“If the person who set up the meeting killed him. Any idea who it might have been?”
“No,” Roger answered, but he felt sick. Morris’s killer had stabbed him with a surgical strike that mimicked the blow that had felled Robert Chesterfield. Roger wondered if Morris had died investigating Chesterfield’s murder—something he would not have been doing if Roger hadn’t asked for his help.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Robin got up at five and ran to McGill’s gym. She worked out for an hour, showered, and walked to her office, picking up a latte and scone on the way. Robin ate the scone and sipped the latte while she read the story about Morris Quinlan’s murder on her phone. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t remember why.
Robin closed her phone and started work on a brief that was due in the Oregon Supreme Court. She was reading a case that she hoped would win the day for her client when she remembered where she’d heard Quinlan’s name. Regina had mentioned it when she told Robin about Robert Chesterfield’s old murder cases. If she had the right person, he’d been Roger Dillon’s partner when Chesterfield was arrested for the murders of Sophie Randall and Arthur Gentry.
Robin went back to the brief. Then she stopped. There was another victim who had been involved in Chesterfield’s old cases. Robin ran a web search and found the newspaper account of Henry Beathard’s murder in the supermarket parking lot. Beathard was the judge who had excluded the evidence of Arthur Gentry’s murder when Peter Ragland tried to introduce it in the case chargingChesterfield with the murder of Sophie Randall. The ruling had forced Ragland to dismiss the indictments charging Chesterfield with the murders of Gentry and Randall.
Were Beathard’s murder and the attempt on Regina’s life linked? The MOs in Regina’s and Beathard’s cases—shooting and poisoning—were different. Quinlan and Lord Robert had both been stabbed.
Robin stared out her window at the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hood. After a few minutes, she swiveled her chair and dialed the office of the state medical examiner.
“What can I do for you, Counselor?” Sally Grace said.
“I’ve got a weird question for you.”
“Many of your questions are weird. What do you want to know?”
“Did you do the autopsy on Morris Quinlan, the retired detective who was stabbed to death yesterday?”
“I did.”
“And you autopsied Robert Chesterfield?”
“Yes.”
“Were the two methods of murder similar?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I can’t tell you now, but I’ll tell the DA if my guess is right.”
Grace hesitated. Then she said, “Both men were killed by a single thrust to the heart in a way that makes me think that the same person may have killed both people. But that’s not something I would swear to in court.”
“Thanks, Sally.”
Robin hung up the phone and stared into space. Was there really a connection between the three murders and the attempt on Regina, or did she have an overwrought imagination? Regina, Beathard, Chesterfield, and Quinlan had all been involved in the Randall and Gentry cases. Chesterfield had been charged with the murders, and Regina’s and Judge Beathard’s actions had led tothe dismissal of the charges. But Quinlan had arrested Chesterfield and had nothing to do with the magician’s escaping justice. And the Gentry and Randall cases happened a long time ago. Why would someone try to kill the participants now? It didn’t make any sense.
Robin buzzed Mary Stendahl. “Do you know where the files from Robert Chesterfield’s old cases are?”
“Probably in our storage locker in the basement.”
“Can you get them for me?”
“I’ll go down and look.”
“Thanks.”
Twenty minutes later, Mary stuck her head in the door. “Where do you want these?” she asked, pointing at a dolly loaded down with Bankers Boxes.
“Put them in the conference room.”
Robin decided to take a break from the brief. Mary had taken the files out of the boxes and stacked them on the conference table. They covered it, and Robin realized that it would take the rest of the day to go through them. She sighed. The issue in the brief was very complicated, and the deadline for filing it was roaring toward her. She couldn’t spend the day going through hundreds of pages of transcripts, police reports, and evidence when she had no idea what she was looking for, so she went back to her office.
It was almost dark when Robin finished the draft of the brief. She closed her eyes and stretched. She was tempted to grab some sushi and head home, but duty called. The hearing on pretrial motions in David Turner’s case was coming up. She was too tired to work on the legal issues, but the police reports of the witness statements in Turner’s case were strewn around the floor of her office, and she wanted them in a trial notebook, where she could get to them easily if Ragland called someone as a witness at the hearing.