Her mind drifted a little: the Day seeped in. Slivers of a scalding blue sky long ago, scarlet blossom on cool grass, filigreed shadow and soap bubbles: she could almost feel the light that had sparkled in front of her. She shook her head. If there ever was a right time to consider that – and she didn’t feel there was – now was not it. She held the steering wheel tight and in her head she screamed, Focus. Work: work would surely drive out everything else. It always had.
The crime scene had been a series of pieces, not a coherent whole. If the killer was the burglar, it didn’t make sense – the burglary seemed like a professional job, and a professional would surely simply hold up their hands to the break-in and take the consequences. There would be no need to do anything more. Maybe Cassavette was the type to fly off the handle: How dare you steal from me?, and so on. But even then… the knife packaging. If the burglar had punched or kicked Cassavette and he’d hit something fatal on the way down: that would have been an understandable death. But when someone reached on to a shelf, tore open a pack of knives – selected the third smallest; that bothered her, too – and then stabbed: it was a degree, however small, of forethought that seemed at odds with an ad hoc altercation. There was something big beyond the obvious.
If it hadn’t been the burglar, the options would fan outwards from the life of Lou Cassavette. Family, business partners, friends, disgruntled former friends, people he owed, people who owed him, former lovers, spurned would-be lovers. She mulled over a list of possibles and how they might be narrowed down. She’d put Mike on to it. Dana was the primary and would pursue the prime suspect. Mike would look at other options and play devil’s advocate to whatever she was thinking.
As she got nearer the Cassavettes’ home the landscape changed. Lush gardens and majestic trees disappeared, replaced by scrubby lots and small industrial units. Roofs turned to scrappy and rust-flecked old Colourbond, neat verges dissolved, spangled concrete prevailed. The luxury of space disappeared and the average wage spiralled down to… mean. Next to a small strip of stores, high-set floodlights still illuminated the mist-draped parking area, where hooded skateboarders regularly outnumbered cars. A barricaded store in the middle of the strip promised to buy your gold for cash. To one side, a mini-mart offered to unlock any SIM card; on the other, an office window claimed that no cash was kept on the premises overnight.
She turned past a faux-stone entryway on to a new estate. It had been built to exploit the new freeway junction ten minutes away but had turned into a money-laundering opportunity for international crime. The banks now owned half the houses, and most of the rest were held by the courts and tax authorities: shells where it was foolish to fit copper pipes, or wiring. Earlville’s now-shunned mayor had opened the estate in a flurry of ribbons, flashbulbs and gurning optimism. He had been indicted but was still awaiting his chance ‘to put the record straight’. Actual owners were thin on the ground and either full of regrets or blessed by their endless and ignorant patience.
Low homes, more roof than brick, hunched on curved streets that must have looked lovely in the artist’s rendering. In the publicity the streets would have shimmered under blue summer skies, casually populated by hand-holding couples smiling as their offspring launched a toy yacht in the ornamental lake. In the chilly early morning of a weekday the streetscape was silent and bleak: kerbside holes awaiting ‘heritage street lighting’, front-yard saplings shivering and inconsequential. Roads finished abruptly, with vandal-proof fencing shielding vacant blocks. The developer hadn’t finished the street signs yet: it took three attempts down identikit cul-de-sacs to find the place.
Dana parked outside the Cassavette home as a grey BMW swept towards the main road, xenon headlights slicing the gloom. The driver held his phone to his ear, barking silently as he passed her. She took a deep breath. The Cassavette house was identical to the one each side; a series of three joined at the garage. A way of shoving smaller blocks on to each development. A country the size of a continent, she thought, and we’re ramming people together. The homes would each have the same floorplan, and neighbours would feel a bizarre sense of familiarity when they entered the house next door. The Cassavettes had forgotten to bring in the rubbish bin – it sat forlorn at the beginning of their path.
Uniform patrol hadn’t spoken to anyone yet; she would have to do The Knock. Some officers ran from that responsibility: she had an autopilot mode she could use. Telling the nearest or dearest had a rhythm, structure and etiquette she could understand, which both reassured and rescued her. Dana had done it twice before. Those hadn’t felt as difficult as they should have: she’d been cocooned by the recipient’s shock. Their emotional concussion allowed her to get away with her own reticence. They seemed to want to make tea or coffee or offer cakes; they rarely asked tricky questions.
She skirted around empathy because, primarily, it wasn’t helpful to the investigation. Close family were close enough to do more harm than good, to harbour grudges and nurture fears: they knew weak spots and moments to strike. Dana knew that well enough. Close family were therefore suspects until proven otherwise, and it hindered clear thinking to have already been sympathetic. Dana tried to strike a balance between humane and professional – if push came to shove, she’d always take the latter.
The door knocker was a metal lion’s head. When she used it, the door – being cheaper than the knocker it held – clattered in the frame. They threw these places up, she thought. Above the door, the soffit was already peeling paint.
The woman who answered was small, neat and oozed rapid capability. Dana made instant calculations. The woman would have fast-twitch muscles, she would eat and walk quickly, she would glance around like a bird, and she would struggle to relax. People would call her a dynamo, sparky, busy. Megan Cassavette was around one metre sixty, dark hair pulled back from a scrubbed, pretty and slightly freckled face. No-nonsense, she would be slightly unaware of her own attractiveness and as a result underestimate who she could attract. She wore a black business suit over an electric-blue blouse. Dana never noticed shoes.
‘Yes?’
Dana offered her ID palm up, as if inviting the woman to pick a card, any card. ‘Good morning. I’m Detective Dana Russo. Are you Megan Cassavette?’
Megan took a half-step back. Her hand rose to her throat, where it touched a thin gold necklace over a slight skin-blush. ‘Yeah, I am. What is it? Lou? Is Lou okay?’
‘Maybe better inside, Mrs Cassavette?’
Dana waited at the threshold until Megan had retreated almost behind the door. The walk into the living room was too long for both of them: Dana wanted to blurt it out and Megan had already guessed. It seemed a charade to say it out loud. Megan perched on the edge of an armchair and reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief, while Dana set the recorder going.
Dana started speaking as she sat. ‘Your husband was at Jensen’s Store last night?’
Megan nodded, and her breath caught for a second. She flashed a look to a framed photograph next to a large-screen TV: the couple waving kayak paddles triumphantly in crisp New Zealand air, bookended by snow-capped peaks. He was a head and neck taller than her. Wet hair suited Megan; a damp T-shirt accentuated Lou’s gut. It struck Dana that Megan was a fair bit younger than her husband – perhaps ten years. Or maybe, simply much better looking.
‘Uh, yeah, we own it. Lou thought someone was stealing, so he camped out there sometimes. I told him… oh, God. What happened? Is he hurt? Tell me.’
Dana focused her effort on keeping eye contact. Megan Cassavette had grey eyes; she’d rushed the mascara. ‘We don’t know all the details. Mr Cassavette was stabbed this morning, at around five thirty. He died at the scene, before officers could reach him.’