The knot in Laurie’s stomach grew tighter. As strongly as she had ever felt about any of her cases, she had never been certain about anyone’s guilt or innocence, especially at the outset. The entire purpose of her show was to explore an unsolved case with an open mind.
She was fairly certain that Ryan had not stumbled onto this case by accident. “Do you happen to know Mr. Gray?” she asked.
“He’s my trainer.”
Of course, she thought. It made perfect sense. When Grace and Jerry were discussing Ryan’s idiosyncratic hours, they may as well have analyzed his various workout hobbies: hitting golf balls at the Chelsea Pier driving range, spin classes at SoulCycle, circuit training at the gym around the corner, and, if Laurie had to guess, some latest workout craze with his new pal, Ivan Gray.
“Yoga?” she guessed.
Ryan’s face made his opinions about yoga clear. “Boxing,” he said. “He’s the owner of PUNCH.”
Laurie wasn’t exactly a gym rat, but even she had heard of the trendy workout spot dedicated to boxing. Their flashy ads were emblazoned on subways and the sides of buses, depicting perfect-looking New Yorkers in fashionable exercise clothes and boxing gloves. The thought of punching an object named Ryan Nichols actually sounded pretty good to Laurie.
“I really appreciate the suggestion,” she said coolly. “But I don’t think that case is right for the show. It’s only been three years. I’m sure the police are still investigating.”
“Ivan’s life has been basically ruined. We could help him.”
“If he owns PUNCH, apparently it hasn’t been ruined entirely. And if he killed that woman, I’m really not interested in helping him. He could be using us to try to get free publicity for his gym.”
Laurie couldn’t help but think back to the grief Ryan had given her only a few months ago. He hadn’t even been officially hired yet, but he took it upon himself to tell her that the case of a woman already convicted of killing her fiancé was unsuitable for her own show because he was so certain she was guilty.
Ryan was looking at the screen of his iPhone. If it had been Timmy, Laurie would have told him to put it away.
“With all due respect, Ryan, the case isn’t even cold yet,” she said dismissively. Her own husband’s murder went unsolved for five years. Even without any suspects, the NYPD kept assuring her the entire time that they were “actively working” the investigation. “The last thing I want is to hurt our relationship with law enforcement by interfering.”
Ryan was tapping on his phone screen. When he finished, he tucked his phone in his pocket and looked up at her. “Well, let’s hear him out. Ivan’s in the lobby and is coming up.”
4
Only one word came to mind when Laurie saw Ivan Gray walk into her office: huge. The man was enormous. He was at least six-foot-three, but his height was not what stood out about his appearance. There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on his body. He looked trim and powerful. His hair was short and dyed brown. His eyes were hazel green.
She was almost afraid to shake his hand, expecting a grip that would crush her fingers. She was surprised when he greeted her with a normal, human handshake rather than a painful clasp.
“Thank you so much for inviting me in, Laurie.” She had not, in fact, invited him, and had not asked him to call her by her first name.
“Well, Ryan speaks so highly of you,” she said flatly.
“The feeling’s mutual,” Ivan said, giving Ryan a friendly punch in the arm. “The first time he came in for a session, I thought, This guy’ll be begging to leave in twenty minutes. But he trains hard. Might even be able to defend himself against one of my better fighters if he keeps up the work—the female fighters, I mean.”
It was the type of inside joke that immediately reminded the outsider—in this case, Laurie—that she wasn’t part of the gang. Laurie wished that Ryan would show the same kind of dedication to learning basic rules of journalism. She mustered a smile.
She would normally study a case for hours before interviewing the primary suspect. She was at a loss for how to transition from their banter about Ryan’s latest workout obsession to a woman’s murder. Once she gestured for Ivan to have a seat on the sofa, she decided to jump right in. “So Ryan told me you’re interested in having us reinvestigate the death of Virginia Wakeling.”
“You can call it a reinvestigation if you’d like, but if you ask me, the NYPD hasn’t investigated it for even the first time. All they needed to know was that a sixty-eight-year-old woman was dating a forty-seven-year-old man, and they made up their minds. They didn’t seem to care about the complete lack of any evidence against me.”
Laurie did the simple arithmetic in her head. Virginia had died three years earlier, making Ivan fifty years old today. He looked more like he was forty, but she suspected that he may have had some assistance in that area. His skin was tan, even though it was January, and that short hair might be hiding the onset of baldness.
The case had been in the news so recently that Laurie was able to recall most of the reported facts from memory. From what she gathered, Virginia’s money was at the heart of the original police investigation. Her husband had been a real estate genius, successful enough to leave Virginia an extremely wealthy widow. Laurie could only imagine what Wakeling’s family and friends thought when she began dating a personal trainer more than twenty years her junior.
But, despite what Ivan said, his age and profession were not the only reasons he became the leading suspect.
“With all due respect,” Laurie said, “to call it a complete lack of evidence is not entirely fair to the investigation, is it? Motive, after all, is a type of evidence. There were financial concerns, as I recall.”
After Virginia’s death, police discovered that several hundred thousand dollars of her money had been spent on Ivan’s various expenses. Her children were adamant that their mother had not authorized the expenditures. They speculated that their mother may have discovered that Ivan was stealing from her, and could have been planning to pursue criminal charges against him. That would give him a powerful motive to silence her.
“Nothing irregular at all,” he said. “Yes, she helped me with some bills. The Porsche was her birthday gift to me. I tried not to accept it. It was far too generous, but she insisted. She told me that she loved the idea of being driven around in it with the top down in the summer. She said it was more a gift to herself than to me.”
Laurie hadn’t remembered that an expensive sports car was involved, but even a Porsche didn’t amount to the kinds of expenditures at issue. “My recollection is that it was more than a car. Substantial funds were missing.”