He’d already texted DeLuca to get over here. With a missing husband and two dead guys, counting Bobby Land, the day was-duh-out of control. Turned out D had not been sleeping, as Jake had predicted, but was staking out Calvin Hewlitt’s condo. So far, though, he reported no activity. DeLuca had requested a backup to take over Hewlitt watch. Who caught it? Angie Bartoneri. Jake shook his head. Figures. With luck, though, Hewlitt would never know the occupants of the beat-up gray van parked opposite his South End brownstone were employees of Boston PD and not Paul Revere Landscaping.
Not even twenty-four hours since the Curley Park murder. Jake had been awake the whole time.
“Coffee?” Catherine Siskel was asking him, gesturing to one of those pod coffee machines.
“Thanks,” he said, grateful for as much coffee as anyone could provide. “Appreciate it. Black is fine.”
Still, luck of the Irish, because he’d been called here, he’d also gotten a damn good lead about City Hall surveillance video. Which, despite her loss, the enigmatic Ms. Siskel would have to explain. The coffeemaker hissed and gurgled, and hot water spat into a white mug. Jake smelled dark roast.
“So your husband?” he asked. “I take it he hasn’t called.”
Siskel handed him the steaming mug. Her hand trembled, the slightest bit.
“No,” she said. “He’s a consultant, so there’s no office he uses. Just home. He didn’t come home last night. He’s not there now. And not answering his cell. Mind if I sit?” She gestured to the black leather swivel chair behind her desk. “I’m not feeling that well.”
“Of course.” Jake took a less-comfortable guest chair opposite. “Has your husband been gone for twenty-four hours?”
Siskel blinked, looked at her watch. “Ah, I guess not,” she said. “I mean, technically? No. I talked to him on the phone around eleven yesterday morning. It’s almost ten now. So fine, twenty-three hours. Is there some-”
“Technically,” Jake said. Funny word to use. He took a sip of coffee, then looked at Siskel. She slid a little notepad across her desk, and he put the hot mug on it like a coaster. “Technically,” he repeated, “we can’t move into missing-persons mode until an adult-especially one we have no indication is in danger, or-”
He stopped, reading her expression. “What?”
She shook her head, barely. “Nothing,” she said.
“Ma’am? Do you think your husband is in danger?” This is exactly what he sensed. The woman was not being straight with him. If she’d murdered the guy herself, or hired someone, this is how he’d imagine her behavior. Half sentences. Distractions. Evasions. All the elements of a cover-up. “Has he been threatened, does he have enemies? Is he driving? Is there a car we should look for?”
“No, he-I have the car.”
Again, subtext. Omissions.
“Ma’am?” Shifting in his chair, Jake took out his spiral notebook. DeLuca had teased him mercilessly about his BlackBerry note taking. It wasn’t that Jake was backing down. The notebook method simply turned out to be easier.
Tolja, D had said. Whatever.
Jake flipped the notebook open.
“You know, I’ve handled many missing person cases, Ms. Siskel. And there’s a pattern we see, even though each case is unique. The family is-worried, sure, but there’s always a theory about what might have happened. Abducted on the way home from school. Drunk again. Incipient Alzheimer’s. Ran off with the other woman.”
Jake paused, checking Siskel’s expression for a response. Poker face.
Jake went on. “Gambling debts? Fired from work? Deep into drugs? Leading a double life with a new family?”
Still nothing. Okay, then.
“And ma’am, I’ve got to tell you, in my book? You’re behaving as if you, in fact, know what happened. And maybe you somehow want me to find out about it, so you can act surprised.”
Jake remembered when his mother always seemed to know what he was doing. “I have eyes in the back of my head,” she’d say whenever he’d stashed candy or contraband comic books. Or sometimes-especially during Jake’s lurching adolescent encounters with girls-she’d say, “I have ESP, my dear, don’t try to lie to me.” Jake still didn’t understand exactly how his mom could have known he’d invited high school senior classmate Olivia Magnussen to their house that Saturday night while his parents were at the symphony.
Now, twenty years later, he knew “intuition” was a mixture of training and experience, and he appreciated how he could use it to perceive beyond the exterior. “A good cop will know if it passes the sniff test,” his grandfather used to say. Jake wished Commissioner Brogan had lived long enough to see him in action. Or even better, to give him advice. Although sometimes it felt like he still did.
Jake recognized the look on Catherine Siskel’s face. He bet it was exactly the one Jake used when his mom caught him lying about Olivia Magnussen.
“Know what happened?” she replied. “Surprised?”
Had it been less than an hour ago that Jane accused him of ulterior motives when answering a question with a question? She’d been right. And here it was again.
Jake stood, elaborately flapped his notebook closed. “If you’re not going to be cooperative,” he said, “might I ask why you called the police? Let me put it this way, ma’am. What did you expect we would do?”
Catherine fussed with her coffee. Her eyes shifted toward a side door in the room, looked at it so purposefully that Jake turned to see who she was looking at. No one.
“I expected,” she drew out the words, looking at Jake again, “to give you a photograph of my husband. And then you would look for him.”
“Look where?” Jake said. His question came out more sarcastically and a little louder than he’d planned. But he had too much going on to parry her transparent attempts to manipulate him. No one had heard from Greg Siskel since yesterday’s phone call, she’d insisted. He wasn’t at home, hadn’t come home last night, didn’t have an office, wasn’t answering his cell. But his wife was not giving the police one bit of useful information to help them find him. In truth, not offering any information at all.
“Can you give us any idea where we might look? Or are you thinking-simply out there in Boston?” Impatient and frustrated and exhausted, he waved toward the office window, a double-tall pane of plate glass, topped with a strip of slatted blind, that looked out over Curley Park. “Maybe out someplace on Congress Street? Or maybe in Curley Park?”
Jane was using every bit of her hearing ability to figure out what was being said on the other end of Robyn’s “conversation.” Even so, even scooting to the edge of the big armchair, she could hear only Robyn’s terse responses. Robyn, cell phone clamped to her ear, sat in the corner of the Wilhoites’ living room couch, one leg tucked under her, the edge of her blue chenille robe touching the fringe of the figured carpet. The phone had rung just before ten. Lewis was supposed to call at ten.
Jane looked at Melissa, mouthed a question. Lewis? Melissa, standing by the desk, shrugged her answer. No idea.
“I understand,” Robyn was saying. “Okay.” She clicked off.
“Lewis?” Melissa took a step toward her, palms out, inquiring.
“No.” Robyn looked at Jane, then at Melissa. Put down the phone. “My lawyer.”
Melissa planted her fists on her hips. “What?”
“What?” Jane echoed her sister’s incredulous tone. Robyn had called her lawyer about Lewis and Gracie? Lewis had clearly instructed her to tell no one.
“Are you kidding? A lawyer? Why?” Melissa’s voice went up in pitch and volume with every question. “What if the lawyer calls the police, Robyn?”