The Fregoli Delusion (19 page)

“It’s up to you guys to figure out
what that means,” Marcotte said, “if it means anything at all. I can tell you
one thing for sure, though. Whoever threw it there wiped it clean first, inside
and out. We haven’t found a trace of anything of note. Gloved or ungloved, your
perp took the time to empty the wallet
and
sanitize it.”

“We’ve got the traces underway on
the credit cards?” Hank asked.

“Yes, sir,” replied Truly. “If
anyone tries to use them, we’ll know.”

“Great. Don’t call me sir.”

“Sorry.”

Marcotte then ran through an
assortment of items found at the scene, either on the paved path itself or in
the grass on either side, within the perimeter that had been set up at the
crime scene. They stared at a variety of cigarette butts, chewing gum wrappers,
a hair pin, a red plastic button, an empty pill bottle, the ubiquitous torn
condom wrapper, an aluminum pop can, a small plastic child’s bracelet, an empty
bottle of nose spray, and other assorted junk.

“It’s actually a fairly clean park
compared to others in the city,” Marcotte said. He looked at Hank. “We can run
DNA and all the other tests on any of this stuff, Lieutenant,” he said, “and
we’ll get you the results within twenty-four, but Byrne wants to hold off
unless there’s something specific you want done. None of this stuff showed
signs of having been discarded within a day of us collecting it. It’s up to
you, but Byrne doesn’t want to flood the lab with a lot of crap if we don’t
have to. We're really backlogged as it is.”

Hank looked around the room.
“Anything jump out?”

Horvath shrugged. Karen made a
flatulent sound with her lips. Truly shook her head.

“We’ll get back to you on it,”
Hank said.

Marcotte looked relieved. “That’s
great. I’ve skipped the dog dirt and other lowlights. As for the body, we’ve
already gone over his clothing and found nothing that stands out. There are no
pets in the house, as I understand it, and we haven’t found anything of a dog
or cat nature. A stray thread, a few human hairs which we expect to match up with
household staff but you never know, dirt and debris from the path and ground.
Nothing that jumps up and kicks you in the ass, though.

“Next is the bullet you brought us
from Dr. Easton.” Marcotte displayed a photo of the round that had been removed
from the victim’s brain. “It’s a standard velocity, plain lead .22 long rifle
bullet. These were sold with a lubricant on them to prevent oxidation, but
there was virtually none present on this round, meaning it was probably pretty
old. The lubricant evaporates after a while. No oxidation to speak of, which
tells us it was kept in a dry, enclosed place.”

He switched to another view of the
bullet. “The rifling has a right-hand twist and we count six lands and grooves,
suggesting it was fired through a Beretta, CDM, Smith and Wesson, Ruger, or
Rohm. Bev is leaning toward a Ruger.” He was referring to CSI Jon Beverley,
their firearms expert. “An older model, maybe the Mark I.”

“Killed by a plinker,” Karen said.

“Placement is everything,”
Marcotte said, unconsciously echoing Jim Easton.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Karen drummed
her fingers on the table. “When I talked to Brett Parris yesterday, he told me
he remembered Holland having a gun in his hand as he ran away to his car. Said
it looked like a starter’s pistol or a target pistol. Could be the Ruger Mark
I.”

“Interesting,” Marcotte said. “Oh,
one more thing before I finish with the crime scene itself. The photo I’m
not
showing you.”

“Not showing us,” Hank said.

Marcotte grinned. “That’s right.
The one of the casing from the round that was fired into our vic. We didn’t
find it.”

“Picked up his brass,” Karen said.

“That'd be my guess,” Marcotte
agreed.

“Interesting,” Hank said. “He shot
Jarrett, policed his brass, found and removed Jarrett’s wallet, emptied it,
wiped it clean, and threw it under the bush.”

“Premeditation?” guessed Horvath. “Preparation?”

“Could be. What else do you have,
Mick?”

The crime scene technician briefly
summarized the evidence gathered from the mansion and Jarrett Tower, which
included photography, fingerprinting, copying inventories, security data and
video footage, and the collection of the victim’s electronic devices,
computers, and personal financial records for analysis. Work on these items was
still ongoing, he told them, and reports would be available as soon as
possible. Again, though, he stressed, nothing significant had been found at
this early date.

When Marcotte had finished, Hank
sat down.

“Let’s move some names onto the
suspect board,” he said.

Karen cleared her throat. “Household
staff. Jim and I did the interviews yesterday.” She looked at Truly.

“I have copies of your reports
here, Detective Stainer,” Truly said, looking down at a white cardboard file
box on the floor.

“You can call me Karen if you want
to. I won’t bite your fucking head off.”

“All right, Karen.”

“Again,” Horvath said, “nothing
was jumping out. No criminal records, no tax problems or messy divorces or any
other kind of skeletons in the closet, no red flags at all. Hand-picked staff,
all been there for a while, all came across as loyal, competent, and upset that
their boss had been killed. Right, Stains?”

“Yeah.” Karen shifted. “I got some
vibes off Winterbottom, but nothing you could hang your hat on. Otherwise,
zip.”

“Winterbottom? We could put her on
the board,” Hank said.

“I wouldn’t bother. Not at this
point.”

They moved on to James Edward
Bishop, Jarrett’s personal assistant and driver. The fact that his fingerprints
were on the bicycle was judged important enough for him to be moved onto the
suspect board for further investigation. Truly wrote Bishop’s name on the
suspect whiteboard and pulled a file from the box. She took out a copy of
Bishop’s Department of Motor Vehicles photograph and stuck it on the board with
a magnetized strip.

After further discussion it was
agreed that the rest of the household staff would stay parked where they were
for the present, but they added Bike Shop Number One and Bike Shop Number Two
to the suspect board since they were unknown commodities who needed to be
checked out.

They moved on to Chrissy Jarrett. Hank
pointed out that Winterbottom had alibied the widow. Karen confirmed it, based
on her follow-up interview, but reminded them of the statistical frequency with
which spouses have turned out to be the guilty party.

Horvath stirred. “It’s a waste of
time looking at her without more to go on. At this point. In my opinion,
anyway.”

“I tend to agree,” Hank said.
“We’ll leave her where she is, for now. What about the rest of Jarrett’s
family?”

Truly reported that she’d made
inquiries about Ned Jarrett’s whereabouts and confirmed he hadn’t left Boston
in the last three weeks. On Thursday morning when his father was killed, he was
sitting at his kitchen table eating breakfast with his wife and youngest
daughter while talking on his cell phone to his teaching assistant about the
day’s assignments. Likewise, Kathleen Jarrett was accounted for—she was in a
rehabilitation clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. Hank had interviewed George, the
driver for Consolidated Transportation Services assigned to Diane Jarrett
Benson. He was satisfied that Diane’s story was solid. He confirmed as well
that David Benson also had an alibi.

“Okay,” Karen said, “let’s talk
about the big shots in his company.”

Hank sat forward. “Before we do,
let’s go back a step. Chrissy Jarrett may or may not have had a motive we don’t
know about yet, but there are two names that should go on the board: Perry
Crocker and Cynthia Troy Powell.”

Horvath frowned. “Who?”

“The Jarretts had an open
marriage. Jarrett apparently had a relationship with the Powell woman some time
ago, and Mrs. Jarrett is currently seeing Perry Crocker. She told me she had to
talk to him before deciding whether to join Jarrett in St. Lucia when he went
down there after retiring. We need to run down both of them.”

“Is that Crocker, the IT guy?”
Horvath asked.

Hank confirmed that it was. Truly
wrote their names on the board but didn’t have a file for either of them in her
box, and hence no DMV photo to post under their names right away.

They shifted their attention to
the next column on the person of interest board, entitled “Jarrett Corp.,”
running first through the board of directors. Hank stood up, grabbed a marker,
and drew a line under Jerome Mah’s name on the suspect board.

“I’m racking my brain trying to think
of a Triad angle here, but I’m coming up empty. Mickey, did you come across
anything during your data mining that would suggest a connection between
Jarrett and organized crime?”

“Zero,” Marcotte said.

Hank nodded. “Leave it with me,
then.”

Marcotte explained he’d queried
the backgrounds of the other board members as well and found nothing untoward.
They moved on to the chief officers, beginning with Emory Raskin.

“He was definitely accounted for,”
Horvath said. He’d already double-checked Raskin’s alibi. “He’s in the clear.”

Hank looked at Truly. “You’ve
finished running background on the rest of them, I take it?”

She nodded. “Jane Ann Marshall,
the CIO, is also clean and clear. Same with Walter Parris and Olive Chin, the
VP of HR.”

“Did you run Chin through the
intelligence databases?” Hank asked, looking at Marcotte, who lifted an
eyebrow.

“Not indulging in racial
profiling, are we?”

“Did you or didn’t you?”

“I did,” Marcotte blushed, “with
all of them. Chin’s third generation Asian-American, born and raised in Chicago.
Her father’s a university professor of economics and her mother’s an architect.
No hits or flags, Lieutenant. No ties to organized crime.”

“Fine.” Hank shifted in his chair.
“That leaves us with Richard Holland.”

“On the board, Maureen,” Karen
chirped.

Truly looked at Hank, who nodded.

“Something else Brett Parris did
for me yesterday,” Karen said, looking at Hank. “I showed him the photo array
of the cars in the parking lot at your boy’s club and he IDed Holland’s car as
the one he saw at the scene.”

“Whoa,” Horvath said. “Really?”

“Really.”

Hank held up a hand. “Let’s not
get too excited. He’s not a reliable witness, and we can’t use anything coming
from him.”

Horvath frowned. “We can’t?”

“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic,”
Hank said, testily. “He has an ongoing delusion that Richard Holland’s
persecuting him, and he has a condition in which he mistakenly identifies all
different kinds of people as Richard Holland. It could have been the pope he
saw running away from Jarrett’s body Thursday and he’d still say it was
Holland. The fact he also says he saw Holland’s car and Holland holding a gun
is not going to hold water either. He’s useless to us as an eyewitness.”

“Come on, Lou,” Karen protested.
“There’s no evidence he was having a delusion on Thursday morning. He saw
Holland. I know he did. He’s our guy.”

“We don’t know that. We can’t
prove it. For all intents and purposes we have no eyewitness who was at the
scene at the time of the murder, end of story. Find another way to put
Holland’s car there on Thursday morning and a gun in his hand and I’ll listen,
but otherwise we work every other person on this board exactly the same way.
Understood?”

Karen’s lips thinned. Then she
nodded curtly and looked away.

“All right,” Hank said, “now, what
about Peggy Kelly, Jarrett’s EA?”

Horvath shook his head. “No.”

Hank looked at Karen, who
reluctantly made eye contact and shook her head.

“I agree.” Hank took a minute to
survey the board. “Anyone we’ve missed?”

“Not that I can see,” said
Horvath.

“Mickey? Did any names pop up you
don’t see right now?”

“No, sir. Not at the moment.”

Hank stood up and walked over to
the suspect board, which now had the following names:

James Edward Bishop

Bike Shop # 1

Bike Shop # 2

Cynthia Troy Powell

Perry Crocker

Richard Holland.

“Here’s the way we’ll divide it,”
he said. “Jim, you and Karen take Bishop and Holland. Maureen, check out the
two bike shop guys and the Powell woman. Mick, would you be willing to pair up
with Maureen to do background on Crocker?”

“I should have a few minutes,”
Marcotte agreed, glancing at Truly.

“Thanks.” Hank folded his arms.
“That’s it for now. Let’s get to work.”

Horvath jumped out of his chair as
though spring-loaded and headed for the door. Truly knelt down beside her file
box. Marcotte closed the lid on his laptop and unplugged it from the projector.
As Karen walked past, she caught his eye.