The traffic lights turned green as they headed east, for the first time in her memory every one of them blinking “go” when they arrived at an intersection, as if the universe wanted her to get to the McDivitts’ home as quickly as possible. Exactly what she didn’t want. One eye on the GPS, they wound their way through the impossibly random streets of Jamaica Plain, around the treacherous Pond Street rotary, and onto the Jamaicaway, the winding too-narrow boulevard that lined the deserted and no-longer-safe jogging paths of Jamaica Pond, dark shapelets of stubby mallards and long-necked geese drifting in the tentative moonlight.
48
Nothing. Nothing. Not a bar, not a flicker, not a glimmer of power as Peter clicked the flat white button on his cell. Once. Twice. Not only had he left his phone at Doreen Rinker’s house, he’d left it on. As he’d blithely powered up to Boston, the phone had powered down into a useless brick. Still, at least he had it. He could charge up again in the car.
Peter’d arrived at the Rinker home for the second time that day-night-relieved the porch light was on, and the blue glow of a big screen TV visible through the lacy living room curtains. The front door was open, the screen closed, the porch guarded by a dark green Adirondack chair. At least he hadn’t had to bang on the front door of a house with a sleeping family, sheepishly admitting he’d been so eager to get to Boston-and Jane-that he’d forgotten his lifeline to the world.
And then he discovered it was dead.
He’d used Doreen’s landline to call the Register, got Jane’s cell number from some cooperative guy at the news desk, and now after all that, Jane wasn’t answering.
He shook his head, smiling, signaling no as Doreen held up a glass carafe of coffee. Listened to the phone ringing. And then, the click and the pause. Right to voice mail. Jane was probably-he looked at his watch, grimacing-ignoring him. Now that it was ten fifty. He couldn’t blame her. Leave a message after the beep.
He wouldn’t be back in Boston until just after one. If he was lucky.
“Jane, it’s Peter Hardesty,” he said. “Tonight did not go as plan-huh?”
Doreen Rinker was back, this time holding up a piece of paper, showing him something.
“Sorry, Jane, ah, I’ll call you. Or you call me. Whenever. Traffic was ridiculous, and, sorry to be such a-” He held up a finger to Doreen. One second. “Anyway, again, sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”
He clicked off, distracted, half-annoyed and half-confused. What was Doreen trying to show him?
She’d pulled her graying hair back in a pink plastic clip, and added a pale blue sweatshirt over her jeans. Its faded lettering promised Fun in the Sun 2001.
“You have a second? Now that you’re here? I felt bad about the note.” She pulled out a kitchen chair, waved him to the other one. Back where they’d started. “I was just-frightened, I guess. And so-well, this.”
Doreen handed the piece of paper across the table, a copy of a newspaper article, Jake saw, skewed on the page, half blurred. From the Register. The date-April 2010-written in tiny red ball point printing across the upper left.
“So I was looking around, in desk drawers you know, just-I don’t know,” Doreen said. Her shoulders lifted, then fell, and she pushed the too-long sweatshirt sleeves up over her elbows. “Seeing if there was anything I could find to help you. Since you were nice enough to-you know. Even though we can’t pay you. Right?”
“Mrs. Rinker? No worries, okay?” He’d never get back to Boston. The fates were lining up to make him miserable and tired, not to mention being saddled with two possibly guilty murder defendants and an understandably pissed-off reporter he couldn’t wait to see again. Times like these, no use in fighting it. “What did you find?”
“We saved this newspaper story, at least. From 2010, when Gordon was paroled.”
Peter saw the headline: “Armed Rob Accomplice Freed.” He skimmed, basically what he already knew, Gordon Thorley, age nineteen when he’d been arrested in 1995 as the getaway driver-of the orange Dodge Charger, shown below-in the armed robbery of Holsko’s Package Store. Freed on parole. Parole Board chairman Edward H. Walsh under political fire for the move, the state’s “liberal” governor taking a hit in the polls for his soft-on-crime stance. A quote from Walsh: “The goal of incarceration is rehabilitation as well as punishment. It’s up to us, as a civilized nation, to accept when a person has paid their penance and is ready to be given a second chance to join those who enjoy their freedom. We all deserve second chances.”
Walsh himself, Peter remembered, hadn’t been given a second chance. A former county sheriff, up-and-coming political big shot, he’d been ousted not long after the controversial Thorley decision. Some said scapegoat, others said good riddance. Where was he now? Probably happy to have washed his hands of the forgiveness end of the justice business. Nobody’d forgiven him, even after Thorley had a clean record for the last four years, until he-
Peter stopped, realizing. What if Walsh had made the biggest mistake of his life, unwittingly letting the Lilac Sunday killer go free?
“Anything here you think is relevant?” Peter said.
“I hoped you might find something,” Doreen said.
He looked at the article again, hoping to discern some hidden clue. But it was just a newspaper story. “I mean, thanks so much for pulling this out. You never know what’s going to be useful, so I appreciate…”
“What?” Rinker said.
Peter blinked, staring at the article, thinking back, trying to remember. He looked at the name again. Had to be, he thought.
“Nothing,” he lied. “May I take this with me?”
Aaron Gianelli had stopped a block or two from Kenilworth Street, parked his car in a municipal lot, clamped a baseball hat over his forehead, and pretended to yawn all the way to the sidewalk. Figuring that would cover his face. Stupid, probably, but who knew what surveillance cameras were out there.
Talk about stupid. She had his picture on her frigging desk. He’d actually given it her!
And now she was dead. And now the cops would come find him, and question him, and he’d have to lie the hell out of everything he said. Or at least be incredibly frigging careful. He hadn’t killed Lizzie McDivitt, of course. Not technically.
He should have just let the phone ring. Ignored it.
Dumb. If he hadn’t picked up? He’d have had one more night’s sleep, he guessed, but eventually he’d have to answer to reality. And there would be Ackerman’s voice, giving him the news. “Keep your head down, kid,” Ack had instructed, after the bottom line. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“And I’m the king of freaking Spain,” he muttered to himself.
Head down, fists jammed in the pockets of his jeans, Aaron walked as fast as he could toward the house, calculating.
He was in this up to his ass. No doubt about that. But now he had to see. He had to. He hadn’t done anything, nothing at all, really, so there was no reason for him to stay away. No one in this measly suburb would know who he was. Which, he reassured himself, was nobody. He was nobody. And he had to see.
Ackerman had killed her, somehow, no freaking doubt about that, he was such a freaking creep, and also no doubt about why. Because he-Aaron the moron-had been incredibly reckless enough to tell her about his-their-rental system. He’d thought it was a brilliant and strategic move, after the whole key debacle, to bring Lizzie into it. She already knew, anyway.
She’d discovered Maddie Kate Wendell and Mo Heedles, and it was merely a hop, skip, and a jump to the bank records to find out what those two houses had in common. She knew. So hey, why not make her part of the-he paused, jabbing the button for the crosswalk, wouldn’t want to jaywalk, right? Get stopped by the cops?