I stood there in the middle of the bedroom, paralyzed by his words. My heart and my mind started to race. Were we ready for such a big step? What if…. No! I meant what I said. I was done living with doubts and fears. “How about a Ring Pop?” I hollered after him.
Gabe’s laughter echoed in the bathroom. “Close, but not quite. You’re a smart fella, so I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“So long as it isn’t ringworm,” I told him.
“Get your ass in here and quit playing around. Don’t freak out either. We’ll know when the time is right to ‘put a ring on it.’ Come tell me all about your big adventures in television.”
“You won’t believe it,” I said as I entered the bathroom.
“Try me,” he said with a smile.
SOMETIMES A MAN WAKESup, and he just knows it’s going to be a great day. He starts his day by waking up next to the man he loves after a night that physically and emotionally rocked him to his core. His first cup of coffee is perfect in every way with just the right balance between sweet and bitter. He gets a goodbye kiss that curls his toes and knows an even sweeter welcome home kiss awaits him.
Then sometimes that same man arrives at work, and his conviction is shaken. He’s reminded of how motherfucking cruel the world can be when faced with a brokenhearted widow whose entire world had been ripped apart by ugliness she can’t possibly comprehend. She’d been hospitalized for treatment the night she discovered her husband’s body and I hadn’t tried to see her again until Monday. Her sister told me she was still heavily sedated and promised to bring her into the station the next day. Dinah Spizer didn’t look anything like the woman in the photo on her husband’s desk. I could tell by Rick’s appearance in the picture that it had been taken recently, but the woman who sat before me looked like she had aged twenty years in a few days.
After introducing ourselves, we handed her a copy of the suicide note. Her hands shook violently, and she sobbed loudly while she read what Spizer wrote.
“Rick didn’t kill himself, Detective,” she said pleadingly. “We didn’t even own a gun. He had seen enough violence in the military and wanted nothing to do with them.” She sat shredding the tissue she held between her hands. “I don’t know why he’s taking responsibility for these deaths, but I know he didn’t kill them.” There were dozens of legitimate stores he could’ve recently purchased the gun from without her knowledge, not to mention all the illegal options as well.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Spizer, but we do need to ask you some questions.” She closed her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks, but she nodded for me to continue. “Can you confirm that this is your husband’s handwriting?”
“Yes, but…” She stopped talking and nodded her head. “Yes.”
“Had you noticed a difference in his personality recently? Had he been more withdrawn or had trouble sleeping lately?” I hated to ask those questions and cause her more pain, but I had to weigh hard facts against her unwillingness to believe her husband was capable of hurting others and taking his own life.
“Yes,” she said softly between tears. “Rick had only been sleeping a few hours a night, if that, for the past few months. I asked him about it and he said his back was bothering him again. He’d grown sullen, but I had blamed it on his lack of sleep. I had no idea…” She shook her head vehemently. “He didn’t do those things, Detective. I’ve known Rick since we were kids. He was a good person.”
“Mrs. Spizer, I want you to know that we’re taking this case seriously and looking at all the evidence. We’re not just going to rule his death a suicide because it’s quick and easy. That’s not how we operate,” I told her.
“Thank you,” she said. “Please call me one way or the other. I’ll never believe my Rick was capable of doing those things he said in his letter. I just can’t.”
Dorchester walked her out of the interview room to help her find her way out while I stayed behind and thought about what she said. No matter how much my heart ached over what she was going through, I had to find the truth. There was nothing about the scene that said it was a homicide made to look like a suicide. The angle and trajectory of the bullet plus the way his body and the gun fell afterward all lined up with a self-inflicted gunshot. It wasn’t that the CPD wasn’t listening to what she said; it was a situation where facts pointed to one thing while her feelings pointed to another. Cases didn’t get solved and closed on feelings. I was starting to think that Rick Spizer did take his life over the guilt of what he had either done alone or with someone else. If he had an accomplice, I wanted to know about him or her.
Dr. Espinoza studied all four cases and determined that a .45 caliber pistol was most likely the gun used each time. We had the gun used in Spizer’s death, but we couldn’t be sure the other victims were killed with the same gun unless we could find the bullets removed from the other three scenes. If we recovered the bullets, a ballistics expert could compare them to see if they all had the same striations as the bullet fired from Spizer’s gun.
Dorchester returned minutes later and said, “Damn, I hate those kinds of interviews. I feel terrible for that woman. To find her husband’s body like that and then read the horrible things he’d confessed to doing.”But was it a confession?
“This part of our job fucking sucks,” I told Dorchester. “I felt like we twisted the knife that reality had shoved into her heart.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed. “What’s next? None of the evidence points to anything besides suicide. His files are off limits because privilege remains intact for his clients after his death.”
“We march on with our plan to interview the main players at McCarren Consortium,” I told Dorchester. “I meant what I said about making sure we don’t leave any loose threads.” The CPD might refuse to hire an expert to analyze the handwriting on the suicide note, but talking to McCarren’s employees cost them nothing.
“Let’s do it,” Dorchester said. “It’s been a while since you dusted off your bad cop.”
I followed Dorchester out of the interview room. “Are you accusing me of going soft?”
“That sounds like a personal problem and none of my business,” he said cheekily. “All I meant was that we haven’t had to go hard at anyone lately.”
“True,” I admitted. “Today is the day. Let’s take a copy of the letter that Larkin sent Robertson.”
It turned out that both Dorchester and I dusted off our bad cop routines for the interview. The poor receptionist looked terrified when we glowered at her and showed her our badges. “We want to talk to McCarren, Larkin, and Thompson. Now.” I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to ask them because all my questions had been prepared before Spizer’s death.
“J-j-just a minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “M-m-mr. McCarren, there are two detectives here to see you, Mr. Larkin, and Mr. Thompson. Okay, sir. I’ll call him.” She hung up the phone and buzzed us through the glass door. “Follow me,” she said skittishly as if she was afraid to turn her back on us.
We followed her through the private offices of a man with more money than sense. The money spent on the opulence throughout the space could’ve fed every starving family in America at least twice. I had a feeling that the paintings hanging on the walls were originals valued in the millions rather than a knockoff you’d find in most office buildings. It was something you’d expect to see in New York City, not a place like Cincinnati that was once referred to as Porkopolis.
“In here,” she said, pulling open two black doors.
