Will and Dodds had immediately looked at her estranged husband, Bud. The spouse almost always was the killer. Simple, remember? Their marriage had been marked by physical abuse and she had a restraining order against him. He was also a Cincinnati cop who had faced more than his share of brutality complaints. Theresa’s time of death had been estimated at around three a.m. the day her body had been discovered. Bud had an alibi-he had been on duty on the overnight shift. But that broke down within a day when it turned out that he had gone off his beat early, his shift commander agreeing to cover for him, thinking he needed to run an errand. Day after day, Will and Dodds had interrogated Chambers in one of the dismal little rooms at headquarters. A cop with a bad temper and a history of threats against his wife had finally killed her. Where had he been that day? Chambers had said he hadn’t been feeling well, so he went home to his apartment and took a nap. No alibi. Lots of motive.
But it hadn’t been a simple case. No witnesses could place Chambers at the scene anytime near the murder. He had claimed he hadn’t seen Theresa for two weeks before the murder. The kitchen had lacked Chambers’ fingerprints. He had said it was because he hadn’t lived there for a month, but Will thought Chambers had wiped it down. Other evidence-bloody shoeprints, fibers, skin under the fingernails-was missing. A search warrant executed at Chambers’ apartment turned up nothing. The knife was missing from the scene, and wouldn’t turn up for days, when Dodds went back to Theresa’s house, did his homicide stroll, and finally found it in the back of the freezer. It had no trace evidence.
On the fifth day of interrogation, Chambers had seemed to crack. He changed his story, said he had left patrol to visit his girlfriend. She would back him up. Her name was Darlene Corley, a white-trash woman living down in the flood zone of the Columbia neighborhood. They had found her in an ancient, paint-peeled duplex that seemed like the moon compared to the Victorians being restored a block or two away. They had stood on the porch talking to her, and she had said that she had been with Chambers early that morning. He had pulled his patrol car right up to the curb there, and come inside and they had made love. The two detectives were about to invite themselves inside when the call came: another homicide in Mount Adams, same MO.
