Webster’s narrowed eyes seem to hint that Emma’s missed the point. “I was hoping actually for a glimpse of Derrick’s personality,” she says. “I find that getting to know a victim—his character, his habits, even his shortcomings—can be beneficial in trying to understand what transpired.”
“Right, I see.” Though she doesn’t completely. “He was smart, focused, superconscientious about his work. Passionate about certain sports—squash, tennis, snowboarding—and he was pretty competitive at them.”
“A risk-taker?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“If someone demanded his wallet, would he have resisted?”
“I’ve actually gone over that question in my mind many times. He wasn’t reckless exactly, but he might have thought he could outsmart a mugger. Like a lot of men might, I guess.”
“How did he get along with other people in general?”
So Webster’s shifting gears from the possibility of death at a stranger’s hands, a mugging gone wrong, and wondering whether someone Derrick knew wanted him out of the picture for good.
Emma clears her throat as she feels her stomach tighten. “Overall, pretty well. But as I mentioned during one of the interviews with the police back then, at times he could be demanding with people working for him, and I think it rankled a few of them.”
“Can you elaborate a bit on that?”
“There were a couple of incidents, but nothing that seemed relevant to the case. A guy he supervised at Alta, someone the company had been fast-tracking, left unexpectedly and apparently bad-mouthed him badly in the exit interview. And a few months before he died, Derrick refused to pay a contractor in full for redoing a bathroom at our house in New Jersey because the work was sloppy. The man cursed at him, told him to quote ‘go to fucking hell.’ I believe the police looked into both men at the time of the investigation and found they had solid alibis.”
Webster nods. “Any issues in his personal relationships? A friendship gone sour, for instance?”
She doesn’t mean just friendships, of course. She means family, too, and that includesher. Emma sees now that this is more than the promised “update” and that she should never have allowed Webster to talk to her without Dunne in the room. Her ridiculous need to please has reared its head and put her on the spot yet again.... But if she asks Webster to leave now, it might make things worse.
“You know, work kept him pretty busy, so when he saw a friend, it was generally only for squash at his club in the city, or to catch a basketball game, or occasionally to grab a beer. As far as I know, there was never any drama with his friends.”
“Any drama at the party you had at your home a week before Mr. Rand’s death?”
Websterhadread the file then, and pretty carefully.
“No, it was a simple cocktail party, our first in the new house. I actually gave the police a list of people who attended and also the names of his friends. Would you like me to see if I can find it for you?” Emma offers an ingratiating smile and then worries it hits the wrong note.
“No, I have that information,” Webster says. “And what about family? I understand that Mr. Rand had siblings. What can you tell me about his relationship with them?”
“Well, his sister, Heather, has been in Melbourne for probably a dozen years—she’s married to an Australian guy—and the only time she’d been back to the States in years was when she came for our wedding. Though they did stay in sporadic touch on email and WhatsApp.”
“And his brother?”
“Kyle?” she says, though there’s only one. “He lives in Bronxville with his wife. He and Derrick played tennis together a couple of Saturdays a month—at a club halfway between our two places. They weren’t superclose, but they got along.”
And as Webster surely knows, Kyle was at home with his wife, Jackie, the entire night of the murder.
The detective takes a minute to thumb through her notebook and then leans forward a little at the waist, in a vaguely conspiratorial way.
“Emma, I’d like to ask you a few questions now that relate specifically to the night Derrick died,” she says. “I’m sure it’s very painful to revisit that time, but it’s important for the investigation.”
“Of course,” Emma says and slowly slides her hands along her linen pant legs, trying to wipe away the film ofsweat on her palms without Webster noticing. She’d like to kick herself hard for having opened the front door today.
“There’s one big puzzle that was never solved—why your husband chose that particular parking lot when he arrived in the city Friday morning. Have you had any new thoughts on that in the past couple of years?”
Webster’s right, that was something that had confused everyone: Why had Derrick parked in SoHo when the conference was being held at a Midtown hotel?
Emma shakes her head. “At the time my only guess was that he’d decided it was simply easier to park there than near the hotel. No other reason has come to mind since.”
“Okay, but then why would he return to the garage that night?”
That was an even bigger question. He’d definitely been at the conference dinner earlier—along with forty or so other company staffers, a number of whom remembered speaking to him. Security camera footage showed him exiting the building at around nine thirty and waiting outside for his Uber ride with body language that seemed typically impatient, though it was hard to tell on the grainy recording. Twenty-six minutes later the car dropped him off at the corner of Greene and Houston Streets, just north of the garage. His body was noticed inside the small alley around 10:40 by two horrified passersby.