Moment of Truth Read online

  Davis shook Brinkley’s hand over the dead body. “Reg, we having fun yet?” he asked with a grin.

  “You tell me, Dwight.”

  The D.A.’s rep tie was loosened and a legal pad rested in the crook of his arm like a newborn baby. “Heard you did a first-rate job with the hubby.”

  Brinkley couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm. “He didn’t sign.”

  “I’m not jerkin’ you, you guys did great work as usual. I don’t need a signature. He confessed and we got the video. I don’t need a picture of him doing it.” Davis nodded at both detectives. “You wanna fill me in on what hubby said?”

  Brinkley shut up, and Kovich launched into the blow-by-blow of what happened. Davis took notes and nodded the whole time, getting happier and happier, and Brinkley thought he had never seen anybody so goddamn happy to wear a white hat. Kovich finished the story, and Davis flipped his pad closed. “Sounds good, gentlemen,” he said. “I got plenty to work with. Thanks.”

  “Let’s go home then, eh?” It was the M.E., Aaron Hamburg, who turned and squinted through his trifocals. Hamburg was one of the better M.E.s on rotation, a wizened, balding man near retirement. He got along with Brinkley, but right now he looked tired. He wanted to get on with it already. Have Brinkley examine the body so he could tag it, bag it, and slice a bloodless Y into its chest.

  “Sorry I’m late, Aaron,” Brinkley said, meaning it.

  “I understand, I’m just grumpy.” Hamburg was a graying head shorter than Brinkley and wore a rumpled gray suit, dark tie, and a blue yarmulke hanging by a tenacious bobby pin. “I know you had to talk to the husband first. Strike while the iron is hot, eh?”

  Kovich nodded in agreement, and Brinkley gestured to the chalk line around the body. He hated it when some knucklehead chalked a body. It could contaminate or move trace evidence. “Who chalked her?”

  Hamburg snorted. “It was Dodgett. It’s always Dodgett. Makes him feel like a cop.”

  Brinkley couldn’t smile. “When I see that asshole I’ll tell him where to stick his chalk. Now, what’d you find, Aaron?”

  “You got lucky this job, it’s cut-and-dried. I’ll tell you what I told Davis. Unofficially, cause of death is multiple stab wounds. I’ll clean her up later but it looks to be about five of ’em. The lethal wound bisected the pulmonary artery. From the temp and lividity, time of death is probably between six-thirty and eight-thirty. Easy case.” Hamburg clapped Brinkley on the arm, but given their height difference it fell at the detective’s elbow. “You live right, my friend.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?” Brinkley asked, and Davis looked at him with a frown.

  “Why you ask, Brinkley? You got a question?” Davis looked concerned. “Lemme know.”

  Brinkley sighed inwardly. He didn’t like talking about his doubts. Actually, he didn’t like talking to anyone but Kovich and sometimes he didn’t even like talking to Kovich. “I don’t know about Newlin, is all.”

  “Why not?” Davis cocked his head. Behind him, crime techs completed their tasks. The party was winding down. “He confessed, right? On the scene, and to you?”

  “Confession ain’t a home run.”

  “Since when? I mean, like they say in the essay tests, ‘Explain your answer.’” Davis grinned, and Kovich laughed.

  “I always hated that,” Kovich joined in. “‘Explain your answer.’ ‘Compare and contrast.’ I hated that shit.”

  Davis was still grinning. “‘Show your work.’ ‘Elaborate.’”

  Brinkley ignored the byplay. He could never forget the body on the floor. Even at wakes, he never joked around or made small talk. Respect for life; respect for death. “It’s too soon to tell. His story didn’t sit right.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t believe him, maybe that.” Brinkley hated being on the spot. “I think Newlin might be lying.”

  “For real?” Davis folded his arms, hugging the pad to his chest. “Why would hubby lie?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. He seemed like he was lying. Could be he’s protecting someone, I don’t know who.”

  “You got any evidence of that? Anything to support it?”

  “None, but it’s early.” Brinkley could feel Kovich looking down at his feet. He was too loyal a partner to laugh.

  Hamburg was squinting skeptically. “I’m only the M.E., but I don’t see anything out of line here, boys. She’s got stab wounds, most of the bleeding internal. Some defensive wounds on the fingers. I’d say she grabbed the knife at some point, but she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. She was drunk as a skunk. It’s coming through the skin.” Hamburg winced. A religious man, he disapproved. “I’ll know for sure at the post, but I think we lucked out, boys. Sometimes you get the bear.”

  “Sometimes the bear gets you,” Brinkley said, but Davis clapped him on the arm with the pad.

  “Cheer up, man. You got it covered. I say it’s a duck, but I hear you. If you get anything concrete, lemme know. I’ll study the videotape to make sure. I’ll have somebody pick up a copy tonight.”

  Brinkley thought Davis made the videotape sound like film from the big game. Lawyers. “I’ll work on it.”

  “Don’t take too long, my friend. Hubby’s going down for capital murder in the morning.”

  “A capital case? Why?” It bugged Brinkley that the D.A. asked for death in almost every case. It was over-charging, but in this political climate, the public ate it up. It was the cops who didn’t like it; there were degrees of guilt in the Crimes Code for a reason. “From Newlin’s story, there’s not even premeditation.”

  “Savage murder. Lotsa stab wounds. Evidence of torture.”

  “He didn’t torture her,” Brinkley said.

  “The number of stab wounds counts, you know that. Newlin shouldn’t get a lighter charge than the average joe.”

  Brinkley didn’t say anything. Everybody knew who the average joe was.

  “Why you stickin’ up for this scum, Brinkley? He’s a cold-blooded wife-killer. Took a butcher knife to a defenseless woman, a drunk who couldn’t even fight back.”

  “I’m not stickin’ up for him,” Brinkley said. “I think he’s a liar.”

  Hamburg yawned. “I’ll let you experts fight this out. I’m going home to bed. I’ll open her up tomorrow at noon.” He picked up his bag and trundled off, trailing an assistant. Davis said his good-byes and left with him, and Brinkley wasn’t unhappy to see him go.

  “Move, people,” he said brusquely, and the remaining techs scattered. One tech looked back resentfully, and Kovich caught her cold eye.

  “What my partner means is, ‘Thanks, everybody, you did a great job. Now good night, happy trails, and y’all come back now, ya hear?’”

  The tech laughed, which satisfied Kovich, but Brinkley didn’t bother to make nice. He lowered himself to one knee beside what used to be Honor Newlin. She lay on her back with her head tilted into the stupid chalk, her refined features lovely even in death. Her dark blond hair made a silky pillow for her head, and her arms had flopped palms up, slashed with defensive wounds. Blood from the gashes had dripped into the lines of her hand, dribbled between the crevices of her fingers, and pooled in her palms, so that in death she cupped her own blood.

  He examined the wounds, a cluster of soggy gashes that rent her white silk blouse. Hamburg had said that most of the bleeding was internal, and Brinkley could see that. He slid his pen from his pocket, leaned over, and pressed open the side of a wound, ignoring the smells of blood, cigarettes, and alcohol that wreathed the corpse. He estimated that the cuts looked of average depth, about four to six inches. It told him the doer was strong, but not too strong, and the angle of attack looked slanted, so the doer was taller than Mrs. Newlin. Around six feet tall, maybe? He thought of the silt on the coffee table. Would Newlin put his feet up on a coffee table? Maybe after a few drinks? Surely not during the fight scene he’d described, though.

  “Jeez, can you believe this guy?” Kovich said, fr
om the other side of the body. “Nice house, pretty lady, lots of bucks. So he goes and whacks the wife.”

  Brinkley ignored him and scanned the body, which showed no other injuries. He judged it to weigh about 125 pounds, at five-six or so. With the blouse she wore black pants of some stretchy material and they outlined the slim shape of her legs, ending above the ankle. Her shins narrowed to a small anklebone, and she had on pink shoes. He looked twice at her shoes. They had no backs, a low heel, and a tiny strap in the front, but the strap of the right shoe was torn and the shoe lay just off the foot. “Shoe’s broke,” he said, making a sketch, and Kovich nodded.

  “Probably ripped it when she fell backwards, like when she was being stabbed.”

  “You’d think it would just fall off. The shoe has no back. Stupid shoes.”

  “Sexy, though. They do it for me. You know what else I like? I go for those big shoes. What do they call them? Platforms. The ones they wear in porno. I like the white ones with the high heel. Or the red. I love the red.”

  “You’re a highbrow guy, Kovich.”

  “Damn straight.” Kovich knelt closer to the floor and braced himself on his hand. With his butt in the air and his broad nose grazing the rug, he looked like a big dog at play. “You’re about to thank me, Mick.”

  “Why?”

  “Look.” Kovich pointed beyond the body, on Brinkley’s side. In the path of the tech’s vacuum cleaner glinted something tiny and gold. It was wedged in the thick wool of the patterned rug, which was why Brinkley hadn’t seen it from his angle. Kovich waved off the tech with the vacuum and both detectives leaned closer.

  “Wacky-lookin’ thing,” Brinkley said. A gold twinkle sat embedded in the swirling Persian paisley. It looked like a tiny piece of jewelry. He looked closer but wouldn’t move it until it was photographed. “What is it?”

  “An earring back. My kid, Kelley, loses them all the time.”

  “What’s an earring back?”

  “It’s for pierced ears. It holds the earring on. Don’t Sheree have pierced ears?”

  “No.” Brinkley didn’t say more. Someday he’d tell Kovich that he and Sheree had separated. Meantime, he looked at Honor Newlin’s head at the same time as Kovich. She still had her earrings on; a single, large pearl on each lobe. He leaned over on his hand, peered behind her ear, and squinted. The left earring back was still on. “This one’s fine. You check the other.”

  On his side, Kovich tilted his head like a mechanic under a chassis. “Okay here, too.”

  “So they’re not hers.”

  “Wrong, skinny.” Kovich righted himself. The body lay between them like a broken line. “They could be hers, just not to these earrings.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “See? You’re not the only dick in the room.”

  “Just the biggest.”

  Kovich laughed and stood up, as did Brinkley, hoisting his slacks up with a thumb and giving the body one last going-over. It stuck in his craw that the techs had grabbed the knife. Couldn’t leave the murder weapon in place. Had to get it tested stat. That was the problem with a goddamn box job. Everybody rushed around like a chicken and things got messed up. In the most important cases, they should be going the slowest, not the fastest. He looked away in frustration.

  At the end of the dining room table sat the two place settings, untouched. It was fancy china, white with a slim black border, and in front of each plate stood wine glasses and water goblets of cut crystal. Brinkley hailed one of the crime techs with a print kit. “There should be a Scotch glass, two of them,” he said.

  “There were two, Detective. They’re already bagged. Rick there” — she waved toward a red-haired young man — “he’s got the Polaroids.”

  “Terrific.” Brinkley wanted to scream. He strode to the red-haired tech, got the photos, and examined them one by one. Shots of the body, from every gruesome angle. Where were the glasses?

  There. A crystal tumbler lay on its side next to the body, with liquor spilling out like a dark snake. Three separate views. Another Polaroid of a matching tumbler shattered on the parquet floor. Five photos of it. Brinkley glanced automatically at the floor. It had been swept up. “Goddamn it!” he finally exploded.

  “What’sa matter?” Kovich asked, appearing at his side.

  “They fucking collected the broken glass! I wanted to see where it fell!”

  “You got the pictures, and they’ll test everything. You know that. We’ll get the reports.”

  “They couldn’ta waited?” Brinkley flipped through the Polaroids, seething. The focus was fuzzy. He couldn’t tell squat from the photos. “We’re gonna miss shit!”

  “Nothing to miss, Mick.” Kovich spread his bulky arms, gesturing at the dining room as expansively as if he owned it. “We got the doer. What’s to miss?”

  “When does Newlin throw up?”

  “Who cares?”

  “Me! Bad guys don’t throw up after.”

  “Calm down, bro. This ain’t your typical bad guy, I’ll give you that. Okay, I’ll give you that. You’re right, but listen and stop bitching. This is how I think it went down.” Kovich punched up his aviators at the bridge. “What we got is a guy, a regular guy, a regular rich guy who lost it. A lawyer who saw a move and took it without thinking. He’s not a punk, so he tosses ’em after. Or like he said, when he sees he ain’t gonna get away with it. He’s not upset he did it, he’s upset he’s goin’ down for it. Like you said, he’s a lawyer.”

  Brinkley considered it. “So you don’t think he’s the type either.”

  “Not the normal type doer, I know.” Kovich stood closer. “But whether he’s the type or not, you know that don’t mean shit, Mick. Newlin did it, all right. Just ’cause he’s sorry later, or it freaks him out, or turns his stomach, or it’s the one time in his life he breaks the law, he don’t even jaywalk before he knifes the wife, don’t mean he’s innocent. I like him, Mick. I really do. He’s our boy and everything here jives with it.”

  Brinkley scanned the crime scene wordlessly. He had to admit Kovich could be right. It was all consistent. The dinner table, set for two. The Scotch glasses. The appetizer platter, untouched. Cold filet mignon, her favorite, Newlin had said. The outside of the meat was seared black and the inside was a spongy, tender pink. It was served cold and sliced, and next to it sat a dollop of speckled mustard and knotted rolls with shiny tops.

  Kovich followed his partner’s eyes. “Jeez, I haven’t had a steak like that in a year, not since Billy retired. Remember we took him downtown, to The Palm? Jeez, I love The Palm.”

  “No.” Brinkley stared at the platter. Next to the mustard was a large pool of gloppy, smooth goo. A tan color. It didn’t look like a dressing for the steak. “Look at that, Kovich. That’s hummus.”

  “What?”

  “Hummus.” Brinkley knew it because of Sheree. When she turned Muslim, she started eating all sorts of shit. Out went the greens and pork ribs, in came the bean soup and whole wheat bread. “It’s a dip, made with chickpeas and tahini.”

  “Tahini? Isn’t that an island, like Hawaii?”

  “No, it’s a paste. From sesame seeds.”

  “Looks like baby shit.”

  “Tastes like baby shit.”

  “You eat that?”

  “Only to save my marriage.” They laughed, then Brinkley stopped. “It ain’t the kind of appetizer most people put out.”

  “Like cheese balls.”

  “Right.” Brinkley didn’t know what a cheese ball was, but didn’t ask. Kovich ate trash. Ring-Dings and hot dogs. “Like cheese balls.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “So why they serving hummus with meat? Wife’s got the appetizer out and she’s waiting for Newlin to come home to dinner.” Brinkley shoved the Polaroids into his pocket and waved at the platter, thinking aloud. “Newlin says the wife likes filet. We know she likes Scotch. They Scotch and meat people, dig?”

  “I guess, Bill.”

  Brinkley let it go. He
felt like he was onto something, whether it was something that mattered he didn’t know. “So why they got hummus, too? Meat people don’t eat hummus. Hummus is a substitute for meat. You eat either hummus or meat.”

  “I understand. One or the other. So, you think Newlin eats hummus?”

  “No. No man eats hummus. Not unless he wants to save his marriage.” Brinkley wasn’t joking. “People who eat meat don’t eat hummus. Don’t work that way.”

  “How the hell do you know that, Mick?”

  “I just know.” He didn’t want to get into it. Sheree’s conversion. The white keemar she took to wearing, covering up her fine body. All the time reading the Koran. It was the beginning of the end for them. “The hummus is for somebody else. Whoever else was at dinner tonight.”

  “What?” Kovich pushed up his glasses, leaving red marks on his nose.

  “You heard me. Let’s check the rest of the house.”

  Brinkley and Kovich went through the kitchen, where a large dinner salad sat waiting in pink Saran, and then went through the bathroom, noting the bloodstained towels and the toilet where Newlin had vomited. There was no mistaking the smell, and the detectives took notes, made sketches, and went upstairs. The master bedroom was sterile, the closets neat and well stocked, with a wedding picture on the white vanity, the wife in a flowing white gown that trailed like a cloud. The his-and-her bathrooms were in order, and Brinkley took notes and ordered everything bagged.

  Everything looked perfect, even the library, and the wife’s home office, which contained a slew of photographs of herself, her husband, horses, and a boat, but only a single photo of the daughter. It was a posed publicity shot, and though the girl looked gorgeous, it wasn’t personal in the least. Brinkley tagged the files to be boxed and seized, and listened to the messages on the office answering machine, all routine. Nothing he bagged was remotely as intriguing as the earring back.