Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) (11 page)

“Like I said.” Thorley took another sip of coffee, then coughed, one miserable hack, clapping a wiry hand to his chest. His once-white T-shirt, ribbing around the arms and neck spent and shapeless, said
BARDON’S GYM
in fading orange lettering. That place had closed ten years ago, Peter knew, maybe longer. “I did it.”

“Did what?” Peter flipped though the folder, finding the pale blue onionskin he needed. “According to your parole records here, you have no priors before your armed robbery conviction in 1995. And after you got out in 2010—your second try at parole—you stayed clean. What’s the deal now with this sudden confession?”

Thorley drained the last from his paper cup, crumpled it, tossed it in the aluminum sink. He licked his lips, patted his chest, then his jeans pockets.

“You got any—?” he asked.

“Sorry,” Peter said. “Gave it up.” He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, the alarm set to remind him of his meeting with Jane Ryland. For which he was now verging on late. Time was also running out, he predicted, for Elliot Sandoval. “Look. Thorley. Your sister called me. I’m here to help. You need to let me help you.”

“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.

“I don’t know, Nate.” He eyed his dark coffee, swiveled the cup in its delicate saucer, left it there.

“Could be it’s you he’s after now.” Frasca dropped the empty plastic Coke bottle into a blue recycle bin tucked under an antique-looking side table.

“Keep that in mind,” he went on. “Sometimes in these confessions there’s an element that pushes someone over the edge. Guilt that finally festers, the poison of remorse, or—” He paused, interrupting himself. “It’s almost the twentieth anniversary, right? That could be an emotional trigger.”

“Trigger? I thought the anniversary made it—” Jake paused. Thorley showing up, right as the anniversary loomed? The Supe’s annual push to close the case? “Well, more unlikely.”

“The contrary. Anniversaries are frequently significant. They’re symbolic, and that makes them powerful. Waco? Ruby Ridge? Oklahoma City? The bad guys can’t resist. It’s like returning to the scene. They think the history makes the action more potent.”

Jake nodded.
History.
The cardboard boxes of case and investigation records his grandfather kept, now stacked on metal shelves in his parents’ basement. There’d been some thought of destroying them, but Grandma Brogan wouldn’t allow it. It’s history, she’d insisted. It’s trash, Jake’s mother had argued. She’d called them “toxic records of failure and unhappiness.”

Gramma Brogan, as always, won. Did those boxes of history contain some answers?

“Lilac Sunday’s less than a week from now,” Jake said.
Five days.
How well he knew. “Thing is, Nate, I don’t see how Gordon Thorley could know I’d be involved. It seems too elaborate. I gotta think this is something else.”

“Something else what?” Frasca clicked his briefcase closed.

“That’s why I came five hundred miles. To ask you. Who would confess to a murder they didn’t commit? Why?” Jake stood as Frasca headed for the door. Were there answers in the stacks of files he was about to open? “Or, hello. Maybe he’s guilty. I’m equally satisfied with that. Just tell me how I’m supposed to know.”

*   *   *

Jane tried to remember what Professor Kindell taught them in Journalism Law and Ethics 101, or even 201, but that was almost fifteen years ago, and it seemed much more logical back in j-school. Now, faced with real-life journalism law and ethics, the black-and-white textbook pages were almost laughably unhelpful.

Each decision was different, that was journalism reality. The only basic certainty, the unchangeable, was to tell the truth. How you did that, and when, and whether there actually was “truth”—that was the stuff her class never discussed.

Jane tapped on Victoria Marcotte’s office door, heard a “come in” from inside. This new city editor was no Murrow, but at least she was someone to talk to. And they had a lot to talk about.

Elliot Sandoval’s lawyer had called Marcotte, offering a deal. He’d provide all the inside info on the Sandoval investigation, but only if the paper agreed to hold off running the full story until the case was adjudicated. He’d called it “a front-row seat at a murder case.”

Jane couldn’t have agreed to such an arrangement with Sandoval’s lawyer on her own. “Risk” and “gamble” were not concepts she was comfortable with, nor were “scooped” and “fired,” either (or both) of which were unpleasantly looming possibilities if this deal went bad.

“Have a seat, Jane.” Victoria Marcotte pointed to the couch. Her chocolaty leather jacket was probably worth Jane’s salary for a month. Two venti paper cups, both with lipstick imprints, stood by her computer.

Jane ignored the couch, grabbed one of the strappy black and chrome chairs from against the wall, scooted it closer to the desk, sat there.

“Legal agrees we’re on solid ground,” Marcotte said. “If there’s an arrest, I’ll send another reporter, Chrystal or whoever. You’ll eventually do a big takeout—multimedia, goes without saying, that’s who we are these days, right?—on the story of an accused murderer. How he felt, how he was treated, how he was nailed, how he was charged—or not—how he was ultimately exonerated. Or not. However it plays out. Use TJ when you need pictures. Got it?”

It was similar, Jane theorized, to how network reporters were embedded in the Gulf wars. Or those long-term projects on
60 Minutes.
It wasn’t breaking news, where you went live, telling everything you learned as soon as you learned it. It wasn’t “day of” news, which aired the same day you reported it. This was a long-term, long-form investigation. She might have time to make it important. Life-changing. Award-winning. Still, holding back information didn’t feel comfortable.

“Are you sure that we’re okay with—,” Jane began.

Marcotte’s phone buzzed.

“He’s on the way up,” Marcotte said. “Peter Hardesty is the lawyer’s name.”

Jane wished she had known that earlier so she could check him out. She’d asked Sandoval for the name, but she’d been too distracted by Jake to realize he hadn’t told her. She hated going into this meeting playing catch-up, with no research or background.

“What if Sandoval’s guilty?” Jane said.

Marcotte patted at her hair, then smiled at Jane, conspiratorial. “Then we have an even better story.”

*   *   *

The first key hadn’t worked, neither had the second. Or the third.

Standing on the front porch of a two-story redbrick house in Jamaica Plain, Liz McDivitt glanced around, checking for nosy neighbors or a late-morning mailman. Or, worst of all, someone from the bank.

It had been a snap to pull up Aaron’s REO records on her home computer. Her in-house password was essentially all-access when it came to the real estate department, so she knew exactly which homes were in Aaron’s portfolio. He’d used this key chain—the one he’d tossed at her, ridiculous—to open the house on Hardamore last night. Made sense keys to other empty houses were on this chain, too. The chain had about a million keys, and big metal “A” dangling from it. Atlantic & Anchor Bank, she assumed. Or Aaron.