Read Online Without Warning by David Rosenfelt - Free Book Online
Authors: David Rosenfelt
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school times, which seemed a lot safer than the years afterwards.
I actually would have liked for it to go longer, not so much because I was enjoying myself, but because it would delay what I had to do when I got home.
I was going to read my wife’s murder book.
I had never read it before. I doubt that I had even seen it, such was my discipline in staying away from the case. But there was no avoiding the need to go through it this time, and I had dug it out of the archives. It was locked in the trunk of my car, waiting for me to stop ordering additional cups of coffee.
Katie and I were mostly quiet on the way back to Wilton. She asked me to take her to the office, and I assumed she called a late meeting to update her staff on the possible results of our dinner. When I dropped her off in front of the building, she said a quick “Thanks, Jake,” and got out of the car.
When I got home, I opened a bottle of beer, turned on a West Coast Red Sox game for background noise, and opened the murder book.
The first thing I saw were the pictures of the scene, pictures that included Jenny’s bloody, naked body. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, and while you never get fully hardened to it, I had learned to achieve a professional detachment.
Until that moment.
For a short while I thought I would not be able to breathe, and I was okay with that. Death by asphyxiation seemed preferable to having to continue looking through that book.
But I wouldn’t let myself look away, because if I did, I would not have been able to look back. I had to know the scene, every detail of it, because that’s what an investigating detective does. This wasn’t as good as being there when the murder was first discovered, but it was as close as I could get.
There were thirty-eight pictures in all, and I probably spent an hour going through them. I would like to say it became easier the longer I did it, but I’d be lying. It was awful from the very first moment, and remained that way.
The murder book includes every aspect, every detail of an investigation, and Hank had done a characteristically professional job putting this book together. The evidentiary records, the witness reports, his contemporaneous notes, it was all meticulously listed and recorded.
And it told a compelling story, one that had inevitably led to Roger Hagel’s arrest and conviction. He had been seen leaving our house the morning of the murder, and clothing with Jenny’s blood was found in his own house. The knife that had been proven to be the murder weapon was in a sealed plastic bag in a dumpster behind Roger and Katie’s house, wiped clean of prints.
Large sections of the book were devoted to Roger and Jenny’s affair and subsequent breakup, since that was considered a motivation for the murder. There was even a six-page interview with me, given at the time, detailing my knowledge of what had gone on between them, and how Jenny had broken it off.
In the interview I did not express an opinion about anyone’s guilt or innocence, and I remembered making a conscious effort to keep it that way. I certainly knew by then that Roger was a suspect, and though I had no direct knowledge of his guilt, I probably believed that he had done it. My opinion would have been of little value, however, because I was numb and not thinking clearly for weeks after Jenny’s death.
A longer interview with Katie was included in the book, and she did not display a similar reticence about giving her point of view. Her marriage to Roger had never really recovered from the revelation of the affair, and she openly admitted that they were likely headed for divorce.
But despite that, she was vehement in her belief that he could not have committed that crime. He was an adulterer, of that there was no question, but he was not a murderer. She had no explanation for the evidence against him that had been uncovered, but none of it seemed to shake her faith in his innocence.
And based on the capsule
I actually would have liked for it to go longer, not so much because I was enjoying myself, but because it would delay what I had to do when I got home.
I was going to read my wife’s murder book.
I had never read it before. I doubt that I had even seen it, such was my discipline in staying away from the case. But there was no avoiding the need to go through it this time, and I had dug it out of the archives. It was locked in the trunk of my car, waiting for me to stop ordering additional cups of coffee.
Katie and I were mostly quiet on the way back to Wilton. She asked me to take her to the office, and I assumed she called a late meeting to update her staff on the possible results of our dinner. When I dropped her off in front of the building, she said a quick “Thanks, Jake,” and got out of the car.
When I got home, I opened a bottle of beer, turned on a West Coast Red Sox game for background noise, and opened the murder book.
The first thing I saw were the pictures of the scene, pictures that included Jenny’s bloody, naked body. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, and while you never get fully hardened to it, I had learned to achieve a professional detachment.
Until that moment.
For a short while I thought I would not be able to breathe, and I was okay with that. Death by asphyxiation seemed preferable to having to continue looking through that book.
But I wouldn’t let myself look away, because if I did, I would not have been able to look back. I had to know the scene, every detail of it, because that’s what an investigating detective does. This wasn’t as good as being there when the murder was first discovered, but it was as close as I could get.
There were thirty-eight pictures in all, and I probably spent an hour going through them. I would like to say it became easier the longer I did it, but I’d be lying. It was awful from the very first moment, and remained that way.
The murder book includes every aspect, every detail of an investigation, and Hank had done a characteristically professional job putting this book together. The evidentiary records, the witness reports, his contemporaneous notes, it was all meticulously listed and recorded.
And it told a compelling story, one that had inevitably led to Roger Hagel’s arrest and conviction. He had been seen leaving our house the morning of the murder, and clothing with Jenny’s blood was found in his own house. The knife that had been proven to be the murder weapon was in a sealed plastic bag in a dumpster behind Roger and Katie’s house, wiped clean of prints.
Large sections of the book were devoted to Roger and Jenny’s affair and subsequent breakup, since that was considered a motivation for the murder. There was even a six-page interview with me, given at the time, detailing my knowledge of what had gone on between them, and how Jenny had broken it off.
In the interview I did not express an opinion about anyone’s guilt or innocence, and I remembered making a conscious effort to keep it that way. I certainly knew by then that Roger was a suspect, and though I had no direct knowledge of his guilt, I probably believed that he had done it. My opinion would have been of little value, however, because I was numb and not thinking clearly for weeks after Jenny’s death.
A longer interview with Katie was included in the book, and she did not display a similar reticence about giving her point of view. Her marriage to Roger had never really recovered from the revelation of the affair, and she openly admitted that they were likely headed for divorce.
But despite that, she was vehement in her belief that he could not have committed that crime. He was an adulterer, of that there was no question, but he was not a murderer. She had no explanation for the evidence against him that had been uncovered, but none of it seemed to shake her faith in his innocence.
And based on the capsule
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