The eyes of the other men locked for an instant. “The point is,” King said, “we don’t know.”
“Or we’re not sure,” Pratt added.
“Well, what is it?” McGuire said. “You don’t know? Or you’re not sure?”
“You know that old rule about never asking a question in court that you don’t already know the answer to?” Pinnington said. “We’ve got a lot of questions to which we don’t know the answers. We don’t know if Orin Flanigan was venturing into criminal areas, intentionally or not. Personally, I can’t imagine it. But we just don’t know. We don’t know if there’s an ethics concern here that the bar association may want to look into. We don’t know if some messy private matter could become public because it’s part of the murder investigation. If any of these things happen, we want to know how to deal with it before it becomes public. Not after.”
“Damage control,” McGuire said.
“Precisely.” Pratt nodded like a teacher hearing the correct answer from a prize student.
“What’s your opinion of the man heading the murder investigation?” Pinnington said.
“Donovan?” McGuire stared past Pinnington through the windows to the view beyond. Across the harbour, an aircraft rose from Logan Airport, the sun flashing for an instant from its wings. “He’s a cattle stampede in a china shop.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Pinnington said. “I don’t think subtlety is his strong suit. And that doesn’t help our position.”
“Look.” Pratt swiveled to face McGuire again, and paused to let everyone know he was about to make a significant statement. “Right this minute, in the boardrooms of some of the biggest corporations in New England, senior management people are talking about Orin’s murder. They know he was a senior partner, a major voice in this outfit’s management. Now they’re wondering what’s going on over here. They already know, if they read the papers, that he disappeared while on some kind of business. They’re sniffing scandal, whether it’s there or not.” He paused again, a little too theatrically, McGuire thought. “Those people are our clients. And they don’t want their corporate legal counsel to have even a whiff of wrongdoing, understand?”
“We’re talking about several million dollars in retainers and special fees here.” Pinnington leaned back in his chair and looked over his fingertips at McGuire. “We have to know what to say and how to say it, if this becomes a debacle.”
“Donovan and I are not exactly fraternity brothers.” McGuire smiled at Pinnington. “As you could see last night. He won’t co-operate with me any more than he has to.”
“So you’ll have to do it on your own,” Pinnington said. “Privately.”
“And discreetly,” Pratt added.
Pinnington sat forward. “Use your judgment,” he said. “You’ve got a sense of what this is all about. If you have to take off somewhere, you go. If you come across something you have to share with the police, of course you’re obligated to do so.”
“Just tell us first,” King said. “Give us a running start.”
“And keep Rosen informed,” Pratt said.
McGuire’s head turned to face Pratt. “Who?”
“Marv Rosen.” Pinnington was watching McGuire carefully. “We retain him as the firm’s criminal-law counsel. I thought I told you that.”
McGuire looked down, shaking his head. “If there’s anybody who dislikes me more than Phil Donovan, it’s Rosen.”
“We can’t let that matter. Besides.” Pinnington rose from his chair and looked out the window. “I just spoke to him a few minutes ago, told him to expect a call. He said he has great respect for you as a police officer.”
McGuire snorted. “He charged me with assault and threatened to sue me and the city of Boston for a million dollars.”
“That was strictly business on his part,” Pinnington said, his back to the group. “Good lawyers don’t harbour grudges. It gets in the way of their work.”
McGuire was about to speak when the door behind him opened and all four men turned to look. It was Connie Woodson, Pinnington’s secretary. She leaned through the partially opened door.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But there’s a personal telephone call for you, Mr. McGuire, and it sounds terribly urgent.”
Pinnington raised his eyebrows. “You want to take it here?”
McGuire rose from the chair and reached across Pinnington’s desk for the telephone.
“It’s line three,” the secretary said before closing the door.
McGuire lifted the receiver, punched the flashing light, and barked his name into the receiver. He listened to a woman’s voice delivered in a flat, bureaucratic tone. Then he thanked her, replaced the receiver, stood up, and looked out the window at the harbour view again. Another aircraft was rising into the air at Logan. McGuire felt fleeting envy for the passengers, whom he imagined were setting off for California or Bermuda.
“That was a matron,” he said, his eyes on the jet. “At the jail. On Nashua Street.” King sat erect in his chair. Pratt looked at Pinnington, who was watching McGuire intently.
“They have Susan Schaeffer in custody for questioning,” McGuire said, surprised at the strength of his own voice. “She’s being held as a possible suspect in Flanigan’s murder.” He was staring out the window where the aircraft was completing a turn, heading west now.
Bermuda, hell, McGuire thought. It’s probably just going to Cleveland.
Chapter Fifteen
McGuire was directed down a narrow hall lined with metal doors to a guard who ushered him into a room slightly larger than a closet. He sat at a counter staring through heavy glass into an identical cubicle in the next room. Just beyond the cubicle, two guards stood gossiping against a pillar. McGuire grew aware of others on either side of him, prisoners and visitors facing each other through armored glass, the voice of each audible to the other through telephone handsets.
One of the guards on the prisoners’ side nudged the other, and both looked to their left, beyond McGuire’s vision. He followed their gaze until a uniformed female guard appeared, leading Susan Schaeffer around the low wall forming the cubicle on the prisoner’s side.
She was walking with her head and her eyes lowered. Her shoulders sagged, and when the matron guided her to the chair and she looked up for the first time to see McGuire sitting across from her beyond the glass, she began to cry. The matron watched her in disapproval for a moment, then withdrew to stand alongside the two male guards. From their glances and expressions, McGuire knew they were talking about her.
She breathed deeply, withdrew a crumpled tissue from a pocket of her smock, and dabbed at her eyes. Then she lifted the receiver to her ear and spoke into it. “Thank you,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Thank you for coming. You’re the only one I could think of to call.”
“Have they charged you with anything?” McGuire asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? If you’re not charged with anything, why are they holding you here?”
She answered with a shake of her head.
“Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“They’re getting me one. They said they would.”
“What happened?”
“They came to arrest me at the candle shop. A couple of hours ago. Two detectives.”
“Who?” McGuire rarely felt sympathy for prisoners, because they all had a reason for being held within steel cages, at least temporarily. But his instincts told him this woman had no reason to be here, and her vulnerability appeared more intense than he expected.
“I don’t remember their names,” she said. “One has red hair, he’s bitter and sarcastic . . .”
“Donovan.”
“Yes.” She rested her head on her hand. “Yes, that’s him.”
“What did they tell you? When they first pick
ed you up, what did they say?”
“That I was being brought here to be questioned about Orin Flanigan’s murder.” She raised her eyes to McGuire’s. “I didn’t even know he was dead,” she said. “Last night, when you dropped me off, I had a long hot bath and read a book and slept late this morning, so I didn’t hear the news, didn’t see a newspaper . . .”
“Why were they talking to you?” McGuire asked. Something was wrong. You don’t jail a murder suspect on the basis of an hour’s questioning, unless you want to confirm hard evidence before laying a charge.
“They didn’t tell me. But they knew so much about Orin and me, about our . . . relationship.”
“I’m going to ask some questions, find out what’s going on. But you have to tell me now. Do you know anything about Flanigan’s murder? Anything at all?”
Her eyes appeared to sag at the corners, and she shook her head.
“Okay, hang in there. Let me find out what’s going on . . .”
She nodded, looking directly at him. “Please get me out of here,” she said. “I can’t stand it in here.”
“I know,” McGuire said. He looked across at the matron, who removed the receiver from Susan’s hand. McGuire burst from the cubical and accosted the duty officer at the front desk. “Where the hell’s Donovan?” he snapped.
“From homicide?” The officer shrugged his shoulders. “I guess he’s up on Berkeley . . .”
McGuire spun on his heel, not responding to the officer’s reminder that he hadn’t signed out, that somebody’d get in trouble if McGuire’s signature wasn’t in the Signed Out column.
This time Stu Cauley was handling day security on Berkeley Street. When McGuire demanded to know if Donovan was upstairs, Cauley nodded, grinned, and said, “Tear a strip off his butt for me, will you?”
McGuire rode alone in the elevator, and grunted in acknowledgment at the few old and tired faces of detectives who recognized him when he stepped out on the Investigations floor. Across the room he saw Donovan sitting on a corner of his desk, a paper in his hand, speaking into the telephone. Donovan looked up at McGuire, then back at the paper in his hand. “Well, if you gotta, you gotta,” he said. “But I’m keeping it in the file anyway, because there’s something to this, I don’t care what you say, or she says, or this dink standing across from me says.” He grinned at McGuire, showing two crooked front teeth behind his thin lips. “McGuire, remember him? Or are you too young. Maybe you don’t go back that far?” He tossed the sheet of paper aside, then slid from his desk and replaced the receiver. “Don Higgins says hello.” Donovan sat in his chair and looked out the window. Higgins was a prosecuting attorney, a quiet, methodical man whom McGuire considered above corruption and profoundly boring.
“He’s not going to press charges against Susan Schaeffer,” McGuire said.
“He can’t.” Donovan shrugged. “We need more. We’ll get it.”
“What the hell are you doing, locking her up down there? You want to hold her for questioning, you can do it here, downstairs. You got her locked up with whores, with muggers. How the hell can you do that?”
“You don’t know?” Donovan grinned at McGuire. “You really as dumb as you look, McGuire?”
McGuire breathed deeply. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is none of your business.”
“If you haven’t got anything to charge her with, let her go. She’s dying in there.”
“Another couple hours won’t kill her.”
“Donovan, you are such scum.”
Donovan smiled as though hearing a compliment from an unlikely source. “What, we’ve been down to Nashua Street, have we? Checkin’ out our little piece a cheese, seein’ how she’s handling gray bars and black dykes?”
“She had nothing to do with Flanigan’s murder.”
“Yeah? Well, a couple of people disagree with you, McGuire.”
“Somebody gave you a blind tip and you dove right into it, didn’t you?”
“A good tip, McGuire. And not blind. Somebody who knows what was goin’ on between her and the victim, day after day. I knew you’d show up here. When I left that law office where you hang out these days, I knew you’d find out we picked up this Schaeffer woman, and I knew you’d come in, blowin’ off steam as though you’re still cock of the walk around here. I figured it would take you till three o’clock, but I don’t mind if you’re a little early . . .”
McGuire closed his eyes and looked away. “Lorna Robbins, right?” He remembered Lorna’s embarrassed attitude that morning as Donovan and the officers removed files from Flanigan’s office.
“Lorna Robbins knew Flanigan’s comings and goings, knew about the relationship between him and Schaeffer, knew a hell of a lot more about Schaeffer than you do, McGuire. She’s a credible source for an arrest on suspicion of first-degree murder.”
“She tell you everything, Donovan? Did she?”
“Like what?” Donovan opened a desk drawer, removed a package of Dentyne, unwrapped two sticks, and popped them into his mouth.
“Like the fact that Lorna and I were dating each other up until a couple of nights ago?”
Donovan watched McGuire, chewing the gum with his mouth open. “Dating? What’s that, something you do in high school? You were sleeping with her, the Robbins woman, right?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Because you know, if you were and you dropped her for the Schaeffer broad, I mean, who could blame you?”
“Lorna Robbins sent you to Susan Schaeffer because she is hurt and jealous. If she said, if she even hinted, that Susan had anything to do with murdering Flanigan, she’s doing it for revenge. That’s her only motive, and you and Don Higgins know it. So let her out now or I’ll see that you’re slapped with a habeas corpus so goddamn fast . . .”
“We’re talking like a lawyer now, are we?” Donovan spoke across the room to two detectives who had been eavesdropping on the conversation. “See what happens, you hang around lawyers too long? You forget you used to be a cop and you start talkin’ like them.”
“Just do it, Donovan.” McGuire turned to leave.
“Hey,” Donovan called to his back. “Hey, McGuire. You think you know everything about this case and that broad, down there on Nashua? Well, I can tell you right now, you don’t know a damn thing, McGuire, and when you find out what’s really goin’ on, you’re gonna look like the dummy you are.”
“Now, please don’t ask me to reveal any details.” Don Higgins’s carefully modulated voice buzzed in McGuire’s ear. Beyond the telephone booth, the midday traffic on Boylston Street hummed past, and McGuire had to cover his other ear with his hand.
“I’m not asking for anything, Don.” McGuire realized he was hungry, and he promised himself a steak at Zoot’s later. “I just want to know. Beyond the things that Lorna Robbins said about Susan Schaeffer, was there any other evidence?”
“Only enough for questioning.”
“It still must have taken a pretty strong statement to haul somebody in like that.”
“There were claims of direct involvement, yes.”
“Claims? That’s it? Unsubstantiated stuff, gossip? Is that enough to be booked on suspicion of murder these days?”
“It came from a source close to the victim.” Higgins sounded defensive. “His own private secretary. You have to assume some validity. And there were other considerations.”
“Do you know there’s a motive on Robbins’s part? For saying what she said?”
“Phil Donovan called and told me that, a few minutes ago.” McGuire heard Higgins exhale into the receiver. “Okay, repeat this and I’ll deny it, but I have a feeling Donovan acted prematurely in making the arrest. Certainly, had we known this Robbins woman had reason to attack Miss Schaeffer . . . well, frankly we’re all looking a little silly here.”
�
��Don, I can’t believe you agreed to book her without something more solid.”
“It wasn’t just the tip. It was the other thing too.”
“What other thing?” McGuire heard a moment of dead air. “Is this is the other consideration you talked about? What other thing?”
“I can’t go into that.”
“Aw, come on, Don. Look, let’s say I have a personal interest in this Schaeffer woman.”
“All the more reason I shouldn’t say anything.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Don. Come on, it’s me, McGuire. You and I have traded secrets over the years . . .”
“Did you ever take this woman home?”
“Yeah, I took her home. Just last night. Nice little brownstone on Queensberry. What about it?”
“Then you know it’s a halfway house.”
McGuire closed his eyes. “No,” he said. He had never lied to Don Higgins in his life, and he didn’t feel like creating any sense of bravado, any false knowledge now. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.” Higgins’ voice softened. The two men, so contrasting in every aspect of their lives—social level, education, demeanour—had always retained something more than professional respect and something less than affection for each other. “She is on parole, so she is subject to arrest and confinement for twenty-four hours at any time on suspicion of possible felonious conduct in this state. You know that, McGuire. Anyway, Donovan’s partner on this thing, he made inquiries today and confirmed her presence there every evening for the past several weeks. We could hold her overnight if we wanted, but I instructed Donovan to release her. By the way, I would appreciate it if you didn’t identify me as the source of this information.”
McGuire turned to watch the traffic pass. “Thanks, Don. I owe you.”
Haunted Hearts Page 18
