Page 59 of Cougar Point

“You’re both talking hunches,” Lucas said, realizing he was enjoying the unusual opportunity to critique someone else doing his job. He looked at Mac. “What do you have that’s solid? Can you actually put Greenwood in the frame for the murder?” He turned to Anderson. “And can you rule him out?”

Anderson shook her head. “We have a decent, if incomplete, timeline of his movements from the night of the sixteenth until he killed himself. Some of that from our interview with him, the rest from his work calendar, social events, and so on. But we don’t have a minute-to-minute account of his whereabouts over the last couple weeks, if that’s what you want.”

“Why was she dumped twenty-five hundred miles away?” Lucas asked. “Almost certainly she was held there; at least immediately before she was killed. You don’t transport a body across seven or eight state lines for no reason. You find the nearest dump spot to you, and I’m guessing you know all the hot spots out here.”

“This is the problem. We have Olivia going missing on the seventeenth, we have you finding her body three days ago, and we have Greenwood offing himself today. In between the first two events, it’s a black hole, thanks to Greenwood.”

“Or thanks to the kidnappers,” Anderson said.

“If there really were kidnappers,” Mac said. “There’s no evidence of that either. No notes, no pictures, nothing.”

“What about the call Greenwood took?” Lucas asked.

“There’s a call from a burner to his phone around three o’clock the afternoon after Olivia was abducted,” Anderson said. “That matches with Greenwood’s story. Supposedly that’s when they called him, told him they had his wife and that he had to tell the police she was safe at home.”

“Any other calls from that burner?”

Anderson shook his head. “If he was telling the truth, they communicated by another burner after that.”

Mac still looked skeptical. Lucas could see both points, but he wasn’t sure who he agreed with. There was one thing that didn’t add up though.

“If Greenwood killed his wife, or hired someone to do it, why did they take her so far away?”

“We were kind of hoping you could tell us that,” Anderson said, after exchanging a glance with her partner.

Lucas thought about it.

“Do you have access to Greenwood’s bank accounts, his business affairs?”

“We know the gist,” Mac said. “There are forensic accountants going through the fine detail right now, but we know that he was a lot less solvent than he appeared to be. That’s the motive.”

“But no big transactions in the last couple of weeks?”

“He moved some money around, seemed like he was trying to free up some capital,” Anderson said. “Nothing had come to fruition, certainly no large sums being withdrawn or transferred.”

“Which would be consistent with a man trying to pay a ransom,” Lucas said.

“Right,” Anderson said.

“Or consistent with a guy making itlooklike he was trying to do that,” Mac interjected. “Remember, if this went to plan, he would have to show his working after the fact.”

“So unless there’s something you haven’t found yet, no ransom was paid.”

“Because there never was a ransom,” Mac said. “He made it look like a kidnapping and was going to cash in on the life insurance.”

Lucas said nothing for a while, deep in thought. It didn’t make sense. If Greenwood had killed his wife, or had her killed, why overcomplicate it like this? Why take her so far away,risking discovery? But if he was telling the truth, and Olivia Greenwood really had been kidnapped and ransomed, why had she been killed before he had a chance to pay? And where were the kidnappers now?

FORTY-ONE

An hour after we open the grisly package, Sergeant Lucas is sitting at the kitchen table with coffee and a pack of cookies. Whatcom County Sheriff crime scene techs have come and gone with the evidence. I sanitized the table from the bloodstains. Jack is still staring into the void. I might have to slap him out of his trance. I want to but I resist. He’s their dad. I won’t hurt him in front of them.

“Are you sure the finger is Mom’s?” Rebecca asks, but Jack doesn’t answer.

“It’s Mom’s,” Ronnie says. “Whose else could it be?” Ronnie says this a little too sharply, and Rebecca starts crying.

“Sorry, sis. Maybe you’re right. It doesn’t?—”

Rebecca interrupts her. “No. You’re right. I’m just…” Her words trail off and she dabs at her eyes with a napkin.

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