“Here,” one officer calls.
They shift the boards aside. Beneath, tucked within a makeshift den, is a red leather duffel. Out of place. Too new. The leather gleams faintly despite the grime around it. Louise crouches as it’s unzipped. Bundles of cash, banded tight, thick enough to choke the bag’s seams.
“Divonti Appagante,” Louise says to Cutty, but loud enough to be heard by Marlow, who has drifted to the porch steps under the watch of another officer. His face is a mask, but the tension in his jaw is hard to miss. “Fancy Italian label. What do you figure that runs retail?”
“Probably, with tax, about four hundred and forty-nine dollars and change,” says Cutty.
“Seeing dark stains on some of these bills,” says Louise. “A lot of these bills. Gives a new meaning to the phrase ‘blood money,’ doesn’t it?”
“That ain’t mine,” Marlow calls out, pointing. “I never seen that bag.”
“No?” Louise returns to the porch, pulls a photo from her jacket. “Ever seen this man?”
“No, no, huh-uh.”
“His name is Finley Brice. Do you know that name, Marlow?”
“Finley what?”
“Brice,” she says. “B-R-I-C-E.”
She sees a glint of recognition cross Marlow’s eyes. But he shakes his head hard. “I don’t gotta answer questions,” he says. “I want a lawyer.”
“That’s a good idea.” Louise nods to the officer standing behind Marlow. “Mr. Luckett, please place your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest.”
65
Louise
—Investigation, Day 10—
“Make the case,” says Bruce Ghadiali, seated in a meeting room inside Grace Park Municipal P.D.
Louise drops a folder on the desk. “June eleventh of last year, Marlow Luckett is found unconscious outside Mortimer College’s athletic building on Woods Edge. Road-rage incident, no question. By all accounts, he chased a car into the parking lot and cornered it. When he got out, the other driver hit him and drove off. He described the other driver only as a big white guy in his mid-thirties.”
“Roughly describing Finley Brice.”
“He’s forty-two, but ballpark, yeah. And the responding officers, I’m not gonna say they worked themselves to the bone to find the driver, given their opinion of Marlow—but they did pull the ALPRs for that night. A camera recorded Finley Brice’s license plate on Woods Edge, southbound, during the relevant time. It checks, too, with what we know from Allison’s investigator, Jennifer Harper. Finley stepped out on the missus every Wednesday night with a woman named Anna Cortese, who lives in some exclusive little subdivision up Woods Edge called Palomino Estates. About the only way Finley Brice could drive home after his little liaison was the route that took him right past the Mortimer College parking lot.”
“And what evidence do we have that this Marlow guy figured out who hit him?”
“Well, for one, Allison Brice wired him twenty-five thousand dollars on March twentieth.”
“Wow.”
“And check this out—we have a hit on a license plate camera two blocks from Allison’s house that morning around 5:30 a.m., about ninety minutes before she wires that money.”
“You think, what, he paid her a visit? Demanded money?”
“Something. I don’t know. But that wire transfer doesn’t lie.”
Bruce gets out of his chair, pacing. “I have questions.”
“So did I. Go ahead and ask.”
“For one, why didn’t she tell the police when this happened?”
“We think Marlow had proof of what happened in that parking lot that night,” says Louise. “Something to hold over Finley. He was blackmailing him. I’ll get to that in a minute.”
