Final Option

he’d just lived hard.
    “You Kate Millholland?”
    “Yes.”
    “Any relation to the Millhollands that live on Jessup Road?”
    “My parents.”
    I waited for another question, but none came. Neither of us spoke. The quiet lasted long enough to get on my nerves.
    “Are you going to tell me what’s happened?” I asked, trying hard not to sound testy.
    “Why don’t you tell me?” answered the detective evenly.
    “I had a meeting this morning with Bart Hexter. When I pulled in the drive I saw his car down there in the gully. I stopped to see if there was something wrong. I found him behind the wheel of his car. He was wearing his pajamas. It looked like he’d been shot. I’m pretty sure that he was dead.”
    “He was the last time I checked.” replied Ruskowski. He produced a small notebook from his breast pocket and began flipping through it. We just stood there for a while, the silence growing larger and more awkward with every passing second. I felt puzzled and annoyed. I thought policemen were supposed to ask questions. Maybe Ruskowski thought that if he just let things hang long enough I’d be tempted to blurt something out—a confession perhaps.
    “Was it suicide?” I asked, finally ending the game. “Is that what you’d expect it to be?”
    “I expected him to be here, alive, for this meeting,” I shot back.
    “What was your meeting about?”
    “Business.”
    “What kind of business?”
    “Mr. Hexter was a futures trader,” I replied, appalled at the speed with which I had slipped into the past tense when it came to Bart Hexter. “The CFTC—that’s the Commodity Futures Trading Commission—is considering bringing charges against him and his company for exceeding position limits in soybean contracts in March and April of last year.”
    “Is that something that might have driven him to take his own life?”
    “I wouldn’t think so. It’s not even a criminal offense,” I replied, remembering the time that I’d heard Hexter refer to a twenty-five thousand dollar government fine as a “parking ticket.”
    “How long ago did you and Mr. Hexter schedule this meeting?”
    “Late Friday afternoon.”
    “Who else knew about it?”
    “I don’t know. His secretary. My secretary. I’d assume his wife since we were meeting at his home....“
    “Have you met Mrs. Hexter?” interjected Ruskowski.
    “Yes.”
    “Friendly with her?”
    “Not really. She’s more my mother’s generation.“
    “Do you own a gun?”
    “No,” I lied.
    “How long have you known Bart Hexter?”
    “He’d been my client less than a year.”
    “You didn’t know him before that? Perhaps socially?”
    “I knew of him, of course. I’d seen him at parties, but I didn’t really meet him until last spring. He had just fired his attorney and was shopping for new counsel.”
    “And you got the job.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why did he choose you?” inquired Ruskowski. There was something in his tone and the way his eyes raked over me that made my flesh crawl.
    “I’m sure he thought I’d do the best job,” I answered flatly.
    “There wasn’t some other reason?” Ruskowski leered.
    “Why don’t we stick to what’s relevant?” I snapped.
    “Miss Millholland,” barked Ruskowski, “I am a homicide detective, and you are standing at the scene of a crime. That means that on this little piece of earth, what I say goes. I ask the questions, and you answer them. I don’t have to explain myself to you. I don’t have to consider your feelings or your reputation. All I have to do is my job, which today means finding the dickhead who shot Bart Hexter. Now, if you don’t like my questions, I’d be happy to have you handcuffed and taken to the police station where you can wait around until I find the time to talk to you again.”
    “It really must be great,” I said, my temper rising to run roughshod over my judgment, “to have the kind of job where you can have an ego hard-on like this in public.”
    This time the silence lasted long enough for me to envision myself spending the rest of the day enjoying the hospitality of the Lake Forest Police Department, harvesting the fruits of my own big mouth.
    “Follow me,” Ruskowski snapped. Then he turned on his heel and headed briskly down the drive toward the gully.
    I followed him, scrambling a bit to catch up, as he made his way down the incline toward Hexter’s car. Already they had managed to string yellow police-line-do-not-cross tape around some