“Jake?” she began, then stopped. He was out cold, the mutterings of his snores competing with Coda’s purr. She smiled, not wanting to wake him. She eased herself up from the couch, pausing, one foot on and one foot off, as Jake shifted, cozying into the pillows. She leaned across him, smelled the beer and the Jake scent, pulled the half-full bottle from the crook of his arm. He shifted again, oblivious.
Coda jumped down and followed Jane into the dining room. With Coda curling around her legs, Jane zipped open her tote bag. Dug in. In seconds, she’d rewound the Quik-Shot video to the very first moment she’d arrived at Curley Park, her first shaky wide shots of the scene. Frame by frame, she inched the video forward. She knew just what-well, who-she was looking for. Red hair, blue oxford shirt, khaki pants. She’d seen Calvin Hewlitt in Franklin Alley, gotten video of him in handcuffs. Had her camera also seen him at Curley Park?
There were all the cops. The crowd. The flashing lights of the ambulance. That brown paper bag that had caught the breeze fluttered by her. And there. At the outside of the circle around the body and moving away fast. Calvin Hewlitt. Caught on Jane’s little camera. Exactly where he’d insisted he never was.
“Jake!” she called out, then remembered he was asleep. And then she remembered why she’d shot that video: as a reporter for Channel 2. Remembered who Jake was. A cop investigating a crime. And remembered, by all the rules of journalism, she could not show it to him.
Or could she? What was the goal, anyway-to break a big story, or to bring justice? Why couldn’t that be the same thing?
“What?” Jake’s eyes fluttered as he scooted himself upright. He yawned, dragged his hands across his face. “Yow. Sorry. I’m wiped.”
“I have Calvin Hewlitt,” Jane said. They’d figure out the ethics later. “At Curley Park. Right here on camera.”
“You do?” Jake tumbled from the couch, was at her side in two steps. “Let’s see.”
Jane rewound the Quik-Shot, held it out to him. “This is before the alley thing. It puts him right here. So funny, though. When I heard DeLuca yelling at you about him, I couldn’t figure out what D was saying. Hyoo-something. I didn’t know it was Hewlitt.”
Jake had a funny look on his face. “Hyoo?” he said.
66
Well, this was a first. Jane sat in the front row of Mayor Elihu Holbrooke’s news conference, middle seat in the line of dented metal folding chairs set up in the walnut-paneled conference room. She was here without portfolio, except as secret girlfriend of the cute cop now standing cross armed (and freshly shaved, she noted) on the raised carpeted dais and as the secret almost-relative of the woman now charged with the attempted murder of her husband.
Another first: Jane hoped to keep all that knowledge from the swarm of media types now filling the chairs around her. Though Robyn and Lewis Wilhoite’s names were irretrievably public, the cops were calling it “a domestic,” shorthand for “no one else is in danger so we’re done.” No reporters knew about the little girl in the middle of it all.
Lewis would recover, and if there were a trial, he’d certainly testify. Melissa and Daniel had whisked Gracie to Chicago, as already planned, and were working out what to tell her. Jane crossed her fingers, and, as almost Aunt Jane, asked the universe to take care of her new niece.
But City Hall was under siege. The secret taping of the chief of staff’s greenroom and the alleged extortion plot of Bartoneri, Dahlstrom, and Hewlitt had been revealed in a tersely worded press release. The media had been notified to attend a “brief” news conference.
Now the room buzzed with pinging texts and humming cell phones, still photographers checking light levels and elbowing for floor space, a crowded row of TV guys clicking video cameras onto spiky tripods. All the local TV stations sent their big gun reporters, even Channel 3’s Emmy-magnet Charlotte McNally. Jane’s colleagues. Ex-colleagues. She could have skipped this, she supposed. But she couldn’t resist seeing it firsthand.
“Hey, Jane.” Beverly Chorbajian, brandishing her reporters’ notebook, arrived in a waft of musky-rose. “What’re you doing here? Did Marsh Tyson finally get in touch with you? Are you-”
“Long story. Oh.” She pointed, relieved to change the subject from Channel 2. “Here comes Siskel. And Holbrooke.”
Catherine Siskel, black skirt, white shirt, hair pageboyed, and chunky gold earrings, strode to the podium. Jane knew her husband had been murdered just two days ago. How had she switched off her grief? Was it strength? Or denial? Or necessity?
“I’m Catherine Siskel, Mayor Elihu Holbrooke’s chief of staff,” she said. “The mayor will make a short statement. He will take no questions. Bottom line, everything is under investigation. Understood? You ask a question? We’re done. Got it?” She scanned the room over the top of Jane’s head, assessing. “You rolling?”
“Rolling,” a voice from the back.
The silver-haired Brahmin marched to the podium in gray worsted and burgundy tie. Still cameras flashed, their pops of light and clicking motor drives punctuated his movements as he adjusted the microphone, raised his chin, calculated the waiting audience.
He had everything money could buy, his opponents in the mayor’s race had sneered. But he couldn’t buy away the murder that had taken place right under his window. Or the involvement of his own employee. Or the discovery of a dirty cop.
“Almost exactly forty-eight hours ago…” Mayor Holbrooke looked at his watch as if he were actually calculating and not reading from the huge-fonted typed pages Jane could see in front of him. “Our city was hit with a series of terrible crimes. But through the brave and quick-thinking work of our city’s homicide division, we can confidently say the danger is over.”
“How could your own surveillance chief be involved in extortion and sales of sex tapes?” Charlotte McNally stood-how’d she always manage to get the first question?-pointed a thick ballpoint at the mayor. “Did you know of the greenroom camera?”
Siskel flew to the podium, frowning, edged in front of the mayor, both hands waving McNally off. “No questions! I specifically-”
But now more reporters clamored to their feet, one after the other, pelting Holbrooke with demands, their voices overlapping.
“So a police detective was in on it? What’s her status?”
“Can you confirm that your chief of staff’s husband was the Curley Park victim?”
“Who killed Greg Siskel?”
Jane couldn’t bear it. She stood, not exactly looking at Jake. He’d understand. She was doing it for the public’s right to know.
“Does City Hall have surveillance video of the Curley Park stabbing?” she asked.
67
“Who was that on the phone?” Tenley Siskel stood at the entrance to their kitchen, saw her mother standing at the sink, staring out the window, her cell phone on the counter. Tenley knew Mom was looking across their backyard to the lush oaks and maples of Steading Woods. Where Lanna had gone, and never come back.
“Come here, honey.” Her mom turned to her, holding out one arm. She was still in her black funeral suit but had kicked off her black heels, like she always did, left them in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Come talk to me.”
Funny how, like, a week ago, Tenley would have been mad because her mom was thinking about Lanna. Funny how so much had changed.
“It was Detective Brogan, sweetheart,” her mom said. “And…”
And then, standing in their kitchen like it was any old day even though it wasn’t, Mom told her what the detective learned. They were still in the midst of an “interview” with Hewlitt, he’d said, but he wanted them to know that the cop who’d questioned Tenley about Lanna-that creepy Angela Bartoneri who Tenley had never liked-was part of the whole thing. Detective Brogan said that while investigating Lanna’s death, Bartoneri discovered Lanna’s connection with Ward Dahlstrom, as well as his secret taping with college crony Hewlitt. Dahlstrom admitted Angie’d convinced him to let her benefit from their scheme in return for covering it up.