Feared

by Lisa Scottoline

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I want to get into the Roundhouse and nose around. I want details.”

  Mary didn’t know if she could handle the details of John’s murder, but she didn’t say so. “But why tonight? Couldn’t we have waited until they asked us to come in, instead of provoking it?”

  “Nothing benefits from delay, DiNunzio. It’s always better to get the jump. And you know in any murder investigation, facts can develop early on. Besides, I want to talk to them before they know enough to ask us better questions. Once they figure out about the lawsuit and the statements John made, this could get sticky.”

  “I don’t know if we should be going in unrepresented.”

  “We’re lawyers. We know how to handle a police interview, we’ve defended plenty of them.”

  “What about Roger? We told him we would play nice.”

  “I called him earlier, but this is a murder case, not a reverse-discrimination case. He’s not our lawyer for all things and all times.” Bennie snorted. “If you want, I’ll text him where we’re going. I’m not about to carry him on a sedan chair.”

  “Don’t we want his PR guy, too? Isaac?”

  “I don’t, but if you do, I’m fine with their coming. We know how to handle the press in a murder case. Basically, don’t feed them. And don’t flip them the bird, even if you want to.” Bennie paused. “Look, DiNunzio, I just realized, I should’ve thought of your condition.” Her tone softened. “You must be beat and you should probably go home. Why don’t you drop me off? I can do my own snooping.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Mary said, with a twinge of regret. She felt bad for saying anything, and secretly, she didn’t want to miss out. Anthony looked over, his mouth tight, so Mary added, “I actually feel fine. I’m not even tired. I don’t want to go home.”

  “Carrier,” Bennie said, again softly. “You can go home too. I know this is roughest on you. You guys were pals.”

  “Thanks but no,” Judy said, her voice thick. “I don’t want to go home, either. I wouldn’t sleep anyway.”

  Bennie asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Mary answered, firmly. “I’m just trying to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. What you hope to accomplish.”

  Bennie fell silent a moment, and Mary wasn’t sure Bennie had heard the question. Mary glanced back, but Bennie’s face was turned away, and Mary couldn’t see her expression. The only lighting in the backseat was intermittent, from the streetlights.

  “Bennie?” Mary repeated. “Are you okay?”

  “DiNunzio.” Bennie turned to face her, and Mary could see Bennie’s eyes glistening with raw emotion. “I’m doing what I’m doing because somebody killed one of my associates. One of our associates, a young man who joined our firm and worked hard for us. I’m doing it because he mattered to me. His life mattered to me. And so does his murder.” Bennie wiped her eye quickly, catching a tear before it fell. Her fingers were trembling, which was something Mary had never seen before, but Bennie kept talking, the words coming out with a force of their own. “I’m pretty good at murder cases. I’ve been doing them for years, and so have you. So I’m not going to sit on my thumbs and let two rookie detectives screw this up, or miss something, or forget even a single detail. I’m going to be all over them from day one. From now. Until they find who committed this murder. That’s why I went through the barricade. I heard you say Foxman has no family here, but you were wrong. We were his family. And even though we had a family fight, that doesn’t mean we’re not family anymore. That’s why we’re doing this. For him.”

  Mary felt a lump in her throat as Bennie turned her head quickly away, looking out the window. Silence fell in the car, and Mary realized how wrong she had been back at the crime scene. She had thought Bennie had been defaulting to professional mode on John’s street. Instead Bennie had been keeping her emotions within, channeling them into action to find John’s killer. Mary felt touched at Bennie’s devotion and loyalty, but she couldn’t say so right now. She tried to hold back her tears, and for some reason, she didn’t look over at Anthony. She knew he felt the same way she did, because she was his wife.

  Mary looked out the window as they passed the gritty industrial area around the concrete cloverleafs to I-95, interspersed with boxy warehouses and factories converted to funky apartment buildings. In the distance, the Ben Franklin Bridge glowed a ghostly blue in the dark night. They made their way through the streets cruising in light traffic through the grid of one-way streets. They went west on Market Street past the United States Courthouse, a modern monolith that anchored the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets, then turned onto Seventh, catching sight of the round concrete buildings that gave the Roundhouse its name.

  Anthony shifted into the left lane, heading for the Roundhouse’s parking lot, and as soon as they got to the entrance, Mary could see the crowd of media collecting in front of the building with their klieglights, video cameras, and the same crowd of reporters from the crime scene. Their white news vans with tall microwave towers overflowed the press section of the lot, but Anthony found an empty space and parked, cutting the ignition.

  Mary braced herself, eyeing the noisy throng of press. “So we just go through and say ‘no comment.’”

  “Yes,” Bennie answered firmly. “No fear, DiNunzio. We’ve done this a million times. Just put your head down and keep walking.”

  Anthony interjected, “Don’t worry, Bennie. If they want to get to Mary, they’re going to have to go through me.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Bennie rallied. “Everybody good to go?”

  “Not yet,” Judy answered hesitantly, then she fell abruptly silent.

  “What is it, Carrier?”

  Judy didn’t answer Bennie, and Mary turned completely around, which wasn’t easy, considering the size of her belly.

  “Judy, what?”

  Judy bit her lip. “There’s something I have to tell you. You should know it before the police find out.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mary didn’t understand why Judy was stopping them before they went into the Roundhouse. Her best friend’s face was visible in the ambient light, and Judy looked stricken, her agonized expression incongruous with her pink hair and the quirky, multicolored poncho.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” Mary asked, concerned.

  “Um, well.” Judy looked down at her hands, fumbling with a ball of soggy tissues. “There’s something you guys should know before we go in. I’ve been keeping it from you. I should’ve told you before now but, well, uh, I didn’t. I didn’t know how you would react.”

  Mary frowned, pained. “Honey, you can tell me anything. I won’t react any way. You know that, I love you.”

  Bennie looked over at Judy. “Carrier, just tell us,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle.

  Judy heaved a sigh that shuddered as she exhaled, then lifted her gaze, which was teary, glistening in the light. “John and I, well, we weren’t just friends. We were dating.”

  Mary blinked, hiding her shock. She felt surprised that Judy would keep it from her, but this wasn’t the time or the place for that, and Judy’s heartbroken demeanor made complete sense. Judy was taking John’s murder so hard because she had been seeing him.

  Bennie frowned. “Wait. You were dating Foxman? An associate?”

  “Yes.” Judy sniffled.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t like it. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “That doesn’t make it right, that only makes it secret.”

  Mary flared her eyes, interjecting, “Bennie, really? Now?”

  Bennie sighed. “Sorry, Carrier.”

  “I’m sorry.” Judy nodded, miserably.

  Bennie added, “But I hate surprises, and now we have to deal with this. We’re blindsided.”

  Mary interjected again, “Bennie?”

  Bennie pursed her lips. “Carrier, how long did you two date for?”

>   “We’ve been dating for, almost, eight months.” Judy’s wet gaze met Mary’s directly. “Since you found out you were pregnant, Mary. After your case with Simon and his daughter. It started with a friendship, then I started seeing him in a new light. I guess I always crushed on him, but we’re so different, like, he’s so straight, but anyway, we got together. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I wanted to, so many times.”

  “It’s all right.” Mary managed a reassuring smile, though she felt bewildered. “You could’ve told me, but it’s okay that you didn’t. What really matters is that I’m very sorry that you lost him. I knew you were friends, but I didn’t know you were, well, closer.”

  “We are, I mean, we really were.” Judy dabbed her eye with the soggy Kleenex. “I should have told you, but you were so busy with the pregnancy and I didn’t want to take the focus off of you, and we weren’t sure when we wanted people to know in the office. We were keeping it to ourselves until we knew it was working out.” Judy turned to face Bennie. “I didn’t think you would approve. I was a partner and he was an associate, but if you remember, you kinda sprung partnership on me, when you thought the firm was breaking up. Anyway, I didn’t know how you would feel about an office romance, especially since I was technically his boss. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Understood,” Bennie said quietly, without rancor. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys.” Judy sniffled, and Mary could see she was fighting to remain in control.

  “It’s okay, honey, don’t worry about it.” Mary couldn’t reach Judy to touch her, but in the next moment, Bennie did, surprisingly, patting Judy’s hand.

  “Carrier, that’s the last thing you should be worried about. But it’s good that we know that before we go into the police interviews.”

  “Wait, there’s more.” Judy sniffled, half chuckling. “Arg, I know, it sounds like those dumb commercials. ‘Wait there’s more!’”

  “What more?” Bennie asked, calmly.

  Mary glanced at Anthony, who was listening, his head cocked.

  Judy swallowed hard. “I was there tonight, at John’s.”

  Mary recoiled, unable to process the information fast enough. Her first thought was that it wasn’t a good thing.

  “What time?” Bennie kept her hand on Judy’s.

  “I guess until about nine o’clock, and we had a big fight.” Judy raked her fingers through her hair, shaking her head. “It’s just so sad, and so awful, I don’t even know where to start, I mean, I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “Carrier, begin at the beginning.” Bennie’s tone strengthened. “Tell me the chronology of your day. We were together in the morning, then you took Mary to the doctor.”

  “Right.” Judy nodded, sniffling anew.

  “What time did you leave the doctor?”

  “Anthony picked Mary up at around two o’clock.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went to John’s.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “I took a cab.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  Judy sniffled, wiping her eyes again. “We were in a fight from the night before, when the Complaint came in from Machiavelli. I was so surprised and shocked, really. I didn’t know John had said any of those things about us and I didn’t even know he was looking for a job. He kept it from me, and we had a big fight about it, on Friday night, and uh we—” Judy’s eyes welled up, and Bennie squeezed Judy’s hand.

  “Stay with me. We need to figure this out and we need to figure it out right now.”

  “Okay, okay,” Judy said, trying to recover.

  “All you have to do is answer my questions. Let’s back up to Friday night. What time did you go to his house Friday night?”

  “After work, at seven o’clock.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I told him I was really mad at him about the Complaint and the things he said, and also at the press conference, because that was such a mess and I didn’t know that he had even been interviewing for a job. He hadn’t told me.” Judy hesitated. “And well, he, uh, said he was interviewing because he didn’t think we could work at the same firm if he was an associate and I was his boss, and he wasn’t going to tell me until he had an offer he wanted, so that’s why he didn’t tell me, but anyway we had a big fight.”

  “What time did you leave his apartment?”

  “I left around one in the morning. We fought, like, all night. It was horrible, and now I feel horrible—”

  “Was there shouting?”

  “Yes.” Judy blew her nose. “Me, mostly. You could’ve guessed that.”

  “Okay, let’s return to Saturday. So you go to his apartment at two o’clock.” Bennie paused. “Wait a minute. Didn’t he have a job interview? I remember he said that, and he was dressed for it.”

  “Yes, but it was over by two.”

  “Do you know who it was with?”

  “No.” Judy shook her head, distraught. “I didn’t know he was doing any of that. I feel so terrible that he said such bad things about us, and I can’t believe that he really felt that way, and that’s what we were fighting about, back and forth.”

  “Okay, so you were at his apartment from two o’clock today. What did you do there?”

  “We tried to work it out and we talked, and we fought, and we ordered in, but we couldn’t work it out, and I was so angry at him and he was angry at me for being angry at him and anyway, so, well, uh, we broke up.”

  Listening, Mary felt a wave of profound sympathy for her best friend, who must’ve been suffering so deeply. Judy was one of the most sensitive creatures on the planet, despite her happy-go-lucky exterior, and Mary’s heart went out to her.

  Bennie asked, “Was there more yelling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think any neighbors heard it?”

  “No, I don’t know, maybe, does it matter?” Judy sniffled. “His landlord lives downstairs, they’re an older couple. I don’t think they’re home this weekend. They cruise all the time, and John feeds their cat.” Judy’s eyes welled up again. “Now he’s gone, I don’t know what’s going to happen, he was so good at taking care of everything, and he was William’s guardian. I don’t know what William’s going to do now, or who’s going to tell him. He doesn’t have anybody but John. The aunt and uncle haven’t been east in years.”

  Bennie patted Judy’s hand again. “The police notify next of kin, so let’s stay on point. Do you know his landlord?”

  “But I don’t want the police to tell William. They’re strangers.”

  “I’m sure the aunt and uncle will then, but talk to me. Do you know the landlord?”

  “Yes, I’ve met him a few times.”

  “But you didn’t see him today or his wife?”

  “No.”

  “So you broke up today and you left the apartment at nine o’clock tonight, is that right?”

  “About that, I think, give or take.”

  “How much give and how much take?”

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t remember, I was so exhausted and I think I looked at my phone because I just kept thinking about calling Mary.” Judy looked at Mary, her eyes welling. “I wanted to come over and tell you everything, that John and I were seeing each other and that we just broke up, but I didn’t call you. It was late and I knew that you needed to rest after the doctor’s appointment, and I didn’t want to upset you or stress you, so I just decided to go home.”

  Mary groaned. “Aw, honey, I’m so sorry. You know, you can always call me and—”

  Bennie interrupted, “Carrier, is that what you did next? You went straight home?”

  “Yes, well, not straight home.”

  Bennie frowned. “Where did you go?”

  “Let me think, I was really upset and I didn’t know what to do”—Judy’s wor
ds ran together with emotion—“and I went to this pocket park because it was such a nice night and I just wanted to calm down, but then I knew I had to get home because the dog had to go out, so I got a cab and went home.”

  “What time did you get the cab?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it a Yellow cab or what?”

  “Yes, a Yellow.”

  “How long did you spend in the park?”

  “About an hour, I think.”

  “Do you know or are you guessing?”

  “Both.” Judy dabbed her eyes.

  “Were there other people in the park, that you saw?”

  “Yes, a few.”

  “Did you talk to any of them?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the park located?”

  “Around the block. Does it matter?”

  “Then you went home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do when you got home?”

  “I walked the dog. I didn’t take him that day, because he was so bad the day before.”

  “Did you see any of your neighbors when you were walking the dog?”

  “No.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I went to bed and I couldn’t sleep, I was so upset and I thought about calling him, like, so many times, I just kept lying in bed staring at my phone.” Judy’s eyes spilled over with tears, and she began to sob again. “And now … I keep thinking what if, what if … what if I had called, that was probably when the killer was there, and I could have stopped it … or interrupted it and if I did then John would still be alive m—”

  Bennie squeezed her hand. “Carrier, we need to sort this out. So then what happened?”

  “So you called”—Judy squeezed the Kleenex to her nose, stifling her sobs—“and you told me that the reporter called you and told you that John was dead and I totally freaked out and got a cab to go to his apartment. That’s when I saw you on the street, so I got out of the cab and we walked the last block together, then we saw Mary and Anthony, and I just can’t believe this is happening, I just can’t, it’s so horrible and I feel so terrible—”

  “Okay.” Bennie patted Judy’s hand in a final way. “I don’t think you should be going into any police interview.”