“No more pussy for you,” he said. Then he laughed.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Talk to me, people. What have we got here?” Max Dietz said.

“The biggest problem is the body, the one we don’t have,” answered deputy district attorney Monte Pike.

Dietz thought Pike was an irreverent little twit, but Jack Stamm thought Pike was brilliant because he’d graduated from Harvard. Dietz thought that Pike’s intelligence was overrated and that he’d probably gotten into Harvard because he had a knack for acing standardized tests. Dietz didn’t test well, and he hadn’t gone to Harvard, but he did kick ass and take names, which was, as far as he was concerned, all that counted in the real world. But Stamm had insisted that Pike be part of Dietz’s team because anytime his office went after a cop, the case became high profile.

“Claire?” Dietz asked.

Claire Bonner had been assigned the task of researching the problem presented by the missing body. Dietz liked having Bonner on his team because she was a suck-up who would do anything to gain advancement in the office. Unfortunately, she wasn’t attractive enough to merit any extracurricular attention, but unlike Pike, she didn’t challenge everything Dietz said.

Bonner self-consciously pushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “OK, well, in American jurisprudence, the term corpus delicti refers to the principle that you have to prove a crime has been committed before you can convict someone. The corpus delicti in homicide is established when you show a human being died as a result of a criminal act.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all that,” Dietz said impatiently. “What if you don’t have a body?”

“It’s OK. We can prosecute using circumstantial evidence. There are plenty of cases in Oregon and in other states where a conviction has stood up. For instance-”

“I get it. Put the rest in a memo. So,” Dietz said, turning his attention to Arnold Lasswell, the lead detective on the case, “what’s our evidence?”

“It’s not that strong, Max,” Lasswell answered hesitantly. He knew that Dietz didn’t like independent thinkers. The prosecutor had decided that he wanted Sarah Woodruff’s head on a pike, and Dietz was like a pit bull once he decided to go after someone. But Lasswell was a fifteen-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau, four with Homicide, and he did not arrest citizens without good reason. The detective fully appreciated the consequences to a person’s reputation once the cuffs were snapped on. And he was particularly sensitive to the impact of an arrest on a police officer’s career, even if the officer was ultimately cleared.

“Let me decide whether we can get past a grand jury, Arnie. I’m the lawyer. Just run down the facts for me.”

“We can place Finley at Woodruff’s house. Woodruff said he was there, and Ann Paulus, the neighbor who called 911 to report the shot and the argument, saw Finley go in.”

“How did she know the guy was Finley?” Dietz asked.

“She’s met him. He lived with Woodruff off and on over the past year. About six months ago, some of Woodruff’s mail was delivered to Paulus’s place by mistake. When she brought it over, Woodruff was at work and Finley answered the door. They talked a little, and he told her his name.”

“So we’ve got the victim in Woodruff’s house on the evening of the crime, we’ve got the victim’s blood in the entryway. What else have we got?”

“Point of order,” interjected Pike, who was slouching in his seat, working a fingernail. The knot in Pike’s tie wasn’t pulled all the way up, leaving the top button on his white shirt exposed. Then there was Pike’s unruly brown hair.

Dietz dressed like a magazine model and got a pedicure and manicure when he was at his hair stylist. He found Pike’s lack of personal grooming repulsive.

“Yes, Monte?” Dietz asked, demonstrating the patience with subordinates-no matter how annoying they might be-that leadership required.

“We don’t know its Finley’s blood. In fact, other than the photograph of him that Woodruff snapped in South America, we don’t know much about him at all.”

“Well, Monte, we do know that the blood type doesn’t match Woodruff’s, so whose blood could it be?”

“The guys who snatched Finley.”

“That’s her story, Monte. The neighbor didn’t see anyone other than Finley go in or out and there’s no evidence to corroborate Woodruff’s assertion that Finley was snatched, right, Arnie?”

“The neighbor wasn’t watching the whole time, Max. She just happened to be looking out her window when Finley went in. She’s a nurse, and she has to get up early to make her shift. She was checking the weather. When she was dressing, she wasn’t watching Woodruff’s house. Then she heard the shouting and the shot.

“Paulus got worried because she’d heard arguments between Finley and Woodruff before. She even reported one fight as a domestic disturbance. We have a report of that. But she was away from the window when she called 911. If Finley was kidnapped, he could have been taken out when she was on the phone.”

“Did she hear three or four people shouting?” Dietz asked.

“She has no idea how many people were yelling. She just heard a commotion,” Lasswell answered.

“If he was kidnapped, where’s the ransom demand?” Dietz asked.

“We still haven’t addressed the problem of identifying our so-called victim,” Pike persisted. “We don’t know his blood type because there’s no record of the guy. Arnie, you ran prints taken from the scene, right? Did you match any of them to someone named John Finley?”

“No. We’ve drawn a blank. We do have prints other than Woodruff’s but none that match anyone named Finley,” the detective answered.

“And none that match our fictional kidnappers,” Bonner said, hoping to score points with Dietz.

“Woodruff says the kidnapper she saw was wearing gloves,” Pike said.

“How convenient,” Dietz answered with a smirk.

“But there are the prints we can’t match to anyone,” Lasswell said.

“Which could be Finley’s,” Dietz argued. “And what does it matter? If we found Finley’s prints in the house, it would just add to all the proof that he was there.”

“It doesn’t bother you that this guy doesn’t come up in our database?” Pike asked.

“Not one bit. We have him in the house, he’s missing, and she lied about shooting her gun,” Dietz said. “We also have previous domestic violence calls. Then there’s the fact that the neighbor heard the shot, we have gunshot residue on her hands, and there’s a bullet missing from her service revolver. Lying about the shot shows consciousness of guilt.”

“Until we find a body, it’s still thin, Max,” Lasswell cautioned. “What if Finley was kidnapped and he’s still alive? That’s a possibility. It will be embarrassing if you go after Woodruff for homicide and it turns out Finley isn’t dead.”

“It will be more embarrassing if we let a cop get away with murder. Jack’s thinking of running for Congress. How tough on crime will he look if we don’t prosecute a killer cop?”

Monte Pike knew that Dietz wanted to use the Woodruff prosecution as a stepping stone to the DA’s job if Stamm went to Washington, but he was smart enough to keep those thoughts to himself.

“I’d go slow here, Max,” Lasswell said. “I just don’t feel this.”

“Hey, we’re not on Oprah, Arnie. Leave the touchy-feely stuff to the shrinks. My gut says Woodruff is guilty. Let’s see if a grand jury agrees.”