“Do not move,” Jake said. Did he have a choice? Sandoval had the cards. He had Jane. How could Jake risk calling his bluff? Jane had to come first. Any victim had to come first. “I’m checking upstairs. Do not move.”
He drew his weapon as he headed up the stairway. That infernal noise, whatever it was. Halfway up. “You okay, Sherrey?” He called out.
“Ten four. Got the cuffs.”
Jake took the rest of the steps, two at a time. Followed the noise. An orange Rent-All wallpaper steamer chugged and bubbled, that was the noise. No Jane. Opened the closet, nothing. Next room, nothing. Closet, nothing. Bathroom, nothing. Attic? No attic he could see.
“Nothing, nothing,” he called out over the steamer sound as he raced back down the stairs. “Sandoval, there’s no one-”
He stopped, one hand on the banister. The other holding his Glock.
Sandoval had Sherrey in the cuffs. Was standing over him, hammer in one hand. Bing’s police-issue Glock in the other.
“Bummer about your partner,” Sandoval said. “Shoulda frisked me. Isn’t that cop 101?”
“Asshole,” Sherrey said. “Sorry, Jake.”
“Let. Him. Up,” Jake said.
“Not. A. Chance,” Sandoval said. “Well, actually, there is a chance. You let me go, I’ll let him go. That seems fair.”
“Where’s Jane?” Jake aimed at Sandoval’s center mass, but the man had his weapon right at Sherrey’s head.
“Well now, that’s where the deal goes out of whack, doesn’t it?” Sandoval said. He twisted his lip, sniffed like he smelled something bad. “You get two things, and I get one? I don’t think so. You want me to let your partner go? Or you want to know where Jane is? You get to choose one.”
65
Peter felt the weight of it under his coat, his small-caliber gift from Dianna, the one he’d argued, all those years ago, he’d never need.
He sat in the font seat of his Jeep, parked across the street from the stone-facade two-story on a side street in Jamaica Plain. No McMansions for Eddie Walsh, man of the people, only a modest mid-century suburban split-level. Walsh’s Cape house, however-an ostentatious Corinthian-columned boondoggle in Osterville Peter found online-that was a different story. Two sides to the man. Two sides to his real estate.
Peter wouldn’t need the gun now, most likely. He was a lawyer. He thought for a living, he didn’t shoot people. But if former Parole Board chairman and well-connected big shot Edward Walsh was monstrous enough to kill Carley Marie Schaefer twenty years ago, then bribe a dying man to take the fall, Peter might need more than words to come out on top.
He hoped not. He was not here to be the aggressor. He was here only to find the truth.
Tonight the Jamaica Plain house was dark, the carefully trimmed hedges surrounding lush grass and meticulous landscaping. No lights in the windows.
That meant their confrontation, well, conversation, Peter should call it, would have to wait a while. Exactly like poor Gordon Thorley, waiting in a jail cell. Waiting for the truth. Sick and dying and trying to do one last good thing.
Peter would wait, too. Long as it took.
“Father?” Liz McDivitt saw his silhouette first, framed in the open door of the Superintendent’s office.
He exploded through the doorway, came right for her. “Honey-Lizzie-at first I thought you were-”
Liz felt her father’s arms around her, she couldn’t remember the last time that happened, and she couldn’t let go. She peered over her father’s tweedy shoulder, saw Rivera watching them.
“Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. McDivitt,” Rivera said. “There was no way we could bring you into this right away. Question was-”
“What if I were involved. I understand.” Her father had ended the hug, but kept one arm around her. Liz could feel the weight of it on her shoulder, feel the weight of the years and the arguments, the years of misunderstandings and distance. “And?”
“Let’s put it this way.” Rivera sank into a massive black vinyl chair, his muscular bulk filling the space, his head almost reaching the brass floor lamp beside him. “Your Mr. Gianelli and Mr. Ackerman are downstairs, right now, in separate rooms. My detectives are now waiting to see which one will tell the whole story first. I’m sure whole teams of lawyers will arrive soon. Then we’ll know. But at this point no one has mentioned your name.”
A tightness in her chest. She stepped away from her father. Had he been involved in Aaron’s scheme? She tried to calculate what that might mean. “Father, are you-?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Sorry about the protective custody,” Rivera was saying. “And positioning our plainclothes cadet at your house to hold off the press. But if your daughter was targeted, you might have been next on the list. Even when Liz was safe, we had to wonder-was it you who’d called them off? So far, nothing links you to any of it.”
“And it won’t,” her father said.
“But then, what really happened, Superintendent?” Liz asked. “Was someone really coming to kill me? Who?”
“That’s still under investigation,” Rivera said. “And exactly what I’m about to go check on. I’ll leave you two alone.”
Liz watched the door close behind him, leaving her alone with her father for the first time in forever.
“So. You’re okay?” He assessed her, up and down. “Are you sure? You’re very brave, honey. If those people had-”
“They didn’t.” Lizzie sat on the arm of a big chair, balancing, one toe touching the carpet. “It’s over. I didn’t know what to do, or who at the bank might be involved. So I went to the police. Told them everything I knew, or suspected. The drugs found in that chocolate thing proved I was right. So that night, officers were waiting there with me, hiding. When whoever it was didn’t show-they decided to go ahead as if he had. See what happened. I’m sorry you had to think I was-”
Her father stood, walked to the window. She’d never seen his shoulders sag before. She’d always thought of him as a bear, a big stocky lumbering bear in pinstripes. Now he seemed diminished.
He turned, outlined in the last dusky glow of Friday’s sunlight. “I’ll have to resign,” he said. “The idea that those two-and whoever else-could be stealing from us, right under my nose.” He shook his head. “Did I know about it? Of course not. But not knowing, that’s equally as damning.”
“We’ll see.” Funny, or not so, how he was thinking about himself. Not about how his only daughter had been targeted for murder. Still, Liz wanted to comfort him, because he was right. The scandal would change their lives.
And there was her own dilemma. Her father still didn’t know the whole story, not at all. Not what she’d done, too, right under his nose. This was the moment, she knew. The moment she should tell the truth.
“Father,” she began. She stood, touching the chair with the fingertips of one hand. Not trusting her knees quite yet.
“Your mother would be so proud of you,” her father interrupted. “She always was, you know. She was never very good at saying it. Neither of us was.”
Liz felt tears welling, all the pressure and the fear, and the deception. And now this, what she least expected, compassion. She’d made some terrible decisions, like with Aaron. Would she make the right one now?
What was the right one?
“Can we weather this one together?” Her father came toward her, smiling. Stretched out both arms to her. “I know I’ve ignored you, I know I’ve focused on the damn bank. But we could come through this, you know. We could.”
Could they? If Liz revealed what she had done, those families would lose their homes. Her father would face even more humiliation and disgrace-his own daughter, manipulating bank records. She could imagine the headlines: “Bank Prez Daughter Is Robin Hood.”