Murder Suicide (12 page)

"I was happy to be able to kiss him good-bye and wish him well."

"You understood the man you married."

"I’m not sure anyone understood him.  I forgave him his limitations.  That may have been selfish, on my part."

"Why do you say that?" Clevenger asked.

"I married a genius.  I never regretted it.  What John lacked in interpersonal skills, he more than made up for with his intellectual abilities.  He could literally startle you with his brain power.  It was magnificent to be close to.  I can’t really describe it.  I suppose it was a little like being close to any other force of nature.  A sunrise.  A storm.  Maybe like living on a beach, mesmerized by the waves that could sweep the foundation from under your home.  But my daughter didn’t approve of that trade-off, and she had to live in our home, too.  I think that made life very difficult for her."

"In what way?"

"the constant pressure to be perfect," Snow said.  "She’s very fortunate.  She’s beautiful and she has a mind nearly the equal of her father’s — when she decides to use it.  He utterly adored her.  But I think the constant effort to please him was a burden.  She hadn’t been trying as hard lately, and things weren’t going quite as well."

"What changed?"

"I think she’s been distracted, in a very good way.  She’s become very committed to her studies."  She smiled, almost bashfully.  "And she may have finally discovered boys."  The smile was gone.  "She used to literally be John’s shadow.  She’d do her homework in his office here, while he did his own work.  She would call him at Snow-Coroway several times a day to check in.  That was all falling by the wayside."

"How about your son?  How did living with your husband affect him?"

"That’s a different story."  A mixture of sadness and frustration showed in her face.  She let out her breath.  "Kyle could never win his father’s love, no matter what he did."

"Why is that?"

"He has... learning differences."

She didn’t seem to like saying the words.  "Dyslexia?"

"That, and problems with concentration."

"How did that interfere with his relationship with your husband?" Clevenger asked.  He knew the answer from the psychological testing in Snow’s medical records.  Snow’s focus on ideals of beauty, strength and intelligence wouldn’t mesh with a child battling ‘learning differences.’

"John saw Kyle as fundamentally flawed.  Broken.  He doted on him as an infant and a toddler.  He was an absolutely stunning child.  But when it became apparent he was different...  At first John went to the ends of the earth to find a solution — to fix him.  Mass General.  Johns Hopkins.  He even took him to London for a program that focuses on computer-assisted learning.  When he found out he couldn’t make him normal, he began to avoid him."

"How did he manage to do that?"

"He arranged to send Kyle to special schools, starting at a very young age.  The first of them was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  He was seven.  They were long days, with the commute and all.  He’d leave at 7:00
A.M.
and return at 7:00
P.M.
, sometimes later.  From grade six, he lived away at school in Connecticut.  He’s only been here with us full-time since graduating high school in June."

Clevenger nodded.  "You didn’t object to the schooling?"

"I didn’t love the idea," Snow said.  "But I thought — still think — it was better for him than the alternative.  He would have been completely destroyed if he had been here more of the time, with John ignoring him."

"Your husband wouldn’t have become more accepting of him over time?"

"Not John.  No."

It didn’t sound like Theresa Snow had ever confronted her husband, even when he banished their learning-challenged son to a decade of private schooling out of state.  But Clevenger knew she had stood up to him at least once, forcing him to have his mental competency evaluated prior to surgery.  Was that because she knew it was her last chance to keep him in her life?  Did she know he was leaving her?  "Didn’t you take a big risk forcing your husband to undergo a psychiatric evaluation?" he asked.  "That had to be a serious challenge to his self-image.  He could have cut you off."

"You’ve been to see Dr. Heller," she said.  "Do you have John’s medical records?"

"Yes," Clevenger said.

She nodded to herself.  "Forcing the evaluation carried that risk," she said.  "I knew he might never speak to me again.  But I had to know if he was being rational.  He was putting his speech and his vision on the line.  And he had been acting oddly before he decided in favor of the surgery — nearly euphoric.  It had been building for months."  She shrugged.  "John didn’t put up much resistance to the evaluation.  I’m sure he knew all along the testing would prove he was thinking clearly.  If it hadn’t, I might not have heard from him ever again.  He was magnanimous in victory, much less so in defeat."

"Tough person to be in love with."

"No," she said immediately.  "He was easy to love.  I understood him.  He spent all his tolerance for imperfection in one place:  his seizures.  He could barely cope with that.  Any other lack of order was unacceptable to him.  That’s another reason he would never have committed suicide.  He had the chance to be seizure-free.  He was ecstatic about it."

"He didn’t share any of your second thoughts about  the surgery?"

"He had complete confidence in Dr. Heller.  He knew the potential side effects, but he didn’t believe he would suffer them."

Clevenger nodded to himself.  There was one side effect John Snow fully expected to ‘suffer’ — loss of memory.  "If your husband didn’t take his own life," Clevenger asked, "who do you think did?"

She hesitated, but only for a few seconds.  "I've urged Detective Coady to focus on Collin," she said.

That was a more definitive answer than Clevenger had expected.  "Why Collin?" he asked.

"John and he had come to an impasse over the company.  Collin was enraged over it."

"Whether Snow-Coroway would go public," Clevenger said.

"That was a major part of it.  John would never have allowed that to happen."

"What was the rest?"

"An invention of John’s."

"What sort of invention?"

"John was a good deal of the way toward inventing a system to make a flying object invisible to radar.  He called it Vortek."

"A flying object, meaning a plane?"

"The system was designed specifically for missiles.  The way John explained it, missiles actually do three things in addition to moving forward:  They spin, tumble end-over-end and tilt side-to-side.  Radar works by identifying any of the three motions.  He had developed an array of gyroscopes that would prevent all of them.  The company expected a windfall from military contractors."

"But..."

"John had second thoughts.  He was an inventor, and he loved the fact that his brain had generated an idea as elegant as Vortek, but he was that he was creating a monster.  He knew it would ultimately cause the deaths of many, many people.  He wouldn’t sign off on selling the intellectual property."

"He had veto power?"

"Every major decision at Snow-Coroway required two signatures — his and Collin’s."

"And in the event of your husband’s death..."

"His ideas became the property of the company.  All control shifts to Collin."

"In other words," Clevenger said, "Collin Coroway is free to move forward with the project now."

"Yes.  And John was certain Vortek would generate more than a billion dollars in revenue.  It would make an initial public offering of the company’s stock a sensation.  Now nothing prevents Collin from going ahead with it."

Clevenger felt Theresa Snow pushing hard to shift the thrust of the investigation toward Collin Coroway.  Could that be because she didn’t want any suspicion swirling around her?  Her son?  "Did you agree with your husband?" he asked.  "You felt his invention should stay under wraps?"

"Of course."

"That’s a very moral position — and a very expensive one."

She didn’t miss the subtext of Clevenger’s comment.  "You’re asking whether I would trade my husband’s life for a larger inheritance?"

"I didn’t mean..."

"It’s a good question," she said flatly.  "I’ll give you a very direct answer.  Between my husband’s equity in Snow-Coroway, our other assets and his life insurance policy, I expect to inherit approximately a-hundred-and-fifty-million dollars.  Not less than a-hundred-and-twenty million.  I can live on that."

Clevenger had the impulse to ask whether Snow’s children were also represented in his will — particularly the son he had never been able to love.  But he held back.  "Would you mind if I spent time over the next few days talking with Kyle and Lindsey?" he asked.

"To what end?"

"I’m sure they have their own perspectives on your husband.  A complete family history is standard in an evaluation like this one. 
Not
speaking to them would be very peculiar."

"By all means, then," she said.  "We’ll do anything we can to make the investigation go smoothly."  Her jaw tightened, giving her face an even harder edge.  "Whoever took John’s life," she said, "robbed me of my husband.  But he robbed all of us the fruits of John’s intellect.  If Collin is that person, I don’t want him rewarded.  I want him to pay."

"Have you suggested Detective Coady consider any other suspect?" Clevenger asked.

"I haven’t.  If Collin can prove he wasn't near Mass General yesterday morning, I don’t have any idea who could have done this.  I’ll have to rely on the police — and you — to find out."

"Do you think Collin might try to hurt you?" Clevenger asked.  "I saw the cruisers out front."

"It’s foolish, I know," she said.  "I don’t see why anyone would have any reason to hurt me or the children.  Bu the truth is I don’t know what to expect, anymore.  John made the world seem very predictable and manageable, almost as though he could invent his future — and ours — singlehandedly.  He was obviously wrong about that."

Chapter 9

Clevenger was almost back to his car when a woman called out his name.  He turned around, saw Lindsey Snow jogging toward him.

She walked up to him.  She hadn’t put a jacket on and was hugging herself to stay warm.  "Do you have one minute?"

"Of course."

"You saw my father?" she asked quietly.  "I mean... after."

Clevenger hadn’t expected Snow’s daughter to suddenly hand him the weight of her grief.  He felt his breathing and heart rate slow and wondered again why sharing the pain of others steadied him.  "Yes," Clevenger said.  "I saw your father."

"I know you’re just starting to figure out what happened."  She hugged herself tighter.  Her eyes filled up.

"It’s cold.  Let’s talk back at the house."

She shook her head.  "My mom doesn’t want me talking to you at all."

"Why is that?"

"Let’s just drive somewhere."

Clevenger wasn’t about to drive away with a teenager he had just met.  "We can talk in my truck," he said.

"Okay."

He walked her over to the truck, opened the passenger door for her.  She climbed inside.  He got in the driver’s side, started the engine and got the heat going.

She looked straight through the windshield, the way Billy sometimes did when he was upset.  "I guess what I’m asking, even though you probably can’t say yet, or wouldn’t tell me..."  She swallowed hard, closed her eyes.  "I want to know whether my dad killed himself."  She looked over at him, then quickly away.  "I need to know."  She drew her legs up close to her body, rested her head on her knees.

For the first time, she looked more like a troubled kid than a woman.  "That’s the most painful question for you?" Clevenger asked her.

Tears streamed down her face.

"Is that because you think you know the answer?"

She nodded, and the tears really started to flow.  "I feel so alone," she managed.

Clevenger felt the impulse to hold her and comfort her, like a father would.  Bu that would dissolve professional boundaries he needed to keep in place.  If he started out by thinking of Lindsey as someone to protect, he might never be able to see the Snow family dynamics for what they really were.

He wondered why Lindsey seemed so comfortable sitting in his truck, opening up to a complete stranger.  Why had she suggested driving off together?  Was she trying to draw him in?  "You don’t have to tell me what you’re thinking," he said, to see whether pulling back would bring her closer.

It worked instantly.  "I have to tell someone," she said.  With her arms still wrapped around her knees, she turned her face toward Clevenger.

That simple movement, spilling her shiny hair over her cheek and neck, showcasing her deep brown, wet eyes and full lips, changed her again — from girl back to woman.  "I killed him," she said.

Clevenger looked into her eyes, saw some of the same emptiness he had seen in the eyes of killers.  And he suddenly felt danger of another kind sitting there alone with Lindsey Snow.  He pressed his leg against the door, made sure he hadn’t forgotten to strap his pistol to his shin before leaving Chelsea.  Just as he did, he saw Lindsey’s eyes fill with despair and vulnerability, and she morphed again from woman to girl, killer to victim.  "You’re telling me you shot your father?" he asked her.

She looked out the window.  "I made him shoot himself," she said.

"You made him?"

"I..."  She looked as though the words were excruciatingly painful for her to speak.  "I made him feel like he should be dead."

"How did you do that?"

"I told him I wished he were."

"And you think telling him that would be enough to make him end his life?"

Her eyes went cold and empty again.  "Yes."

Lindsey Snow obviously believed she wielded extreme power over her father — the power to sap his will to live.  That probably meant Snow had made her feel entirely responsible for his happiness.  "Why did you want your father dead?" Clevenger asked her.

She curled into a tighter ball than before, let her hair fall back over her face.  "He lied to me," she whispered.