“How’d it go?” Alvarez asked, glancing up from her desk and computer monitor. While Pescoli had been interviewing Ezzie Zwolski, Alvarez had been trying to pinpoint any connection between Lara Sue Gilfry and Lissa Parsons.
“It went. I don’t like the wife. Ezzie. And her Caspar Milquetoast of a lawyer.”
“Who?”
“You never heard of someone being a ‘milquetoast’?” At the blank stare she received, Pescoli shook her head. “Old expression. Some comic strip character, I think, from a ka-billion years ago or something.” She waved the idea away. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, the guy was meek or weak as hell ... and Ezzie’s lawyer, sheesh. He didn’t look old enough to shave, let alone have graduated from law school. If you ask me, she’s involved with either Bradshaw’s death or at least the embezzling accusations.”
“The autopsy report finally came in on him,” Alvarez said, clicking her mouse to a new screen on her computer and printing out the document. Handing the pages to Pescoli, she said, “If he was killed on purpose it was a big waste of time. A couple of his arteries were ninety percent blocked and his liver was about shot. Cirrhosis taking hold.”
“Wouldn’t he know that?”
“Probably ignored the symptoms. He was a bit of an alpha-male type. You know, hunter, fisherman, farmer—”
“Tinker, tailor, soldier ... Oh, wait!” Pescoli held up a finger. “Embezzler. And murder victim.”
“Funny.” She rolled her chair back.
“Not too.”
Alvarez said, “The gunshot wound, the one where the bullet blew out Len’s liver and nicked his heart? It was consistent with an accident. They re-created it in the lab and the bullet hit the dummy in just about the same spot as Zwolski’s did in Bradshaw.” She glanced up. “Even if it wasn’t an accident, it would be hard to prove otherwise. So no first degree. Murder one is out unless we find more evidence to support it.”
Pescoli’s bad mood just got worse. “Great.”
“Hey, it is what it is!”
“You think? I don’t know. There’s just something about Zwolski’s wife. She’s smug. Sanctimonious.”
“Doesn’t mean she and her husband plotted a murder.”
“I know, but. There’s just something about it that doesn’t sit well.” She took a sip of her cooling coffee. “Not well at all.” Pointing the index finger of her cup-holding hand at Alvarez, she asked, “What about you? Find anything to tie the victims of our latest psycho together?”
“Nothing that jumps out between these two, but it turns out that Lissa Parsons did attend the same church as Brenda Sutherland.”
“So does Cort Brewster, our illustrious undersheriff.”
“And boss,” Alvarez pointed out.
“Whatever.” Thinking hard, Pescoli chewed on the rim of her paper coffee cup. “You think there’s a link?”
“Don’t know. Brenda Sutherland was very active in the church and fund-raisers and Bible study. Volunteered all over the place and never missed a service.”
“What about Lissa Parsons?”
“Not so much. Even though she was a parishioner at one time, she’d quit attending eighteen months ago. Before th
at, she’d show up once or twice a month. Or maybe there would be a gap, maybe when she was out of town, I’m working on that. Then, she was back again. Until eighteen months ago. She quit going altogether.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. I thought I’d talk with her family and friends. Next of kin; her father—the mother is dead—was notified an hour ago.”
“The press know this?” Pescoli asked, glancing out the window where the same two news vans that had shown up at the crime scene had parked in the visitor’s lot.
“They will in an hour. Darla’s going to make a statement.”
Darla Vale was the public information officer. She’d been with the department for a few years. Once a reporter for the Seattle Times, she’d come to Grizzly Falls when her husband, Herb, had decided to retire in Montana. She’d always joked that because of her ties to the press, she’d come from “the dark side.”
“Good.” Alvarez said, “We’re still checking with any video cams going out of town, toward Sheldon Road, and deputies are checking with neighbors, see if they saw anything last night. Had to have happened sometime between ten, when Oliver Enstad shut off the porch light and looked outside before going to bed around eleven, and when the missus looked out the window the next morning around six. Probably around one A.M., judging from the snowfall over the tracks where the slab of ice was dragged and the amount of snow covering the statue, though it was already disturbed by the time that Mabel got her eyeful.”