Page 6 of Not a Word

Back upstairs, she passed the uniformed officer standing in the front hall, making sure no one entered who shouldn’t be there. McCabe asked him, “Williams, right?”

“Yes, Detective. Williams.” She nodded and walked into the living room.

There were shelves built into one wall and stuffed with books. A lot of nonfiction. Political bios of a couple of Canadian prime ministers, four books by that Woodward guy who helped bring down Nixon decades ago and had written about all the presidents who’d come after him, a celebrity memoir or two, including that doorstopper by Barbra Streisand. Fiction by Margaret Atwood, more novels by Russo and Irving. Half a dozen art books, stored sideways because they were too big to fit upright in the shelves. Small items of Inuit sculpture.

Family photos.

McCabe examined those. All displayed in sleek black frames with white matting, they featured the Chartwells, some with only the couple, others with two young men McCabe presumed were their grown children. She recognized Reece. There were the Chartwells at a wedding. Chartwells at the beach. The couple at a restaurant table, champagne flutes raised, celebrating some occasion. McCabe told herself she might be reading too much into them, given the scene in that upstairs bedroom, but there seemed, despite the physical closeness in these pictures, a kind of distance between the Chartwells. As though they were strangers who’d been asked to stand next to each other by the photographer.

They weren’t together in all the photos. There was one of Brent Chartwell with some buddies standing on a golf course green. In another, Catherine Chartwell sat on a dock, dangling her feet in the water, her jeans rolled up to her knees.

McCabe picked that one up, took a closer look.

She was an attractive woman. Dark blond hair with a hint of red in it, high cheekbones, bold eyebrows. Something in the eyes that suggested a fierceness, McCabe thought. A mole dead center in her right cheek. Not much of a smile, not unlike the pictures where she was paired with her husband, as though she was tolerating having her photo taken but wanted it to be over with.

McCabe put the picture back. Time to see whether the coroner was done.

She mounted the stairs to the second floor, catching the coroner on her way out.

“Well?” she asked her.

“We’ll know more later, but looks pretty straightforward,” she said. “Woman died of a gunshot wound to the head, ditto the husband. Bagging his hands for GSR. They’re all yours.”

McCabe gave her a nod and entered the room, taking in the scene for a second time. It was as Reece had described it. He’d said he hadn’t touched anything, had bolted from the room to be sick. She couldn’t blame him there.

She stood for a moment, puzzling it out. If you’re angry enough with your wife to shoot her, and then take your own life, do you do it in bed? Incidents of domestic violence could take place anywhere in the house. The bedroom, for sure. Bathroom. Plenty occurred in the kitchen, where there was access to knives.

McCabe wondered whether she was overthinking it. Why not in bed? Maybe the part that bothered her was that they were both naked. It implied intimacy, which didn’t exactly match what had happened here.

Maybe anger wasn’t the motivation. Technically a murder-suicide, but more like a suicide pact, perhaps. If you were each going to down a bottle of sleeping pills, you could do the deed simultaneously. But if you opted to use a gun, someone had to go first. So she’d have had to know it was coming and opted not to protest. McCabe imagined those final seconds between the first and second shot. That moment after Brent sees what he’s done to Catherine and then has to put that gun under his chin and pull that trigger a second time.

Something seemed off.

The woman had been shot in the back of the head. If the husband had shot her while sitting in the bed, she would more likely have been hit in the temple. If she’d been trying to talk him out of killing her, she’d have been looking at him, and taken the bullet head on. Face, neck, or chest.

Perhaps, at the last second, she’d had second thoughts. Her body’s position suggested she was starting to roll, like she was headed for the floor on that side of the bed.

McCabe looked down at the Beretta on the floor. The outstretched hand. Her eyes went up to the bedside table. There was a cell phone sitting there, face down, pinning a small piece of paper with some writing on it. Next to it, a pen.

With her gloved hand, McCabe moved the phone, and as she turned it over the motion prompted a series of unread texts to pop up. She’d check those in a moment, but first she wanted to look at the paper. Across the top: FROM THE DESK OF BRENT CHARTWELL. Below that, a short note, handwritten:

I am so sorry for all the hurt I have caused. I did this. I bear all responsibility. Brent

She set the note back on the table, then looked at the four unread text previews on the phone. They read:

Might be late (90 min ago)

Going to a gallery after the lunch (1 hr ago)

Are you there? (50 min ago)

Is everything okay? (30 min ago)

All four were from “Cath.”

McCabe looked at that name for several seconds, then walked around to the other side of the bed to get a better look at the woman, still on her left side, facing the wall. McCabe put a gloved hand on her shoulder to turn her onto her back, her head rolling onto the blood-soaked pillow to allow McCabe to get a better look at her face.

“Hmm,” she said again.