Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland)

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Fine, how are you?” Jake smiled, ignoring his mother’s question, kissing her quickly as he stepped inside. “Are you off to some event? I’m headed to the basement again.”

  “Sweetheart.” His mother fiddled with a bright blue stone at her neck, looked at the hardwood floor of the entryway. She touched the petals of a crimson rose, a bouquet on the sideboard. “Seriously. What’re you looking for down there? It’s just old papers. Lilac Sunday was a long time ago. There’s nothing—”

  “There might be,” he said. “I’ll know when I find it. Don’t worry. Have fun.”

  Diva nudged and snuffled him, following him down the basement stairs, wanting to play, but soon gave up, defeated by Jake’s attention to the file cabinets. Eventually, with the dog snoring beside him, Jake realized he’d spent more than an hour pulling individual files, one by one, opening them, and returning each to exactly the same place.

  It felt as if Grampa were watching.

  Again and again, Jake pulled out a file and flapped it open, scanning for the key words “Arboretum” and “ligature” and “Lilac” and “Schaefer”; found nothing; put it back. The search took on a rhythm of its own. Pull, search, return. Pull, search, return. Bank robberies and kidnappings, child abductions and armored car heists. Newspaper clippings cut from periodicals that no longer existed, the Record American and the Banner, the Southie News. Some old Registers, back when the typeface and margins were different. A history of true crime on crumbling newsprint, filed away as a record of—something. Why had Grandpa kept all this? For himself? Or for someone else to unearth, someone digging up the archeology of lawbreakers and miscreants?

  A history of law enforcement, too. The record of his grandfather’s career. Starting when there was no DNA testing, and no tox screens, no GPS or fax machines, no computer databases or surveillance cameras on every corner. Every file was Grandpa’s notes, his intuition or suspicions, handwritten in fountain pen or banged out on a crummy typewriter. Jake smiled, remembering when he’d asked to use it as a kid. The e’s were funny. And there they were, a smudge and a twist where every e was typed.

  He shoved another folder back into place, assessing the number of them remaining in the drawer. He could use a beer, and some food, and a real shower, not to mention sleep. Gordon Thorley himself, the subject of Jake’s subterranean paper search, was in a cell, waiting for the system to put him away for life. Jake would be happy to oblige him—if only some concrete evidence could nail the case closed. The note Thorley had written would help. Bing Sherrey was supposed to be getting it from the sister.

  “Two more, then I’m done,” Jake said out loud. He still had to prepare for tomorrow’s arraignment of Sandoval. He knew the DA would be going for no bail. As well she should. Sandoval was guilty was hell.

  He pulled out another file, flapped it open. The police report, dated 1994, described a raid on a Charlestown apartment, cops seizing a stash of “Rihipnil,” according to the file. “Rohypnol,” Jake muttered. It was probably new, back then, they had no idea how date rape drugs would soon change the law enforcement picture. But this file was no help.

  “Two more.” Jake smiled at his own pronouncement, knowing he would keep saying “two more” until he found the Lilac Sunday file. He checked his watch. He should call Jane, maybe. Find out what—if anything—this Peter Hardesty meant to her. But that would be a complicated conversation, and might be better in person. Maybe when he finished here? That would give him incentive to hurry.

  He leaned against the file cabinet, pondered the wisdom of searching for a needle in a—well, a file in a pile of files. He still had that stuff from the Register archives to check, too. He opened the next folder. And there it was.

  * * *

  Jane struggled to keep her eyes open, the words on the computer screen in front of her blurring, verging on mental defeat. Peter had called again, told her Cape radio was warning that traffic back to Boston was hellish, and that he might be late, but would pick her up at the Register as soon as he could. It was pushing nine, now, so much for the early dinner. But he’d promised new info on Sandoval, and the lure of that insight made her agree to the delay.

  It seemed like a wise decision at the time.

  She rubbed her hands across her face, then yawned with every part of her body. Two hours ago she’d spruced up as best she could, but by now her lipstick was certainly gone, and she probably had more mascara under her eyes than on her lashes. She’d passed the time, trying to be efficient, by starting on the bank story. Almost halfway through her column inches, the names of the customers Lizzie had given her taunted her from her notebook.

  Jane jiggled one foot, considering. What would it hurt to look up their phone numbers? Pros, she’d have real people in her story, always good to keep it personal and emotional. Otherwise, it’d essentially be a commercial for banks and their customer service, boring as hell, and the last thing Jane was interested in writing.

  Cons, it might get Liz McDivitt in trouble. But Jane had only been using Chrystal’s notes, exactly the way she’d been instructed. Still …

  “Why is this such a big deal? It is such a dumb story,” Jane said, the sound of her own voice surprising her in the almost-deserted newsroom. From what she could see over the shoulder-high walls of her cubicle it was only her and the water cooler, now that the bulldog edition deadline had passed. Victoria Marcotte’s office was dark. The night shift people were all out on stories, probably, writing on the fly, and production was on another floor. Daysiders were home. Where she should be.

  Without realizing she’d made the decision, Jane clicked onto an online phone number search Web site, chose the most unusual name from Chrystal’s notes, and typed it into the search engine.

  Christian, she typed, Iantosca. The screen paused, blinked, and came up with one match, Christian D. and Colleen Iantosca, on Hemenway Street. Near Fenway Park, Jane knew. Probably a brownstone-turned-condo. She copied the number into her notebook. Decided to try just one more. She smiled at her own rulemaking. “Just one more.” She knew she would do them all.

  She didn’t need her whole brain to look up phone numbers, so she could get something accomplished without much effort. She wouldn’t actually make any calls tonight of course, it was way too late, she’d never call anyone past eight, unless it was an emergency.

  She searched for another uncommon name. Cole Gantry. There might be several Gantrys, but Cole was unusual enough. And there it was, only one listing. Warrick Road in Allston. She copied the number, and started a new search.

  Her stomach grumbled. No wonder she was sleepy. Should she hit the vending machine? Have a little blood-sugar and caffeine boost of Twizzlers and Diet Coke? At this rate, she and Peter would be closing down the kitchen somewhere. She touched her hair again, thinking about a mirror, then took her hand away. It wasn’t a date, it was business. At his rate, it would be over breakfast.

  Maybe if she put her head down for a few minutes, she could sneak a tiny nap, and wake up when Peter called. No one would see her.

  She yawned again, scooted back the keyboard, and crossed her arms on the desk. Trying to get comfortable, she rested her forehead on one arm, and thought about pillows. Bed. Jake. She felt a little welling of sadness, a loss. Why hadn’t he called?

  43

  The police report, dated May 14, 1994, indicated two officers had responded to a West Roxbury location, Tollefson Street, and then in parentheses “arboretum.”

  Basement fluorescents buzzing overhead, Diva still snoring on the raffia rug, Jake couldn’t read it all fast enough, but he didn’t want to miss anything, either. He shook out one leg and forced his brain to shift into a lower gear, paying attention. Next page. In some cop’s misspelled printing, the stilted and mistake-ridden narrative of the story unfolded, the discovery of the “body of Carol Mary Schafer, WF, approx. 17–19 years of age…”

  The medical examiner’s report, signed with an almost-illegible slash of ball-point pen by a guy who’d l
eft town years ago, ruled the cause of death “strangulation by ligature” and “asphyxia.”

  The damn Lilac Sunday case was lore. The Grail. The white whale in the Boston PD, their commonality, the case they wrestled with over beers and coffee and during stakeouts when talk of current cases and police gossip ran out. A reward, big big bucks, sat waiting for whoever gave information leading to the killer. Every commissioner since Grandpa stamped it top priority. Jake read on, intent. Hunting.

  All the newspaper clippings, snipped with pinking shears and mostly from the Register and the American, ran the same photo of Carley Marie, a painting that hung over her parents’ mantel, her dark hair parted in the middle, a girl with a tentative smile and a string of pearls. Pages from Carley Marie’s Attleboro High school yearbook. The DA—now dead—called it “a heinous and brutal crime,” and warned he already “had his eye” on some suspects, “some more than others.” Jake’s grandfather, Boston Police Commissioner Ewan MacIlhenny Brogan, was not quoted. So far.

  Jake continued through the musty paperwork, looking for anything—anything—that would lead him to Gordon Thorley. Or to be fair, to anyone else. The DA had said there were “suspects,” plural. Where the hell was the info on that? He turned a few more pages. If there were suspects, there’d be some sort of—if not a list, then at least—huh.

  The back of his neck prickled as Jake ran a finger down the typewritten list of names, trying to read the whole thing at once, looking for the shape of the name “Gordon Thorley.” Some names had checkmarks next to them, some were crossed out, some circled, in different inks, the page possibly handled by more than one person. Today they’d euphemistically call these individuals “persons of interest,” but this coffee-stained document had no heading. Jake figured they wouldn’t have wanted some smart defense attorney to demand it—and then trumpet to a jury that since cops had targeted a whole list of people, wasn’t that reasonable doubt? With an untitled list like this, there would be a semblance of deniability. Interesting that Grandpa kept it.

  As his finger moved down the list, name after name, Jake felt his disappointment growing.

  He was almost to the end, no Thorley, and his mind was already rationalizing why it didn’t matter. Of course that name wasn’t there. No one had heard of Gordon Thorley, that was the whole dilemma from day one of his “confession.” If they had—wait.

  The name Gary Lee Smith was on the list.

  Crossed out.

  Jake sank into a wicker chair, its uneven legs wobbling, the woven seat so creaky he worried for a moment that it wouldn’t hold his weight. Diva, startled at the sound, raised her head with a halfhearted woof, then went back to sleep.

  Gary Lee Smith, according to Nate Frasca, had been Gordon Thorley’s first parole officer. Maybe this wasn’t a list of suspects? But a list of parole officers? Why? If they were POs, they’d have been on the job almost twenty years ago, so it was possible some of them were still working. Or at least, alive. A long-ish shot, but possible.

  Why did Grandpa keep this list? Cops were required to review notes in open cases every ten days. But when a case went cold, so did attention to it. Had Grandpa taken this from the police file? Or made a copy and added it to his own separate set of records?

  Jake leaned back in the chair, staring at the list. He turned it over, looking for something, anything, a date, a notation, a mark from a copier.

  Why was Gary Lee Smith’s name in a file that no one had opened for years?

  The armed robbery Thorley’d be nailed for didn’t happen until the year after the Carley Marie killing. Thorley was a free man—teenager?—when Carley Marie was killed. Had Gordon Thorley known Gary Lee Smith before Lilac Sunday?

  Jake pulled out his phone, did a quick Internet search. There was a Gary Lee Smith who was an ex-con in Oklahoma and one who was a realtor. There was a dead Marine, and a minor-league baseball player. Nothing about a Massachusetts parole officer.

  Nothing that fit.

  * * *

  Jane grabbed her throat, startled by the sound. She sat up, blinking, trying to figure out where she—oh, right. The newsroom. She’d put her head on her desk only for a moment.

  Her phone was ringing. Finally. Her desk phone, not her cell.

  She checked the time on her computer. Could this be Peter? Where was he? She grabbed the phone before the end of the second ring.

  The caller ID showed an in-house extension. Had someone seen her sleeping?

  “This is Jane Ryland,” she said, trying to sound awake.

  “Hey, you at your desk? I thought I saw the light. It’s Nick LaGarza, over at the copy desk?”

  Jane shook her head, clearing it. Stood up, looking over the shoulder-high walls of the cubicles. A lanky guy in a blue shirt stood popped up like a prairie dog, waving, phone clamped to one ear.

  “I see you.” She sat down again, preparing her defenses. It’s never a good thing when the copy desk calls. She hoped Nick needed some advice, or a phone number, and was not thinking of sending her on some story. She was off the clock, technically, dammit. No way, this time of night, she was going to—

  She paused, regrouping, finding her team player voice. No need to be upset about an imaginary assignment. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a possible homicide,” Nick said. “Over on Kenilworth? You know? Over by where the Southeast Expressway comes into Albany? Half a mile from here.”

  Jane pictured it, the highway ramp with its craggy overpass, graffiti-emblazoned with indecipherable gang tags and farfetched cartoon faces, the entryway to the iffy neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston. Peter had just been driving on the Southeast Expressway. Must have been.

  Could he have—stopped somewhere? On the way here? That’s why he was late? And now, what if Peter was—she swallowed, reconnoitering. She glanced at her cell. No messages. If the phone had rung, she’d have awakened before now. Where was Peter? Possible homicide? Peter?

  “Any details?” She was almost afraid of the answer. But whatever happened had already happened. “Do we know anything?”

  “That’s why we’re sending you.” Nick’s tone allowed no room to argue. “Right now. TJ will meet you there. Let us know, soon as you can. We’re holding the front page.”

  44

  Footsteps on the basement stairs. Footsteps? Fourth step from the top always creaked. There it was.

  Jake stopped, tucked the file under one arm, listened. His mother was still out, so who—? He hovered his right hand over his weapon. Diva came to all fours, woofed.

  “Oh hush, dog.” Gramma Brogan’s voice floated down the stairs, followed by chunky black shoes, then black yoga pants, then an oversized white shirt and a cropped bob of silver hair. One of Grandpa’s shirts, Jake knew. She still wore them, at least on her casual days. “Jake, are you still down there, dear?”

  Jake took his hand away from the Glock. Shooting Gramma Brogan. All he needed.

  “Yes, Gramma. I’m here.” Jake watched her take the last of the steps, hand on the banister, a suddenly dutiful Diva trotting over to prove she was on the case. Jake gave his grandmother a quick hug, a careful hug, felt like she was getting smaller every time he put his arms around her. She still smelled sweetly powdery, same as she had as long as Jake could remember. What was she doing here? This late?

  “I didn’t know you were—,” Jake began.

  “Your mother called.” She scratched Diva behind the ears. “Good dog. Now shoo.”

  “Mother called you at this time of night?”

  “She knows I don’t sleep, dear. It’s only nine thirty. I’ll be home in time for CSI. But she told me, in no uncertain terms, I was to derail your ‘obsession’ with Ewan’s files.”

  Jake shook his head as Gramma went on, pointing and gesturing in a perfect imitation of her daughter-in-law.

  “‘Get him away from Lilac Sunday,’ your mother said to me. ‘It’s haunted this family long enough.’” Gramma stood on tiptoe, holding on to Ja
ke’s arm, pecked him on the cheek.

  The Carley Marie case file was under his other arm, plain sight. There was no hiding from Gramma: Jake first learned that during the cigarette episode of 1992. And then the beer thing. He’d have to come clean and hope she wasn’t upset.

  “I’m happy to see you, Gram,” Jake started again. “But—”

  “But what, dear? I never told your mother I would stop you. In fact, I came to help, if I can.” She waved a hand, dismissive. “As if she could make Lilac Sunday go away by ignoring it.”

  She took a deep breath, fingered the white collar of her shirt. “That’s why Ewan kept these files, you know? For someone exactly like you. Your grandfather told me, again and again, there was something he must have missed. Some truth that escaped him. That’s why I insisted we keep them, even after he … well, he never got over it.”

  She stopped, her expression softening as she gestured toward the basement stairs. “Sometimes, before he got sick? He’d sit on that bottom step for hours, right there, turning and turning the pages in some file. Broke my heart.”

  She paused, looked up at Jake. “And his.”

  “I know, Gram.”

  The air conditioner kicked on, a low hum cutting through the silence. Diva growled, then went back to sleep.

  Gramma poked at the file under his arm. “So, Detective. The Brogans are on the case again.”

  “Both of us now, I guess.” Jake held out the paperwork. “Is this the same file?”

  Gramma took it, wrapped both arms around it, held it to her chest. Closed her eyes, briefly. Jake watched the manila rise, then fall. She wore her gold wedding band, still, on her left hand. Grandpa’s matching ring hung from a thin gold chain around her neck. Jake saw it first at his funeral, back in 2000. Since then, in sweats or in sapphires, Gramma wore that necklace.