“Melissa?” she said again.
Jane heard voices in the background, the hushed murmurs of someone else talking.
“She’s nine years old,” Melissa whispered. “Jane, I’m so worried, and Daniel’s not here to help and-could you come? I need you. I really do. Please?”
“One second,” Jane told her. Please? “Ah, Mr. Tyson? I-”
“So?” Tyson,was aiming his remote at the bank of TV monitors, goosing up the volume, one screen after the next. “Ready to write it up nice and juicy for the six? Lead story, sister.”
Jane felt the warmth go out of her face, pressed her lips together.
“I can’t,” she said.
Tyson turned to her, his arm still pointed at the screens. It slowly lowered, and Jane’s shoulders seemed to sink along with it.
“Can’t.” Tyson made it a statement. A bullet. He nodded, silently, considering. Then turned back to the monitors. “I see.”
Jane waited a heartbeat. The day had started with an opening door. Now it was apparently slamming in her face.
“I have a family emergency,” she said.
16
No way could he be in four places at once, so Jake had chosen the one that could clinch the case. Mass General. He jabbed the elevator button, waiting for the numbered lights above to make their agonizingly slow journey down to where he waited on L. Five o’clock. Shift change. Every elevator in the hospital would be stopping on every floor. It wouldn’t help to be impatient, even though he was. He felt so close to case closed he could taste the celebratory beer.
Bobby Land would have to wait. Jake had stashed him in an office on the third level of Headquarters with a can of Sprite and a couple of sports magazines. Fortunately, the kid hadn’t called for a lawyer or his parents, and, after admitting that he was over eighteen, thank you so much, had agreed to stand by until Jake got back. The memory card from Land’s camera was a total loss, according to the techs in IT, so whatever photos he had taken were crushed out of existence. Jake had promised Bobby they’d investigate the shattered camera incident, so Land was probably happily planning his revenge-or lawsuit-against Calvin Hewlitt.
Hewlitt himself, not such a happy camper, was parked in interrogation room C with Paul DeLuca. In a cold blast of law enforcement irony, DeLuca had been partnered for the preliminary questioning with Angie Bartoneri, once Jake relieved her here at the hospital. Question one for Hewlitt: Why had he smashed that memory card? Just to keep his handcuffed picture out of the papers? Seemed more like an obvious move by a guilt-ridden person worried by something incriminating on it. Still, if Bobby Land had seen whatever that something was, his eyewitness evidence was almost as probative as that caught on camera. Almost.
D had promised to let Jake know if Hewlitt said anything useful or instructive. Not likely, since the only word out of his mouth so far, according to D, was “lawyer.” They couldn’t hold him forever-eight hours, according to case law, until they had to cut bait. “Malicious destruction of property” would legally keep him at HQ for a while, but a good lawyer would get him sprung pretty damn fast. Hewlitt was trouble, Jake knew it. He just didn’t know how. Yet.
John Doe No. 1 was in the morgue. Identification team was hot on his case, but so far, the stabbed guy-Caucasian male, middle-aged-was still nameless. Why wasn’t he carrying ID? Everyone had ID. How’d he get to Curley Park? Victim and potential suspect both arrived at the park with no ID?
Jane would soon be pushing to get pictures of them both. She’d already texted him a few times, most likely about exactly that. He hadn’t decided how to handle the Jane situation, so he was ignoring it for now. Jake hadn’t seen a photo of the dead guy’s face yet, so all in all, at this point, it was hard to come up with any theories. And maybe theorizing was a waste of time. This case might be solved in the next five minutes.
That’s why Jake was headed to the guarded bedside of John Doe No. 2.
What was that guy doing in that alley? Why had Calvin Hewlitt jumped him? So far, according to the watch, John Doe No. 2 was so doped up he was out of it. Jake wanted to see for himself. Maybe hear for himself. Try to get some idea of what had gone down in Franklin Alley.
Jake texted himself a reminder-Dumpster.
On the way to HQ, he’d dispatched a crime scene team to check it out. They’d soon reported there was nothing inside, e-mailed him their photos of the empty bin. Jake used a thumb to scroll his cell phone through their wide shots and close-ups; grimy dented metal walls, peeling paint, streaks of black and bird shit, puddled floor.
Empty.
That’s what worried Jake. Be a bad break if whatever had been in the Dumpster was now covered by layers of trash and detritus in the municipal landfill. He’d asked a cadet to get the pickup schedule. It was unlikely-Jake hoped this wasn’t wishful thinking-there’d be a Waste Management pickup at noon on a Monday. Maybe the Dumpster was empty. Maybe the tipster had been wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t matter.
He jabbed the elevator button again. Jane would have teased him about the futility of that. The alley. Who was the girl-woman who’d sent the cadet back there in the first place? He’d ordered him to find her.
Finally. Entering the elevator, he stepped to the side, getting out of the way as a frazzle-haired mom maneuvered a double-wide stroller into all the available space.
The good news, and the reason Jake was here? Though cadets were still looking through photos from bystanders’ cameras and cells, they’d discovered one kick-ass lead. Jake pulled out the folded copy of the digital color snapshot DeLuca had handed him half an hour ago.
“Check it out,” D had said. “Note the time stamp. Eleven fifty-nine A.M. Guy who took it’s around if we need him.”
They’d printed it out on letter-size paper. Not the best quality, but good enough. A medium close-up of someone’s back, someone wearing a once-white shirt. Jake could tell it was a man, could tell he was facedown on the sidewalk, and could see a bit of Mayor Curley’s bronze knee. Also in the photo was the clear image of the hilt of a knife, clutched in someone’s hand. Someone plunging the blade into the man’s back.
“Too bad you can’t see the stabber’s face,” Jake had said to D.
“True,” DeLuca said. “Thing is, we don’t need to see it.” He pointed to the stabber’s forearm. The arm with the knife. “Look closer.”
Jake looked. “Tattoo.”
“Yup.”
Jake had examined it again, close up, and then from farther away, holding it up to the light, as if that would reveal something. “Some fancy defense attorney’ll probably try to argue the stabber was being a good Samaritan, trying to pull the knife out.”
“Love to be there when he tries that,” DeLuca said. “We’d hear the jury laughing all the way to the Cape.”
“Yup,” Jake said.
“So, my man. If our John Doe 2 at MGH has a tattoo? What you see is what you get. Another life drama successfully solved,” DeLuca had said. “And in less than six hours. A new record, Harvard, even for us.”
Jake put the photo back into his jacket pocket. Reaching past the stroller, he pushed the button for 6.
So that was cool. The afternoon had raced by, even though it usually seemed like time went by slower if you wanted the day to go fast, not today. Brileen had asked her if she wanted to get coffee after work, since lunch got too rushed.
Tenley had gone back to her desk, and time had completely flown.
She logged off, watched the screen dip to black, waved at the second shifters arriving to take the day team’s place, and even smiled at the slobby red-haired guy who always took her spot. He looked kind of, like, surprised, so she guessed she’d never smiled at him before. Dahlstrom was nowhere to be seen, even better, as Tenley punched the ticking metal time clock. She usually hated that-who still had a punch clock?-but this time the little good-bye ding made her happy. She’d realized she’d seen Bri on the T in the mornings, must have, they just hadn’t connected. And turned out Bri went to the same college. Now she was meeting a college friend for coffee. Cool.