25
ONE FLOOR ABOVE Farrell, Devin Juhle didn’t have any problem with the hierarchy of the desk. He sat behind his and looked over the empty expanse at his two inspectors, who were pitching him on the idea of arresting Hal Chase for the murder of his wife, even in the absence of a body.
Juhle said, “But without a body, guys, and I know you know this, but it’s hard to establish there’s even been a homicide.”
“And yet,” Abby said, “here we are, Homicide inspectors, building a case that looks a hell of a lot like Katie is actually dead.”
“Well, still,” Juhle argued, “corpus delicti and all that. No body, no homicide. That’s the way we do it.”
“Aha!” JaMorris held up his index finger.
“Aha what?” Juhle asked.
“The body in corpus delicti isn’t about the physical body of the dead person. It’s about the body of evidence that proves the crime’s been committed.”
“Are you shitting me? Where’d you get that?” Juhle asked. “You going to law school at night or something?”
“I think it’s true, Devin,” Abby said.
“Even if it is, and I’m not so sure that Jambo’s right on that, what’s changed that we’re now ready to go ahead?”
“The new thing is we’ve got the girlfriend,” JaMorris said. “Plus, we know Hal’s got nothing like an alibi. He could have left the house with Katie and the kids at four, five, six o’clock, driven to someplace secluded, done the deed, and driven back home.”
“Everybody’s been talking about the missing three hours, seven-thirty to ten-thirty,” Abby added, “but it could have been as much as six hours. Then you plug in Patti Orosco and the affair and her several million dollars . . .”
JaMorris could barely contain his enthusiasm. “No jury’s going to see her and not also see a motive.”
“She really is something to see, Dev,” Abby added. “I’m not a guy by a long shot, and she is one heck of a package.”
“And then,” JaMorris continued, “the jury learns about her fortune, and not one person on it, even in this town, will believe that he wouldn’t have killed for her.”
Juhle kept shaking his head. “We got nada. Equally plausible explanation: Katie finds out that she’s losing her husband to a beautiful woman. She can’t stand it and she runs away, maybe kills herself. If the jury has two explanations, they have to accept the one that leads to a ‘not guilty’ verdict. Your theory is compelling as hell, and I completely believe it, but I don’t think Farrell will charge it—why would he, with no evidence?—so what’s the point in pressing for a warrant? For that matter, what judge would sign off on it? We need more.”
“How about if Farrell goes to the grand jury?” JaMorris suggested. “On what we’ve got, it’ll indict Hal in a heartbeat.”
“Same problem, guys,” Juhle said. “Farrell has to think he can get a conviction at trial. Without that, he’s not going forward, I promise you.”
“But if Hal’s indicted and locked up,” Abby said, “then we can get some warrants and do some searches.”
“First you need something beyond motive to open the door.” Juhle pushed his chair back and settled into it. “While we’re on this, what’s with Glitsky’s appearance? What the hell is that about?”
“It means our boy is lawyered up,” JaMorris said.
“Glitsky doesn’t have a private license that I know of, and I think I would have heard. Did he get in your way?”
“No,” Abby said, “although he was surprised to see us.”
“Did he identify himself to Patti as a police officer?”
“Not in front of us,” JaMorris said.
“Although,” Abby said, “if I remember, she called him Inspector Glitsky.”
“That might be enough. If he’s impersonating a police officer, he and I are going to have to have a discussion. He’s talking to Hal, too?”
Abby nodded. “Apparently.”
“It would be interesting to find out what he knows,” Juhle said. “If he’s on another track, what’s he going on? And if he’s pretending to still be a cop . . .” He let the comment hang.
“Whatever it is,” JaMorris said, “it led him to Patti Orosco.”
Juhle processed for a second. “She and Hal were definitely having an affair?”
“Until about a month ago,” Abby said. “Total admission, in spite of what she knew it could mean to us. But she put the best possible spin on it.”
Juhle asked her, “Who broke up with whom?”
“Hal ended it,” Abby said.
“And how did Patti feel about that? Bitter? Pissed off? Hurt?”
The two inspectors shared a glance. Abby said, “None of the above, wouldn’t you say, Jambo?”
Her partner nodded in agreement.
Abby went on, “She seemed completely okay with it. Hal wanted to go back and make things right with Katie, and for that to happen, she and Hal had to break up, and in some ways it was too bad, but she wished both of them the best.”
“Really?” Juhle asked.
“That’s her story.”
“No scorned-women rhetoric?”
“Not remotely.”
“That seems unlikely,” Juhle said.
“We tend to agree,” JaMorris said. “We talked about it after we left and agreed it was more like she was waiting a reasonable amount of time after Katie’s disappearance before she and Hal could come out as a couple. If her heart was even a little broken, she was hiding it pretty well.”
“So—”
Juhle was interrupted by the telephone on his desk. He listened for the better part of two minutes, pulling over a yellow legal pad and taking a few notes. When he hung up, he came back to his two inspectors. “Somebody just found a woman’s body, blood all over her head, on the Interior Park Belt out by Parnassus. You know where that is?”
JaMorris was already up and out of his chair. “Hal’s neighborhood,” he said.
Juhle nodded solemnly. “Close enough.”