“Carley and me, we met at high school,” Thorley said. He looked over Peter’s shoulder, so intently Peter turned to see if someone was there.
“We-had a thing,” Thorley went on. “We kept it secret. I was older. She lived with her parents, out in Attleboro. Then she tried to break it off. I didn’t want that. We went to our special place in the…”
“What was she wearing?” Peter interrupted. He’d already heard Thorley tell the “special place” part. They needed to get this show on the road.
“When?” Thorley said.
“When you killed her.”
“A dress. With flowers.”
“Remarkable.” Peter riffled though the sparse paperwork, found the ragged photocopy of the Register article he’d been looking for. “That’s exactly what the newspaper reported.”
“’Cause it’s true, I guess.”
“You ever kill anyone else?”
“Nope.
“Just Carley Marie Schaefer.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why? Why’d you kill her?”
Thorley looked at the kitchen sink, as if fearing he’d thrown away the coffee too soon. He splayed his narrow fingers across the yellowed Formica table, stared down at them. Stretched one hand, then the other.
“Why?” he asked. “Why not?”
“Her jacket is here, Mr. Gianelli, so she must be here.”
Aaron hated Stephanie’s voice. Almost as much as he hated what she was telling him. The secretary sat behind her damn little desk, wearing that damn little headset, and didn’t seem at all concerned that Lizzie, her boss, wasn’t in her office. Even at eleven in the morning, way past the time she should be here. As for the jacket, Aaron knew what Stephanie clearly didn’t. Lizzie had left that jacket on her chair last night, not this morning. Last night, when Aaron had lured her to the swan boats, and then to that expensive dinner, and then to the second floor of the Hardamore Road house.
The office door behind Stephanie was wide open, showing Lizzie’s vacant desk. And that meaningless jacket over the back of her black leather chair.
Ridiculous that their “date,” or whatever, ended so absurdly. Him slamming the door as he stormed out. He’d tossed his whole ring of keys at her, so frustrated, even kind of told her to lock up and find her own way home. It was a bush-league beer-fueled mistake, but she’d made him so damn angry, laughing at him, first about the sheets, and then about, seemed like, every freaking thing he said, that he’d pretty much lost it. Now, before the whole thing blew up in his face, he had to get those keys back. Keep Lizzie happy. And make sure he hadn’t created a career-ending mess.
“Is she in a meeting?” That would be a reasonable explanation. “Can you check her calendar?”
Stephanie yanked open a drawer, but pulled out a packet of sugar instead of a calendar, dumped it into her mug of coffee, stirred it with a little stick.
“Oh, sorry, we don’t do the calendar thing yet. She’s new. We’re supposed to work that out this week.”
This girl was Lizzie’s secretary, she ought to know where Lizzie was. If she didn’t, she should be smart enough to wonder.
“Did she call you? Tell you she was gonna be late?” Aaron yanked at his tie to keep it from strangling him, tried to “eavesread” the paperwork on Stephanie’s desk to find any clues to Lizzie’s whereabouts. He’d put off the meeting with his client, but if he stalled much more, that deal’d fall through.
“Nope.” Stephanie took an agonizingly slow sip. “She might be at the doctor, and forgot to tell me. Or she might be upstairs. I was a little late myself.”
Upstairs? Shit. Exactly what Aaron feared most.
Had Lizzie told anyone about last night? Did anyone know they were together? She probably hadn’t, since it could be equally damaging to her as it would to him. Mutually assured destruction. Might keep her quiet.
Might.
“Will you have her call me, soon as she gets here?” He adjusted his tie, made himself into a confident bank employee again. “Nothing urgent. Just-whenever.”
He walked toward the elevator, checking behind him one last time. Praying to see the one person who might save his life.
If Lizzie gave the keys to anyone, anyone upstairs especially, he’d be screwed. Beyond screwed.
Okay. It was his fault. But fault didn’t matter at this point. Lizzie was the problem now, because she had the keys. All the keys.
The elevator door opened. But Aaron didn’t budge. He’d just realized what would make this even worse.
What if she didn’t have them?
19
“What the hell time was your plane, Brogan? Here it’s been however many years-and suddenly now you can’t live without me?”
Jake slung his briefcase onto the too-luxurious-for-government-issue wing chair in the corner of the office, shook Nate Frasca’s outstretched hand. He’d left Boston when it was still dark, arrived at Dulles before eight, grabbed a taxi, and battled the beltway morning traffic to the ordinary-looking brownstone in the three-syllable streets way past Dupont Circle. Ordinary on the outside, at least.
“Yeah, worried you’d blow it in the big time.” Jake gestured to the lacquered white office walls, the lofty floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the wall-to-wall windows with the view of the winding green trails and iconic stone bridges of Rock Creek Park. “Guess I was wrong. Or maybe you’re fooling them, too.”
Frasca waved Jake to a plush leather chair, gestured to a tray with a shining silver pot, a matching sugar bowl, and tiny pitcher of cream. A lacquer tray presented twisty glazed crullers and three bagels. “I know it’s not Dunkin’s,” Frasca said. “Sorry I can’t make you feel at home.”
“I’ll live,” Jake said. He poured a steaming cup, ignored the add-ons. “You doing okay, Nate? Getting some downtime, finally?”
A shrill beep interrupted, followed by a voice over an intercom. “Dr. Frasca? Fifteen.” And then silence.
“Welcome to D.C.,” Frasca said. “Downtime, my friend, is somewhere in the future. So cutting to the chase, Jake. I hope we get to grab lunch, maybe tomorrow? Sorry you had to come all his way, but it’s all classified, archived, no copies. We had no choice. There’s some DVDs, too, of the confessions. You can watch them in that laptop on the console. The false confessions are labeled ‘F.’”
“That’s why you get the big bucks,” Jake said. “Thanks.”
“I’ve got a hell of a day, too Washington to describe.” Frasca stood, packed his briefcase while he talked. “But while we’ve got a few minutes-sounds like you’ve got an interesting thing going on.”
Jake painted the Thorley confession with quick strokes. Told Frasca how every year the cops took a beating from the press, taunting the hell out of them for the still-open case. How Carley Marie’s parents came back to Boston every year, made a big deal of trying to ensure their daughter wasn’t forgotten.
“The legacy of Lilac Sunday,” Jake said. “One dead girl, one still-grieving family, a killer on the loose, and a colossal failure for the BPD.”
“Your grandfather’s case, right?” Frasca took a swig of Diet Coke, put the plastic bottle on a silver coaster. “Potentially significant, that this Thorley’d show up confessing to that one with you now on the force. Did he know your grandfather?”
Jake frowned, considering. Did Gordon Thorley know his grandfather? Never crossed his mind. How could they have been connected back then? A punk from the suburbs and the sixty-five-year-old Boston police commissioner? Lots of ways, actually.