Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) (27 page)

She shrugged one shoulder, a thin strap showing under her sleeveless blouse. “Who were we to say? Who knows what he even
does.
That’s why this is so upsetting, you know? What if he—”

She took a deep breath. “Maybe it was better he wasn’t living here. You think? Hard to believe he could kill any—”

“I saw his apartment.” Peter saw she was spiraling herself into fear and panic, worrying about imaginary terrors. “He’s a talented photographer.”

“Really?” Doreen seemed surprised. She settled her shoulders. “Anyway. That note he left. I mean—the Lilac Sunday killer?
Gordon?
The Lilac Sunday killer? And was going to confess? I just saw my whole life, everything I always believed—I don’t know. Crumbling. Like everything I ever thought suddenly wasn’t true anymore.”

She looked at Peter, as if he could provide some explanation.

“My little brother. Maybe I never really knew him? But family is family. We don’t have much, as you can see. And the house payments are—well. We may not be able to keep the place. Who knows? The bank knows, I guess. We’ll survive. Anyway, least I could do was hire my brother a lawyer. Who else would do it? I found you online, under criminal defense. Now you’ve gotten more than you bargained for.”

She examined her coffee cup again. “I have, too. I’m sorry you came all the way out here. We can’t afford you.”

Peter’d heard every sob story in the book, he figured, the down-and-outers, the misfits, the misunderstood. The people who had made wrong decisions, or had wrong decisions made for them. How did people wind up where they were? Could they ever change? He couldn’t help but be fascinated by it, even knowing the slices of life he heard in his cases were, by dint of his profession, going to be the oddities, the outliers, and the mistakes. A criminal defense attorney hardly ever heard a story of joy or success or redemption. Well, sometimes redemption.

“Mrs. Rinker? Let’s talk about the money some other time, okay? I’m involved now, and we’ll see where it goes. So confirming what you told me—you never heard Gordon speak of Carley Marie Schaefer. Or Treesa Caramona.”

Doreen nodded. “Yes. I mean—no. He never said those names. To me.”

“To anyone? Anyone you know?” Sometimes specificity was a good thing. Other times it sounded like evasion.

“No, not to anyone I know.”

“The note was a surprise to you.”

Doreen nodded again. “On the kitchen table.” She pointed with one finger. “Right there.”

“How’d Gordon get in to leave it?”

Doreen smiled, just barely, and seemed to look over his shoulder and out into the past. “There’s been a key in the third pansy pot from the end of the front walk ever since we were kids. At our old house. I did the same thing here. Guess he remembered.”

“I’ll need to see the note, of course. Things are not always what they seem on the surface. It may hold some clue or meaning we didn’t understand initially. Even a fingerprint, you know? Could be someone else’s. Happy to make a copy, certainly, and you’ll get the original back as soon as we find out what’s really going on here.”

Doreen blinked at him, looked at the ceiling.

“I burned it,” she said.

*   *   *

Maybe Jane
was
trustworthy. Lizzie’s back complained from the ten minutes she’d spent leaning into the intercom speaker, getting her ear as close as she could. She’d told Stephanie to leave the switch open. And, listening, she learned Jane hadn’t divulged that Liz had given her any customer names.

What did it mean? Lizzie leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, considering. Maybe you could trust reporters after all. Jane Ryland, at least. If Ackerman would do the interview she’d heard Jane request, Lizzie’d be off the hook and she could go back to her real life.

A life which was getting more complicated by the second.

She’d be seeing Aaron “lata.” He hadn’t called yet to give her specifics. What might he want to do? What might he be thinking?

She plucked at her navy blazer, imagined she saw a crumb or two of sugar from that chocolate chip pastry. He had completely knocked her out.

That’s what worried her.

She popped her research back to full screen on her computer monitor. That chocolate pastry. She’d been woozy. Had trouble remembering what happened, exactly. Sort of. She’d attributed it to—well, lust. But thinking about it later, in a clinical moment at the bathroom mirror, she admitted it didn’t add up. It didn’t.

She’d searched “date rape drugs.” And checked off the symptoms, yes, yes, yes, one by one. She still had the headache. Could he possibly have drugged her? Why?

But he’d told her about the rentals. Why?

Well, easy one. Because she already knew. And he was trying to find out how much.

Her office suddenly seemed perfectly silent. As if the world had stopped, and time had stopped, and her brain was the only thing working.

She pulled the metal handle of her desk’s top drawer, hearing the whisk of the metal runners, the click as the drawer opened all the way. She pulled out those leases he’d created, one, then the next, on the triple folded white paper. Saw those college kids, paying
Aaron
to living illicitly in the
bank’s
houses. Saw the words in black and white. Saw Aaron’s double-dealing and downright theft.

What he was doing was wrong. There was no way around that. It was bank robbery.

He didn’t care about her. How could she ever have thought he did?

He was using her. To get access to bank records. Her files. Her connections.

Rohypnol, her monitor said. A colorless, tasteless …

The intercom buzzed.

“They’re gone,” Stephanie’s voice crackled though the metal mesh. “You heard?”

“I did,” Lizzie said. “Great job on the speaker thing.”

“And your appointment is here, early,” Stephanie said. “The Gantrys.”

Cole and Donna. Deep in debt, after Cole’s once-thriving company’d lost a government contract, but about to enjoy a financial surprise. Their mortgage numbers had gotten the Liz treatment. The bank’s “mistake.” They would keep their home.

Elbows on her desk, Liz clasped her hands in front of her mouth, fingers intertwined. Aaron
was
using her. Of course. She was an incredible dupe.

“Give me a moment,” Liz said into the intercom.

And what about her own system? Doing the wrong thing for the right reason still made her a liar. Grateful customers or not. What she was doing was just as—immoral—as what Aaron was doing.

Well, no. Not really. Aaron was benefiting from his deals. Taking the money.
Stealing
the money. Not doing it for the renters. Doing it for himself.

She was getting nothing from her system. Nothing. Except the justice of it.

It was doing good. But it was still wrong.

She stuffed the leases back into the drawer, closed it, locked it.

Maybe just this once more. Then she would stop. There was still time to change everything, anyway. She could help her clients in other ways.

Which left the Aaron problem.

He expected to see her tonight. She should simply call it off. Leave it alone. Problem was, Aaron knew that she knew. He would never go away.

She closed her page of research, erased the history.

She blinked at the blank screen.

Erased the history.

She had an idea. About tonight, and about the Aaron situation. It was a little risky, maybe a lot risky, but this time she had all the cards. She’d have time to think it through before this evening.

“Okay, ready,” Liz said into the speaker. She straightened the pencils on her desk, saluted the photo of Aaron, and flapped it facedown on her desk. She was ready. Ready for more than the soon-to-be surprised Gantrys. “Send them in.”

She loved her job. The realization washed over her with the glow of sunshine from her third-floor window. And she loved her life.

Things all worked out. Eventually. Even growing up with her father, and his criticism, and his focus on his precious bank. She wouldn’t be here, now, without that difficult journey of the past. She wouldn’t trade it. Her father being who he was had put her in the position to help people. Really help them. She’d had a difficult childhood, well, so what, so did lots of people. It had made her who she was today. And that was worth it.

All worth it.

41

“Just look at me, Mr. Ackerman, not at the camera, okay? I know you’ve done this before. TJ will make sure it looks good.” TJ’s portable minicam allowed them to bang out quick sound bites without white-balancing or searching for electrical outlets for the lights. “Now, tell me your name and title.”

Colin Ackerman’s assistant, all navy blazer and prep school attitude, had tapped a pass card on a black-box locking device, ushering Jane and TJ through massive double-paneled doors into the conference room, an homage to sleek mahogany and cordovan leather.
No wonder you needed a special escort to get to the executive floor.
Customers might not be pleased to discover their fees and service charges were spent on fancy chairs and lavish conference tables. Ackerman had kept them waiting for an hour, a pitiful power play, but whatever. She needed the interview.

TJ finally placed Ackerman in front of the bank’s ubiquitous anchor logo, this one in gold, wall-mounted on a navy blue suede background.
Suede and mahogany.
Jane remembered the shabby vinyl of the empty house on Waverly Road.

“You set, TJ?” The recitation of the name and title wasn’t only for Jane’s reference, but to allow TJ to check audio levels and camera angles. “Great. Mr. Ackerman? Tell me about the bank’s focus on customer service,” Jane said.

“Certainly, Jane. As a mortgage customer of the bank yourself, you know Atlantic and Anchor’s primary concern is for…”

The “concern” part was bull, but was Ackerman trying to telegraph that he knew her mortgage information? Creepy, and totally inappropriate, if he’d looked her up. Jane rolled her eyes, mentally at least.
Public relations guys.

Ackerman continued with canned PR prattle about customers and personal relationships, using her name in every sentence. In a usual taped interview, she’d let him say whatever he wanted, get that over with, then ask the tough questions she actually cared about. But in this case, all she needed was a perfunctory twenty or so seconds for an online sidebar. She’d gotten the video, and that would please multimedia Marcotte, and if Victoria was happy, Jane was happy. And soon she could go home and take a nap.

Sleep.
Her thoughts half-wandered as Ackerman continued his boilerplate.
Bed.
Which reminded her of Jake. Who was in Boston, not D.C. Who hadn’t called.

She’d phone Marcotte, give her the good news about this interview, and say she’d bang out the story tomorrow, plenty of time. What she wouldn’t say was—she was not about to let cleaning up Chrystal’s journalism leftovers distract her from the potential headlines she was pursuing on her own. Sandoval. Peter Hardesty. Her foreclosure story. And, perhaps, even Gordon Thorley.

A nap would have to wait. A good story trumped sleep.

*   *   *

“Vierra? It’s Jake Brogan. Listen, can you run an address for me at the Registry of Deeds? I need to know the owner of the house.” Jake could have run the Moulten Road address through the Registry of Deeds himself, but not while he was driving. Officer Vierra in Records had offered to help. Jake still felt weird to be on the job without DeLuca, and the empty passenger seat changed the whole atmosphere of the cruiser, making Jake feel as though he’d forgotten something. Still, he preferred working alone to warding off the nonstop rancor and “in the old days” complaining that spewed from Bing Sherrey.

Sherrey was assigned as primary on Moulten Road, with Jake as backup. So far, Sherrey seemed to be content with watching Crime Scene do its thing rather than initiate any investigation of his own. But that was not Jake’s problem. Until it was.

“Yeah,” Jake told Vierra. “It’s two-zero-zero-two Moulten Road. Let me know ASAP, okay? And one more thing—call the MBTA flak, make him give us the video from the buses that took the Moulten Street route—you know? Between say, five
P.M.
and ten
P.M.
Tuesday night. Got it?”

He paused, heard Vierra sneeze. “Bless you,” Jake said. “Got it?”

“Got it,” she said.

Jake had a thought. Probably’d go nowhere, but running an investigation of a cold case meant looking up everything, relevant or no. You couldn’t know until you found it, or didn’t. “One more thing,” he said. “Look up the name Gordon Thorley.” He spelled it. “Find out if a Gordon Thorley, he’d be around forty years old, owns any property. Start with Massachusetts, see if there’s anything.”

“Got it,” Vierra said. “Back to you soonest.”

Jake clicked off the Bluetooth, cranked the AC, grabbed the second half of the roast beef on a bulkie roll he’d gotten at Kelly’s. At least no one was there to criticize the cole slaw dripping on the upholstery.

Driving one-handed, he made the right turn onto the expressway, figuring it would be fastest, going against the already-in-progress rush hour. Somehow the five-thirty exodus from Boston now started at four thirty. With weekend inflation, three thirty on Fridays.

His phone rang mid-bite. Jake steered with one elbow as he punched on the speaker.

“Brogan,” he said. Hoping it sounded intelligible.

“Jake?”

Jake swallowed. “Yeah.”

“You don’t sound like yourself,” the voice said.

“Who’s this?” Jake felt for a paper napkin, wiped mayo from his mouth.

“Nate Frasca,” the voice said. “Listen, remember I said—”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He put the sandwich on the waxed paper he’d spread out on DeLuca’s seat. He’d been wondering about Frasca. “You said the name Thorley rang a bell. You think of the bell?”

“I did. Remember the Willie Horton case, years ago, convict who got paroled and then murdered someone? Pretty much killed the governor’s career?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Hard to get votes when people are convinced you set a killer free. As if anyone would do that on purpose. So?”