She leaned forward, half-serious. “Is there some big secret?”
“You reporters are all alike, you know that?” Maitland clanked his chair to the floor, got to his feet. Stabbed a forefinger toward the office door. “You see some ex-wife beating down my door to make trouble for the governor? When Owen announced, it got big national coverage. Everybody and his brother knew about it, the entire country. Don’t you think if there was something ‘unacceptable’ in Owen’s past, some mistake, some skeleton, some ex-wife wouldn’t have already made that pretty darn public?”
“I’m looking for the truth,” Jane said. She watched Maitland’s face harden, his ears turn red. Good. The higher the bluster, the more possibility of a big story. In her tote bag, her phone was ringing again. Damn. Not now.
“Oh, bull. Don’t insult me with that BS about your search for ‘the truth.’” Maitland rolled his eyes, making air quotes around the words. “You’re only about the scandal, all of you media types. The dirt. Poking into the past, digging for something where there’s nothing. Some news that when it turns out to be wrong, you’ll run some pitiful correction, if you even bother to do that, while someone’s reputation goes down the tubes. But you’ve got to get your story. Make yourselves the new Woodward and Bernstein.”
“Mr. Maitland?” Jane kept her voice even, as if calming a five-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum. “What about Owen Lassiter’s first wife?”
“What about her?” Maitland shot back.
“Is she hiding for some reason? Are you hiding her?”
“Hiding her?”
“Where is she?” Jane continued.
“Where is she?” Maitland echoed.
Jane struggled not to laugh out loud. Maitland was clearly losing it, repeating her questions like that. She was about to win this round. What would happen when she pushed him about the mysterious Kenna?
“Yes, Mr. Maitland, where is she?”
“I’ll tell you exactly where she is.” Rory’s eyes did not match his smile. “Where she’s been for the past two years. Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
“She’s in-”
“She’s a resident of Poplar Grove Cemetery.”
49
Today had not gone as planned. Ten minutes to go, but Jake could see the news conference was already packed. The media clumped together outside the post office, microphones, tape recorders, cameras. Coffee. Klieg lights. Soon would come the inevitable questions. Jake had zero answers.
Today was supposed to have been a big score for the good guys. The headlines were supposed to have been Kylie Howarth. Now that her parents had identified their daughter, the supe planned to call the press to the BPD media room, disclose the victim’s identity, reveal she was a suicide, reassure the public, and stop the manufactured clamor to catch some mythical Bridge Killer.
Then they’d found the fourth victim. Now they were out in the miserable windy cold, getting ready to deliver bad news in a damn parking lot. The Kylie story would be buried. The vulture patrol would care only about Jake’s failures, and about stampeding people into thinking some serial killer was on the loose. There must be a better way to sell newspapers.
A tap on his shoulder. “Detective? Supe wanted me to show you this.”
Pam, the homicide office clerk, held up a manila envelope.
“Hey, Pam.” He gestured at the still-growing crowd. “Quite the turnout, huh? Whatcha got?”
The clerk reopened the metal-pronged closure and drew out a piece of paper. “It’s the sketch of the-”
“Come over here for a sec.” Jake could tell the Channel 5 reporter was edging closer. Trying to eavesdrop, see over his shoulder. Vulture. He turned his back, motioned Pam to do the same. “So what’ve we got?”
“Sketch guy just finished,” Pam said. “Supe called me in to hand these out. Also, DeLuca’s at the Suffolk County Jail. He says there may be a collar in the Roldan case. Says he’ll call you.”
Jake took the sketch. And there she was. Fort Point. Jake stared at the postcard-sized drawing, mesmerized. A bulleted description was typed in the lower right: Hair: light brown. Eyes: blue. Distinguishing marks or tattoos: none. Age: approx. 25.
What the bullet points didn’t say was-she had been beautiful. The colored-pencil sketch was something more suited to a magazine than a morgue. Long curly hair, model cheekbones, full lips. Some sort of little necklace. Young, gorgeous, and dead.
Did she die because I suck at my job? Did she die because I refused to believe her killer existed? Is she as much my victim as the Bridge Killer’s?
He thought about Arthur Vick. About Vick’s connection with Amaryllis Roldan, and with Sellica. And Kylie. Kylie Howarth, the confirmed suicide who ruined the whole case. Or solved it.
“Thanks, Pam,” he said. He slid two copies of the sketch into his jacket’s inside pocket. Then he had an idea. “Hold one up for me, okay?”
Jake took out his BlackBerry and snapped a picture of the picture.
A flurry of activity-a siren, a car crunching through the gravel, a door slamming. Lights flicked on; photographers scrambled to their cameras.
“Supe’s here,” Pam said.
Jake slid his BlackBerry back into his jeans pocket. “Showtime.”
“Okay, okay, okay, I just have to get into this parking space.”
Jane tried to keep her phone between her cheek and her shoulder while she backed into a too-small almost-space near the post office. The parking lot was crammed with trucks and vans and news cars, staffed by reporters who’d answered their phones in time to arrive before the news conference started. How was she supposed to know it had been Alex on the phone? How was she supposed to know there was another Bridge Killer victim?
Plus, she’d had to run out of Maitland’s office before she could ask about Kenna.
Damn. After this morning’s unpleasantly contentious encounter, it would be a real challenge to even get near Maitland again.
She inched as close as she could to the gigantic pickup mooching too much space in front of her. She tapped its fender, wincing. “Yeah, yeah, Alex, I’m here. I’ll let you know when Tuck arrives. Where is she, anyway? She owes me, big-time.”
She was talking to air. Alex had hung up.
A hulking black Crown Vic four-door blurped its siren at her in warning, turning across her path as it slid into the post office parking lot. A BPD decal on the side of the car said SUPERINTENDENT.
Thank goodness. Jane, out of breath, reached the pack of reporters before Rivera stepped to the lectern’s bristling bouquet of microphones. Jane eyed her colleagues-ex-colleagues, some of them. Maybe it was good she was late. She wouldn’t have to chitchat, pretend to like them. She pulled out her spiral notebook, wrote 11:45 A.M. at the top of a clean page.
A gaggle of cops surrounded the podium. Superintendent Rivera, wearing dress blues and his hat yanked down over his forehead, towered over the rest. Laney Driscoll, the PR guy, hovered next to him, clutching a thick manila envelope. A few uniforms stood stationed along the fence, eyes hidden behind identical dark Ray-Bans.
Jake.
In those jeans and leather jacket, almost with his back to the crowd, talking to some woman in a black police-issue pullover. Poor Jake. Another victim. He must be…
The woman was holding up a piece of paper, and Jake seemed to be snapping a photo of it. As the woman walked away, Jake turned around, now facing the reporters but not making eye contact.
Jane shifted position, willing him to see her. Come on, Jakey. She sent him ESP messages. I’m here.