Page 11 of The Writer

Declan feels the blood rush to his face, and he takes a step closer.

Cordova’s hand settles on his shoulder. Declan starts to say something, but his partner cuts him off. “We’re all just doing our jobs here, Counselor. No reason to get personal. We’ll give Mrs. Morrow a ride to the precinct, where we can talk this through. You’re welcome to follow. The sooner we learn all the details, the sooner we can get this resolved.”

As Cordova speaks, Hoffman’s eyes don’t leave Declan. He actually draws closer, cranes his neck up to look him in the eye. Then he tells Denise, “I’ll be right behind. Don’t say a fucking word to anyone.”

CHAPTER NINE

STUDYING THE SMALL observation monitor two doors down from the precinct interview room, assistant district attorney Carmen Saffi taps the end of her pen against her lips. Declan, next to her, nurses a cup of tar-black coffee from the break room. On the screen, Denise Morrow is sitting at the aluminum table, her hands in her lap; her attorney is in the chair beside her. He keeps looking up at the camera. When he speaks to her, he does so in whispers.

“Geller Hoffman just happened to show up?” ADA Saffi asks Declan.

Although it’s approaching midnight, Saffi looks as sharp as she does in the courtroom—gray pantsuit, hair and makeupperfect. She’s the same as Cordova, married to the job. It’s like the two of them sleep standing up in their Sunday best, ready to roll at a moment’s notice. Like they wait for it. Unlike Declan, who knows he still stinks of subway and despair. “The Morrows’ alarm was tripped. He said the monitoring company called him,” he tells her.

“Seems odd to have a defense attorney on the call list, doesn’t it?”

“Said he’s a family friend.”

“What do you make of their body language?” she asks. “Something seem off to you?”

Declan has picked up on that too.

Denise Morrow is an attractive woman—a bit on the odd side, but attractive. She has that mousy thing going on. With the black-rimmed glasses and her hair swept up, she makes you think of a sexy librarian or a teacher from some ’90s rock video. It’s like she knows she’s attractive and purposely tries to dial it back. Even now, sitting in an interrogation room wearing borrowed scrubs, she’s striking. Every guy who passed her in the precinct hallway turned to get a second look. Declan flashes back to Geller walking in on Denise Morrow naked when she was being processed—hedidn’t give her a second look. He didn’t give her a first look.He went out of his way not to,Declan thinks.Not out of respect—that squirrelly fucker doesn’t know from respect. It was something else.Declan got the feeling that seeing Denise Morrow naked was nothing new to Geller. He got the feeling that Geller and Morrow were intimate and going out of their way to conceal it. Her husband was just found dead.She’s traumatized, Gellersaid, yet he didn’t do a damn thing to comfort her. For her part, Morrow gave no indication she needed or wanted comforting. None of this was typical. While it might mean nothing, it also might mean something.

Cordova knocks twice on the door frame and steps into the small room; he’s clutching a computer printout. “We’ve got life insurance, but not exactly what I was expecting.”

ADA Saffi frowns. “What does it say?”

“Joint policy. They took it out three years ago. Pays out five million for natural death, eight million for accidental.”

Declan whistles. “There’s your motive.”

“I agree. It would have been a fantastic motive if Denise Morrow hadn’t canceled the payouts on David six weeks ago. Would have been one hell of a motive.”

“What?” Declan snatches the paper from him and scans the text. “Says here she terminated all coverage related to David but left hers.”

“That’s what I just said.”

Saffi’s frown deepens. “So she dies in a home invasion, he gets eight million, but he dies, she gets zero?”

Cordova nods.

“And she changed that six weeks back?”

“When she paid the premiums for the year.”

“You saw that apartment,” Declan says. “She doesn’t need the insurance money. This woman is smart. She knows we’d see insurance as motive, so she took it off the board. Don’t forget, she writes about this sort of thing for a living.”

“Oh, I didn’t forget.” Cordova smirks. “I’ve been looking at that too. There’s something I want you to watch, an interviewshe did for her second book,A Mother’s Burden. The book’s about Michelle Bacot. Remember that case?”

Saffi does. “Bacot killed her husband when she learned he was molesting their thirteen-year-old daughter. Made it look like an accident—pulled the ladder out from under him when he was cleaning gutters around the house. Jersey City, right?”

Cordova nods. “I found this interview on YouTube. I’m skipping the preamble nonsense and starting at the eight-minute mark.” Holding his phone between them, he plays the video.

“The jury didn’t take any pity on her, though, right? I mean, Bacot is serving twelve years. Hardly the perfect crime,” the interviewer says.

The camera flashes to Denise Morrow. She looks a little younger, and her hair is longer, but she’s otherwise the same. “She didn’t get caught; she turned herself in. It wasn’t the police that got her, it was the guilt. She had saved her daughter, but she couldn’t live with what she’d done. Even with the understanding her daughter would be raised by someone other than her if she surrendered, the guilt ate her up until it outweighed everything else.”

“So you take guilt out of the equation, and Bacot is a free woman today.”

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