“Was the Mattauk Police Department already familiar with Mr. Chertov at the time?”
“Yes, sir. Our department had had at least one prior run-in with Mr. Chertov. We knew he worked as a bodyguard for Spencer Harding.”
“Did you think that Mr. Chertov was acting on his employer’s orders in this case?”
“We did. When the actress came forward to identify the body, she brought documents that would have been difficult to forge. A birth certificate. An immunization schedule. It was not a cheap operation. Someone with deep pockets had to be footing the bill.”
“Spencer Harding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would a wealthy, well-known art dealer pay an actress to impersonate a dead girl’s mother?”
“To convince my department to close the case.”
“Why would he want the case closed?”
“That was the question we wanted to answer.”
“At what point did Harding become a person of interest in the Danskammer Beach case?”
“The day the actress identified Mr. Chertov as her employer we placed Mr. Chertov and Mr. Harding under surveillance.”
Nessa pressed pause. “What the hell?” she said. “That can’t be true.”
“Is he claiming he suspected Spencer Harding all the way back at the beginning of June?” Jo asked.
Harriett sniggered. The snigger turned into a chuckle and the chuckle into a howl. “I saw that plot twist coming a mile away! Keep going!” she urged. “Press play!”
“What are you laughing about?” Jo demanded. “This isn’t goddamned funny.”
“She’s stoned,” Nessa grumbled.
“Yes, and yet I’m the only one who knows what’s going on.”
June sixth, exactly one month after the body was discovered on Danskammer Beach, a deliveryman on his way to Culling Pointe came across an accident on Danskammer Beach Road. When police arrived at the scene, Rosamund Harding was discovered in the driver’s seat, dead from what the medical examiner would later determine was a head injury. She appeared to have been alone at the time of the accident.
“Chief Rocca, was there anything about the accident that struck you as strange?”
“To start with, it was an unusual location for an accident. Danskammer Beach Road is straight and flat. We don’t see many crashes out there, and when we do, they’re alcohol related. We did not believe Mrs. Harding was intoxicated at the time of the crash. But it wasn’t until we discovered that the vehicle’s internal computer network had been hacked that we suspected Ms. Harding had been the victim of foul play.”
“So someone remotely hacked into the car and caused the fatal crash?”
“The accident took place at four fifteen a.m. The car’s black box showed that in the moments before the crash, the vehicle had been steadily accelerating until it was traveling at well over one hundred miles per hour. Three seconds prior to the collision, the headlights were cut. Sunrise that morning was at five forty-six a.m. There are no streetlights along Danskammer Beach Road, and it was a moonless night. Mrs. Harding would have been driving blind.”
“You would have to be a pretty good hacker to orchestrate something like that.”
“Yes.”
“Good hackers don’t come cheap, do they?”
“No, sir, they do not. On the dark web, prices for a murder of this sort tend to start in the low to mid six figures.”
“A fortune to most, but a pittance to a man like Spencer Harding.”
“That is correct.”
“When you informed Mr. Harding of his wife’s death, what was his response?”
“He received the news with very little emotion. The officer who placed the call referred to him as ‘robotic.’”
Knowing that Spencer Harding would do his best to thwart any investigation into his wife’s death, police began by looking into Rosamund Harding’s life. Their inquiries took them to a women-only gym in downtown Mattauk—the same place where officers had first encountered Danill Chertov. One afternoon, while Rosamund Harding was working out on a treadmill, Chertov had barged into the gym in search of her. After an altercation with the establishment’s owner, the police were called. Chief Rocca had a hunch that the gym might hold a clue to Rosamund Harding’s fate.
“And what did you find?”
“In the locker she rented? Gym clothes. A pair of sneakers. But my gut told me there had to be more. I had my men execute a search of a locker that hadn’t been rented to Mrs. Harding but was locked nonetheless. That’s where I found the photo.”
“You’re aware that the owner of the gym claims she was the one who discovered the photo in Rosamund Harding’s locker?”
“She let me and my men into the locker room.”
“And that’s it?”
“That was the extent of her involvement at the time.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jo wasn’t sure she’d heard that right.
“Did he just make that all up?” Nessa asked, one hand clenching Jo’s arm.
A professional lawman’s hunch led to a smoking gun—a Polaroid of a naked girl. The moment Chief Rocca saw it, he knew it was the same girl they’d found dead by Danskammer Beach weeks earlier. On the upper right corner, forensic technicians found a partial thumbprint.
“Who did the thumbprint belong to?”
“It belonged to Mr. Chertov.”
“How do you think the picture ended up in the locker?”
“We believe Mrs. Harding discovered it among her husband’s belongings at home and placed it there for safekeeping. Unfortunately, that discovery likely led to her untimely death.”
“What did you do after you identified the owner of the fingerprint?”
“We immediately sought to bring Mr. Chertov in for questioning. But we wanted to do so without tipping off his employer, whom we knew to be a flight risk.”
“You were worried that Spencer Harding would get wind of the plan and fly away.”
“Yes, literally.”
Jo turned down the volume as the show transitioned into another commercial break. “Have I stepped into an alternate universe?” she asked. “In my world, none of this happened. Am I right?”
“You are indeed,” Harriett said.
“Franklin said there were no fingerprints on the photo—just two partial prints inside the locker that couldn’t be identified,” Nessa pointed out.
“Clearly someone was lying,” Harriett said. “I’m fairly certain it wasn’t Franklin.”
“But this is the chief of police. How could he make something like that up?” Nessa marveled.
“Who’s going to call him a liar? The case is closed,” Harriett said.
“We could!” Jo argued.
“He hasn’t mentioned our names once,” Nessa muttered. “It’s like we don’t even exist.”