The Big Exit (4 page)

W
ITH THE STREET CORDONED OFF
, C
AROLYN HAS TO PARK ON
V
AL
paraiso and walk back to the entrance of Robert S Drive, where police have set up a barricade. The house is almost at the
end of the cul-de-sac on the north side of the street. While it isn’t big enough to be an estate, whoever designed it wanted
you to think estate, mini one anyway.

“It happened over there,” says the young officer with a completely shaved head who escorts her, pointing to a glow of bright
lights a little further down the street to the left. She’s not particularly tall, just five-four, and dipping her head slightly
at an angle, she looks through the bars of the metal driveway gate. Several yards away she glimpses the unmistakable ponytail
of the chief deputy coroner, Greg Lyons, who’s speaking with a black detective she knows named Jerry Burns. A few other people
are milling about, some looking more occupied than others. The rest of the property is only illuminated with ground lights
here and there, but it’s enough for her to get a sense of the elaborate and meticulous landscaping that surrounds the house.

She feels herself drawn toward the murder scene but when she starts to drift away from the officer and move a few paces closer
to the entrance of the driveway, he warns her to stay with the tour and follow him into the house next door.

Going inside, she notes that the foyer has a grand, formal feel to it, with light-colored, polished marble floors. The feel
isn’t exactly modern—there’s a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling after
all—but somewhere between modern and traditional. One look at the entranceway and a peek into the living room, and she doesn’t
have to see anything more to know that someone clearly spent a lot of money imbuing every inch of that home with that sensibility.

She can’t help but think that if things had gone a little differently she’d be shacked up in a place like this rather than
the “cute” three-bedroom cottage she’s in now. She’d had her chances, of course, but early on had developed a penchant for
dating guys with unique and intriguing qualities, particularly good looks, just not large bank accounts. Perhaps the problem
was they always seemed to have dual professions separated by a slash. There was the restaurant manager/nutritionist, a mediator/ski
instructor, an architect/political blogger, the landscaper who bred huskies and had Iditarod aspirations. She’d tried to break
herself of her habit, rotating in a few techie types, they of lofty titles and nonsensical company names, tier-two Boy Wonders.
Invariably she found them dull or unattractive—or both. Meanwhile, the “slashes” kept finding her.

The exception was Ted Cogan, the surgeon. Wealthy, no. Not for around here anyway. But well off, yes, which was just fine
with her. The only problem was she’d failed to seal the deal and marry him not once, but twice, and though she doesn’t like
to admit it, that second defeat triggered the little tailspin that led to her professional grounding.

Fuck him
, she thinks, glancing up at an arguably exquisite light fixture that’s illuminating the short hallway they’re passing through.
Fuck Ted Cogan
. And just then a door suddenly opens in front of her, startling and separating her from her escort. It’s a woman coming out
of a small bathroom. The two stop just short of colliding.

“My God, you scared me,” the woman says, clasping her hand to her chest. Pencil thin, around forty-five, with short sandy-colored
hair, she isn’t exactly dressed up, but she is well dressed, with khaki slacks and a couple of buttons open on her crisp white
blouse to show off a string of white pearls.

“Sorry,” Carolyn says. “And you are?”

“Pam Yeagher. I live here. We’re the neighbors. This is just ghastly. Absolutely horrible. You must be Carolyn Dupuy. Beth’s
in the den. She’s waiting for you.”

Out of view, Carolyn hears the young officer talking to a man with a very familiar-sounding voice, though she only realizes
it belongs to Jeff Billings, one of the detectives, when she follows Pam Yeagher into the kitchen and sees him standing there.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Ms. Dupuy,” he says. “Last I heard, you’d been put on hiatus, Counselor.”

“New season, new show,” she replies, reflexively winding up to return his jab with a bigger shot of her own. “You guys figure
out a way to fuck up the crime scene yet? That why they have you stashed over here?”

Billings face blanches; she’s hit a nerve. “Ask Hank,” he says. “He’s in charge.”

Last year, she’d caught Billings in a small fib on the stand in a breaking-and-entering case and made him look bad (he’d testified
that a piece of evidence was in “plain sight” when in fact it wasn’t). She loves cops but most of them are liars. And they’re
arrogant. They think they know who’s guilty and who isn’t, and if they occasionally have to bend their story a bit to make
things come out right in the end, well, that’s the way it is. As a prosecutor, she was empathetic. She’d overlooked the fudges,
even tacitly approved of them so long as she didn’t think they’d come back to bite her in the ass. But now it’s different.
Now it’s her job to make them bite back. And leave marks.

“Your perimeter isn’t wide enough,” she says to antagonize him further. “You’ve got all kinds of people over there destroying
possible evidence.”

He forces a smile and sticks his thumbs in the belt loops on either side of his hips.

“Sure they are,” he says, smiling, not taking the bait.

Neither the young officer nor the Yeagher woman, who’s standing just to her left, knows what to make of the exchange.

“I’m just going to get a glass of water for Beth,” Pam says. “My husband’s in there with her. He’s a doctor. I’ll take you
in.”

A doctor?
thinks Carolyn.
Are you kidding me? A fucking doctor’s house? That’s just goddamn perfect
.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Billings says.

“And I’ll see your ten minutes and take as long as I like.”

“We need to question her, Carolyn.”

“So do I.”

With that, she heads into the den. When she enters, Beth Hill doesn’t look up. She’s sitting on a beautiful chocolate-colored
leather couch with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head pressed against her forearms, quietly sobbing. She’s wearing
black yoga stretch pants and a white T-shirt that’s covered by a gray crocheted cardigan. Her feet are bare.

Pam Yeagher’s husband, the doctor, also neatly dressed and more well put together than good-looking, has his hand on her back
and is doing his best to comfort her, murmuring something inaudible in her ear. His hair is almost completely gray, which
makes him seem a few years older than his wife, though they’re clearly contemporaries.

“Harry,” Pam says quietly to her husband. “This is Carolyn Dupuy. The lawyer she called.”

With that Beth looks up at her, then stands up, excited to see her. Carolyn extends her hand but Beth goes right past it,
opting for a full embrace.

“Thanks for coming,” she says, hugging her tightly.

Under the circumstances she should have expected it. Nevertheless the show of affection feels awkward. She’d always remember
the woman’s piercing stare in court all those years ago when she was part of the team that prosecuted Beth’s fiancé for killing
a young woman in a drunk-driving accident. Now they’re just acquaintances who see each other in passing in town or at the
tennis club where Cogan is a member.

Despite exchanging pleasantries when they crossed paths, Beth always came across as distant, and Carolyn always wondered what
she was like under the veneer. Some days she had an urge to come right out and ask her.
You hate my guts, don’t you? Go ahead; tell me, it’s okay
. But something always stopped her. Once, a friend walked up just as she was about to ask. Another time she was all set to
approach when she caught a glimpse of Cogan chatting up some bimbo by the snack bar and became enraged, forgetting about Beth.

Luckily, while the embrace is forceful, it’s short, and once Beth relinquishes her grip, she sits back down on the leather
sofa. Carolyn notices the doctor mouthing the word “water” to his wife and making a shooing motion with his hand, seemingly
encouraging her to complete
the mission he’d sent her on, unaware she’d already set the glass on the console to the left, beside a set of family pictures
that show off the exploits of the couple’s two college-age kids, son and daughter. The gesture indicates that Dr. Harry has
had lots of experience dealing with crisis situations and has little tolerance for those who don’t. It bothers Carolyn that
he’s essentially treating his wife like a nurse.
The guy’s a controller
, she thinks.

“If you don’t mind, Dr. and Mrs. Yeagher, I need to talk to Ms. Hill alone for a few minutes.”

She makes the request in her polite voice, but it must still come out sounding abrupt because both husband and wife react
as if she’s insulted them. When Harry Yeagher reluctantly gets up from the couch, Carolyn realizes he’s taller than she thought,
over six feet. “I’ll get you that sedative,” he says to Beth. “In case you need it later.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you both.”

After they’re gone, Carolyn sits down in a club chair across from Beth, leans forward, and starts talking in a quiet but firm
voice.

“Here’s how it’s going to go, Beth. The detectives are going to come back in here in a few minutes. They want to take you
into the station house. It’s purely procedural. They want to interview you in a clean environment. They want to be able to
videotape your answers and they have to follow certain rules when they’re investigating a case. I just saw my old boss, Dick
Crowley, the DA, outside talking to the police. He’s making sure that they dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.”

“I don’t want to go to the station house.”

“Well, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“They think I have something to do with this,” she says. “Every time I answered a question, I could see it in their eyes.”

“Whose eyes?”

“The detective, the older guy. He knew me. He knew Mark.”

“Madden?”

“Yeah, Madden. I remember him from the trial.”

“But he gave you my number?”

“Yes. I said I wanted to speak to an attorney. Mark has a guy for contracts and stuff. But you were the only criminal attorney
I knew. He had your cell number.”

She thought of telling Beth that one of the reasons the detectives
might have developed a suspicious gaze was that whenever someone close to a victim lawyers up quickly investigators tend to
peg that as a sign that something wasn’t kosher. Her natural instinct is to concur, but she’s also willing to chalk up Beth’s
paranoid behavior to other factors, most of which involve the shock of discovering her husband violently murdered. But she’s
also sure that there’s more to the story—perhaps a lot more—that Beth isn’t willing to share yet.

“Well, I know Hank Madden very well. I was involved in a case with him a few years ago.”

“Your boyfriend, the doctor?”

“Well, at the time he was my ex. Now he is again. Anyway, Hank’s a solid guy,” she says, wanting to change the subject. “Maybe
you’re reading a little too much into his questions. He just wants to catch whoever did this.”

Carolyn explains that she’s under no pressure to go to the station now, but she can’t stay in her house tonight. The most
important thing to do is to give them any information she thinks may help them identify her husband’s killer. They’ll need
the names and phones numbers of all the people who work in their home for them. Housekeepers, gardeners, chefs, personal trainers,
anybody who’s regularly on the premises or has access to the house. Time is of the essence. But if she doesn’t feel up to
it—or if there are extenuating circumstances—they should proceed very cautiously.

She’s hoping the “extenuating circumstances” comment might elicit a reaction, but Beth just looks at her and without much
emotion and says, “No, it’s okay, I want to help.”

Carolyn decides to be a little more direct.

“Now I don’t know the exact situation with your husband. But I’ll say this as politely as possible—I heard, well, there was
some talk at the club, you know how people talk, about some possible problems. I don’t know how serious they were …”

She lets her voice trail off, hoping Beth will pick up where she left off. But Beth doesn’t respond right away. She stares
down at the carpet.

“They were serious,” she says after a moment, lifting her head. “Some of the things I didn’t know. Mark seemed to be having
some problems with his business. Or I should say businesses.”

“And that put a strain on your relationship?”

“Sure. He was working late. He was working all the time. A couple years ago he ended up in the hospital with chest pains.
Spent the night there.”

“But it wasn’t a heart attack?”

“No, it turned out to be acid reflux. But he complained of having anxiety attacks. He’d smoke some pot sometimes, but then
he got paranoid someone might find out and make him submit to a drug test.”

“I thought he owned the company.”

“He did. But in many ways you’re at the mercy of your investors.”

“And how long was this going on?”

“What?”

“The acid reflux, stress, and whatnot.”

“I don’t know. A couple of years. A while.”

“What kind of business was he doing?”

“Well, he had lots of stuff. You know, holdings and investments. But the bigger thing was this start-up. He was pretty secretive
about it. Partially on purpose, you know, to create buzz.”

“What type of start-up?”

“It’s a new platform for geo-location mobile advertising.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a variation on the whole instant coupon thing where you walk past a store or a restaurant and deals pop up on your phone.
A lot of people have been trying to do it for a while. But it’s very difficult to do without being intrusive. The messaging
part is a challenge.”