Page 57 of Not a Word

“Yeah.”

“There was alcohol in her system. We thought maybe she’d met someone in a bar, got in a car, things went bad.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

Maitland sighed. “Some you don’t forget. The ones you never solve, they kind of haunt you.”

“You one of those detectives, when he retires, he takes all these files home with him, the open cases he had over the years, figures he can still solve them?”

“Like in a Michael Connelly novel or something?” Maitland said. He shook his head. “When I quit, I quit. I didn’t want to pretend I was still on the job. Won’t lie, though. Thought about it.”

He closed his eyes again, thinking back. “We found her car. A little sports car. Convertible. It was parked down the road a few miles from a bar. Trying to remember which one.”

“The files say it was the Village Idiot.”

“Right. So we spent a lot of time interviewing men who were there that night. Checking credit card receipts. No one could remember seeing her come inside, but we thought someone might have had a run-in with her before she took a seat. We brought one guy in for questioning.”

“Rufus Block?”

“Yeah, right. I’m not good remembering names, but I remember that one. Rufus Block. He frequented the Idiot—I couldn’t have imagined him going anyplace else—and he had a sheet. A sexual assault conviction from a few years earlier. Not a rape, but a groping, and his excuse was that he was drunk, didn’t know what he was doing. A couple of minor assaults, getting into it with other dim bulbs who’d had too much to drink. He’d been at the bar that night, left around ten. But he had a girlfriend who lived with him, said he got home around half past ten, and we couldn’t break down the alibi. No physical evidence to tie him to the victim or the scene or her car. And no physical evidence putting her in his truck.”

“There’s something in the report about a gun.”

“He owned one. We got warrants to search his truck, his home, even where he worked, which was . . . help me out here.”

“The Toyota dealer,” McCabe said, adding, “curiously enough.”

“That’s right. He was a mechanic there. Still could be, for all I know. We did find a weapon at his home, seized it, tested it, but it wasn’t the gun used to kill the woman. So, there wasn’t enough there to go to the Crown attorney with. And my gut was telling me at the time that it wasn’t him. Why’d you twig to the Toyota dealer?”

“Had a word with someone there yesterday in relation to something else, but not the same guy.”

Maitland slowly shook his head. “We had theories. Maybe her car had broken down and someone stopped, like they were going to help her but had other ideas. But the car was mechanically sound, not even a flat tire. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t have been standing by it, someone came along, asking if everything was okay. But here’s the thing. I don’t think she was killed there. I’d always thought she was killed someplace else and her body dumped there, that maybe someone moved the car too. There was some mud on her face that didn’t match anything in the area where she was found.”

He thought of something else. “There was a packed overnight bag in the car. Had the trunk in the front, bag was in there. No idea where she was going, though.” He smiled to himself. “Can’t believe how much of this I remember. Everything except the poor woman’s name.”

“Evelyn Corby.”

Maitland snapped his fingers. “That’s it. I think she worked in pharmaceutical sales. That company with the funny name.”

“Wiffel-Smith.”

“Bingo. Yeah.”

“Anyone you were interested in that didn’t make the report? You know, you get a feeling about someone but there’s not enough to justify writing it down?”

“No. No husband, no boyfriend. A couple of women in her past. We interviewed a niece who was staying with her.”

“Yeah, I saw her name in the file.”

“And Corby had a nephew who overdosed on that drug Wiffel-Smith got in so much trouble for, eating it like buttered popcorn. Once it all came out, the company paid millions in fines, settled with thousands of families for millions more. Had their names erased from various museums and foundations. Got all those people addicted so they could buy their yachts and mansions and trips to the French Riviera and not one of them served a single day in jail.”

“Maybe Wiffel himself might have, if he hadn’t taken a header off the top of his corporate headquarters.”

Maitland sighed. “Coward’s way out, killing himself. Point is, you got enough money, you can buy your way out of anything. Even mass murder, because, let’s face it, that’s what it was. Anyway, nobody we talked to knew if Corby was planning to go anywhere. All there was, was a note on the kitchen table saying she’d be back in a couple of days.”

“Did you ever talk to a Brent Chartwell?” she asked. “He ever come to your attention?”

“Chartwell?”