Ascension Day

The officer shook his head. ‘Not by the looks of it. Probably wearing gloves. No tell-tale clusters on the window where he broke in, at least.’

‘And ballistics?’ Coyne addressed Friele. ‘We got the two bullets?’

‘They found one — the head shot.’ Friele pointed. ‘Deflected through and was found a foot away, embedded in the carpet. The stomach shot looks like it’s still inside her, will have to be retrieved at autopsy.’

Coyne was halfway through a scan of the room, looking for anything significant or out of place, when some excitable voices and movement from the hallway broke his attention.

A patrol-man slightly ahead of his side-kick leant into the library doorway. ‘Lieutenant. Looks like we might have a witness. A woman a hundred yards down the street was out walking her dog, and saw a man leaving the Roche’s house about the time of the shooting.’

Coyne followed the patrolman back along the hallway, and looked towards the woman standing by the three patrol cars beyond the taped-off front gate, their flashing lights reflecting starkly on her face. She’d obviously seen the squad car lights and drifted along to investigate.

‘She get a good look at him?’ Coyne asked.

‘Not sure, sir. We thought it best to leave her for you to question.’

Coyne had interviewed the eye-witness, but her description was far from conclusive: African-American, stocky build, six foot to six-two, maybe more, thirty-plus, maybe forty, wearing a dark-blue or black jacket, maybe dark-grey or brown.

‘The ‘maybes’ had concerned Coyne: her core description was vague enough, could fit ten per cent of African-American adult males, without stretching the boundaries further. And with sixty per cent of New Orleans African-American, they were a million miles from a ‘workable suspect list’, as 6^th District chief, Captain Vincent Campanelli, had demanded on day one of the investigation.

Pat Coyne looked thoughtfully towards his neatly-tended garden beyond the small back verandah, as if it might give him clearer focus on the events of twelve years ago. Strange, he thought: often he could recall the events of that time clearer than things that had happened only months ago.

‘Would she recognize him again, I asked… not sure, she said. I took that as a “No”, but thought: if we narrowed down the list of possible suspects and got a few faces in front of her — we just might get lucky. So we started working things from the other end — putting together a list of house burglars with that MO.’

‘Was Larry Durrant one of those on that list?’

‘No. No, he wasn’t. Mainly because his past MO hadn’t been violent. We were looking at a particularly brutal killing “in the course of” here. Somebody who could kill without raising much sweat. We had half-a-dozen suspects who’d shot and wounded or beaten their targets half to death in past robberies, two that we suspected of killing but had never managed to nail — and two more who’d tied up and tortured their robbery victims. We were spoilt for choice without looking at the likes of Larry Durrant.’

‘So were you surprised when his confession came in?’

‘Purely on a MO level, yeah.’ Coyne shrugged. ‘But then everything else tied in: not only the jacket with the DNA match, but his descriptions of the murder itself. Things that only the killer could possibly have known — particularly the head shot.’

‘Why was that?’

Coyne shrugged with a palm out. ‘Okay, first off it was the one thing that might not fit in with a robbery- gone-wrong theory, more hit-man territory. But that’s also why we held it back from any official releases, press or otherwise — so that we could filter out any false confessions. All we released was that Jessica Roche had been shot twice, apparently while disturbing an intruder. Most people would assume: sudden surprise, blam-blam from five paces, and out. And that’s pretty much what came in.’ Coyne smiled ingenuously. ‘Celebrity murder like that, we actually expected more — but there were six confessions in all. Three were white, one was way off the mark of the eye-witness description, and of course the other two we grilled like all hell. They got all manner of things wrong with internal descriptions of the house, but most tellingly neither of them mentioned the close-up head shot. The only one to describe that was Larry Durrant.’

Coyne was silent for a second, the only sound from a couple of bees hovering by a nearby azalea bush. The muted sounds of the city beyond like a more distant swarm.

‘But we’re getting a touch ahead of ourselves here,’ he continued. ‘Hand in hand with us narrowing down the general suspect list, we also took a closer look at Adelay Roche. My superior, Captain Campanelli, wasn’t at all comfortable with that — felt we’d get all kinds of back-lash from Roche. Word had it that he was pretty buddy- buddy with the Assistant Commissioner at the time. But it’s standard procedure, you know, looking close to home. And Roche wasn’t giving us any grief at that stage — which also struck me as somewhat strange, not running completely true to form.’

Coyne took a fresh breath. ‘But after months of digging into Adelay Roche’s background, we found nothing. No possible link to him killing his own wife, and, most importantly, no motive: no other woman, no arguments, no pressures or problems that anyone was aware of, and no big insurance policy on her — not that he’d need the cash. In fact everyone we spoke to said they seemed very much in love. And to cap it all, they were hopeful of soon having their first child. Mrs Roche was undergoing fertility treatment, with high chances of success, according to her doctor. Perhaps if her doctor had said that the fertility treatment hadn’t gone well and there was no possible hope of future children… then we might have had the seed of something. Or lack of seed, in this case. The Henry the Eighth motive, I think it’s known as.’

Coyne smiled dryly, but noticed that his visitor mirrored it only half-heartedly, as if the subject was too weighty for humour. Or perhaps because of what he’d mentioned when they first sat down.

‘But even if I had gone to Campanelli with that, he’d no doubt have told me that I was being too much of a cynical prick — as often was his wont to do — and I was stretching things too far. Then just as the dust was settling on the Adelay Roche front, he did run more true to form and start screaming why weren’t we making more progress in finding his wife’s killer. Maybe it took him a while to get over the initial shock and become obnoxious again, who knows? Then just two weeks later, Durrant’s confession landed in our laps.’

‘And did you feel comfortable with it, you know — given your concerns about Durrant’s MO?’

Coyne held out one palm. ‘I had some reservations. But listening to Durrant’s voice on tape, there was only one possible conclusion: he had to have been there. So either he was the killer, or a fly on the wall at the time. And when the DNA evidence came in, that sealed it.’

Coyne’s visitor looked faintly crestfallen at that moment, perturbed. It took him a second to decide where to head next.

‘And the eye-witness?’

‘Incidental by that stage. All she was able to do was provide a general fit for Durrant’s appearance, not an exact ID. Early on, we’d narrowed down our list of hard-hitting robbers to three possibles and put them in a line-up with five others, including two police officers. She was split between three of them — two suspects and a police officer. Which I suppose from a hundred yards away at night, is understandable. So we didn’t want to push our luck with Durrant, otherwise the defence could have had a field day. But, by then, we didn’t need to.’

His visitor glanced absently towards the garden for a second before bringing his attention back. ‘And were there any other witnesses or others on the scene at the time that weren’t mentioned in the police report? Perhaps, say, because they didn’t come forward?’

‘No, the lady with the dog was the only one. Or, at least, if anyone else was there, they weren’t seen by her or any of the Roche’s neighbours we questioned.’ Coyne raised an eyebrow, was about to ask why, when his visitor leant forward and passed across three photos.

‘This is someone in touch recently by e-mail, claiming that he was there at the time and so knows Durrant’s innocent. Probably a hoaxer, or maybe even a friend of Durrant’s — but you never know. Strike any chords?’

Coyne studied them, grimacing tightly after a moment. ‘Can’t say that they do — even if there was more to pull a match from here.’ Coyne shrugged as he handed the photos back. ‘But, like I say, doesn’t become a factor here: nothing to match to. No other sightings. If there had been, they’d have been in the report.’

His visitor nodded, his gaze towards the garden this time seeming to stop in mid-space — as if something was hanging there he couldn’t quite bring into focus — before he looked back at Coyne.

‘Thanks for that, Mr Coyne. You’ve been most helpful.’ He switched off the tape recorder and put the photos