“No. Wait.” The editor pointed to them. “Don’t leave. Stand by.”
Jane stopped, and Peter almost ran into her. “Sorry,” he said.
Marcotte put her hand over the mouthpiece, aimed her words at them. “We’re set on the deal, okay? And you two can continue without me. I’ve got a possible situation here.”
“What’s up?” Jane said. “Anything I can do?”
“Yes,” Marcotte said. “There is. Will you get me Chrystal Peralta? Tell her we’ve got a body on Moulten Road. Homicide is on the way.”
21
“This is Jake Brogan.” Jake’s cell showed caller ID blocked, so maybe it was Frasca checking in. But there was no one on the other end. “Hello?”
Jake hung up, figuring whoever it was would call back. He’d spent the last three hours pulling rubber-banded manila folders from accordion files, reading the fusty multi-syllabic psych-talk that analyzed the reasons a raft of poor saps confessed to crimes they didn’t commit.
Four cups of fancy coffee and two crullers later, plowing through all the professional lingo, Jake felt he’d been reading fiction, stories too bizarre and unbelievable even for the movies. And, he had to admit, law enforcement manipulation so brazen it was embarrassing.
Jake read stomach-churning cases of overzealous detectives and special agents, battering confessions out of the semi-defenseless or totally confused in the pressure cooker of an interrogation room, usually plying them with phony reassurances and false promises.
The case where he and Frasca met-a young Vietnamese woman, in barely marginal English, confessed to killing her child because the cops had guaranteed her if she did, “it would all be over” and she could go home. Instead, she was slammed into the Framingham House of Correction awaiting arraignment for murder. Jake and Frasca had discovered the baby had been sick, doctors’ records proved it, and the young woman was completely blameless. Now free but humiliated, she hadn’t come out of her home in the last year.
She’d confessed all right. They all had. But none were guilty. Misguided, confused, or impaired or young or stupid or manipulated or coerced. But not guilty. Jake powered through Frasca’s case files, absorbed, almost forgetting why he was here. The guy in Sweden trying to impress a girlfriend who thought he was a wimp, a poor dupe in Illinois who’d been kept awake by the cops for forty-seven hours until he finally caved. And forget about recanting. Once a confession was “given,” it obliterated any other evidence. Witnesses, alibis, everything, would be ignored-because why would someone confess to a crime they didn’t commit?
Jake sighed, leaned back in the soft leather, stared out the plate glass at the gathering gray clouds, thought about Gordon Thorley. No question his confession to Bing Sherrey had been taped. The Massachusetts courts frowned on what had once been the norm, those “we forgot” or “the machine broke” excuses by detectives about why their interrogations weren’t recorded. Jurors had actually been ordered to be skeptical of “confessions” where the questioning wasn’t on tape-judges instructing jurors they could infer that a lack of audio meant police had behaved inappropriately.
But Bing Sherrey hadn’t offered solace or security or release or redemption. He hadn’t offered anything. Thorley’d shown up on his own.
All the more reason to be perplexed.
Jake glanced at the stack of DVDs Frasca had left. Might as well watch those. But now, faced with dozens of similar but unique cases of false confessions, he wondered if any of it mattered. What was he expecting to learn, really, from all this? Some kind of key to Thorley? Some kind of psychological explanation for his actions, or scientific proof of guilt?
Or maybe, just maybe, finding nothing was the proof of something else. That Gordon Thorley-not young, not mentally ill, not stupid or manipulated or strong-armed-actually was the Lilac Sunday killer.
Jake stared blankly at the dregs of his coffee and the cruller crumbs, imagining the future.
What if this year’s Lilac Sunday, five days from now, was the first without the ghost of Carley Marie Schaefer hanging over it? The first the Schaefer family could hope for some justice? The first without the memory of failure sending Gramma Brogan to face Gerald and Maureen Schaefer at their annual “Remember Carley Marie” news conference, and then to her room for the rest of the day.
Jake, lost in speculation, flinched when his cell phone rang again, dropped his pencil. Was Frasca already done with his meeting? Already close to noon. No wonder he was starving. Was that thunder outside?
“Brogan,” he said. He paused, listening, then inserted a DVD into the slot in the machine under the TV monitor. He didn’t push play, though, his hand frozen in mid-air as he listened to Bing Sherrey’s terse recitation. “Are you serious? Was it an accident? No? Are you sure?”
Peter’s cell phone, set on vibrate for the meeting with Jane and Marcotte, buzzed in his jacket pocket. Peter ignored it, focusing on what Victoria Marcotte was telling Jane.
A homicide? With ninety-three murders a year in Boston alone, it wasn’t surprising there’d be one reported while he was at the Register. His lawyer brain instantly wondered if the bad guy needed a defense attorney. He had his hands full already, he decided. Someone else could have this one.
Jane had raced off down the hall, holding up one finger in a “be right back” gesture. He stood in the doorway, realized he was watching her jog away. He’d assumed she’d be kind of a pain, tough or bitter or a hardass. Or a diva, full of herself and her career. He’d been wrong about all of that. He was still embarrassed with himself for checking out her ring finger. His phone buzzed again. Someone who had his cell number, so probably Nicole at his office, reminding him of something. Or maybe-had Sandoval been arrested for Waverly Road?
That’d start the wheels in motion with Jane, even sooner than he’d predicted.
“Peter Hardesty,” he answered. Marcotte, he could see through the glass, was still on her phone, now clamped between her shoulder and cheek, peering at something on her computer screen.
“This is Detective Branford Sherrey, Mr. Hardesty. We met yesterday? I’m calling about your client, Gordon Thorley.”
“What about him?” Bing Sherrey. The blowhard cop who’d tried to keep Thorley in custody. The news he’d just overheard in Marcotte’s office. A homicide. Was Thorley dead? The victim? Or who?
“We cannot seem to locate your client, Mr. Hardesty,” Sherrey said. “He should have checked in with parole this morning. When he didn’t, we sent an officer to his LKA. Last known address.”
“I understand LKA,” Peter said. Down the hall, Jane was walking with a tall salt-and-pepper brunette, both women gesturing toward Marcotte’s office. The other woman, older, with wild curls and dark glasses perched on her head, wore a flimsy too-small sundress. He could see the woman’s sunburned shoulders and surprising cleavage all the way from here. This was probably Chrystal, the reporter Marcotte mentioned. “My client was not home? So what?”
If Thorley was missing, was he dead? Killed? By whom? Why?
“Nope. No answer to the knock, no sign of him. Your client is gonzo. We went inside-”
“You went inside? You have a warrant to-”
“Landlord let us in, what if he’s in trouble, right? Plus, he gave up his Fourth Amendment rights the moment his homey waved a.45 at that liquor store owner back in 1995, Counselor. As I am sure you’re aware.”
Jerks. “And?”
“And nothing, Mr. Hardesty.”
Peter waited.
“That warrant?” Sherrey said. “We do have it. Violation of parole. Not to mention fleeing after an interrogation, suspicion of-”