“We know the tip line number, Jake,” a reporter’s voice called out. “So is this a homicide? A domestic? Give us something, okay?”
“Do you have any suspects? Jake, should people in this neighborhood be afraid? Take extra precautions?”
Jake should have known this was coming. The no-win question. If he said people shouldn’t be afraid, reporters would assume it meant they had a suspect and a motive, but weren’t making it public. That would be the headline. If he said people should be afraid, reporters would decide a crazed unknown mother-killer was on the loose, and that’d be the headline.
As well as the end of his career as a cop.
“Our team is doing knock-and-talks now,” Jake said, floating a non-answer, “to assess-”
“Any witnesses?” a voice interrupted.
“Is this the victim’s home? Or whose?”
Porch lights flicked on at the house across the street, then the one next to it, and then the one next to that one. The Channel 2 guy had said they were broadcasting live. Talk about a ghoul magnet. People watching TV were now seeing their own neighborhood, live, on the air. They’d all be coming outside now, unable to resist the lure of disaster. Get their faces on the air, participate in tragedy, maybe record it all inside so they could watch the whole thing again later over a beer. Time to get this thing over with.
“The incident is now under investigation,” Jake read the final line of the statement the Supe had e-mailed to his phone. “And we’re done.”
“Jake, Jake, one more question!”
Another reason why television sucked.
Jane hid a smile, remembering the not-so-old days when this frigid deadline-pushing news conference would have been a stress-inducing nightmare. “Going live” meant you had to ask the first question, make sure your news director saw you were the front-line big gun. Working for the Register, though, Jane kind of enjoyed watching it all play out, especially the TV types fighting for the spotlight. She’d make her deadline, piece of cake, and not have to worry about whether her hair frizzed in the misty snow. Leaving TV felt terrific. It did.
She watched Jake, squinting against the lights, field the barrage of questions. Dr. McMahan looked like a slinky version of one of those little Russian dolls-in-a-doll, all big eyes and dark hair and red lips. FrankenDoc’s replacement was even hotter than the gossip that already surrounded her. Dr. McMahan whispered close to Jake’s ear, then went back into the apartment.
So why was the ME here? Jake hadn’t answered that.
Or much of anything else, for that matter. Jane had already used her phone to check resident listings for number 56, top floor, but nothing. No names. The cops had no ID. She didn’t, either.
Jane listened with half an ear, suspecting Jake wouldn’t reveal much more, and composed her story, scrawling it in pencil on her snow-dampened notebook. Police are soliciting the public’s help in finding the identity of a young woman found dead in her Roslindale triple-decker apartment Sunday afternoon. Officials revealed there are two children…
Jane paused, mid-sentence. Poor things. Jake hadn’t said their ages. But, really, there were three victims here, not only the mother. Life as those kids knew it-whatever it was-was certainly over. What would happen to them? Would relatives swoop them up? Maybe this marked their entrance into the bureaucratic morass of the foster care system. Maybe that’s a good follow-up? Maybe she could talk with Alex about-but that was for later. She had less than an hour to bang out today’s story.
Police admit they have no leads on the possible homicide at 56 Callaberry St., but say they were called to the scene by a-
Huh.
“Detective Brogan!” All the other reporters called him Jake in public. She didn’t. They had to be careful. But she had one more question.
“Detective Brogan, Jane Ryland with a follow-up. You said you have no witnesses and no information. So who called nine-one-one?”
“Miss Ryland, any further information will have to come from Tom O’Day, media relations, at headquarters.” Jake was answering Jane’s question, hiding a smile, of course she would pick up on the crux of this thing, but suddenly Jane wasn’t listening to him. She’d picked up a cell phone call in the middle of a news conference? Who’d be so important? “That’s it, folks. Thank you.”
He turned away from the mics and the lights and the still-clamoring reporters. That was over, at least. With no exploding land mines. It’d be worth some brownie points with the Supe, too, who’d probably monitored the whole thing on that ancient TV in his office. Now on to-he turned to check, couldn’t help it. Jane still had her back to the house, hand cupped over her phone. Who was she talking to so intently?
“Leonard Perl,” DeLuca interrupted his thoughts.
“Huh?” Jake said, turning back to him. “Pearl?”
“P-E-R-L. He’s the landlord, according to the Afterwards dude,” DeLuca said. “Lives in Florida. ‘Fort Something,’ the genius told me. So, case closed. We find this Leonard Perl, get the four-one-one on his tenant, track down her ex-husband or whatever, read ’im his rights, go home, and watch Law and Order. DeLuca and Brogan score again.”
“Detectives?” Kat McMahan trotted across the first floor landing and down the stairway, white lab coat flapping over her T-shirt and scrubs, her latex gloves not touching the walls or the banister. “Can you come upstairs again? I need to show you something.”
12
“Can we go now? Please?” Kellianne Sessions gripped both hands over the back of the front seat, pleading with her older brother as he got into their van. Kev had joined the group of neighbors who arrived to check out the reporters while Keefer had stayed in the front seat, obliv, glued to his iPod. She’d sat through the whole news conference, sulking, sinking into her parka. Trapped, totally, by this whole thing. People had to die for them to get paid. How sick was that?
She’d probably wind up with some disease from all the junk they had to use to clean up after somebody who died. Whatever got rid of the stench and the crud, had to, like, eat away at your lungs and blood when you breathed it in. Sometimes the death smell stuck in her nose no matter what she did. She knew people looked at her funny. The smell was always part of her.
“What’s the prob, Kel?” Kevin slammed the driver’s side door. “You got a big date or something? He can wait. Then you can tell him all about your latest cleanup job. Bet the guys go nuts over that. You’re the queen-a-death.”
Jerk. She kicked the front seat with her boot for punctuation.
“Huh?” Keefer turned around, eyes wide, yanking out one earbud.
“Ignore her,” Kevin told him. “Here’s the drill. We’ll wait till the cops leave, then go in and scope out the place. The landlord’s guy got a key for us. We gotta see what there is, what we need to bring. We gotta call the landlord and give him the estimate-he’s got insurance, so we’re golden.”
“Oh, right.” Kellianne rolled her eyes. The estimate. Like that was reality.
“Then we’ll book. And you can head off to meet Prince Charming.”