With the state police handling the technical side, Owen was free to focus on documents. He liked documents. There weren’t enough of them in narcotics cases. Maybe you’d get a slip of paper that said “Chino, 20 kilos,” with a cell number on it, but nothing that required a man to solve a puzzle, to use his brain. He was looking for anything that gave Rothenberg a motive, or put him near the River Road boat launch on Friday night, when they believed she disappeared. Phone records, a bus ticket in a coat pocket, a receipt from a gas station. Anything. Or an insurance policy on Kate’s life with Rothenberg named as the beneficiary. Wouldn’t that be nice? Owen walked the first floor, looking for a desk or filing cabinet or anything, even a junk drawer where they stashed their paperwork. The house was a jumble of rooms, poorly organized, musty and dark, not at all the sort of place he imagined Kate living. She belonged in that mansion in the picture, not in a dump like this. Rothenberg must’ve really hit the skids if this was the best he could do. Hell, Owen could’ve done better for Kate himself, and he’d never come within a hundred miles of the kind of money that guy had.
In the kitchen, where he and Keisha had interviewed Rothenberg just the afternoon before, Owen went through the drawers and came up empty. Then he opened the pantry door and stopped and stared. Owen’s pantry had about ten boxes of cereal, a few cans of beans, maybe some spaghetti. This one was full to the brim with the most amazing stash of booze he’d ever seen outside a bar. Owen rummaged through it, the bottles clinking as he read the labels. There were many types of artisanal gin and some very expensive vermouth. Bourbon, both Kentucky and local, as well as five kinds of scotch, including a famous single malt that cost a pretty penny. Dark rum, white rum, and cacha?a. Liqueurs and cordials in every flavor, brandy and cognac, margarita mix and Bloody Mary mix and simple syrup and bitters. You could throw a party for a hundred people and not make a dent in this haul. Owen wondered what the total price tag was. If Rothenberg could afford a liquor cabinet this extravagant, maybe he wasn’t hurting so bad after all. Maybe he had money stashed. Lightbulb—maybe he had money stashed, and he used it to pay for a habit that was maybe booze, but maybe something more. Could there be drugs in the house? The answer to that, in his experience, was there always could. Owen didn’t have enough to lock Rothenberg up for murder. But if he found drugs, he could sure as hell lock him up for that, and he’d get the breathing room he needed to make the murder case at his leisure.
Owen dialed the state police for what felt like the tenth time that day, and requested dispatch of a canine team. He hated going to them with hat in hand, but this town had no goddamn resources, and if he borrowed from the overtime fund again, someone was bound to find out. He swallowed his pride and asked the state police for another favor. Owen was not about to let a possible drug arrest of Rothenberg fall by the wayside just to save face.
When they told him it would take an hour to get the canine there, Owen photographed the booze (you never knew what might come in handy at trial) and went back to searching for documents. Eventually he located a screen porch off the kitchen that he’d missed on his first walk-through. The storm windows were up, but as Owen stepped down to the porch, the temperature dropped a good twenty-five degrees. If Kate was his, he would’ve spent a Saturday insulating the porch so she didn’t have to sit in the cold. Presumably a guy like Rothenberg had never heard of Home Depot and couldn’t swing a hammer to save his life.
The desk in the corner was covered with papers. Owen switched on the desk lamp and started wading through them. It was a freaking bonanza. Phone records, credit card bills, bank records, correspondence. Rothenberg hadn’t gone digital yet, apparently. Owen sorted them into piles. The bank records and credit cards were key, because Owen needed to be able to prove that Rothenberg profited from his wife’s death. He found the October statement for a joint checking account, which showed a dangerously low balance, less than was needed to pay off the credit card debt he found in their bills. Now that he had the account numbers, he would subpoena every record he could get his hands on, and if there was a financial motive, he would find it.
Owen moved a sheaf of papers and under it discovered a shiny silver laptop. He knew better than to lay a finger on it himself. An expert needed to retrieve the data under controlled conditions. (Another expense he’d have to find the money for somehow.) His hands twitched with excitement as he sealed the laptop into an evidence bag for chain of custody. There was bound to be something on there to sink the husband. Sexts with a girlfriend. Google searches for how to dump a body. Directions to the River Road boat launch, or something else Rizzo hadn’t thought of yet. Computers solved cases, because people were stupid. Owen couldn’t count the number of times he’d searched a guy’s phone and found it loaded with pictures of drugs and guns and cash. Which, okay, maybe meant drug dealers were especially stupid. But no—it was the rich, stuck-up assholes like Rothenberg who felt so far above the law that they’d never bother to destroy evidence of their crimes.
Next came the desk drawers. He yanked open the top right-hand one and stopped, breathless. This was Kate’s drawer. A small tray held pink paper clips, hair elastics, a lip gloss, matches from a bar in New York City, a pack of Marlboro reds. (Did she smoke? He didn’t remember that from the bar.) It was just the sort of stuff a woman would keep in her handbag. He’d thought about the handbag before, of course. It was missing. They were hoping to find it in this search, but so far they hadn’t. Something was wedged under the tray. Owen moved it aside and pulled out a small red-leather date book. It was a dainty thing, with gold edging on the pages and a red silk ribbon marking Friday’s date. Friday, her fortieth birthday, the last day she walked this earth. He had to sit down in the desk chair. She’d written “40” in black ink at the top of the page, surrounded by little lines that looked like fireworks exploding. And below that, in a bold, slanted hand, in the space for seven o’clock: “Bday dinner at Henry’s w/ J&A.” Henry’s? Was that the name of a person, or did it refer to Henry’s Bistro? He’d send Keisha down there with a subpoena for their reservation book to find out.
His walkie-talkie squawked.
“Yo, Chief. We got something here.”
“Where are you?”
“Master bedroom.”
“On my way.”
He’d looked through the bedroom before the forensics team showed up, but it had been a cursory search, to get a feel for things. He thought he would’ve spotted something major, but that’s why you brought in the crime scene team. They were the experts.
In the bedroom, Owen found the team leader and another guy hunched over the laundry hamper, clothing scattered on the floor at their feet. They turned when he walked in.
“Get a load of this, Chief,” the team leader said. “Matthews found it wadded up in the bottom of the basket.”
The team leader stepped aside. Laid out on the top of the hamper, Owen saw a men’s shirt, purple-check, with a Brooks Brothers label. The left-hand side was marred by a large spatter of dried blood.
Owen grinned and clapped the team leader on the back. “Thanks, bro. I think you just solved my case.”
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