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“No, this is the first one where someone was killed. It looks like our serial burglar has stepped up his—”
Stroud cut off the officer. “Is that all you need from Miss Stone right now?”
The officer nodded and looked down, realizing he’d overstepped his bounds by saying too much in front of me.
The detective motioned me out of my mother’s room.
I walked downstairs, back to the sitting room and took my place on the couch. This time, Stroud remained standing.
“Do you think you’ll be able to report exactly what jewelry is missing?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll try. I’ll do my best to try to remember what she had in there.”
“If you could get as detailed as possible that would help. Usually what happens in these scenarios is whoever steals it immediately turns around and tries to sell it. It’s usually someone who is poor and desperate—needs money, drugs, whatever. They sell the jewelry and when it hits the black market, that’s when we find it and track the person down. But we need to know what jewelry we’re looking for.”
“I understand. I’ll take some time this afternoon and make a list of everything I remember being in there.”
Our attention was pulled to the coroner carrying a black body bag into the house.
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I just—I can’t believe this… What do you think happened? What’s your initial read of everything?”
“Well, only being thirty minutes into the case so far, best I can tell is that your mother heard the burglar break in and confronted him, likely with the aluminum bat lying next to her body. And the burglar attacked back with a knife.”
“So you think this was just a burglary gone bad?”
Stroud glanced toward the kitchen. “I don’t want to close the door on anything else just yet.”
“Why? What are you thinking?”
He paused, weighing how much he should say.
“Why, Detective?” I press. “Tell me.” My voice suddenly pitched with desperation. “That’s mymotherin there. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“It’s a lot of wounds for someone who is just trying to steal some jewelry.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if whoever did this only wanted jewelry, I’d say one stab would’ve unquestionably demobilized your elderly mother enough for him to get the jewelry and get out.”
“But there were a lot of stabs…”
“Exactly.”
“So what do you think this means?”
“It suggests emotion. That the attack was emotional.”
Just then another officer walked in. This one with the sheriff’s department. I could tell because his uniform was different. His boots were dusty, his hair saturated with sweat. The scent of fresh air and pine sap followed a second later, still clinging to him from what appears to be a search in the nearby woods.
He held a plastic bag in his hands. Inside the bag was a kitchen knife, stained with blood. A few blades of grass were stuck to the tip. I immediately recognized the knife as my mother’s favorite carving knife.
Soon after, we would learn that this was the murder weapon, complete with my mother’s DNA and full set of fingerprints along the hilt of the knife. The prints belonged to a down-on-his-luck carpenter named Rhett Cohen, the same man my mother had hired to update her cabinets.
Marjorie Stone’s homicide quickly became sensationalized, not only because of the brutality of the murder, but also because Rhett’s tireless proclamation of innocence combined with his rugged, movie-star good-looks made him a headline magnet. A tattooed Gerard Butler, the local journalist had described him with little hearts in her eyes. Funny how something like cold-blooded murder becomes so easily overlooked through the lens of lust. Passion is more powerful than judgment, after all.
From the moment he was arrested, Rhett Cohen swore he was innocent. He said he’d used the knife earlier in the day to open a box, which was why his prints were on the hilt. No one cared. He questioned why his DNA wasn’t on the bat that laid next to Marjorie’s body, and why, assuming she’d used it to protect herself, wasn’t he covered in bruises? The detective shut this theory down immediately with proof that the bat had been wiped down with bleach and casting doubt in the jury’s mind by saying that if Rhett had been bruised, his body would have had plenty of time to heal before his arrest. The case was practically closed the moment it was opened because Rhett Cohen had no alibi and hit every point on the criminal trifecta. He had means, motive, and opportunity.
At six-foot-three and 230 pounds, no one disputed that Rhett Cohen had the means to break into my mother’s home and overpower her.
