He looks at the personal-effects inventory again, realizes something he should have noticed immediately.
“Her nephew says he’ll be glad to talk to us,” Sykes says. “Well, not glad. But he will.”
“Size ten,” Win says as someone knocks on the door. “The tennis clothes are size ten. A five-foot, ninety-one-pound woman doesn’t wear size ten. Now what!” as the knocking becomes more insistent.
“Got to go,” he tells Sykes, gets up from his desk, walks into his living room as the urgent knocking continues.
He looks through the peephole, sees Sammy’s flushed, unhappy face, opens the door.
“I’ve been trying to get you for a damn hour,” Sammy blurts out.
“How’d you know I was here?” Win asks, confused, his mind going everywhere.
“I’m a detective. Your home phone’s busy. She just screeched at me like an air-raid siren.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think. You got to come with me right now. She’s waiting for you at the Globe.”
“Forget it,” Win says.
8
Stuart Hamilton, the managing editor, maintains his appropriate demeanor as he sits inside his office with Lamont and a senior reporter and a photographer. The office is glass. Everyone in the newsroom is witness to what no doubt will be an unprecedented interview, maybe the biggest news in the city since the Red Sox won the World Series.
Everyone, and there must be a hundred people beyond the glass, can see the well-known, formidable DA Monique Lamont, in a dark warm-up suit, exhausted, no makeup, sitting on a sofa, their commander in chief, Hamilton, listening, nodding, his face somber. Journalists, secretaries, editors are guarded in their glances from the other side of the glass, but Lamont knows she is being watched, talked about, that looks are being exchanged, that e-mails are firing from desk to desk. It is what she wants. The interview will run on A1, above the fold. It will race through cyberspace and land in papers and on Internet news sites all around the world. It will be talked about on television, the radio.
Crawley can go to hell.
“Because I have no choice,” she is saying from the sofa, her shoes off, her legs curled under her as if she is having coffee with old friends. “I owe it to women everywhere.” She catches herself. “To men, women, children, all victimized people everywhere.”
Careful. Don’t suggest that sexual violence is a problem restricted to women. Don’t refer to yourself as a victim.
“If we are going to destigmatize sexual violence. Pedophilia. Rape — and not only women are raped—” she continues, “then we must be open about it and speak of it in the context of violence and not simply in the context of sex.”
“So you’re basically desexualizing it at the same time you’re demythologizing it,” the reporter says, Pascal Plasser-something, she never can get his name right.
Last time he interviewed her, he was reasonably fair, reasonably truthful, and not particularly bright, which is why she requested him when she showed up unannounced at the newspaper, rang Hamilton, told him that if he assured her the coverage she deserves for an exclusive of this magnitude, she would talk openly about what just happened.
“No, Pascal,” she says. “That’s not what I’m doing at all.”
She wonders where Win is and her anger spikes, fear sits in her stomach like lead.
She says, “I can’t possibly desexualize what happened to me. It was a sexual crime. Sexual violence that could have exacted the ultimate price. My life.”
“It’s incredibly courageous for you to do this, Monique,” Hamilton says with an air of solemnity, of sorrow, like he’s a damn funeral home director. “But I must point out that some of your detractors will view this as a political ploy. Governor Crawley, for example…”
“A ploy?” She leans forward on the sofa, holds Hamilton’s gaze. “Someone puts a gun to my head, ties me up, rapes me with the intention of murdering me and burning down my house, and that’s a ploy?”
“Your talking about it might be construed as…”
“Stuart,” she says, and her mettle, her self-control are remarkable. “I welcome anybody to suggest such a thing. I challenge them. I dare them.”
She’s not quite sure how she can be so poised, and a part of her is terrified that it isn’t normal for her to be this pulled together, that maybe it’s the dead calm before a horrific storm, the sane moment before the straitjacket or suicide.
“Why do you say you’d welcome it?” Pascal What’s-his-name asks, scribbling notes, flipping a page.
“Anybody,” she says ominously. “Anybody who says or suggests such a thing will only succeed in revealing his true character. Good. Let him try.”
“Him?”
“Let anybody try.”
She looks through the glass, surveys the expanse of bleak partitioned space, journalists in their cubicles, rodents who feed on the garbage and tragedies of others. She looks for Win, waits for his formidable, striking presence to suddenly dominate the newsroom, striding her way. But there is no sign of him, and her hope begins to fade. Anger flares.
He has defied her directive. He has degraded her, belittled her, shown his misogynistic contempt.
“Your new crime initiative — in fact published in this very paper this morning—any crime, any time,” Hamilton says. “What might you say now?
“And will this new cold-case initiative, At Risk, the murder in Tennessee, somehow take a backseat to…?”
Win isn’t coming. She’ll punish him for this.
“I couldn’t be more motivated and determined to bring about justice in any violent crime, no matter how long ago it was committed,” Lamont says. “In fact, I’ve assigned Investigator Garano to At Risk full-time while he’s on leave from my Middlesex County headquarters.”
“Leave? So there’s a question about whether the shooting of Roger Baptista was merited?” Pascal is suddenly alert, more alert than he has been throughout her brave, painful interview.
“Any time deadly force is used, no matter the apparent circumstances,” Lamont says, placing emphasis on the word apparent, “we must investigate the incident to the fullest.”
“Are you implying that the force might have been excessive?”
“I can make no further comment at this time,” she says.
Win feels a little guilty walking into the state police crime laboratory with his sealed envelope, knowing it really isn’t fair to bypass backlogs and protocols when he wants evidence analyzed right away.
He doesn’t feel the least bit guilty for not showing up at the Globe to further Lamont’s relentless political aspirations, to participate in behavior that is inappropriate, outrageous, and, in his opinion, self-destructive. Sammy says her exclusive tell-all is already being talked about in cyberspace, on TV and the radio, getting everybody primed to read her prurient and pitiful interview. He has decided she’s reckless and irrational, and that’s not a good thing if the person is your boss.
The modern brick building with its heavy steel front doors is a haven for Win, a place to go when he wants to unload on Captain Jessie Huber, discuss cases, complain, confide, ask for advice, maybe a favor or two. Win walks through the green and blue glass-block lobby, heads down a long hallway, and helps himself to the familiar open door where he finds his friend and mentor, typically dapper in a conservative dark suit and a gray silk cravat, typically on the phone. Huber is tall and thin, bald as a full moon, and women find him sexy, maybe because he is formidable and a good listener. Three years ago he was the senior investigator in Win’s unit, then was appointed to take over the labs.