Guilt (18 page)

Or maybe not. Maybe no one could find her because she was dead. Dead people were actually pretty easy to find. Annie opened a browser window and typed in the URL for the online Social Security Death Index. She didn't know her first name, so all she typed was KLEVINSKI in the
LAST NAME
field. Fortunately, that was a fairly unusual last name. A list came back. She scanned it, looking for women in the right age range. There were none. Not officially dead.

Annie went back to reading the affidavit. The words blurred across the page. Idly, she opened up an online directory. She typed in KLEVINSKI and MA. Back came Joseph Klevinski in Cambridge; the address was the apartment Jackie lived in, the one she'd made Joe move out of. There were also a Carl Klevinski in New Bedford and an Elaine in Franklin. Maybe that was her. Or maybe she'd gone back to using her maiden name, or remarried. There were entirely too many possible scenarios.

Annie knew this was a waste of time. She was procrastinating, putting off the busywork she hated. But she was curious. She widened the search area to the entire United States, and dozens of names came back. There was Anna in North Carolina. C in Union, New Jersey—it was usually women who were listed by first initial. An androgynous Dana from Paramus, New Jersey. Scrolling through the list, she noticed there was also a Joseph in Toledo. Little Joey would be twelve. Kids that age sometimes had phones listed in their own names. She printed the list.

Through the open office doorway, Annie could see Jackie's desk with its bowl of hard candy and framed school photograph of Sophie. If Joe and his first wife had been living in Cambridge, then undoubtedly they'd been to family court, right across the street from the district courthouse, less than a mile from Annie's office. If there'd been a restraining order, there'd have been a hearing. Divorce and custody hearings, complaints for protection—all she had to do was pull the records, and
voilà,
she'd have a first name, a maiden name, a social security number. Armed with that information, the rest would be easy. Like making a chink in the tough hull of a coconut, just a few more gentle taps would send fissures all around, releasing the meat inside.

Annie checked her watch. The family court records office was open for another hour. With traffic starting to back up, she'd get there faster on foot. She switched her boots for sneakers, put on her jacket, and tucked her wallet, a pad, and a pen into her pocket. She turned out the lights and locked the office.

Her cheeks stung from the wind as she ran up narrow, tree-lined Third Street, past converted red-brick industrial buildings and handsome old row houses. The sky was dark with clouds, the treetops swayed and quivered in stiff wind gusts. The horizon lit up, and far off there was a roll of thunder. No time to go back for an umbrella.

Fat drops of rain pelted her as she ran past the yellow sawhorses that blocked off Thorndike Street and stretched across the front of the district courthouse. She ran around to the front of the probate court building on the next block. Family court records were there on the second floor.

Rain came down more steadily as Annie ran past the wide granite steps leading to the base of four massive brick columns that framed the building's original entryway. The modern entrance was a purely functional wooden door in the side of the base of the steps. Two men and a woman were huddled to one side, smoking.

She made it inside just as the sky opened up in earnest. She was surprised to find a line of people backed up into the narrow, high-ceilinged entry tunnel. They were waiting to go through security. That was odd. This late in the day it had usually cleared out.

Annie squeezed past, waving her court ID. When she got to the front, she realized the cause of the backup. They'd started photographing visitors. The line must have been out onto the street and around the corner earlier in the day.

She got to the staff entrance and handed the security officer her court ID and key card. He was a fresh-faced kid, his hair slicked back. Security had been tightened here, too. He wanted to see a second ID. She showed him her driver's license. He looked back and forth from her to the photo.
Okay, so I had a bad hair day
—she knew better than to crack the joke. She gazed out into the lobby while he wrote her name in a logbook. Another new procedure. The people who packed the benches of the crowded, stuffy room looked as if they were waiting for trains, not their day in court.

“Ma'am?” the security guard said. “I said you can go in now.”

Ma'am?
Sheesh. Annie strode past the snack bar that filled one corner of the lobby and took the stairs to the second-floor records room. She had plenty of time; usually the lines were shorter this late in the day. When she reached the doorway, she stood there in dismay. The low-ceilinged room with its counters and crowds of people looked like Filene's Basement during a sale. A sign hung over one counter:
DIVORCE
. Over another:
PATERNITY
. She half expected to see
PANTYHOSE
over the counter where more than twenty people were lined up to request records. No way she'd get to the front of that line and get what she needed before the place closed. Damn.

She'd just turned to leave when the lights flickered, and there was a crash of thunder that shook the floor. There were screams as the place went dark, then silence.
Another bomb?
The thought swept through the building like a foul-smelling wind.

It seemed like minutes, but it was probably only seconds before the lights came back on, and a rumble and hum as the building's assorted systems came back online. There was nervous laughter.

Annie stood at the second-floor balcony and looked down on the round tables that crowded the center area of the main floor. She hated to go home empty-handed.

“Pain in the ass,” a man grumbled as he walked past and headed down the stairs. “Figures it would happen right when I get to the front of the line,” a woman said to another as she brushed past.

In the good old days, when Annie had just started doing this kind of work, there were no computers to crash. You looked up what you wanted in a master index and then checked out the ledger you needed. Now, with the index online, everything ground to a halt when the computers burped.

Annie returned to the records room. Just a few patrons and the staff remained inside. Lightning flashed again, and rain poured in sheets down the windows.

“Annie? Annie Squires?” Annie thought she recognized the man's voice. She turned. Did she know this florid man wearing a three-piece suit who seemed to know her? “You don't recognize me, do you?”

Then it dawned on her who he was. If he'd been wearing his cop's uniform she'd have recognized him instantly. Instead of shaking his offered hand, she hugged him. Then she stood back and took in the pinstripes. “You're not a lawyer now, are you?”

He chuckled. “Lawyer? Me? Hell no. I got a nice desk job, though. That's my office.” He pointed to a door that said
CHIEF CLERK
, and below that
CHARLES AYRE
.

“No kidding,” Annie said as she remembered what her Uncle Jack had said about how Charlie had a knack for helping out the right people.

“How's Jack?” Charlie asked, his face solemn with concern.

“He's pretty good,” Annie said, and brought him up to date on how her uncle had moved into a nursing home. She didn't tell him that Uncle Jack rarely recognized her or her mother when they came to visit.

“And yourself?” he asked. “You still in the business?”

Annie knew what cops and ex-cops thought about her business, the business of helping defendants. “Actually, I was here hoping to pull some divorce records. It's for one of our clients who's also a friend. A good friend.” She gave Charlie a sideways look. “She's being harassed by her ex. He was married before, divorced. I thought there might be prior restraining orders. You know, that kind of thing.”

“A friend?” Charlie said, and put his index finger under Annie's chin and studied her face.

Cripes, he was looking for bruises. She laughed and pulled away. “No, it's not me. Really, it's not.”

Charlie shepherded her into his office. There, from one of the walnut bookcases that stood tall between arched windows overlooking Cambridge Street, he grabbed a CD. He explained to Annie that he kept his own copy of the records index since the network was “slow as molasses.” He slid the CD into his PC and brought up a window.

Annie wrote down “Joseph Klevinski” and Charlie typed in the name. He shook his head and clucked to himself at what he was finding.

“This guy's a piece of work.”

A few minutes later, armed with notes written on a scrap of paper, Annie returned with Charlie to the main room. He pulled a half-dozen ledgers of court records and made her promise to return them to their spots.

“Gonna have to throw you out of here in twenty minutes, or I'd make you tell me what you've been up to. Next time you come, you give me a call. We'll get some coffee,” he said, and left Annie to her work.

19

P
ETER COLLECTED
souvenir copies of the wannabe A-bomber flyer as he walked back to his car on Dunster Street. The damned things were posted everywhere. Peter unlocked his car. Despite his detour for coffee and encounter with Harvard Harry, he had plenty of time to get back to the Pearce for his final appointment with Rudy Ravitch before discharging him. He got into his car. He knew he should have called the police the minute he'd spotted Harry. MacRae and Neddleman had every reason to be pissed at him. No, he wasn't a detective, as MacRae so helpfully pointed out.

A car horn jolted Peter from his thoughts. A silver Honda was pulled up alongside him, and the driver was jerking his thumb at him.
All right, all right, I'm going,
he thought as he started the car.

He made it around the corner and back up to Mass Ave. Then traffic came to a halt. He heard what sounded like chanting, and someone shouting through a bullhorn. Shit. A demonstration. He crept closer. Traffic was narrowed to one lane to make room for double-parked police vans. The Cambridge Common swarmed with demonstrators, an odd assortment of what looked like college students and older people, women mostly, waving hand-painted signs and shouting “Freedom, Freedom!”
LIBERATION FROM RIGHT WING TYRANNY
was written on one sign.
OUR DEMOCRACY IS IN DANGER
, said another. A woman who looked a lot like one of Peter's mother's mah-jongg friends was holding a placard aloft. When the woman turned away, he could see that printed on the other side was a campaign poster for Ralph Nader.

As police officers frantically assembled yellow sawhorse barriers along the edges of the Common, a crush of demonstrators spilled out into the street. A young man in a Harvard sweatshirt waved a sign in Peter's windshield—
AMERICAN DICTATORSHIP. RED ALERT. BIG BROTHER IS AMONG US
. MacRae would love this.

Peter hit the steering wheel in frustration. There wasn't a damned thing to do except put the car in neutral and call Gloria. At least she could let Ravitch know he was running late. After he made the call, he flipped on the radio and tried to relax.

Finally the traffic began to move, first in fits and starts, then at a steady crawl. As soon as he could, he turned off and cut through to Mount Auburn. He might have made it with minutes to spare if it hadn't been for the security backup at the gate. Instead, by the time he'd parked, he was fifteen minutes late.

Peter ran the length of the parking lot, up the winding road, then up the hill to the unit. It was dark and overcast, and leaves were blowing across the sky like flocks of starlings. Winded, he let himself in the side door of the unit. Kwan just stood there watching, poker-faced, as Peter stood in the hallway catching his breath. He knew Kwan was dying to make some smart-alecky remark.

He picked up Ravitch's chart at the nurses' station and took the elevator to the third floor. He hurried up the hall past Kwan's office. Kwan had left his door open. Peter paused, the administrator in him kicking in. He pushed Kwan's door shut and made a mental note to remind the staff about safeguarding patient privacy. They could be fined $250 for every patient file left unlocked.

He continued to his office, expecting to see Ravitch waiting for him in the chair in the hall. The waiting area was empty. Maybe Ravitch had given up and gone downstairs. Peter got out his keys, unlocked the door, and entered his office. He'd just put down his briefcase when there was a tap at the door. It was Ravitch.

“Sorry I'm late,” Peter said. “I didn't see you.”

“I was in the bathroom,” he said, indicating the men's room at the opposite end of the hall. He took a seat. “Hey, Doc, these pills you have me on? They supposed to make you sick?”

Peter ducked under the overhanging eaves and sat at his desk, ignoring the blinking red message light on his phone. He turned on the desk lamp and examined Ravitch's face. His skin was pale and pasty-looking, and there was a skim of perspiration on his upper lip. He flipped open Ravitch's chart. Kwan had prescribed Paxil for depression and Ativan for anxiety.

“Stomach ache, diarrhea?”

Ravitch gave a doleful nod.

“Unfortunately, those are some of the side effects of what you're taking. Keeping you from eating?”

“I wish,” Ravitch said, looking down at his paunchy stomach. “I'm hungry all the time.”

Unfortunately, that was another side effect.

“How about bad dreams?” Ravitch asked.

That wasn't from the drugs. “Tell me about them.”

“They're about Leon. Leon and me.” Ravitch took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. “Like last night, I dreamed I'm outside the courthouse and this guy comes out, lights up a cigarette, takes a puff. Then he turns back, opens the door, and I want to tell him to put out his cigarette, there's no smoking inside. Turns out he's not going in. He throws the lighted cigarette into the lobby. Only it isn't a cigarette, it's a bomb.”