Jake scratched the back of his neck, gave himself some time to think. “Mr. Galt? Sit back down, okay? You know, after we talked to you and your wife Monday night, I did some checking on you.”
Galt paled, fussed with the rolled-up sleeve of his light blue shirt. Didn’t meet Jake’s eyes. “Checking?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, keeping his voice pleasant. “You and your wife Willow. Funny thing. What I’ve seen so far, you pretty much don’t exist.”
“Don’t exist?”
“You keep repeating what I say, Mr. Galt,” Jake said. “But yes, these days, it’s SOP to follow up on witnesses, see if there’s anything in their history or information that might be relevant. But in your case, and your wife Willow’s, it’s not a question of relevant information. It’s a question—”
Jake stopped as his cell phone rang. “Brogan.” He listened as D reported what he’d learned. Nodded a few times, and glanced at Tom Galt, who was watching him, obviously straining to hear. What D said confirmed another connection between Willow Galt and Avery Morgan. “Thanks, D.”
“Did they find her?” Galt asked.
Jake took longer than necessary to stash his phone. He wasn’t ready to answer that.
“So, Mr. Galt,” he said. “We checked the airlines. Your wife apparently had a ticket to Long Beach, California, on a plane that arrived there last night.”
“So do you know where she is? She’s okay?” Galt looked at his watch, then at the ceiling, then at Jake. “She’s in California?”
“Any idea why she would go to Long Beach?” Jake was trying to understand this latest development himself. Galt seemed genuinely surprised to hear Willow was in California. Maybe because he knew she wasn’t there.
Jake pushed the black intercom button, the one that summoned reinforcements. He needed his partner here for this next move. The wooden door clicked open, D holding a new cup of coffee. Clicked closed behind him.
“Our friend is still asleep,” D said.
“Understood,” Jake said. Grady could wait. “Detective? Mr. Galt here is asking whether his wife is in California. But I was just about to explain what else you learned.”
“Ah.” D lifted his cup, giving Jake the floor.
“So, Mr. Galt?” Jake continued. “I guess the answer is no, we haven’t found your wife. Because according to the airline, she never made that flight. So that leaves me asking you—is there something you’re not telling us? Like where she really is?”
The silence became a thickness in the air, all exchanged glances and lifted eyebrows. Interrupted by the triple bing-bong chimes of Jake’s cell phone.
Only nine in the morning. Already this day was about to crush him.
“Brogan.” He tried to keep the annoyance from his voice. Failed. But Shom Pereira didn’t even say hello. Jake listened as the officer spilled the news, his mood changing, annoyance evaporating with every word. About. Frigging. Time.
This news didn’t make Tom Galt not guilty of killing his wife, if indeed she’d been killed. That investigation was still open. But maybe Galt hadn’t killed Avery Morgan. Because according to Shom, that case was about to be closed.
“One moment,” he said to Galt, signaling with a finger. “Something’s come up, and we’ve got to go. But we’ll have an officer take your statement, sir. We’ll do all we can to find your wife. So go home. Don’t worry. Call us if you hear anything. And we’ll be in touch.” He motioned DeLuca into the hall. Safely away from Galt, he held up the phone in triumph.
“T’shombe Pereira says we’ve got a semi-anonymous tip about Avery Morgan,” Jake said. “It says the killer is a kid. Well, a student. Who the tipster says had a big crush on her. And listen to this. He’s got a record of sexual problems. Inappropriate behavior. Documented in his school records. It’s all there, the tipster says. And remember Tarrant’s video?”
“He in it?” DeLuca asked.
“He shot it,” Jake said. “Kid’s name is Trey Welliver.”
“You ready?” D said.
“Let’s go find him,” Jake said.
42
JANE RYLAND
Life was good.
Jane examined her new self in the medicine cabinet mirror and burst out laughing. Coda, sitting on the closed toilet seat, jumped into the still-damp bathroom sink, her newest attention-getting ploy. Cat was crazy, and now, possibly, confused. Jane was no longer recognizable. With out-of-style horned-rim glasses (her own, backups to her contacts), her hair in a ponytail, no makeup, short-ish skirt and Adams Bay baseball cap, Jane looked like … well, she didn’t know. Not Sorority Barbie, since that attempt had been pretty much a disaster. But also not like a thirty-something reporter. She hoped.
But life was good, because the party at the Spotted Owl was on. Jane and Fee were all set to attend, and Isabel/Tosca, brave girl, had finally decided to go with them. “I’ll be fine,” she’d insisted. Jane wasn’t sure, but there was nothing to do but see.
They’d meet Elaine and her SAFE crew at the bar around eight. Jane could introduce Isabel to Elaine, and make a potentially life-changing connection.
This afternoon she and Fiola had worked on their documentary. The DA’s office did not call her. No Sholto creeps showed up. And, pièce de résistance, something had happened in police world that meant Jake didn’t have to go to California.
He’d texted her “developments” and “looking for someone” and “be careful” and “love.” And deliciously, “See you tonight.” She’d leave this outfit on, just to torment him. So, yeah, life was good, and possibly about to get better.
She gave Coda a pat and a goodbye cat treat, then checked herself one last time in the entryway mirror. Trusty little Quik-Shot camera in her purse, the lens centered in a cut-out hole and hidden by a scarf. When she moved the scarf, the lens would be uncovered and she could shoot video without anyone knowing. Fiola had a camera of her own, so between them they’d nail it.
“Party time,” she said out loud. And closed the door behind her.
ISABEL RUSSO
The first steps wouldn’t be the hardest. It was the steps after that. Isabel opened her front door, and stood there, silent, feet on the thin metal threshold. She’d ventured out this far before, so in some ways this was still comfortable. But this time, she’d get in the elevator. Ride down fifteen floors, and go outside. She had not been outside the building since May. May twenty-first to be exact.
She calculated the time, persuading herself. It had been sixty days. Or so. People were, like, in the hospital for sixty days, and they came out fine. Astronauts. Explorers. Missionaries. She had decided to stay in. She could decide to come out. It was all about power and determination. And she had both.
Isabel closed her eyes with the weight of it, standing in the hall, wearing her jeans and a little pale pink silk top. Her hair had turned out fine—she hadn’t lost the touch. The matching pale lipstick worked. For one fleeting moment, forgetting, she’d been pleased with her mirror image. On the outside, she was simply another college face in the crowd.
On the inside, though, she felt something she couldn’t even name, more fragile than a butterfly wing, more delicate than a single silk thread, more tentative than a hummingbird. She was about to go out into the world. If she didn’t do it right now right now right now, she’d retreat into her little apartment and never come out.
“Showtime,” she said aloud, though the hallway was empty. Maybe she could pretend it was a performance. Yes. She could do that. She whirled, as if on cue, slammed her door closed, locked it, ran down to the elevator and punched the button, stepped into the elevator with eyes tight shut, and opened them only when she heard the swish of the closing doors.
Her stomach lurched as the elevator took her down, fifteen floors. She clutched the brass railing and watched the glowing numbers carrying her to a new life, maybe the rest of her life. Maybe that would include helping people, other girls like her. Same as Fiola and Jane were doing. Maybe this was her mission, t
he reason bad things—one bad thing—had happened.
This would be the end of her silence. The door opened, sending her into the soft twilight and the sound track of real life. Outside.
The sound of birds. Their fluttering trill, grace notes in the leaves of the scattered trees dappling the sidewalk with the last of the sunlight. Outside. So intensely colored, so full of the music of the evening she almost cried. Inside had been good enough—it had, until she’d opened this door. She reveled in the sunset coloring her face, felt the breeze riffle the ends of her hair, smelled the exhaust and the perfume and the dust. The sidewalk pavement was sunbaked and solid under her ballet flats. The clouds stretched across the darkening sky, tinged pink and purple, fuchsia and hyacinth. She’d almost forgotten how big it was, the ceiling of the sky so endless, so gorgeously, touchingly infinite. She’d felt safe inside, safe and gray and colorless. Now the spectrum of the world poured back onto her, into her, so profoundly beautiful and compelling she almost forgot what she was doing.
“Isabel?”
She pivoted, the voice yanking her back to reality. Jane. And Fiola, too. Standing side by side on the pavement. Waiting for her.
“Hey,” Isabel said. “You two look…” She tried to choose a word. If their pretend-hip outfits were attempts to fit in as college girls, they were not totally effective. But whatever. “… different.”
“Well, you look wonderful,” Jane said. She tucked her arm through the crook of Isabel’s elbow.
The warmth of Jane’s skin skimmed Isabel’s bare arm, the scent of Jane’s clean citrusy fragrance exotic and intoxicating. Isabel wondered when she’d last touched another person.
“You okay?” Jane asked.
“She’s fine,” Fiola said. She tucked her arm through Isabel’s other elbow. “We’ve got cameras, we’ve got batteries, we’re on a mission. Ready?”
“Vincerò,” Isabel whispered.
The music in her head played even louder than the insistent hip-hop blasting from inside the bar. Vincerò. She almost sang the triumphant aria out loud as Jane pulled open the black-lacquered door to the shadowy ambience of the Spotted Owl, letting Isabel go inside first. She took that step, the first step, she knew, of her return to the real Isabel, and the recognition, the regaining, of her power. Vincerò. I will win.
Music surrounded her, and the fragrances. She remembered them with a rush of longing—yeasty beer and salted peanuts, popcorn, and a hint of weed. The last of the twilight disappeared behind the closing door as the three women joined the chaos of bodies and laughter and chatter of other people. One room, then into another, each filled with people with hopes and desires. With futures. Like hers.
She felt the muscles of her back stiffen, her shoulders square, her chin lift. She would tell everything, no matter who didn’t want her to. Who was Edward Tarrant to tell her how to live her life? To dictate what was “good” for her? “Prudent?” She’d done nothing wrong. And what she could never reconcile—Tarrant knew about Trey Welliver. What he’d done. So why had nothing happened to Trey? Again, though, maybe there was something she didn’t know.
But now was now, and now was new, and in this new life, Isabel would prevail.
“Isabel?” Jane was saying something, close to her ear. “You still okay?”
“Sure,” Isabel said. And she was, she really was.
JAKE BROGAN
“We’re gonna look like somebody’s parents in there.” Jake, dubious, pretended not to be stalling as he and D paused on the Hemenway Street sidewalk in front of the black wooden door of the Spotted Owl. If the elusive Trey Welliver was inside, as his stubbornly unhelpful pals had finally suggested, it would be best if they could bring him out quietly, no fuss, no attracting attention. But even in plain clothes, he and D were obvious intruders, would never be able to pass as college kids. Not that they were trying to. He smiled, thinking of Jane, wherever she was, and her silly getup. He’d tease her about it later tonight.
One Theodore Winston Welliver III, white male, age twenty-one, of Darien, Connecticut, was now in their sights for the murder of Avery Morgan. One phone call to the begrudgingly cooperative Tarrant had confirmed Welliver was a student of Morgan’s. Took that video of the party. Had certainly been at the Morgan House before the night of the video.
“He seemed smitten with her,” Tarrant had told them. “And come to think about it, he’s the one who informed me about Avery’s death. When I asked how he knew, he was … evasive, I suppose is the word.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before?” Jake and D had exchanged annoyed looks across the squawking Bluetooth speaker in their cruiser.
“As I told you, privacy,” Tarrant had said. “But since you already knew the name, it seemed acceptable. And as you said, he’s not a juvenile.”
“Our source says Mr. Welliver has a history of ‘sexual misconduct’ on campus,” Jake said, deciding to push Tarrant. See what else he would give up.
“All I can tell you, that’s under investigation,” Tarrant said.
“What would he say if we asked him about it?” Jake rolled his eyes. This guy was a piece of work. But at least he was talking now.
“I couldn’t possibly predict,” Tarrant said. “Although I’d be quite interested to know. He’s an adult. He makes his own decisions.”
Jake hoped “his own decisions” would not include asking for a lawyer. Not until they got some information. Armed with a yearbook photo from the Adams Bay Eagle, they were about to make the next move in what Jake now more than suspected was the murder of Avery Morgan. Grady Houlihan, recovering at Boston City Hospital, might still be part of the equation, but that was for later.
Trey Welliver. The first person to know about the murder. An alleged sexual offender, so said the tipster. Smitten with the victim. Familiar with her house. Bye-bye, Trey. If it wasn’t enough for a warrant—which would be absurd—it was certainly enough for a little chat. If not a big chat.
“You think we’ll look like somebody’s parents?” D tossed his empty coffee cup into a trash receptacle on the sidewalk outside the bar. “More like grandparents. But, hey. If they make us as cops, they make us. Maybe it’ll scare the crap out of them. Serve ’em right.”
Jake reached for the door. “Let’s do it as planned and hope he comes quietly,” he said. “No reason to ruin the party for everyone else.”
43
JANE RYLAND
“There they are.” Jane raised her hand, signaling Elaine across the student-crammed hubbub, glimpsing her face through the blur of beer bottles and clinking glasses, girls in skintight denim and even tighter tank tops, gyrating shoulders and echoing laughter. She saw the SAFE organizer blink, once, looking puzzled. Elaine finally broke into laughter, head back, when she recognized Jane, and pointed toward a back room, gesturing them to follow, still laughing. Fine, Jane thought. You’ll be old someday, too.
“Man,” Jane began. “Did we dance like that? Dress like that?” Jane shook her head, feeling the inexorable creep of impending fogeyness. “I sure hope this isn’t the way we looked in college.”
Fiola did not respond.
“Fee? You with me here? What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Fiola waved her off. “Memories.”
“Tell me about it,” Jane said. Then she stopped, put her hand on Fee’s arm. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it—” Her producer took a deep breath, let it out. Adjusted the Levi’s jacket over her boho midi dress. “That’s why I didn’t bring it up. You have to just let me be. Let me work.”
Jane locked eyes with her. Making sure.
“Thanks, though,” Fiola said, her voice low. “Tonight’s not about me, okay?” Then, as Isabel turned back to them, she changed her expression. “Hey, sister. You two ready?”
“Ready,” Isabel said.
“Sure,” Jane said. “Let’s work the room. See who and what we can find. And come on, Isabel, there’s someone we want you to meet.”
The music surrou
nded them as they headed through the partying throng, Jane arm in arm again with Isabel, Fiola leading them toward the posse of SAFE women stationed beyond an archway in the club’s inner room. Pin spots twinkled on the zinc-topped bar, and the floor-to-ceiling mirror multiplied the array of glasses and multicolored liquor bottles lining the glass-shelved wall. Laughter, bare skin, dangly earrings, and exaggerated gestures, everyone vulturing for position at a long line of bar stools. In each person’s hand, and lined up along the bar, a stubby highball goblet, or a snifter with an orange straw, or a long-stemmed martini glass, drinks green and pink or colorless with a twist, nursed, sometimes ignored, always accessible.
It would be so easy, Jane realized, her unseen camera rolling, to drop something in one of those drinks. She wondered if that’s what Fee was remembering. Or Isabel.
The sound system’s incessant bass rumbled the wooden floor, and the exuberant bounce of the dancers kept the three women dodging and weaving their way ahead. It had been barely twilight outside. But here, with the flashing colored lights and shifting reflections and windowless walls, there was no time but now.
Jane pulled Isabel closer as they continued through the crush. “How’re you doing?” Jane asked, trying to connect over the music. “We don’t have to stay too late, okay? I’m here, long as you need me.”
“I’m fine,” Isabel murmured. Jane saw her scanning the room as they walked, eyes darting back and forth, nervous as a sparrow. “I just haven’t seen these people in a while. And I keep worrying that—”
“Hey, Jane. Hey, Fee.” Elaine, perched on a bar stool in jeans and black T-shirt, called out to them from a few yards away. Elaine then slid from her seat, acknowledging Isabel with an outreached hand as they approached. “I’m Elaine.”
ISABEL RUSSO
“Isabel,” she said. She shook the woman’s hand, trying to calm her racing heart. Was Elaine her lifeline? Or maybe she herself was the lifeline. Or maybe it was just a party, and she was merely a student. She tried to let the music take her away, as music always did, tried to become part of the real world again.
Say No More Page 26
