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“People search the web for all sorts of crazy things. If I were to show you my recent search history, you’d be surprised.”
“Let me guess. Something to do with dead bodies.”
“Do you really think that’s all I have on my mind?”
“It’s the only thing you and I ever seem to talk about.”
“Penguins.”
“What?”
“My last Google search was about penguins.”
Jane laughed. “Yeah, okay. That is a surprise. If I may ask, why penguins?”
“I’m planning a trip to Antarctica.”
“While everyone else in the world heads to a warm beach, you choose icebergs. Typical.”
“Penguins are fascinating, Jane.”
“Yeah. Like goldfish.”
A raindrop fell on Jane’s nose. She looked down at the splatters now hitting the ground and inhaled the scent of wet pavement, the smell of a city rainstorm.
“Time for me to get back to work,” said Maura.
“You think I’m wasting my time, don’t you? Trying to connect these two murders.”
“I don’t know, Jane. One thing I’ve learned, after all these years of working with you, is to never doubt your instincts.”
But back at her desk that afternoon, as she reread the documents in the Eloise Creighton folder, Jane wondered if this might be the one time when her instincts had sent her in the wrong direction. Maura was right. The two victims, as well as the way they’d been killed, were very different. Eloise Creighton had been an attractive young academic who lived in a rural neighborhood with a young daughter. Sofia Suarez was a middle-aged widow who lived alone with her goldfish in the city of Boston. Other than their gender and their ultimate fates, they had little in common.
She opened the autopsy document and studied the morgue photos of Eloise Creighton. Except for the bruising around her neck, her skin was flawless, her hair almost silvery under the morgue lights. There’d been no evidence of sexual assault. She was wearing a nightgown and her bed had been slept in, so something had awakened her during the night. Was it the creak of footsteps? Her daughter, calling to her? Something made her climb out of bed, open her door, and step out into the hallway. And there she had encountered the intruder. Had he been surprised by her sudden appearance, and killed her in a panic?
Jane flipped back to the photo of mother and daughter, both so blond, both so happy. She thought of Regina, imagined her own little girl vanishing into the night.What would I do to find her? Anything.
Everything.
—
At fivep.m. Jane wasstill at her desk, still reviewing the Eloise Creighton file. Det. Tremblay, the original investigator on the case, had generated hundreds of documents, which were now nearly two decades old. They may not have any connection to the Suarez murder, but all those phone calls Sofia made to Maine, plus Sofia’s search for information about James Creighton, made Jane think there had to be a link here. Frost had left half an hour ago, and she’d soon have to pick up Regina from daycare, but Jane kept sifting through Tremblay’s notes and interviews, looking for some all-important detail she’d missed the first time. A detail that would tie Creighton to both murders.
She flipped to the next document in the stack. It was an interview with Tim Hillier, one of the students who’d attended Eloise Creighton’s wine-and-cheese evening the week before themurder. He was twenty-one years old, a senior from Madison, Wisconsin, who hoped to attend medical school after graduation. There was no photo, but the State Police had collected his fingerprints for exclusionary purposes. He had no criminal record, he claimed he was with his girlfriend on the night of the murder, and Tremblay did not consider him a suspect. Attached to the interview was an addendum, written soon after Det. Thibodeau had taken on the cold case.
Tim Hillier, MD, is currently a dermatologist practicing in Madison, WI. Per telephone conversation, he has no additional recollection or further info about Prof. Creighton’s death. He is now married to former Colby classmate Rebecca née Ackley, who also attended Prof. Creighton’s reception. (cross-reference to Ackley interview)
Det. Thibodeau had certainly made Jane’s task a great deal easier. He’d tracked down most of the students’ current addresses, occupations, and phone numbers. A quick search online told Jane that Dr. Tim Hillier was indeed still in active practice in Wisconsin. His and his wife, Rebecca’s, fingerprints, collected for exclusionary purposes during the investigation nineteen years earlier, showed no hits on the AFIS database. A squeaky-clean couple.
Jane set Tim Hillier’s and Rebecca Ackley’s files off to the side and moved on to the next interview.
Nineteen students attended the cocktail party and Thibodeau had followed up on every interview. Good detectives suffer from at least a touch of OCD, and he clearly had a serious case of it, doggedly tracing the current whereabouts of everyone who’d been inside Prof. Creighton’s residence the week before her murder. He’d discovered that two students were now deceased, one from a brain hemorrhage, the other from a climbing accident in Switzerland. After graduation, most had left the state ofMaine and scattered to cities around the world. Only one currently lived in the Boston area: Anthony Yilmaz, a financial adviser at Tang and Viceroy Investments, someone who would probably be worth talking to. Most of the students had gone on to impressive careers: doctor, attorney, financial consultant. None had been in trouble with the law and none of their fingerprints had turned up at any other crime scenes.
Finally, Jane turned to the file on James Creighton. Other than an OUI at age nineteen and a charge of vandalism as a juvenile, the man had no criminal record and no history of violence, but he and his ex-wife had been locked in a bitter custody battle for three-year-old Lily. Eloise had recently been offered a position at a university in Oregon, which meant moving the child three thousand miles away from her father. Communications between the opposing lawyers had grown more and more rancorous.
He told me I’d be sorry if I took her away from him,Eloise said in her affidavit.I considered that a threat. Which is why I don’t think his visitation rights should continue.
And this was why Tremblay zeroed in on James as the killer. The man had a motive, he had access, and he had no alibi. Traces of his blood were found in the hallway near his ex-wife’s body. He was clearly the number one suspect but he never tried to flee the state of Maine. Even though the murder poisoned his reputation, even though his neighbors shunned him and police continually tramped through his backyard, searching for Lily’s remains, he did not flee his home—not at first. Then parents at the high school complained that their children’s music teacher could be a murderer; he lost his position and was forced to cycle through a string of dead-end jobs, none of which lasted long. When the police keep dredging up your past, keep pursuing and harassing you, who would hire you?
