Murder.com (13 page)

As he got up to leave, Joel Patterson turned to Reuben and muttered, “My God, what is this world coming to? Two murders that affect us, one way or another. But I guess that's what you have to expect in an anything-goes Blue State.”

“I think it's a matter of coincidence, not a collapse of the social order,” Reuben replied. Patterson was a rock-ribbed, diehard conservative of long standing; Reuben, by contrast, was delighted to live in a Blue State and, in fact, hoped that it was bright, Cobalt Blue.

On the way to the room where drinks were served, several colleagues approached Reuben and said they disagreed with the notion that he shouldn't be involved in the Courtland case. He himself knew that he had to leave as soon as he decently could to meet Luis, so he had a very quick martini and left as unobtrusively as possible. In a way, he was relieved; he didn't want to be pressed by the others any further—or to have to dissemble at any greater length—about the situation. He especially did not relish confronting, and being polite to, Eskill Lander.

Twenty-Three

The Search

On his way to the rendezvous with Luis, Reuben was filled with apprehension; his whole attention was on the Courtland murder and the impending search of Eskill Lander's computer. His first fleeting thought was that it was a shame that Luis had found that American Express receipt at Quatorze. He soon came to the self-realization that this was a foolish and deeply flawed view. If Eskill was in fact guilty, he deserved to be apprehended and punished, whatever the consequences to Chase & Ward and to Reuben personally. Covering up was not an option. He was, after all, an officer of the court, bound by his oath as a lawyer to see that justice was done.

Nevertheless, Reuben remained troubled and nervous. He was sure Luis would act properly; the detective had called in midafternoon to say that he had obtained the necessary search warrant from a criminal court justice. And Reuben told him that he had found out the magic password.

“We're all set,” Luis told him. “Everything's cool. There's no problem. I have the search warrant. So I'll see you at seven o'clock?”

“That's what we agreed to,” Reuben told him, with notable lack of enthusiasm. With the cocktail hour after the firm meeting taking place, he was sure Eskill would not be around. Still, Reuben was edgy about searching the man's computer in his absence, without prior notice. True, it would be done under color of a legitimate search warrant, but shouldn't Luis serve it in the customary way? By personal service to Eskill?

He finally convinced himself that he should defer to Luis and then began ruminating about Dan Courtland. If Eskill were found to be the murderer, and the facts of Reuben's participation in his exposure came to light, wouldn't his partners blame him if Dan pulled his legal business from the firm? He almost certainly would do so. Reuben could foresee being ostracized and shunned by the likes of Craig Haskins, ready to blame him as the messenger—or, more properly, the interloper—rather than the real culprit.

Reason again prevailed and Reuben saw his duty. Promptly at eight, the night receptionist rang to announce Luis's arrival. Reuben went to meet him.

“Can we talk privately for a few minutes?” Luis asked in a low voice the receptionist could not hear.

“Come down to my office,” Reuben replied.

Once seated in the office, door closed, Luis related three “events” that had occurred that day. “It's been busy,” he remarked.

The first event had been a call from his Suffolk County colleague who confirmed that John Sommers had been at the Almond Restaurant the night of the murder, leaving around nine o'clock.

“So he could have driven back to New York and been the killer,” Reuben said.

“Not very likely. You remember he said he was at the restaurant with a martini and a book? Well, it was several martinis, and both the owner of the restaurant and the taxi driver who took him home told my colleague that he would not have been in any shape to drive back to the city, let alone to strangle Marina.”

“What's next?”

“Courtland's alibi checks out. He was at that inn all evening and had dinner there.”

“And Watson was not with him?”

“No. But that's item number three. I've just come from seeing her at that club of hers. She was indeed in town today and agreed, albeit reluctantly, to see me again. I questioned her about April twenty-seventh, and she admitted she had not been candid with me.

“‘I figured anything about Dan and me—we were meeting up that weekend—could only confuse the murder investigation unnecessarily,' she told me, then apologized for what she had done.

“I continued to press her about her whereabouts that evening. ‘Are you insinuating that I killed Marina?' she finally said. I didn't reply, and then she said ‘There's one little fact you don't know, Detective. I don't drive. Never have. Never learned.' Then to emphasize the point, she took her passport out of her purse, explaining that she has to use it as her photo ID because she has no driver's license.

“She made a crack about ‘hiring a taxi to dump the body,' but I got up, thanked her for her time, and left.”

Reuben could barely suppress a smile as he thought of the surprise the novelist had caused.

“You realize what these events mean, don't you Reuben?” Luis continued.

“I'm not sure I do.”

“Well, unless something turns up on that Facini kid—which seems unlikely—our only remaining suspect is Eskill Lander. So let's get to his computer.”

The two left Reuben's office and headed toward Eskill's.

“You have the, um, search warrant?” Reuben asked in a low voice as they went down the corridor.

“Of course. You want to read it?” He pulled it from his pocket and offered it to Reuben.

“No, no, I trust you,” Reuben said, declining the proffer.

On the way, they encountered George Schoff, the head night stenographer.

“Mr. Frost, what are you doing here at this hour?” Schoff asked jovially. “Don't you know retired partners have to leave by five thirty?”

Reuben felt like saying “We're doing a bag job,” but refrained from doing so.

“Just showing my friend Mr. Bautista around our beautiful offices,” he said instead.
Mr.
Bautista, not
Detective
Bautista or
Officer
Bautista.

Schoff seemed satisfied and went on his way.

“Here we are,” Reuben said as he and Luis reached the suite that included Eskill's office and those of Eskill's secretary, another partner, and that partner's secretary. All were absent.

Reuben tried the door of Eskill's private office. It was unlocked, as he expected. By long custom, Chase & Ward partners left their offices unlocked. The only one in recent memory who insisted on locking up every night, Christopher Pickard, was known jokingly as “Lock-Pick Pickard.” Sensitive papers were, of course, supposed to be secured in files or desks, but otherwise, for no good reason other than tradition—the purpose of which no one could remember—there was an open-door policy as far as partners' offices were concerned.

Eskill's computer was on a stand next to his desk. Once turned on, the screen showed a box containing Eskill's name and asking for a password.

Luis sat down in the desk chair, Reuben standing behind him. “Okay, what's the magic word?
Open sesame
?” Luis asked.

Reuben pulled out the sheet showing the password, and passed it to the detective. “This is it,” he said, again hoping that Townley had given it to him correctly.

Luis typed it in, and the home page opened.

“Great. So far, so good. Now wish me luck,” Luis said. “Let's hope I get the info we want.”

Reuben shared the detective's hope. As he watched, Luis double-clicked on Favorites. A long list of website addresses came up, from Find Law to Travelocity. All very business-oriented—and non-damaging references. Meet.com was not found among them.

“Don't worry, Reuben, that was just a stab in the dark,” Bautista said as he typed
www.meet.com
into the address bar at the top of the screen. The Meet.com start page came up at once. Then, almost instantly, the user ID box automatically filled with the handle Waggerson444 and, seconds later, a row of asterisks appeared on the password line.

Immediately below these two entries was a square next to the legend “Remember my password on this computer.” The square had been checked.

“Hey, Reuben! Look at this!” Luis said, gesturing at the screen and half rising from his chair in excitement. “This is more than we had any reason to hope for! I figured we could find out if Lander ever went to the Meet.com site, but I didn't expect we could go any further than that without his password for the site. And here it is! ‘Remember my password on this computer.'
Muy bueno!
That little check mark just may have put Mr. Eskill Lander away.”

After another double-click, the two were staring at Waggerson444's page at the date-matching service. There was no picture, but the same profile of Waggerson444 that they had already seen on Hallie Miller's page.

They then checked Waggerson444's emails as recorded in his Meet.com file. After checking the records he had brought with him, Luis grabbed Reuben's arm and said, “They match! The mirror image of the email correspondence in Hallie Miller's file. We've got him, Reuben!”

“Let's get out of here and go back to my office,” Reuben said nervously.

“Just a second,” Luis said. He was still looking at Eskill's email file at Meet.com. “Look at this, Reuben, he had correspondence with another girl besides Marina/Hallie, though it looks like it didn't go anywhere. But what a different story it would have been if his affair had been with her—BlondieforU.”

“Enough,” Reuben said. “Let's go.”

Luis again sat down in the chair across from Reuben's desk.

“Okay, Reuben, let's talk business. As far as I'm concerned, we've got Lander. It's now just a question of closing the electronic fence around him.”

“You're absolutely sure?”

“Look, he's Waggerson444. He made a date with Marina the night she was murdered. Add that to the Amex chit at Quatorze Bis and the identification of his picture at the restaurant, and we've almost got the fence closed.

“I'm coming back here with my IT man in the morning to serve the search warrant. We'll take away Lander's computer and his cell phone and anything else of interest.”

“The PC may not be his own, but the firm's.”

Luis grinned. “Look, Reuben, I've been down this road before. The search warrant covers Chase & Ward as well as Lander personally.”

“How about confidential material about his clients? What about the attorney-client privilege?”

“Keep it up and we'll make a criminal lawyer out of you yet,” Luis said. “We're only interested in stuff relating to the murder of Marina/Hallie. And if we grab some evidence that's privileged, he can object to its introduction at his murder trial.”

Reuben sighed. “I guess you have all the answers.”

“Man, I understand you're upset, Lander being your partner and all, but the electronic fence will be all completed real soon, and you can put the whole mess behind you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Reuben said doubtfully.

“And maybe you'd better stay home tomorrow. Let us do some heavy lifting without you around.”

“Gladly. And good luck.”

Reuben had wanted to believe the contrary, but the results of Bautista's search convinced him that Eskill was guilty. But he still had one doubt: Eskill's motive. When he reached home, he sat and had a cocktail with Cynthia and reviewed the situation with her.

“Okay, we've established that Lander was having an affair with ‘Hallie,' and one that seems to have been going well, at least from his point of view. They had met up that night just before flying away for the weekend. Why would he suddenly decide to kill her? It makes no sense.”

“It makes sense if he were killing Marina rather than Hallie. As you've said, if Dan Courtland had any idea Eskill was carrying on with his daughter, he'd find a new lawyer.”

“Absolutely. From Eskill's point of view, Marina had to be silenced before her father got any inkling of the affair. But how did he learn Hallie's true identity?”

“Wait a minute, dear, I have a theory. Remember that medical student you told me about, that showed up on the police's doorstep? Didn't he say that he had dated Hallie, but when things got serious, she revealed that she was really Marina—and did so at a dinner she'd requested they have? Couldn't she have done this again with Eskill?”

“There's one problem, Cynthia. Let's say she admitted she was Marina Courtland. Eskill would have been shocked, but all he had to do was walk away from the situation, he didn't have to kill her. She didn't know who he was, so she'd have no reason to mention him to her father. He could have just put an end to the affair and that would have been it.”

“Maybe she
did
know who he was,” Cynthia argued. “What about that stranger who approached Marina and Eskill at the restaurant? Didn't the waiter say he knew Eskill?”

“You're right.”

“So he presumably said, ‘Hello, Eskill,' or ‘Hello, Eskill Lander,' or ‘Hello, Mr. Lander.' Any one of the three would have been enough to tip Marina off that she wasn't dining with—what's his name?—Tom Waggerson.

“And just the mention of
Eskill
—how many Eskills do you or anyone else know, for heaven's sake?—or
Lander
may have given his identity away. After all, she did know who Eskill Lander is.”

“So there was a mutual revelation at Quatorze that night?” Reuben said.

“That's what I think.”

Reuben thought about this for a moment. “Cynthia, you may well be right. I think you've doped out the likely scenario.”

“The fatal scenario, you mean.”

“Yes.”