Anonymous Sources

by Mary Louise Kelly

  On my phone I tapped out one last advisory, relaying everything I knew back to the newsroom editors. They seemed to like the yellow cardigan quote. That got posted to the website right away.

  It had been a slow news day, and a death and police investigation at Harvard would likely make tomorrow’s front page. But frankly, I didn’t see much of a story here. It was terrible, of course. A promising young man’s life cut tragically short, and all that. I figured the police and the autopsy report would reveal soon enough whether this was a suicide or an unfortunate—maybe drunken—accident. Neither was exactly unheard of on a college campus.

  I shoved my phone in my pocket and stood up. It was late. I had what I needed. The crowd had thinned out, and there seemed no point incurring the wrath of that Cambridge police commander if he wandered in again. I decided to call it a night.

  3

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23

  I don’t consider myself superstitious. But I do follow something of a ritual every time I land a story on the front page.

  On these mornings—and there have been many of them now—I lock my little apartment and walk the fifteen minutes across Harvard Square to the T-stop. Out of Town News still stacks up neat piles of the Chronicle, alongside the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I shell out the exact change and carry it onto the train with me, savoring the feel of newsprint on my fingers and the thrill—yes, it’s still a thrill—of seeing my name above the fold on page one.

  Today, if I may say so, my story read pretty damn well. The headline wasn’t wildly creative but it was accurate enough: “Harvard Student Falls to His Death; Police Promise Full Investigation.” The critical thing was the dateline: “Inside Eliot House, Harvard College.”

  Most of the competition had stories datelined, at best, “Cambridge, Mass.” The other papers had been forced to quote heavily from either the Crimson or, I noted with satisfaction, my own reporting. No one else had gotten inside.

  Getting inside is my specialty.

  I’ve never loved the stories that are the bread and butter of a big-city newspaper: violent crimes, contentious city-council meetings, natural disasters, and subway strikes. They make good copy. But they’re a little obvious. I love the stories no one knows are there.

  I like to think I’m good at getting people to talk. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. The simple questions work best. Pick one, ask it over and over, don’t let them dodge it, and you’d be amazed at what people will tell you. With more sophisticated sources, you have to earn their trust. Call them on a routine story, get it right, call them back the next day for feedback. Pay your dues. The best stories grow out of a tiny detail someone lets drop, a crumb that doesn’t initially seem significant. But then you consider it alongside another crumb that a different source might have dropped weeks back. I gather these morsels patiently, hoard them, until I begin to make out a path that I can follow.

  All this crumb-gathering has earned me one of the New England Chronicle’s most prestigious beats, higher education. I can’t say higher ed makes my pulse race. But my beat offers one critical quality: it is relentless. Boston is home to more colleges and universities than any city in the world. There are more ivory towers than you can count. That means there is always, always something to write about.

  This is good on the nights when the ache begins in my chest. I don’t give in to it more than a couple of times a year. I can go for days now when I barely think about what happened. But when it starts, I can feel the ache move up from my chest to my throat to knock me behind the eyes. I used to vomit with the guilt. The regret. Regret—the word does not begin to capture what I feel.

  You wouldn’t expect it, but on these nights I do not drink. I think because if I did, I would never find it in me to get up again. Some scrap of self-preservation tells me I have to just lie there and ride it out. Eventually, the newsroom will call. And I’ll get up and go to work again.

  4

  Morning, Ginger!”

  My friend Elias Thottrup, the paper’s national security reporter. He’s based in the DC bureau; I hadn’t realized he was around. I narrowed my eyes and pretended to scowl at him.

  “Why, good morning, Shorty,” I purred. “You know how I love it when you call me Ginger.”

  He chuckled and kept moving across the newsroom. “All right then. Carrot Top, if you insist. Coffee later?”

  I nodded. Patted my hair self-consciously. Another trait I inherited from my Scottish mother. Salon highlights tame it to a shade I like to think of as strawberry blond. But I was overdue for the salon, and I had to admit my hair was looking particularly fiery this morning.

  Well, nothing to be done about it right now. I threw my bag under my desk, swapped my flip-flops—the same ones that had served me so well last night—for a pair of ridiculously high heels, and flipped on my computer. The Chronicle newsroom was still quiet at this hour. I was starting to scribble down the three voice mails flashing on my phone when Hyde Rawlins rounded the corner.

  Hyde is managing editor of the Chronicle. He looked harassed. At eight thirty in the morning. Not a good sign.

  “Ah, Ms. James. The celebrated correspondent returns triumphant. A tip of the old chapeau and all that. Nicely done. However. You’ll need to get right back over to Harvard. Now.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “It’s not what. It’s who. Thomas Carlyle’s father is what’s happened. Last night we seem to have missed the minor detail that this kid was the son of Lowell Carlyle.”

  I looked at Hyde blankly.

  He rolled his eyes. “As in the White House counsel? As in the president’s lawyer? As in one of the most influential men in Washington?”

  “Oh.”

  “Indeed. Quite. Mr. Carlyle is understandably grief-stricken and furious and on the warpath to find out exactly why his son fell out of a fifth-floor window last night. Apparently he is not overly impressed so far by the exertions of the Cambridge cops. The Washington bureau has it from his office that he was on the seven a.m. shuttle up today. Mrs. Carlyle too. So if you would please get yourself back over there and see what you can dig up?”

  “Sure.” It was starting to come back. Lowell Carlyle was a bigwig at Harvard Law School. He had taught constitutional law. And then the president asked him to come to Washington. When had that been, a couple of years ago? I don’t follow Washington politics closely, but my vague impression was that Carlyle was well regarded. Which meant that if he was on the warpath, as Hyde had indelicately put it, he would have the support of powerful allies not just at Harvard, but at the White House.

  THE COP POSTED OUTSIDE ELIOT House this morning was considerably friendlier than his colleagues the night before. But he still wouldn’t let me in.

  He’d kept his eyes trained on me as I made my way down Dunster Street from the T-stop in the square.

  “Let me guess,” he called, as I approached his post outside the front doors. “Fox News? USA Today? I know you’re not CNN. They’re already here.” He gestured toward several television trucks, satellite dishes stretched toward the sky, parked around the cul-de-sac.

  I grinned. “Looks like they beat me to it this morning. I’m with the Chronicle, actually.”

  “The Chronicle? You don’t say. You wouldn’t know anything about this reporter who’s got the chief all worked up? The one who sneaked in last night and heard the briefing meant for students only and ran all the quotes in today’s paper?”

  I rearranged my features into a picture of innocence. “No. Really? Shocking, honestly, the things some people will do for a story. But listen, Officer . . . ?”

  “Galloni.”

  “Officer Galloni. Great. Have Thomas Carlyle’s parents been here yet this morning?”

  “Afraid I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “Did you guys find anything when you searched the grass last night?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Any further insight into whether this was an accident or a suic
ide or what?”

  “Afraid I really, definitely couldn’t tell you that. Even if I knew.” He winked as he said it. Looked like he was enjoying himself.

  “Right. I guess I’ll just take a quick look inside then and be on my way.” I made to step around him.

  He burst out laughing. “Nice try. I think you’d better be going before I have to arrest you. Miss—er—Miss James, you said it was?”

  “I hadn’t, actually.” I studied him. Maybe a few years older than me and not bad looking.

  My own looks are not subtle. It’s hard to be subtle with screaming red hair. I’m taller than average, five feet seven inches, and not conventionally beautiful. Or at least I never thought so: too many freckles, too strong a jaw. But I have long, lean legs and I’m curvy in the right places. I dress well. And now that I’ve hit my late twenties, I seem to have grown into my looks. Jess says I’m “striking.” Judging by the wolf whistles I get on the street, I’d say I pull off “sexy” on my good days.

  So now I decided to test whether Galloni was immune. I tilted my head, pulled back my shoulders, and stepped close.

  “You know,” I whispered, “if you were just to lean down and tie your shoe for a second, you would never even notice me walking past. And then I could do my job, and you could get on with doing yours, and everyone would be happy.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Ten minutes. I won’t touch anything.”

  “I really can’t. Sorry.” And he actually looked it.

  Hmm. So he wasn’t immune. But he wasn’t budging either. I stepped back.

  “Well, then, it was nice to meet you. I should get going. Sorry to trouble you, Officer Galloni.”

  “It’s Lieutenant Galloni, actually. And no trouble at all, Miss James.”

  I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away. I was glad I’d kept the heels on.

  DUNSTER STREET CURVES JUST ENOUGH that the front steps to Kirkland House weren’t visible from where Galloni stood. I paused when I reached them. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be illegal, technically, to sneak into Eliot House again. But Galloni, however charming, had delivered a warning: they knew I’d trespassed once. I wasn’t sure I’d get off so lightly if the police caught me trespassing a second time around the scene of an investigation.

  Still, it was tempting. I glanced around. There was no guard this time at Kirkland House. I decided to see how far I could get before someone stopped me. I crossed the courtyard. Glided back through the Kirkland dining hall, back toward the enormous kitchens, behind the grill, past the food trolleys. It turned out to be easy. A few cooks and dishwashers glanced my way, but no one made to stop me. I marveled, not for the first time, at what you can get away with if you look as if you know what you’re doing.

  Within five minutes I was standing in the middle of the Eliot dining hall. I would have to be careful. Breakfast appeared to be long finished, lunch was not yet served, and the dining hall was nearly empty. I headed to the far end, away from the main entrance where Galloni was stationed. A pair of swinging doors gave way into a stone foyer.

  I knew from a couple of stories I’d done on undergraduate life that Harvard houses are organized around stairwells known as entries. A-Entry, B-Entry, etc. A few dozen students live in each one.

  Where I found myself now was apparently the bottom of H-Entry. Some sort of student common room was at the far end of the foyer. Stairs rose up to the right. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but I thought it might be useful to get a closer look at where Carlyle had fallen. I was heading for the glass doors that led out into the central courtyard when they swung open. A cop walked in. Navy uniform, gold badge, talking on a handheld radio. I froze.

  “Miss, you mind? We’re trying to keep this area closed off a bit longer.” He brushed past me and moved toward the stairs.

  “Sure. Sorry.” I nodded. As I backed toward the doors, I watched him duck. Police tape was stretched across the banister and running up the stairs. His radio crackled and another cop appeared on the half landing.

  Outside in the sunlight I stood blinking for a minute and trying to get my bearings. Across the courtyard I could see more police tape, still ringing the spot where Thomas Carlyle’s body had fallen last night. It didn’t look like the bloodstain had been cleaned up yet, but then again it was hard to tell, I was so far away. H-Entry was at the opposite end of the dining hall, almost a hundred yards from where the body had fallen. I could see other neatly labeled entryways now, ringing the courtyard. No cops or police tape at any of the other doors. This didn’t make sense. Why would police have cordoned off just one entryway? And one so far from where Carlyle had landed?

  I was pondering this when a tall figure emerged from the main entrance. Galloni. He was talking to yet another cop. I looked behind me. The police were there too. I was trapped.

  5

  Lowell Carlyle sat on the edge of his bed and stared out the window.

  He had shared this bedroom with Anna for forty years. Forty good years. Their three children had all been conceived in this room. Two daughters, and then a son.

  The boy had been born too early and sickly. Over the years, his sisters sometimes teased him about it. About how the runt of the family had grown into a giant. Six feet tall before he turned fifteen, and then he’d kept on growing. A varsity athlete, stroke of the Harvard crew. It was hard to imagine how small he had once been.

  But Lowell remembered. Those first days, when no one could say whether Thom would make it, he had lain in the incubator, hooked up to wires and monitors. The nurses had judged him too weak even to breast-feed, and instead they fed him sugar through a tiny tube. Lowell and Anna were not allowed to pick him up or to hold him. But they were allowed, after carefully scrubbing with soap, to reach inside and lay a hand on their son’s chest. It had moved Lowell beyond words to realize that when he did this, his son’s heartbeat would slow, as if he sensed his father’s presence and it helped to calm him.

  Lowell was not a religious man; he viewed the world with the ordered mind of a lawyer. But he was a man of faith—faith in his own and his family’s place in the world, faith that hard work would get you somewhere, faith that good would prevail over evil. Over those terrifying days in the neonatal intensive care unit, Lowell had sat for hours with his son. He sat and watched and promised: I will love you and you will know it and that will be enough. That will be all that matters. Just live. Just please live.

  When had he lost sight of that? Lately he had pushed Thom so hard about law school. Hounded him about it, as if Lowell’s approval—as if his love—depended on it. Who cared? What did it matter what Thom grew up to be?

  And now . . . Lowell forced air into his lungs. He was in shock, he knew that. The call last night had seemed unreal. It still seemed unreal, even now that he had been to Eliot House, had seen the police tape and the red stain for himself.

  Anna had not come with him to Eliot. She was downstairs now. She would want to talk about the funeral arrangements. She would be pushing him to take time off and focus on the family. On healing. But he couldn’t bear that. He didn’t want to heal.

  He picked up the phone from his bedside table and called his secretary at the White House. She answered tearily, babbling sympathies. He thanked her. Said the family thanked her. And then he asked what he had missed in the office so far. He insisted on scheduling a conference call for later in the day. Pack my schedule as full as you can, he told her. Fourteen-hour days.

  Anything to avoid remembering.

  6

  It took Marco Galloni a second or two to spot her and do a double take. But even from this far away, the hair was unmistakable. Shit.

  He motioned to his colleague to head back and guard the front entrance. Then he jogged over.

  “What the hell? Really, what the hell?”

  Alexandra James winced. “I’m sorry. I haven’t touched anything, and I’m leaving now.”

  “You got that right.”

  He pu
ffed his chest out and glowered at her. “You know, I could book you right now. For trespassing. Interfering with an ongoing investigation. Maybe even obstruction of justice. What are you thinking?”

  “Well, to be honest, I’m thinking something strange is going on here. He fell from those windows up there, right?” She leaned back and took in the full scale of the building. Five floors of dorm rooms and then the dome of a bell tower rising another hundred feet above. “So why have you got cops and police tape all over the stairs at that end of the house down there? The H-Entry end?”

  “No reason. Now let’s go.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Did something happen there?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Maybe? Maybe, meaning yes? Come on. Give me something.”

  “Miss James. That’ll be enough. Let’s move it, please.” He took her arm.

  “Lieutenant.” She put her hand over his. “I gather you’re in charge here today?”

  “Er—yes.”

  “I would really love if we could find a way to work together. I mean, it would be such a shame if they found out back at the station that I managed to evade the stringent security perimeter set up by the Cambridge PD not once, but twice. That would look so terrible, wouldn’t it?”

  He stared at her. “Is that a threat?”

  “No. Merely a statement of fact. But let’s not get ugly.” She smiled up at him. “I know you have to throw me out now. But while we’re walking, what about it? What happened down at H-Entry?”

  “Unbelievable.” He shook his head. Today was only Wednesday, and already it was shaping up to be a bad week. Monday had kicked off with a reprimand for arriving ten minutes late for work. Then the shift supervisor had gotten on his case for failing to report a smashed taillight on his cruiser. And now this business with the Carlyle kid. He’d been stuck at his desk well past midnight last night, playing referee as the Harvard police, Cambridge cops, and the Feds gleefully worked at cross-purposes, each jockeying for a piece of the action. The chief had gone ballistic this morning, waving the Chronicle around the break room and demanding to know what kind of clowns had let a reporter sneak past the perimeter and into Eliot House.