Free Don't Die Under the Apple Tree by Amy Patricia Meade

Strikes . And even that wasn’t the classically styled, handsomely familiar pack of Lucky Strikes to which he had grown accustomed, but the drab white “gone to war” variety, since the ink used in the signature green and gold packaging was laden with chromium and copper, which could be put to better use in shell casings.
    Riordan snuffed the partially smoked cigarette in a nearby ash stand and walked to the rear doors of the building. Upon poking his head out, he was greeted with the whirs and bangs of rivet guns and hammers. “Remind Mr. Del Vecchio that I’m still waiting to speak with him,” he shouted to the officer standing guard outside Finch’s office.
    The uniformed officer nodded and Riordan, eager to return to the relative quiet of the holding room, swiftly shut the sound-muffling solid steel door. Alone with his thoughts, he reflected upon his conversation with Rosie Keefe. The chance encounter had answered few questions, but it had done much to solidify his belief in the woman’s innocence.
    First, there was her bid to be rehired. If Mrs. Keefe was guilty of Finch’s murder, it was unlikely that she’d return to the scene of the crime. One might suggest that she sought to interfere with the police investigation. But, in Riordan’s experience, such schemes were strictly the stuff of books and films. In real life, all but the coldest killers had an aversion to revisiting the crime scene. Even if they managed to overcome their feelings of disgust, they would find that tampering with evidence was extremely difficult, if not impossible. Upon arriving at a crime scene, law enforcement officers immediately cordoned off the area and set about collecting physical evidence; anything “discovered” after the initial search was treated with a good deal of skepticism.
    Second, Rosie Keefe didn’t, in Riordan’s mind, quite fit the profile of the killer. Physically, she was petite—five foot four at best—with slender wrists and a narrow waist. Her ability to land a stapler on Finch’s temple was the combined result of Keefe’s need to escape and Finch being caught off guard.
    The scene later that day would have been much different. After lying in wait for hours, Keefe might have still been angry and seeking vengeance, but she would have been operating under far less adrenaline than she had been during her initial confrontation with Finch. As for Finch, he might not have anticipated retaliation from Keefe herself, but he still would have practiced caution during the walk home, just in case an angry brother, husband, or boyfriend was waiting for him at the end of his shift.
    Taking into account the location of Finch’s body and the number of shipyard employees on the streets at 5:00 p.m., one could only conclude that Finch had been lured beneath the dock and then murdered. Riordan refused to believe that Finch, given the morning’s events, would have followed Keefe anywhere, never mind beneath a dark pier on a cool, overcast April evening. But if, for the sake of argument, he had, he certainly would have been wary. If there was the slightest indication that things were not as they seemed, Finch would have lashed out and it would have been Keefe’s, not Finch’s, body that was discovered beneath the pier.
    Even from a psychological standpoint, Rosie Keefe didn’t fit the role of killer. Although not an expert, Riordan had read enough case studies to recognize the rudimentary signs of an unhinged personality. In an attempt to get her to let down her defenses, he had thrown a variety of comments in Keefe’s direction, all of which she’d fielded without undue or inappropriate emotion.
    Riordan’s thoughts were interrupted as the rear doors of the brick building swung open abruptly, allowing a tall, uniformed policeman and the short, stocky figure of Tony Del Vecchio admittance. “You wanted to see to me?”
    â€œI