But there is a higher probability of astronauts in female killers than male killers.”
“How about Dr. Burroughs?” Goldman asked.
“Burroughs is definitely an astronaut. He’s the type of person who would think he could get away with the perfect crime.”
Noah wrote ASTRONAUT under Dr. Burroughs’s name.
“His motive is weak,” Noah said.
“Correction. The motive we’ve so far managed to conceive of is weak,” Margot said.
Noah wrote JEALOUSY under Owen’s name. “Owen finds out about the affair and kills his wife out of jealous rage. Why doesn’t he kill Sam?”
“I don’t know. Because Irene betrayed him.”
“It could be a jealousy-greed combo,” Goldman said.
Margot took another pen and scribbled Luna’s name in her messy script. The L looked almost like an h. She remembered why she wanted Goldman to do the writing.
“Maybe Luna found out about the affair and killed Irene?” Margot said.
Goldman wrote JEALOUSY under Luna’s name.
“So, Luna brings in the husband’s burner and toothbrush to deflect blame?” Goldman said.
The partners were exchanging hypotheticals but not buying any of it.
“Maybe,” Burns said, unconvinced.
She paced over to the window and squinted at the blazing landscape. The kaleidoscope of colors would fade in just a few weeks.
“She’s not an astronaut,” Goldman said.
“Definitely not. Is there anyone else in Irene’s orbit that we need to look at?” Burns asked.
“Her neighbor, Maya Wilton,” Goldman said, writing her name on the side of the board. “I interviewed her briefly when we were canvassing the neighborhood. She claimed that she and Irene were good friends. Neither Owen nor Luna mentioned her at all. She seemed overly interested. After I gave her my card, she gave me her card. She said I should call if we needed any help.”
“You should definitely call,” Burns said. “Let’s take a step back and look at motive from a wider view. Why do people kill?” she asked. “They kill as a misguided expression of love.”
“They kill for greed,” Noah added. “They kill because they lose control. They kill for jealousy and hate. But who hated Irene? No one, based on our interviews. Everyone loved her.”
“Whitman didn’t. He seemed to resent her, in a way. I’m not sure what it was, but something wasn’t right with them,” Margot said.
Goldman wrote Whitman’s name on the board. “He hated that she got all Chantal’s money,” he said.
“Right. Maybe all those cash withdrawals were going to Whitman.”
“How hard would it be to get his bank records?”
“We’d need more evidence. We can certainly bring him in and ask him about it,” Burns said.