According to the leather-bound volumes of yellowing newsprint Jake had examined, the Register had gone all out on Lilac Sunday coverage. And, jackpot, the reporter had interviewed witnesses, well, not witnesses, but people who’d come to the Arboretum soon after Carley Marie Schaefer’s body was found. Their names were not familiar, though, and not in his grandfather’s files or the police records. Why hadn’t the cops interviewed them? Some of them must still be around.
The reporter-Jake recognized the byline Chrystal Peralta, knew she still worked here at the Register-had even interviewed his grandfather. Those articles hadn’t been in Grandpa’s files, either. But maybe that was Grandpa being modest. Not keeping clips about himself, only about the crime itself. Jake had pulled the Thorley parole stories, too. Everything about Gordon Thorley.
The footsteps got closer. Sounded like a woman walking quickly, not clacking in high heels. He looked up.
Jane.
“Oh!” Jane stopped, two steps above him, one hand on the railing, the other holding a few dollar bills. She took a step backward, up and away from him, her eyes wide. “Ah. Jake.”
His face must have looked as surprised as hers. And she was probably trying to figure out what to say, too, same as he was.
“Can I help you with something?” She didn’t take the next step down toward him, held her ground.
“I’m fine.” Jake hesitated, knowing it was his turn to talk, but unable to come up with anything. What could he say about Hardesty? That didn’t sound-weak?
“Something I should know?” Jane tilted her head, looking at him, quizzing.
He loved her hair that way, tucked behind one ear, the other side falling over her face. No jeans today, he noticed, black pants and a black T-shirt, and even her “go to court” pearls, he knew she called them. Headed for the Sandoval arraignment. That would be cozy.
“Sorry about last night,” he began. “What happened was-”
“Oh, we’re past that, don’t you think?” Jane said. Her smile seemed off, maybe, and he didn’t blame her. Last they’d really been together was on her couch the other night, when he’d had to tell her their vacation was blown, and he was assigned for a few days to Washington. Since then, he hadn’t had a chance to explain what happened. Now she didn’t seem open to hear anything he had to say. But she’d been at another guy’s house, that made it her turn to explain.
“Jane, I-we-” Jake paused, considering. What was the most important thing? His responsibility to his job? Or to this woman, who he-damn it. This was not the time for a life discussion. One day soon, they’d have to face it all. Decide on their truth.
More footsteps on the stairs, a few floors up. Their private moment on the landing was about to end. Would their last conversation be in a gloomy back stairwell of a struggling newspaper?
“Listen,” he said. “Jane. We should talk.”
“Talk?” Jane put up a palm, trying to stop him. Her other hand clutched the banister, trying for equilibrium.
Here was the last person she expected to see, and the only one she wished for. And yet-what kind of relationship did they have, that he could be in town and not even tell her? When he could show up at the very building where she worked and she had no idea?
“We’re talking now, right?” She lowered her voice. “Although clearly you were trying to avoid it. Avoid me. I mean-here you are, a detective, the morning after a murder, coming from the basement of the-oh.”
Only one place Jake could have been. The Register’s archives. Happily, whatever he’d found, she could find, too. Archive Gus was an old pal, and would be all too eager to give Jane the scoop on whatever articles the cops requested. She’d have thought Jake would realize that. But then, he hadn’t expected she’d even know he’d been there. So it goes, buddy, she thought. Cops don’t have all the power, all the time.
Jake was silent. She should shut up, too, but she couldn’t resist.
“So. How’d you get along with Archive Gus?” The balance was usually so in his favor, and now, the tiniest of bits, it was in hers. She touched her pearls, wondering if she’d see him later at the Sandoval arraignment. That’d be cozy. “He give you what you came for?”
She could tell Jake was unhappy. His eyes were soft, and only he stood that way, that wide stance, she could almost feel his arms around her. She was frustrated with herself for acting so cranky. But he’d left her, right? Instead of going to Bermuda, he’d made up something about Washington, D.C. Then he showed up in Boston. And then brushed her off at the scene of a heart-breaking murder. Such things did not make for the most successful of relationships.
“Jane?” Jake was talking again, and Jane simply did not know how to unscramble her feelings. This was not the time to try.
“I’m late,” she said.
She heard the bitterness in her own voice, regretted it, couldn’t help it. Hurt was difficult, and life was complicated, and Liz McDivitt was dead and she still felt-yes, ridiculously-that somehow it was her fault. Jake knew what had happened to Liz, but he wasn’t telling. Fine. Jane could find out on her own, and make sure whoever killed her got what was coming to them.
“I’m late,” she said again. Looked at her watch, maybe with a little more drama than necessary. “I bet you have someplace to be, too. Perhaps Washington again?”
“I do,” Jake said. He moved aside as someone else trotted down the stairs, carrying a stack of newspapers, coffee sloshing out of an open paper cup. “Have someplace to be. And you know exactly where.”
His voice had quieted, softened, and Jane felt tears beginning to well. They had shared so much, and now-she was tired, that was it. Seeing Jake like this had caught her off guard. And now he was smiling at her, a look she knew from couches and cars and across rooms where no other person realized they were looking at each other. Don’t do this, her brain instructed. Tell him. Just say-I love you, this is crazy, I’m sorry, I’m confused, I’m sad, I’m tired, you’re amazing, let’s just-
“So maybe see you in-,” Jake continued.
“Court?” Jane said. “Maybe.” She raced past him, down the stairs, not looking back, not looking back, down to the basement for sugar and caffeine, leaving him silent behind her.
51
“All rise, court will be in recess.” A bespectacled court clerk, one tattooed angel wing peeking out from under the short sleeve of her starched navy blue uniform, stood in front of the shiny new woodwork of Suffolk Superior Courtroom 6. Jane entered the nearly empty room, seeing the black folds of Judge Rockland’s silk robe disappear behind an opening tucked into the wall behind the bench. The door leveled into the woodwork as it closed. “Court will resume at ten fifteen.”
A potload of taxpayer dollars had gone to revamp the moldy insulation and the moth-eaten carpeting in the old courthouse. Jane had investigated the whole debacle when she worked at Channel 11. Now some courthouse workers complained the place smelled “too new,” pointing to the chemicals in the synthetic wall-to-wall that Jane discovered were provided by some state senator’s half-brother’s wholesale house. It was Massachusetts, after all, home of Whitey Bulger and James Michael Curley and the Boston Strangler. What was a little more graft and manipulation at the public trough? Pols wouldn’t know how to handle anything if it were by the book. In this state, political insiders hardly knew what “the book” was.