“Oh, Mr. Maitland, I’m so—” Deenie grabbed a stack of napkins from the tray, blotting and wiping and trying to stop the flow of spreading coffee. The cup had knocked over a gold-framed photograph, clattering it from the desk to the floor. It landed facedown, milky liquid dripping on the velvet-covered backing and splashing onto the carpet.
As Deenie and Maitland scrambled to clean up, Jane grabbed a wad of tissues from a box on a side table and picked up the photograph, blotting it dry. Pretty photo, Jane thought, putting it back on the desk. Umbrellas on a beach. The muffled trill of her phone came from her tote bag next to the swivel chair. Whoever was calling would have to wait. She had to find out about Katharine, then about Kenna Wilkes. Nothing could be more important than that.
By the time Deenie backed out of the room, carrying a sodden pile of documents and paperwork, Jane’s phone had rung twice more. Annoying, but she couldn’t answer it. She stood by her chair, waiting.
Maitland looked disdainfully at the blotches now scattered across his yellow silk tie and once-white shirt. “So much for this,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jane said. “Mondays.”
Maitland checked his watch. “So. Excitement over. We done here?”
Jane couldn’t help but smile. Good try. “No, actually. You were about to tell me about Katharine, Mr. Maitland. Where is Owen Lassiter’s first wife?”
47
Matt stared at the ceiling, biting his thumbnail, mind racing. Flopped on the white chenille spread of his hotel’s king-sized bed, still wearing his running shoes and the jacket he’d managed to retrieve. At two in the morning, after carding open his hotel room door, he’d slugged down the entire five-dollar bottle of fancy water on the nightstand, then filled it with tap water from the bathroom. He’d never been so thirsty. He hadn’t slept since then, not at all.
What to do? Now, the morning light through the window blinds made slashes of shadow above him. Like bars in a prison cell. The heater kicked on, humming. I have to figure out what to do.
There’d been no cops banging on his door—why should there be? No accusing phone calls from—whoever. Why should there be? Far as anyone in Boston was concerned, he was no one, with no connections. And certainly no connection with Holly Neff. Or whatever name she’d been using.
He almost dumped Holly’s little purse in the water after she’d gone in. Then worried—maybe it’d float, or wash ashore. He’d stuffed it under his jacket. Her keys, too. But like that old movie, there’d be no reason for anyone to link him to her. He was a stranger in town, and so was she.
What if the waitress in the bar remembers me? The guy selling newspapers at the post office? Are my fingerprints on her car? What if they are? No one has my fingerprints to compare them to.
His brain ached. Do they?
He’d spent the last five hours talking himself down from the ledge. It had all been an accident, right? An accident.
He flopped over, punching an oversized pillow into place, and stared out the window, unseeing. The movie of what happened kept playing in his head, over and over and over.
They had sat side by side on that molded-metal bench by the merry-go-round. He felt uncomfortable, awkward, the bench hard and cold and unyielding. Night gathered, making the wind chilly over the harbor. Seagulls squawked overhead, airplanes roaring their descent to Logan. Did anyone see the two of us there? Countless office and hotel windows overlooked the park, but who would have cared about the two figures by the water?
Holly had been clinging. Crowding him. Suffocating him. “You’re still not married,” she said. Putting her face too close to his. “And I know why. That’s why I’m here. To take care of everything. To make you happy. This is all for you. For you, Matt.”
She outlined her plans—and he listened to her explanation with escalating dismay and increasing alarm. She was completely nuts.
He had made one frigging bad choice. Back in B-school, he’d told Holly the truth. And now, this was his payback? Maybe he could talk her out of it. Convince her not to do it. Pay her off. Everyone had a price. But she kept talking and talking.
“Your father killed your ability to love.” Holly said this, solemn and sincere, her voice trembling with the strength of her belief. “He left you, deserted you, deserted your poor mother. That’s why you couldn’t love me. That’s why you can’t love.”
He couldn’t breathe. What was she, friggin’ Dr. Phil? She was—crazy. Wasn’t she?
“Your mother died because of him, and your life was taken away. Your family was taken away. Your father. And then your mother. That’s exactly what you told me that day by the river. You could have been the governor’s son,” she said. “That’s what you told me. Instead, you were the throwaway child. The child whose father destroyed everything.”
It was true. It was true. That’s what he’d said, probably. He could almost hear his own mother telling them that. But it was long ago. Long ago. Now, after all these years, he only wished to be a son again. He wanted his father back. Someday he could make it work. But he wasn’t about to tell that to Holly.
“I couldn’t let that happen to you,” Holly persisted. “He ignored you, he erased you. You said that word, erased. He killed your mother. Didn’t he? Didn’t he? So what do you think he deserves in return?”
Matt’s stomach lurched. He couldn’t take his eyes off this nutcase.
“But now, I have the power. The power to give you back your life. The power to destroy Owen Lassiter.”
What was he supposed to do? Call the cops? “You’re not planning to—”
Holly’s laugh, brittle and crystalline, floated out across the deserted park. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m not crazy. This is all so we can be together. You found me, and that proves it’s meant to be. But let me ask you—he does what he wants, takes what he wants, leaves his family behind. Does he just—get away with that?”
Matt couldn’t find the words to answer. Thought of his mother. His poor baby sister, who’d found her. But—
“When the time comes,” Holly continued, “the good Owen Lassiter will not be going to Washington. Oh, he won’t be dead, my darling Matt. He’ll just wish he were.”
She had rubbed up against him, her eyes shining.
“You’ll be free of him. We’ll be together. Won’t that be perfect?”
A double rap on the hotel room door jolted him from his memories. Holy shit. The cops. How did they find me? And why? He bolted to his feet, yanked off his jacket, mussed his hair, calculated excuses and alibis and denials.
“Maid service,” an inquiring voice came through the door.
“Later,” Matt called back. His voice didn’t sound like his. He was dizzy. Couldn’t feel his feet. Could not breathe. “Come back later.”
He collapsed back on the bed, struggling to tame his thoughts.
What made it worse, if that was possible—Holly’s plan was still under way, even with what had happened. She went public to that reporter, she had crowed, and the result was only a matter of time. To stop it all, now he’d have to go public somehow. Wouldn’t he? And when he did, the story would come out anyway.
Either way, disaster. Either way, he was trapped.
All of a sudden he could hear the sound of his own breathing. Maybe the sound of his own heartbeat. He’d gotten himself into this. Now he had to get himself out. He’d spent his days working the system, right? Market up, market down. Assess, calculate, make his move.
He sat up. Taking back control. Taking action. He had to. Maybe he could use this. Get his life back. The life he deserved.
He ran a hand over his face, thinking it through.
First he’d have to find the reporter, that Jane Ryland, and somehow convince her the story Holly was selling wasn’t true. She absolutely could not print it.
He’d also have to warn Owen Lass— He felt his fists clench and stopped himself mid-thought. No. He would say it.
He’d have to warn his father.
He stood, went to the window. Seeing the morning. A sense of peace came over him, a certainty. He’d already saved his father’s political life, hadn’t he? If you looked at it that way? Maybe he should let him know that. Matt felt his shoulders go back, his chin come up.
Maybe he should let Governor Owen Lassiter know, after all these years, what his own son had sacrificed to save him.
Yes. That’s what he would do.
48
Jake stared at the crime scene. Sun glint on the water, rocky shoreline, office buildings, bridge. No footprints, no evidence, no nothing. Murk and obscurity. Just like this case. Silent ripples lapped close to his boots, then slid away into the depths of Fort Point Channel. The ME’s office had long since taken away her body, whoever she was. Victim four. “Fort Point,” Jake would call her, until she had a name. He patted his pockets for his gloves. Cold by the water. Colder in it.
He swiveled his head, scouting. Perhaps not the wisest move, strategically, for him and DeLuca to leave Vick and company mid-interview, but there was no alternative. And if Patti was telling the truth, Vick had a pretty damn good alibi for this killing. A birthday party, for chrissake. Someone else had killed victim four. Whoever she was.
If she worked at Beacon Market, though, all bets were off.
The yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the Monday-morning lookies who pointed, gawking, over the railing from the bridge above. The post office parking lot was already filled with side-by-side news vans and satellite trucks and hovering reporters. He’d nearly decked that Channel 11 chick who ventured down here, ducking in under the tape in those rubber boots, all hairspray and lipstick and ridiculous questions. Jane would never have … He checked his watch. Half an hour till the damn news conference. Why the supe decided to hold it at the post office—
“Harvard, you there?” DeLuca’s voice came over his two-way radio.
“I hear you,” Jake said, punching the Talk button. “Whatcha got? You up in the parking lot?”
“Ten-four. Supe just got the sketch of number four. Wants you to see it before he hands it out.”
“Copy that,” Jake said. So now she would have a face. It was his job to find the someone, somewhere, who would recognize her. He looked again at the water, at the shoreline, at the buildings lining both sides of the channel. Hotels, offices, the museum, studios in the boho-chic Fort Point Channel artists district. Studios. He blinked in the late-morning sunshine, a memory punching its way to the surface.
Where is Patti Vick’s studio? In Fort Point? Could be Arthur Vick’s alibi wasn’t so airtight. His wife kept insisting he was “with me,” but had she said they were at home? Not last night. Jake clicked on his BlackBerry, checking his notes.
Exactly. She’d said—the birthday party was at the studio. What’s more, Sellica’s body had been found, what, three blocks closer to the harbor from here? Down by the Federal Courthouse. What if Patti Vick’s studio was around here? What if Vick used it to shoot those commercials, luring in women, then killing them?
Okay, seemed like he hadn’t killed Kylie Howarth. But maybe she, the first victim, was the outlier. Maybe Vick killed Amaryllis Roldan, and Sellica, and now this one. What if there was a Bridge Killer? Dammit. What if it was Arthur Vick? What if he had three victims, not four?
And Jake and DeLuca had just left Vick in some lawyer’s office.
“Shit,” he said.
* * *
“You ever been married, Miss Ryland? Divorced?” Maitland reared back in his chair, crossing one ankle over a knee. The hem of his jacket, still draped over his chair, touched the coffee-spotted carpeting.
Jane blinked, taken aback. “What difference does that make?”
Maitland scratched his head, as if pondering a baffling dilemma. “Precisely my point. Maybe I should know that about you, your past, your marital status, before I go talking to you. Maybe it makes you—I don’t know. Biased. You think?”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Maitland.” Jane smiled, humoring him. “That’s irrelevant. But it is relevant for Owen Lassiter. Will it matter to voters? Who knows. But they need to decide. Not you.”
“And I suppose you’re the one anointed to tell ’em? You and your newspaper?”
“Why not just tell me the truth?” Jane said. “If you don’t, you certainly must be aware, it’s going to appear there’s some big secret.”
She leaned forward, half-serious. “Is there some big secret?”
“You reporters are all alike, you know that?” Maitland clanked his chair to the floor, got to his feet. Stabbed a forefinger toward the office door. “You see some ex-wife beating down my door to make trouble for the governor? When Owen announced, it got big national coverage. Everybody and his brother knew about it, the entire country. Don’t you think if there was something ‘unacceptable’ in Owen’s past, some mistake, some skeleton, some ex-wife wouldn’t have already made that pretty darn public?”
“I’m looking for the truth,” Jane said. She watched Maitland’s face harden, his ears turn red. Good. The higher the bluster, the more possibility of a big story. In her tote bag, her phone was ringing again. Damn. Not now.
“Oh, bull. Don’t insult me with that BS about your search for ‘the truth.’” Maitland rolled his eyes, making air quotes around the words. “You’re only about the scandal, all of you media types. The dirt. Poking into the past, digging for something where there’s nothing. Some news that when it turns out to be wrong, you’ll run some pitiful correction, if you even bother to do that, while someone’s reputation goes down the tubes. But you’ve got to get your story. Make yourselves the new Woodward and Bernstein.”
“Mr. Maitland?” Jane kept her voice even, as if calming a five-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum. “What about Owen Lassiter’s first wife?”
“What about her?” Maitland shot back.
“Is she hiding for some reason? Are you hiding her?”
“Hiding her?”
“Where is she?” Jane continued.
“Where is she?” Maitland echoed.
Jane struggled not to laugh out loud. Maitland was clearly losing it, repeating her questions like that. She was about to win this round. What would happen when she pushed him about the mysterious Kenna?
“Yes, Mr. Maitland, where is she?”
“I’ll tell you exactly where she is.” Rory’s eyes did not match his smile. “Where she’s been for the past two years. Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
“She’s in—”
“She’s a resident of Poplar Grove Cemetery.”
49
Today had not gone as planned. Ten minutes to go, but Jake could see the news conference was already packed. The media clumped together outside the post office, microphones, tape recorders, cameras. Coffee. Klieg lights. Soon would come the inevitable questions. Jake had zero answers.
Today was supposed to have been a big score for the good guys. The headlines were supposed to have been Kylie Howarth. Now that her parents had identified their daughter, the supe planned to call the press to the BPD media room, disclose the victim’s identity, reveal she was a suicide, reassure the public, and stop the manufactured clamor to catch some mythical Bridge Killer.
Then they’d found the fourth victim. Now they were out in the miserable windy cold, getting ready to deliver bad news in a damn parking lot. The Kylie story would be buried. The vulture patrol would care only about Jake’s failures, and about stampeding people into thinking some serial killer was on the loose. There must be a better way to sell newspapers.
A tap on his shoulder. “Detective? Supe wanted me to show you this.”
Pam, the homicide office clerk, held up a manila envelope.
“Hey, Pam.” He gestured at the still-growing crowd. “Quite the turnout, huh? Whatcha got?”
The clerk reopened the metal-pronged closure and drew out a piece of paper. “It’s the sketch of the—”
“Come over here for a sec.” Jake could tell the Channel 5 reporter was edging clos
er. Trying to eavesdrop, see over his shoulder. Vulture. He turned his back, motioned Pam to do the same. “So what’ve we got?”
“Sketch guy just finished,” Pam said. “Supe called me in to hand these out. Also, DeLuca’s at the Suffolk County Jail. He says there may be a collar in the Roldan case. Says he’ll call you.”
Jake took the sketch. And there she was. Fort Point. Jake stared at the postcard-sized drawing, mesmerized. A bulleted description was typed in the lower right: Hair: light brown. Eyes: blue. Distinguishing marks or tattoos: none. Age: approx. 25.
What the bullet points didn’t say was—she had been beautiful. The colored-pencil sketch was something more suited to a magazine than a morgue. Long curly hair, model cheekbones, full lips. Some sort of little necklace. Young, gorgeous, and dead.
Did she die because I suck at my job? Did she die because I refused to believe her killer existed? Is she as much my victim as the Bridge Killer’s?
He thought about Arthur Vick. About Vick’s connection with Amaryllis Roldan, and with Sellica. And Kylie. Kylie Howarth, the confirmed suicide who ruined the whole case. Or solved it.
“Thanks, Pam,” he said. He slid two copies of the sketch into his jacket’s inside pocket. Then he had an idea. “Hold one up for me, okay?”
Jake took out his BlackBerry and snapped a picture of the picture.
A flurry of activity—a siren, a car crunching through the gravel, a door slamming. Lights flicked on; photographers scrambled to their cameras.
“Supe’s here,” Pam said.
Jake slid his BlackBerry back into his jeans pocket. “Showtime.”
* * *
“Okay, okay, okay, I just have to get into this parking space.”
Jane tried to keep her phone between her cheek and her shoulder while she backed into a too-small almost-space near the post office. The parking lot was crammed with trucks and vans and news cars, staffed by reporters who’d answered their phones in time to arrive before the news conference started. How was she supposed to know it had been Alex on the phone? How was she supposed to know there was another Bridge Killer victim?
The Other Woman Page 22
