I didn’t have answers, but I had kept the card hidden.
I took a breath and typed “Peter Fournier” along with “Boston Globe” into the search engine and hit Enter.
The screen blinked. I began to cough as two links popped up.
Both were from the Boston Globe. The dates matched those on the card.
I quickly clicked on the first one before I could think of a reason not to. The screen blacked out for a second, and a little hourglass icon appeared. I was about to get up to ask Alice what was wrong when an image appeared.
Boston Globe
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Chapter 32
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERYAmanda Fournier, wife of Boston Police Department rookie Peter Fournier, was killed in a holdup of a Boston delicatessen on Thursday. Around noon, witnesses say, a masked man entered the establishment, brandishing a shotgun and demanding money. The assailant grabbed for Mrs. Fournier’s purse, and during the struggle the gun discharged, killing the twenty-year-old instantly. The suspect fled in a blue Chevy pickup truck. The Fourniers, police sources said, were planning to start a family.
I swallowed involuntarily, my hand shaking. I felt like throwing up, like I’d been kicked in the stomach.
Coffee shot out of the lid of my cup, scalding my jittery hand, but I couldn’t feel it.
The date seemed to make sense. It was Peter. I could feel it in the marrow of my pregnant bones.
He’d had a wife? A wife who’d been killed?! Why didn’t he tell me that he was a widower? I wondered. He did tell me I was the first girl that he’d ever dated for more than a month. He’d also told me he was from New York, not Boston. Which I’d accepted at face value despite the suspicious fact that he was a die-hard Red Sox fan.
“No!” I actually said out loud to the screen.
I wiped sweat from my face with my wrist. When I turned, Alice was looking at me funny from her desk.
“Everything OK in there?” she said.
“Fine,” I lied again as I looked back at the screen.
So what? I thought angrily. What did this prove? It was just a coincidence. Someone named Peter Fournier was a cop in Boston. There were lots of Peter Fourniers in the world. It was just a coincidence.
What was I doing here anyway? I wondered. Wasting my time was what. Driving myself crazy was what.
I stood and grabbed my barely touched coffee. I needed to get out of this cramped concrete box and go for a jog on the beach or a long swim. Maybe in the afternoon, I’d head down to one of the wharves in Old Town and buy some freshly caught wahoo in case Peter and Morley came back empty.
Maybe he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing, but we could deal with that. Checking up on him like I was Nancy Drew was too out there. Screw Björn and his cryptic bullshit. My trip to Crazyland was over. I needed to go where I belonged. Home. Now.
As I stood, I couldn’t help but remember the second link on the screen.
I clicked on the back arrow and stared at the Enter button as if it meant “Self-destruct.” Then I put my coffee back down and clicked.
“Come on already,” I said, nervously flicking the coffee’s plastic lid with my thumb as I waited for the screen to change.
There was a hum, and then my stomach dropped as the black screen turned to white. The first thing that appeared as I began to scroll down to the article was a smudgy photograph.
I stopped scrolling, my whole hand trembling on the mouse.
It was Peter.
He was a few years younger, and he was wearing a Boston PD uniform.
As I looked into Peter’s eyes, it felt like my throat was slowly closing, garden hose to coin wrapper to bar straw.
I finally closed my eyes to make the picture and the rest of my rapidly disintegrating world disappear.
Unbelievable, I thought, keeping my eyes closed.
I assumed I’d calm down after a while, but it wasn’t happening. The office chair beneath me suddenly felt wobbly, as if all the screws had been removed.
I’d thought that I’d grown up on the day my father died, but I’d been wrong. Sitting there in front of the picture of my husband that proved he was a liar, I felt my heart concede and my head take over.
I shook my head at my wedding and engagement rings. I had to get it out of the sand. I needed to wake the hell up.
There was no more denying it. Pictures didn’t lie.
Fact: Peter was from Boston, not New York.
Fact: Peter had been married before to a woman who was killed.
Fact: Peter had been lying to me from day one.
Fact: I was in some deep shit.
It felt like time stopped as I glanced down and spotted the new headline beside Peter’s picture. My eyes ran over the five words, and it felt like the rapidly spinning world had stopped dead right there under the public library fluorescents.
I didn’t think that it could get worse.
God, was I so very wrong.
“Cop Questioned in Wife’s Death,” the headline said.
Chapter 33
Boston, MA
COP QUESTIONED IN WIFE’S DEATHAuthorities in the Boston Police Department have questioned the husband of the woman killed in a delicatessen holdup last month. Peter Fournier, who is a rookie patrolman on the Boston Police force, refused to answer reporters’ questions as he left headquarters with his lawyer late last night.Twenty-year-old Amanda Fournier was killed by multiple shotgun blasts during the midday holdup on September 21. A receptionist in a pediatrician’s office on Crescent Street, she entered Jake’s Deli next door a little before noon. Witnesses say a masked assailant entered behind her and that she was shot several times when she hesitated to give up her bag. No one else was injured.The autopsy report released from the Suffolk County coroner’s office confirmed that Mrs. Fournier was pregnant.Detectives would not reveal if the questioning was routine or not. But a source close to the investigation described the events surrounding the murder as “suspicious.”Neighbors of the couple described the Fourniers as close and were shocked to learn of the questioning of Mr. Fournier. As were Mr. Fournier’s fellow Boston PD officers, one of whom described the twenty-six-year-old rookie and former U.S. Army Ranger as extremely competent and “a cop’s cop.”
I stopped reading. The world turned gray, as if a dimmer switch had been hit. I blinked, unable to breathe, waiting for my heart to start beating again.
I noticed that there was another photograph at the bottom of the article. I shuddered as I looked at the picture of the young woman above the “Amanda Fournier” caption.
The young woman had a lot of high hair and some dark eye shadow. I realized two things about this photograph simultaneously. It looked like the girl’s high school picture, and she looked a hell of a lot like me!
I thought about what Peter had said when I confronted him about his double shift.
Then I… looked into your eyes, and I haven’t been inside a church since my Communion, Jeanine, but it felt holy… Like God sent an angel down from heaven.
I’ll bet! I thought as I sat there, unable to pry my eyes away from the photo of the deceased young woman on the screen.