Exhausted.
He wasn’t sure about Marla, but when the lab reported back that the blood on the door of her house did indeed match up with Rosemary Gaynor’s, the chief and the district attorney made the decision: Bring her in.
And so he did.
She hadn’t said a word the entire way to the station. Just sat in the back of the cruiser as if in some kind of trance. Duckworth had to admit he felt sorry for this girl, even if she had done it. The things that had happened to her had left their mark. The girl was damaged. And her parents weren’t making her life any better. He’d heard them screaming at each other while he waited for someone to open the door.
You met a lot of fucked-up people in this line of work.
He moved his computer mouse and the screen came to life. He had two new e-mails. He’d heard his phone ding a couple of times in the last hour, but hadn’t had a moment to look at it.
The first one was from a Sandra Bottsford, manager of the Boston hotel where Bill Gaynor had been staying when his wife had been murdered. She wrote that she had information for him, and asked him to call her.
The second e-mail was from Wanda Therrieult, the coroner. It was short. Call me, it said.
Duckworth decided to call the hotel manager first. He got bounced around some. Bottsford was somewhere in the building, so they transferred him to her cell when he explained who he was.
Finally she answered. “Bottsford.”
“It’s Detective Duckworth, in Promise Falls. I just got your e-mail. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“No problem. I could have explained it in the e-mail, but I thought you might have extra questions, so I figured we should just talk.”
“Great. So, I was trying to confirm whether Mr. Gaynor was at the hotel Saturday midday through Monday morning.”
“Yeah. Terrible thing, what happened to his wife. Anyway, he checked out of the hotel at six in the morning on Monday. I even checked the security footage, and he was there at the front desk bright and early yesterday morning.”
A six a.m. checkout sounded about right. If he’d stopped once or twice to get a coffee or hit the bathroom, that departure would have seen him getting home at the very time he did.
But that didn’t nail it down for Duckworth. It was conceivable Gaynor could have left the hotel sometime during the previous forty-eight hours, driven home, killed his wife, then returned to Boston. His wife had clearly been dead at least a day when her body was discovered. Which meant whoever had killed her had done it more than twenty-four hours earlier. Duckworth was still waiting to hear back from the Mass Pike authorities to see whether Gaynor’s car’s license plate had been picked up entering or exiting the toll road in the two days before he’d officially returned home.
A round trip would have taken him the better part of five to six hours, but it could be done if he used the interstate highway. His attendance at the hotel conference could serve as his alibi.
Duckworth pressed on. “I’d asked you, I think, if you had anything else that would confirm Mr. Gaynor’s presence at the hotel for most of the weekend.”
“Yes,” said Bottsford, “you’d mentioned that. There were seminars most of Saturday and Sunday, and the conference dinner at five on Sunday, and he was seen at that. There was a charge from the bar at ten p.m., Sunday, and he’s visible on the security camera again, crossing the lobby at around eleven. Around midnight there was a call from his room down to the desk to ask for a wake-up call at five, which was done. The call was answered.”
That covered Sunday. But Rosemary Gaynor was already dead then.
“What about Saturday, and into Sunday morning?”
“The thing is, Detective, Mr. Gaynor is a regular here. He has stayed here for weeks, sometimes months at a time. Last year his wife was even with him for a very long stay. Everyone here knows the Gaynors. I asked around in the bar and the restaurant, and they saw him quite regularly all through the weekend. And his car did not leave the hotel. I talked to the valet, and he remembers bringing his car up for him at six, and it was the only time the car was asked for in the preceding forty-eight hours.”
Duckworth said, “Thanks very much for getting back to me.”
“Mr. Gaynor’s always been very kind and courteous to everyone here,” the manager added. “We feel very bad for his loss.”
“Of course. Good-bye.”
Duckworth hung up the phone. Just as well to scratch Gaynor from the list of suspects, he guessed, considering that they’d made an arrest. But he’d had to be sure.
He picked up the phone and called Wanda.
“How’s it going,” she said.
“I got your e-mail. What’s up?”
“I finished the autopsy on Rosemary Gaynor.”