A Reasonable Doubt Read online

  “Is someone with her?” Moser asked Randall.

  “She’s in school.”

  “You should go to her,” Quinlan said. “Your daughter needs you now. Do you feel up to driving?”

  Randall wiped his eyes and took some deep breaths. “I’ll be okay. When can I see Sophie to say goodbye?”

  “Give these officers your contact information and I’ll make sure it’s soon,” Quinlan said.

  “Thank you.”

  Quinlan squeezed Randall’s shoulder. Then he led Dillon and Ragland out of the room.

  “Poor bastard,” Dillon said.

  “This is the part of this job I hate,” Quinlan told him. “And it never gets easier.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Morris Quinlan had been sitting in the reception area of the accounting firm of Fisk & Combe for fifteen minutes when a severe-looking woman in a gray business suit walked out of a long hall and stopped in front of him.

  “Mr. Quinlan?” the woman asked.

  “Actually, it’s Detective Quinlan.” He stood up. “And you’re Eileen Paulson?”

  “Yes.” Paulson frowned. “Is this about a client?”

  “No. I’m with Homicide, and it concerns your father, Arthur Gentry.”

  Paulson’s features hardened. “It’s about time. Come back to my office.”

  Paulson’s office was halfway down the hall. She had a window with a view of the Willamette River and enough space to let you know that she was a partner in the firm. The decorations were austere, mostly college degrees and professional certificates. The few personal items were a picture of Mrs. Paulson, her husband, and their child, and a framed crayon drawing of a stick figure father, mother, and child standing in front of a house that Quinlan assumed was a tribute to the daughter’s artistic talent.

  “Why did you say that it was about time when I said I was from Homicide?” Quinlan asked when they were seated.

  “Two years ago, when it happened, I told the investigating officers that there was something suspicious about my father’s death, but they brushed me off.”

  “What made you think something was wrong?”

  “My mother passed away several years ago and my father was horribly depressed. We had a wonderful relationship and he moved in for a while. Being around Jill, his granddaughter, was a tonic. After a while, he moved back to his house, but we spoke or visited all the time. But what really pulled him out of his depression was his relationship with Lily Dowd.

  “Dad and Mom were longtime members of the Westmont Country Club, and they were very good friends with Lily and her husband, Frank. Frank passed away a year after my mother, and Lily and my father grew close. They started showing up at club events together and I thought they might get married. Then Robert Chesterfield showed up.

  “Lily met him in London. She had a place there and she moved to London to get away from Oregon for a while because of the bad memories of her husband’s death. I don’t know what happened in London, but Chesterfield showed up in Portland shortly after Lily returned and started going after her. Lily is very wealthy and Chesterfield is a predator. That was obvious from the get-go, only Lily couldn’t see that.

  “My father tried to warn her about him, but Lily was infatuated. Chesterfield was much younger than Lily. He was dashing and sophisticated and he swept her off her feet. She wouldn’t hear anything against him. When my father tried to wake her up, it soured their relationship.

  “My father was very concerned about Lily’s welfare and he started looking into Chesterfield’s background. I don’t know what he found, but he told me that he was going to talk to Chesterfield and get him to back off. The next thing I knew, my father was dead.”

  “I read the police report,” Quinlan said. “The investigators concluded that your father died from natural causes.”

  Paulson’s posture became rigid. She folded her hands on her desk and stared into Quinlan’s eyes. “My father was sixty-two but he had the physique of a man in his early fifties. When he was in college, he swam so well that he almost made the Olympic team, and he never stopped working out. Those workouts were strenuous. His physicals never showed any danger signs. He didn’t smoke, he was a social drinker and rarely had more than a glass of wine. There is no way he would have just keeled over.”

  “The police report said that you found your dad.”

  Paulson nodded and briefly lost her composure.

  “Tell me how that happened and what you saw.”

  “Jill is ten and she’s on a swim team. My husband works at Intel and my job keeps me pretty busy, so we often asked Dad to pick up Jill from school and take her to swim practice.” Paulson smiled. “He loved Jill and he loved doing it. On a Monday, the day before I found him, I called to ask if he could take Jill, and the call went to his answering machine. I tried later, but I never got through, so I had to take her. My husband and I both had meetings the next afternoon, so I called again and the calls went straight to voice mail. That’s when I got nervous and drove to his house. I have a key. When I went in, he was lying in the living room.”

  “Was there any indication of how he died?”

  “There was a pool of vomit. It had dried. It looked old.”

  “Was there any food nearby or in the kitchen? Something he might have eaten?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Sophie Randall’s death? I heard that someone gave her poisoned chocolates.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s all they’re talking about at the Westmont.”

  Quinlan wondered if Peter Ragland had been opening his big mouth.

  “Is it true?” Paulson asked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss Mrs. Randall’s case, except to tell you that she was poisoned.”

  “And you think the same person poisoned my father? Is it Robert Chesterfield? Do you think he killed Sophie Randall? Everyone knows about the run-in he had with Sam Moser.”

  “I really can’t discuss the Randall case.”

  “Oh my God, I just remembered something. My father called me two days before I found his body. This would have been in the afternoon. He said he’d just gotten a box of chocolates in the mail and he wanted to know if I’d sent it. I said I hadn’t. When I found my father, there was a pile of mail on a table in the entryway next to the mail slot, but I never saw the box of chocolates.”

  “I didn’t see any mention of a box of chocolates in the police reports.”

  Paulson stared into space for a moment. Then her features hardened. “The back door was open,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Father always locked all the doors. But the back door was open. If there was poison in those chocolates, the person who sent them could have taken the box away after he died.”

  “There was no mention of the back door being open in the police report.”

  “I didn’t discover it until I came back to the house to get some clothes for the funeral, a few days after the police had left. It didn’t occur to me that it might be important until now. I don’t even know that Father wasn’t responsible. It’s also possible that one of the investigators forgot to lock the door when he left.”

  “That’s a possibility. But the info about the door is helpful. Thank you.” Quinlan handed Paulson his card. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”

  “Thank you for caring,” Paulson said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The office of the state medical examiner was in a tree-shaded, two-story, redbrick building that had once been a Scandinavian funeral home. The roof over the front porch was supported by white pillars, and the porch was partially hidden from view by arborvitae, split-leaf maples, and other shrubs.

  Max Rothstein came out to greet Morris Quinlan as soon as the receptionist announced him. The state medical examiner was a Santa Claus look-alike with a beer belly and full white beard. His deep voice, sense of humor, and abil
ity to make the most obscure medical facts understandable made him an excellent witness.

  “What can you tell me about the cause of death in Sophie Randall’s case?” Quinlan asked when they were seated in Rothstein’s office.

  “It was definitely cyanide poisoning. I found traces during the autopsy, and the chocolates were all doctored.”

  “Was there anything special about the chocolates?”

  “I had the lab look at them. It’s a national brand. The killer could have bought them in any state in the union. And there’s nothing distinctive about the box or the wrapping paper that would let us narrow down where it was purchased. The chocolates were mailed a day before Christmas so the odds on anyone remembering who mailed them is next to zero. There were no prints on the wrapping paper, the box, or anything else.”

  “Did you get a chance to look at the autopsy report in Arthur Gentry’s case?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “Arthur Gentry had been dead for several days before Eileen Paulson discovered his body, which makes a conclusive diagnosis of cyanide poisoning difficult. Cyanide has a relatively short half-life, anywhere from minutes to hours. That means toxicological detection of cyanide to conclusively confirm cyanide poisoning is feasible only within the first few hours following exposure.

  “However, there were some findings consistent with cyanide poisoning. Gentry vomited, and the vomit around his lips was black. The tissue of the liver, lungs, spleen, and heart was bright pink, and the stomach lining was badly damaged and blackened. This is consistent with cyanide poisoning. And there’s one other finding that may help you. Gentry ate chocolate before he died.”

  “The same type that killed Randall?”

  “No. I asked the lab to look into that, and they concluded that the chocolate that Gentry and Randall ate were different brands.”

  * * *

  The Justice Center was a sixteen-story building in downtown Portland that housed the Multnomah County jail, some circuit and district courts, state parole and probation, the state crime lab, and the central precinct of the Portland Police Bureau. The Detective Division was a wide-open space that stretched along one side of the thirteenth floor. Each detective had their own cubicle separated from the other cubicles by a chest-high divider. Morris Quinlan had just returned from talking to Dr. Rothstein when Roger Dillon walked into his cubicle.

  Quinlan swiveled his chair and looked up at his partner’s smiling face. “What’s got you all excited?” Quinlan asked.

  “I just got off the phone with Scott Bentley, my contact at Scotland Yard, and he had some interesting things to tell me.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Robert Chesterfield is British. He called himself Lord Chesterfield when he performed in London as a stage magician, but he’s no lord. He was born in a slum in Manchester to abusive, alcoholic parents and was in trouble from an early age. Chesterfield ran away from home on several occasions and earned money by gambling in high-stakes, back-alley poker games. Scott says that Chesterfield is a whiz at card manipulation. He was arrested for assault when he stabbed a man who accused him of cheating, but witnesses said that the other player attacked Chesterfield. No charges were brought, because the police concluded that Chesterfield acted in self-defense.

  “Chesterfield developed his persona as an English gentleman when he began performing. Scott told me that Lord Robert is quite the ladies’ man and his favorite prey is wealthy older women like Lily Dowd. He used these women to get him into several private clubs, where he made a living at cards. Scott tells me that he stayed under the radar by winning but not winning so much that he called attention to himself.”

  A magician might be able to pick the lock on Arthur Gentry’s back door, Quinlan thought. Out loud, he asked Dillon if he knew why Chesterfield had left London and come to Oregon.

  “Scott wasn’t certain. There were rumors of a scandal but he didn’t have time to follow up. We know he met Lily Dowd in London, so he may have moved to Oregon with the idea of marrying her.”

  “Nice work.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I did a little detecting myself,” Quinlan said, and he proceeded to tell Dillon what he’d found out at the medical examiner’s office and during his meeting with Eileen Paulson.

  “Before I visited Max, I spoke to Jan Crawford, the judge’s wife,” Quinlan continued. “She had some interesting things to tell me.”

  “Such as?”

  “When her husband told her that Chesterfield was going to resign from the Westmont and take Lily with him, she tried to talk Lily out of it, but Dowd wouldn’t listen. A few weeks after she resigned, Lily called Mrs. Crawford. Mrs. Crawford said that Dowd sounded drunk or drugged. She told Mrs. Crawford that she regretted resigning and had found out that many of the accusations about cheating at cards and with women were true. She said that she was at their home on the coast, which is isolated, and that Robert watched her all the time.

  “Mrs. Crawford asked if she was afraid and if she needed help, but Mrs. Dowd suddenly said that she didn’t mean what she’d said, and she hung up. Mrs. Crawford called back but her calls went to voice mail. Then Dowd called again and asked Mrs. Crawford not to call anymore.”

  “Should we go out there?” Dillon asked. “This sounds serious.”

  “Dowd’s home is out of our jurisdiction. Even if she lived in Portland, we wouldn’t have any grounds to believe that a crime is being committed.”

  Dillon sighed. “You’re right. But what about the murders? Do you think we have enough evidence to show that Chesterfield murdered Randall or Gentry?”

  “No. He’s our chief suspect but I don’t see enough here to go for an indictment.”

  Dillon started to say something, when Quinlan’s phone rang. Quinlan answered it, and Dillon could tell that he wasn’t pleased.

  “Grab your coat,” Morris Quinlan said when he hung up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ragland wants to brainstorm the Randall case.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  An icy wind raced inland from the river, and threatening black clouds hovered over the detectives, who hunched their shoulders as they walked to the Multnomah County Courthouse. The district attorney’s office was on the sixth floor. Peter Ragland had one of the exterior offices with a view of downtown Portland and the West Hills that were assigned to higher-ranking deputies.

  Photographs of Ragland with politicians and celebrities took up part of one wall, giving visitors the impression that Peter hobnobbed with the rich and famous. Ragland’s father appeared in most of the photographs, and Quinlan thought that Peter was probably just along for the ride.

  Next to the photographs was a diploma from Georgetown, an elite law school. Rumor had it that Peter had been admitted as a legacy because Jasper Ragland was one of the school’s famous alumni. Another rumor held that he had barely scraped through.

  “Sit, sit,” Ragland said, pointing at the two client chairs on the other side of his desk. “What have you got for me?”

  Quinlan laid out what they had discovered.

  “Good job,” Ragland said when Quinlan finished his briefing. “I think it’s time we confronted Mr. Chesterfield, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Pete,” Quinlan said. “There are still big holes in our case.”

  “Such as?”

  “We don’t have any evidence connecting Chesterfield to the poisoned candy in the Randall murder, and the evidence is even weaker in Gentry’s case.”

  Ragland leaned back in his chair and grinned. “That’s the beauty of having two murders with the same MO and a defendant with a motive to kill both victims. I’ll introduce evidence of the Gentry murder at Chesterfield’s trial for the murder of Sophie Randall and vice versa. That will give the jurors in both trials strong circumstantial evidence that Chesterfield killed Randall and Gentry.”

  “I still don’t see proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Quinlan said. “We d
on’t even have conclusive evidence that Gentry died from cyanide poisoning.”

  Ragland flashed Quinlan a patronizing smile. “Leave proving the case to me, Morris. I’ve got the law degree.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “What do you think, Roger?” Ragland asked.

  “You make some good points,” Dillon said in an attempt to be diplomatic, “but I don’t think we have enough to go for an indictment.”

  “Maybe we can get that extra something when we talk to Chesterfield.”

  “Aren’t you worried that you’ll tip him off?” Dillon asked.

  “It’s too late to worry about that. I called him and he’s expecting us to visit this afternoon.” Ragland stood up. “Gentlemen, let’s take a trip to the coast. Oh, and when we arrive, let me handle the questions. I’m used to dealing with the class of people who gain admission to the Westmont.”

  * * *

  Most of Oregon’s four million citizens live close to I-5, the highway that runs north to south from Canada to Mexico, so Oregon is sparsely populated east or west of the interstate. The road from Portland to the Pacific passed through small towns, farmland, forests, and mountains. Morris Quinlan drove along it in a driving rain.

  When they crossed the Coast Range, Roger Dillon saw patches of snow in the forest. Once they turned south onto the highway that ran along the coast, he distracted himself by watching violent waves crash into the massive rock formations that jutted out of the churning Pacific.

  Several miles south of Lincoln City, Quinlan turned seaward onto a narrow, unmarked, gravel driveway bounded by evergreens and shrubbery. The unpaved driveway stopped at a high stone wall divided by a gate. Quinlan lowered his window and pressed a button embedded in an intercom. Ragland was expected, and the gate swung open as soon as the detective identified their party. As they continued along a paved driveway, gaps in the foliage gave Dillon fleeting views of an unruly ocean. A final turn revealed a modern glass, steel, and weathered wood house that sprawled along a cliff. Below the cliff was a sandy windswept beach.