Page 136 of The Woman By the Lake

“That cop said he felt Lincoln’s hotel room had been straightened after what could have been a struggle. He was found lying serenely on the bed. Death by arsenic poisoning isn’t pretty and would include seizures, and yet the bedclothes were unperturbed. Outside that, the detective couldn’t put his finger on it, and he had no proof, but in his gut, he thought that room looked wrong. He also noticed bruising around the man’s jaw consistent with someone taking a forceful hold and pushing his head back. Last, as pertains to the scene, there was no suicide note.”

Interesting.

Cade kept at it.

“They found traces of alcohol and a mild sedative in his system. But there were no suspicious prints or DNA found on the scene, and only his fingerprints on the bottle of arsenic. The coroner had no explanation for the bruising on his jaw, but, except for another minor contusion on his shin, there was nothing else on his body to indicate a struggle. And although they didn’t find evidence of him having a sedative in his possession, something he’d take to calm anxiety or the like, it isn’t outlandish to think the guy needed some hooch and a pill to deal with what had become of his life. That said, you can get drink at a bar, you can’t say the same about sedatives. And the tests show the man was definitively, if not significantly, as in, he’d been given Rohypnol, sedated. So how do you take two or three pills in your hotel room, and not have the pack?”

How indeed.

Lord, this was a tangled web.

“This detective was interested enough to actually investigate,” Cade continued, “and all three of the kids, the sister, and all of the parents had alibis. It’s just that the two younger kids’ alibis were each other. That said, the investigator was under pressure to close a case that seemed not to merit resources, so he did as his superiors requested and closed the case.”

God, he was good at this.

A sentiment to be shared.

“You’re crazy good at this,” I announced.

Another smile from Cade.

“You should have seen how closely he pegged Ray Andrews,” Delphine noted.

Cade aimed his current smile Delphine’s way before he kept going.

“What’s of note is that Lincoln’s express wishes while he was in prison, the only word they have from any of the three about how their assets were to be distributed, are why that judge ordered the monies to be used for schooling and living expenses. And the only one of them who went to college was the first one. What’s also of note, is that the oldest is being the least contentious of all those vultures. He simply wants an equitable split between the offspring. He’s repeatedly said that was what his mom, dad and uncle-maybe-dad would have wanted. But he’s not hiding his growing fatigue with these proceedings, to the point that I would be surprised if soon, he didn’t withdraw. Further, he hasn’t had much to do with his brother and sister since well before his father was released from prison. When he went to college a year after the deaths, he got stuck in his studies, and essentially, if not officially, broke ties with all of them.”

“How did Dern’s case file look?” Riggs asked.

“It had Lincoln’s mugshot, prints, his written confession, a report that’s precisely three paragraphs long, a lot of pictures of a burned building, a picture of the shotgun, and a copy of a lot more thorough report from the coroner. And that’s it,” Cade informed him.

“So they didn’t test Lincoln for gunshot residue?” Riggs asked.

“Now why would he do that?” Cade asked sarcastically. “He had a confession, and probably a beer and a game to get back to.”

“Does this mean Harry is going to be up to his neck in shit if that gets out?” Riggs pushed.

Cade shook his head. “Harry, being Harry, has already asked Polly to pull the bigger cases Dern worked on to do an audit, so when this gets out, he’s not blindsided. It still could be an issue. The thing he has going for him is the guy confessed and went down without a whimper. Dern definitely should have done more. They don’t even have notes on an interrogation like they didn’t ask the guy that first question. And they certainly didn’t interview anyone else. If there’s a case that’s going to turn over, this would be the one.”

Cade took another sip then asked his own question. “You worried about those footprints?”

“Nadia and I are going to start tramping around ourselves.”

“I’ll help with that, and Jace and Jess aren’t on an assignment, so I know they’ll be on board to help too. If you don’t mind me making suggestions, give us quadrants, but we concentrate around your house, the cabin, the east side of the lake down to where there was evidence of trespassers. If Roosevelt hid something, he was an outdoorsman, I wouldn’t put it past him putting it on the more remote side of the lake. But it’d be better to concentrate our efforts, then expand.”

“Your help would be appreciated. But, Cade, if someone is actually looking for something, they’ve had fifteen years to find whatever it is, and it obviously hasn’t been found,” Riggs noted.

“And Roosevelt Whitaker was a clever thriller writer,” Cade returned. “If there’s something to be found he didn’t want to be found, it’s probably going to take eternity to find it.”

That meant, whoever was looking had to be found.

And if I understood what Riggs and Cade were talking about, that “whoever” had been looking for fifteen years, they hadn’t found it, but they were definitely in to keep looking.

Well.

Damn.

TWENTY-EIGHT

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