Kenna clicked red and green Lego blocks together and apart, watching the man who wanted to be the next senator from Massachusetts play with a four-year-old. Fifteen minutes had long passed.
Over one cup of coffee, then two, she had drawn him out about his campaign, his policies, his strategy. She was fascinated, of course. Riveted. It was almost too easy. Lassiter had answered a second phone call with a terse: “I know what time it is. I’ll call you.”
“Dat is a oil truck!” Jimmy crowed. He grabbed the plastic vehicle from Lassiter’s hands. “I know it!”
“Maybe he can help with your Middle East policy,” Kenna said, smiling. She uncoiled herself from the chintz armchair, tossed two Legos into the rubber bowl. “Or transportation.”
“Absolutely. We can use a guy who recognizes his trucks.” Lassiter leaned back against the side of the couch, stretching his legs across the oriental rug. “The campaign could also use a well-informed mom who cares about his future. Ever thought about volunteering? Work for the Lassiter campaign?”
With an insistent buzz, Lassiter’s phone vibrated across the glass-top coffee table. The doorbell rang. And rang again.
“Your master’s voice,” Kenna said, looking at the phone. “I guess our time is up, Governor.”
“Will you do it?” Lassiter clambered to his feet and punched off his phone. “Join our merry band?”
“You’re a hard man to resist.” Kenna stood, hands on hips. “But I’d better answer the door before your staff comes looking for you, don’t you think?”
By the time Kenna returned, Trevor and clipboard in tow, Lassiter had rebuttoned his suit jacket and adjusted his tie. Jimmy, making vrooming sounds, was running the oil truck up the side of the couch.
“Mrs. Wilkes has volunteered for the campaign.” Lassiter pointed a finger at his aide, delegating. “Make sure she gets the information and paperwork she needs. Tell Maitland to expect her downtown.”
He turned back to Kenna. “Right?”
She held out one hand, palm up, agreeing. “You got yourself a campaign worker. I like what you said about the environment. And your foreign policy is… well, James would approve, I’m sure.” She saw Lassiter’s eyes soften.
“I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Wilkes.”
Standing in the doorway, Kenna waited until the entourage drove out of sight. She slid open a drawer in the foyer’s mahogany desk. Took out a cell phone. Dialed. Waited for the beep.
“Slam dunk,” she said. She paused, taking a deep satisfied breath. “Now. Come take this damn kid away.”
5
Would anyone answer this time? Detective Jake Brogan stepped back from the front door, angling himself sideways on the concrete front steps in case the response to his second round of knocking was a bullet. He’d almost lost a partner that way, back when he and DeLuca were rookies.
Tonight DeLuca was on call, and Jake was scouting solo. Fine. Couldn’t solve a murder, two murders, from the couch of his condo. He didn’t have to touch the Glock under his shoulder to know it was there.
He strained to hear what might be going on inside the Charlestown three-decker, its white-vinyl façade a copy of the one next door and the one next door to that. Black shutters, random shrubs. Streetlights mostly working. Down the block, newer brownstones, carefully gardened, pumpkins on stoops, gentrified the neighborhood into class battle lines, townies versus yuppies, all in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. The granite obelisk in the middle of Charlestown marked the slaughter that began the Revolutionary War. People around here were still fighting authority.
Code-a-silence, they called it. The townies never saw anything. Not much chance whoever was behind this door, or watching from the windows above, would admit to knowing what happened by the bridge last Sunday. Or would identify the victim, even if they knew her. Still, that’s what cops mostly did. Ask questions. Behind every closed door was a possible answer. This time on a Wednesday night, people should be home.
Still no response. Holding his BlackBerry under the feeble glow of the dusty porch light, he checked the canvass notes he’d tapped in. No grimy spiral notebooks for him, though the other guys sneered. “Harvard,” they called him. But he could type in the info, zap it to himself via e-mail. Instant filing, paperwork done.
“Boston PD,” he said, knocking again. “Anyone there?”
This time he heard something. A scraping, a creak. Maybe someone on a stairway.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he called out. Which wasn’t exactly true. “Just want to show you a few photos.”
A shadow behind the glass peephole, middle of the door. Sound of a dead bolt. The door creaked open, two inches, maybe three. The length of the chain. Then a slash of blue eye shadow, a heavy-penciled eyebrow. A fuzz of carroty hair.
“Ma’am?” Jake guessed. “Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”
“So?”
“Do you recognize this person?” Jake pulled postcard-sized sketches from his inside jacket pocket, held one up. The first was colored pencil, a redraw from the crime scene photos of Sunday’s Charlestown Bridge victim, the girl found three blocks from here. The real thing-bloated, bruised, basically grotesque-was too gruesome to show on the street. The sketch, brown hair, brown eyes, trace of a smile, softened the girl into someone’s college roommate. Anyone who knew her would recognize her.
“She had this on her leg.” Jake held up another drawing, this one depicting the green Celtic vine tattoo on one thin ankle. Minus, of course, the weedy vines the river waters had deposited around her leg. The tattoo was standard issue, another dead end, but he had a cadet hitting tattoo parlors and piercing places. Jake decided not to tell the reluctant townie exactly why he was asking.
In the drawing she didn’t look dead. “She from around here at all?” Jake asked.
“Zat the Bridge Killer girl?” The eye came closer to the chain.
So much for strategy. “You recognize her, ma’am? We could use your help here. Someone’s missing a daughter, maybe.”
“You people should catch that guy,” the voice said. “Before he kills someone else.”
And the door closed in his face.
Another campaign event canceled? Jane clicked through the swirling graphics of the Lassiter campaign’s online newsletter, elbows on her desk and chin in her hands, weary, trying to focus. Trying not to listen as coworkers she didn’t know said good night to one another and headed for bars or gyms or someone special at home. The sounds of the newsroom, tapping keyboards, cell phone rings, beepers, and the occasional peal of laughter, were familiar, and yet-not.
It had been a while since she’d been the new kid. Some people were trying to be nice, but breezy hellos and good-byes aside, she was the outsider. Maybe they couldn’t believe Alex had hired her. Everyone hates TV reporters. Amy had reminded her of that reality. Nobody hates them more devotedly than newspaper reporters. Especially a television reporter who gets it wrong. And they all thought she got it wrong.
The Lassiter newsletter blurred with a twinge of tears. There was nothing she could say that people would believe. They thought she was defensive, or lying, or a has-been, someone to be pitied, or dismissed. She missed her old life. Missed the after-news postmortems at Clancy’s. Missed the sneaked lunchtime manicures with Margery. Except for Margery and Steve, stalwart pals who’d persisted with dinner and movie invitations, none of her “friends” from Channel 11 had even called. As if being fired were a communicable disease.
Get a grip, she told herself. Shit happens. You’ll make friends here.
If only the lawyers could win the appeal. If only Sellica would contact her. Decide to come forward and tell the truth. Then everyone would know Jane wasn’t wrong. A moment of hope lifted her heart. Then disappeared.