Morgan opened the app on his phone that controlled the room’s video equipment. He touched an icon, and the big screen on the wall came to life. Everyone shifted in their chairs for a better view of it. Even as he swiveled around, PR expert Martin Carmody maintained the steepled-fingers pose of a strategic thinker.
“After Angus’s murder, Lorinda got in touch with a home security outfit, who got the first camera installed and running the day before Aspern’s break-in. So we have a high-resolution record of his arrival on the property in Tate’s Jeep and his approach to the conservatory door, wearing his Billy Tate disguise.”
“In Tate’s Jeep? I thought your department had taken possession of that.”
“We’d found the vehicle on Aspern’s property. Kyra Barstow completed her forensic examination of it on-site, but there was a delay in having it moved to the county impound lot. So Aspern had easy access to it that night.”
Stryker nodded tentatively. “And, according to your new view of the case, he would have had the key?”
“Exactly. He would have taken it from Tate after he killed him.” Morgan touched another icon, and the screen was filled with an image Gurney recognized as the area of lawn between the conservatory and the woods. The image definition in the moonlight was extraordinarily sharp.
“Keep your eyes on the trail opening,” said Morgan.
The front of a vehicle, recognizably a Jeep even in the semidarkness, came slowly into view and stopped at the edge of the lawn.
A dark figure emerged from the Jeep into the moonlight. He seemed to be wearing the same gray hoodie, black jeans, and sneakers Tate had been wearing in the mortuary video. The figure moved quickly across the camera’s field of view toward the house. Because of the angle of the camera and the size of the sweatshirt’s hood, his face was hardly visible. For a second Gurney thought he could see a thick black mark on the side of his cheek.
Morgan looked down the table at Cam Stryker. “His line of movement puts him on a direct path to the conservatory.”
The hooded figure passed out of the frame, and the screen went blank.
Morgan added, “Detective Gurney and I interviewed Lorinda Russell later that night, and the story she told us begins where that video left off.”
“The interview was recorded?”
“It was.”
“Where?”
“In a cottage on the estate.”
“Why there?”
“Mrs. Russell has a phobic reaction to blood. She insisted that she couldn’t stay in the main house until the body and all visible signs of blood were removed. She had the same reaction when her husband was killed.”
“It’s an audio recording?”
“Audio and video—already cued up in the system, ready to go.”
She checked the time on her phone. “Let’s do it.”
The first image on the screen was of Lorinda sitting in one of the cottage’s chintz-covered armchairs, wearing a cream-colored silk blouse that seemed a well-chosen counterpoint to the dark shoulder-length hair that framed her face. She managed to appear both magnetic and untouchable.
Stryker stared at the freeze-frame image. “
Morgan shifted in his chair. “Lorinda is . . . an unusual person.”
“An unusual person whose husband was brutally murdered last week, who just came within seconds of having her own throat cut, who just shot a man dead, and she’s sitting there like the queen of serenity.” Stryker opened her palms as if searching for an explanation. “Is she on drugs?”
“Not that we know of,” said Morgan.
After Morgan put the video in motion, the first voice heard on it was Gurney’s, coming from somewhere off camera.
Lorinda’s unblinking eyes were gazing out of the screen at whoever might be watching the video—the result of the fact that she’d been looking not at Gurney but directly at the camera positioned next to him.
She spoke with a voice that revealed no emotion, no geographic roots.
