“Uh-huh.”
Walters paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “But she filed for divorce Friday morning.”
“Yes.”
“So presumably she got out of the motel in one piece and made it to the courthouse. That’s a wrinkle, but we can finesse it.”
“A wrinkle in what? Where are you going with this?”
“The fastest way to convince the world you’re innocent is to make somebody else look guilty,” Walters said. “This doctor is gonna be our alternative suspect. We hold a press conference, and divert attention onto him.”
Griff frowned. “But what if he’s innocent?”
“What do you care? He screwed your wife, punched you in the face so you bled all over your shirt, made you look guilty when you’re not, and now you’re rotting in a jail cell and he’s walking around free. This is your chance to fight back, my friend.”
“It would serve him right,” Griff said.
“There you go, that’s the attitude.”
“Is my father-in-law on board with this plan? He says he wants to end the media circus, and this strategy will only make the story bigger.”
“Keniston hired me to clear your name, and I have to do that the best way I know how. The press’ll fall all over themselves crucifying this other guy. Trust me, it’s the way to go.”
Griff nodded. “All right, I’m in.”
“This will take a few days to pull together. I’m going to agree to postpone your bail hearing so you don’t have to go to court. It’s more important to negotiate with the prosecutor and persuade her not to file charges. But you’ll have to spend a few nights in jail.”
“It’s worth it if it means I don’t get charged with murdering my wife.”
Walters smiled reassuringly. “That’s the plan, my friend, and I think we can pull it off.”
They shook hands, and Griff was escorted back to his cell. He felt euphoric for a good five minutes or so after the meeting ended at the thought of getting out of jail, and of taking that smug asshole Owen Rizzo down a notch. He was elated, as well, that his father-in-law believed in him enough to pay the freight for someone like Leonard Walters. But then Griff remembered that Kate was dead, and the good feeling began to fade. He thought about the fact that Kate’s body had been lowered into the cold, hard ground without him there to say a last good-bye. She was under there now, as she would always be, with six feet of dirt between them. Griff lay down on his bunk and stared at the ceiling, too miserable to move.
32
Keisha barged into Owen’s office and told him to pull up CNN on his computer.
“Is it about the kid?” he asked.
The lead story on the front page of the Register had Owen’s stomach in knots. The star forward of the high school soccer team had been clipped by a TV truck yesterday. The kid would be fine, but he had a fractured tibia and would be out for the season, just as the playoffs were starting.
“No, it’s about Rothenberg, about the murder. You need to see this,” Keisha said.
Owen went to CNN, turning the monitor so Keisha could see. They were livestreaming a press conference straight from the steps of the Belle County Courthouse. Leonard Walters, the big-shot lawyer from New York, was speaking to the press about the Rothenberg case.
“I know that guy,” Rizzo said. “He represented the kingpin on my biggest drug cartel case. What’s he doing in this town?”
“You’re not gonna like it, Chief.”
Leonard Walters sported the standard lawyer’s winter uniform of dark wool overcoat with a sober gray scarf tucked under the collar. It made an impressive contrast to his snow-white hair as he spoke into a bank of microphones.
They had come into it in midsentence.
“—pregnant with another man’s child. Ask Chief Rizzo whether the autopsy found evidence of that! What are the police hiding? Naturally when Mr. Rothenberg found out about his wife’s affair, he became extremely angry, but he did not take his anger out on his defenseless, pregnant wife. No, he went after her seducer, a married man, a father of three, a doctor at the hospital in this very town, by the name of Ethan Saxman. The two of them got into a fistfight at the Pinetree Inn on Thursday night. Mr. Rothenberg was merely defending his wife’s honor. The gentleman standing beside me is the night manager at the Pinetree Inn, Mr. Rajit Singh. He was an eyewitness to that fight, and will speak to you momentarily to corroborate everything Mr. Rothenberg says. He’ll tell you Mr. Rothenberg was bleeding from a cut on his lip—which explains the blood on his Brooks Brothers shirt. He’ll also tell you that when Mr. Rothenberg left the premises, Mrs. Rothenberg was safe and sound, left alone in this other man’s company. I discovered this evidence with one phone call. Why didn’t Chief Rizzo find it? Or did he, and decided not to tell you because it’s bad for his case? Ask the chief whether a DNA test was already conducted on the bloody shirt. It was, but he won’t tell you the results, because they undermine his attempt to frame an innocent man.”
Keisha grabbed the mouse and clicked pause. “Is that true, Chief? It’s Rothenberg’s own blood on the shirt?”
“So what? Killing someone is a violent business. Rothenberg could’ve hurt himself going after his wife.”
“If you knew it was his blood and not hers, why didn’t you tell me that?”
“It doesn’t make him innocent.”
“You’ve been saying she was pregnant, but did you know it was this other guy’s baby?”
“We don’t know that yet. The ME sent samples to the FBI lab for fetal DNA testing, but it takes weeks to get the results.”
“What if it is, though?”
“Why is that a problem for the case? If Rothenberg’s wife was pregnant by another man, his motive to kill her was even stronger.”
“But you knew Dr. Saxman was in the picture, and you didn’t say anything to anybody?”
“He shows up in her phone records, that’s all I know,” Rizzo said, with a defensive shrug.
“How much were they calling each other? Enough to know he wasn’t treating her bunions?”
“Look, I haven’t even gotten all the phone records I subpoenaed yet, all right? I didn’t know anything specific. And what’s your point, anyway?” Owen asked.
“My point is, there’s another viable suspect here, one we should’ve been investigating all along.”
“Keisha, do you know what the leading cause of death for pregnant women is in the United States? It’s homicide by husbands and boyfriends. I kid you not. Go look it up.”
“Yeah, but Saxman was her boyfriend, so why are you fixated on the husband? Hold on a second. Saxman. That name’s ringing a bell.”
“We interviewed his wife. He’s married to the yoga teacher,” Rizzo said.
“Not because of that. Wait here.”
Keisha got up and ran out of the room.