“Can you break that down to regular English?” Grace asked.
“What we’re looking at,” Monica explained, “are just words, as if tapped on a keyboard; the underlying data can’t be accessed. In short, I’d have to be psychic to tell you who actually wrote this stuff.”
Hunter’s murder had made national news. In the public eye, Casey quickly went from grieving girlfriend to “presumed guilty.” With Monica’s help, they had also sifted through thousands of online comments written by followers of the trial, who found one another on message boards and debated the case intensely.
The first step had been to identify all comments authored under the name “RIP_Hunter.” When they were able to read all of these posts together, they noticed two trends. The author tended to speak with authority, as if he or she had inside information about both Casey and Hunter. All of Casey’s friends know, for example, or Casey has always had a raging temper, was a phony, and and also had the easy route handed to her. Throughout the entire case, it seemed as if someone with inside information was “trolling” Casey and feeding gossip to Mindy Sampson.
It was Jerry who noticed another, more subtle characteristic. The author had a tendency to introduce additional points with the phrase “and also.” Anyone who knows Casey will tell you that she has to have the last word, and also has to be the center of attention.
On the chance that whoever authored the RIP_Hunter notes had posted other comments, Monica had found another fifty-seven comments that appeared to suggest firsthand knowledge of the case, and another twenty using the phrase “and also,” with some overlap between the two groups.
“Bravo for our organizational skills,” Laurie said, “but what in the world are we supposed to do with all of this now?” She collapsed onto her office sofa, her head beginning to hurt from reading so many printouts.
She grabbed a notepad and made a list of all of her unanswered questions. Who is RIP_Hunter? Who tipped off Mindy Sampson about her show? Why did Alex warn her to be careful, and did it have something to do with the fact that Alex had met General James Raleigh as a law student? Did Hunter audit the foundation’s books, and was that related to Mark Templeton’s departure from the foundation four years later?
Laurie thought about the principle of Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually correct. Was there any one thing that could tie together all of these loose threads?
She barely noticed the sound of her phone ringing and Grace picking it up, until Grace told her that General Raleigh’s assistant, Mary Jane, was on hold. “She wants to know how much time she should allot for the General’s interview as well as hers. I offered to juggle the schedule if they had somewhere else to be, but she said his time is tight every day of the year. She said Arden’s pushing him for pages, whatever that means.”
“He’s working on his memoirs,” Laurie said. Something about Grace’s question was bothering her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Most likely, it was that she had no idea how long Ryan would take to conduct his interviews. Was she ever going to get used to working with Ryan instead of Alex? “See if he can give us an hour. I assume she’ll be more flexible.”
Of the suspects Casey had identified, Mary Jane seemed the least likely. Hunter may have worried about the assistant’s motives, but fifteen years later, she appeared to still be working as a dutiful servant. And General Raleigh did not seem like a man who would be taken advantage of easily.
While Grace returned to the phone, Laurie went back to her list of questions, but Mary Jane’s phone call was still nagging at her. Arden. Where had she heard that name recently? Who else had been talking about a book publisher? And then she remembered her conversation with Casey’s ex-boyfriend Jason. I’ll admit that calling her Crazy Casey in the book title was a little unfair. Frankly, Arden Publishing insisted. Could it possibly be a coincidence that General Raleigh’s and Jason’s books shared a publisher?
“Jerry, when you talked to Mark Templeton, did you ask him about the gap between his employment at the Raleigh Foundation and his new job at Holly’s Kids?”
“No. As I said, I wanted it to seem like we only wanted to talk to him about seeing Casey and Hunter at the gala. I thought you should be the one to decide whether to push him on the rumors about the foundation’s assets.”
Laurie walked to her computer, typed Holly’s Kids into the search engine, and pulled up the website for the nonprofit that currently employed Mark Templeton as its director. She clicked on the list of the board of directors. Her eye immediately moved to one name in particular: Holly Bloom, as in Holly’s Kids, listed as both board member and founder. She clicked through to Holly’s bio and then tilted the computer screen toward Jerry. “The Holly of Holly’s Kids is the president of Arden Publishing, also known as the publisher of Jason Gardner’s book and General Raleigh’s forthcoming memoir.”
Jerry was staring at the screen. “Whoa. I think I just felt the room tilt.”
Laurie still didn’t know who killed Hunter Raleigh, or even whether Casey Carter was innocent. But she was putting certain pieces of the puzzle together. If she was right, then Casey never had a fair shot at trial.
She picked up the phone and called her father. “Dad, I have a favor to ask. Do you know anyone with the Connecticut State Police?”
“Of course. I may be off the job, but my old Rolodex still comes in handy.”
“Can you see if anyone who worked on the Hunter Raleigh murder case would be willing to talk to me off the record?” She remembered his wistfulness last week when he seemed to miss being in the middle of an investigation. “Maybe you can come with me.”
37
The next morning, Leo waited at the curb outside her building behind the wheel of a rental car, blinkers flashing.
“Thanks for this, Dad,” Laurie said as she hopped in the passenger seat.
“And for this,” he added, handing her one of two Starbucks cups from the car’s console.
“Best dad and driver ever.”
Yesterday, Leo had called his friend, the former commissioner of the Connecticut State Police, to ask for a meeting with Detective Joseph McIntosh, the lead investigator on the Hunter Raleigh case.
“So who’s taking my job for the day?” he asked.
“Kara.”
“That’s great. Timmy likes her.”
As hard as Timmy tried to convince Laurie that he was no longer in need of a babysitter to walk him to and from school when his grandfather was unavailable, all protests ceased when it came to Kara, who loved sports, made chocolate chip pancakes from scratch, and shared Timmy’s growing love for jazz.
“When it comes to your role in Timmy’s life, you’ve got tenure, Dad. You know where we’re headed?”
“Already got it in the GPS. Detective McIntosh, here we come.”
•••
Detective Joseph McIntosh was still with the Connecticut State Police, but his current title was lieutenant. He did not look happy to meet Laurie, but was considerably warmer to her father. “Commissioner Miller had a world of good to say about you, Deputy Commissioner Farley.”
Once they began talking about the evidence, it was clear that McIntosh had no doubts as to Casey’s guilt. “You’ve got to understand that the defense lawyer even suggested I was responsible for Rohypnol being found in Casey’s purse. Until we found those pills, we were on her side. She seemed genuinely distraught when we arrived. We only tested her hands for gunshot residue as part of the protocol. In our eyes, she was one of the victims. She’d lost her fiancé to horrible violence. From all appearances, her sickness that night probably saved her life. And when her cousin arrived, she suggested we test Casey Carter’s blood to see if she had been drugged. Ms. Carter consented and we asked the medic on the scene to take a blood sample. Later it was confirmed that she had Rohypnol in her system. At that point, we still believed it was possible the killer had drugged her.”