“I’m doing my job, Jack.” She reached into her tote bag for her sandwich, slowly unwrapping the turkey and cheddar on rye. There was a gnawing sensation in her stomach. But it wasn’t the result of hunger. It was good old stress.
“Did Suzanne Holden ever mention Lynn Ingram to you?” he asked, watching her careful ministrations.
“No. But I’ll talk to her. And to Ingram.”
“Coscarelli handled Ingram’s case, you know.”
“I know.” She crumpled the plastic wrap into a ball, and with a flick of her wrist, tossed it in the direction of her trash can. It missed. They both ignored it.
“You gonna talk to him?”
“Leo and I talk all the time.”
“He’s out in the visiting room right now. Along with his mother and his kid. Suzanne told me he’s been visiting more frequently. On Sunday, he and the kid showed up without Grandma. First time she didn’t come along as chaperone. And he stayed for the full two hours. Suzanne told me on Monday, he’s been pushing even harder for her to tell the boy she’s his mommy. ”
Nat pushed her sandwich aside, her appetite fully gone. “Is there a point to this, Jack?”
“The point is, I don’t want you to get hurt again,” he said softly.
“Let’s not do this, Jack.”
He leaned closer. Close enough for Nat to smell his coffee breath. Better than those days when he reeked of whiskey and mouth freshener. He’d been on the wagon for close to a year. A big plus in Nat’s book. Especially since her dad had been an alcoholic who’d served time—once for driving to endanger while under the influence, and a second time for parole violations. Following his second release, after grappling with the pressure to stay sober, work a menial job, make up for lost time with his daughters, and cope with his manic-depressive wife, he blew it. One day, he disappeared, drank himself into a five-day-l6ng stupor, then sobered up enough to hang himself. Nat was seventeen.
“Give me a chance here, Nat. Just crack the door open this much.” He measured an inch with his thumb and index finger.
Nat saw the loneliness reflected in Jack’s eyes. For the past year, there hadn’t been any woman in his life for more than a night or two. After her friend Maggie’s death, intense feelings of grief and betrayal had brought Nat and Jack into each other’s arms for a very brief time. Nat had come to her senses before it had gotten out of hand, but Jack wouldn’t let it go. She saw his persistence as one part bruised ego, and, more significantly, her deputy’s way of fending off the pain of losing Maggie.
When Jack got no response from Nat, he reluctantly got to his feet and headed over to the door. “I still think you’re making a mistake about Ingram.”
As always, a last-word kind of guy.
three
The sentence is an outrage. I don’t care what sex that pervert thinks he is, or what he says, he killed my husband in cold blood. And he should have been put away for life.
Jennifer Slater (post-trial statement to the press)
NAT WAS STANDING by her window watching Anna Coscarelli and her grandson, Jakey, his little hand clasped in hers, exit the center.
“Got a sec?” a voice asked behind her.
Instead of turning to her visitor, Nat watched the pair as they stepped into a waiting taxi. It was a warm, breezy summer day, the first in nearly a week of almost constant rain and grayness. The kind of day meant to be spent out of doors. Out of offices.
“I hear you and Jakey visited Suzanne on your own this weekend.” Nat could feel a scratchiness in her throat as she spoke.
“My mother had a stomach bug,” Leo Coscarelli said, walking over to her.
“How is she now?”
He was at her side. “What’s wrong, Natalie?” Everyone but Leo called her “Nat.” She usually liked that he used her full given name. Right now it irritated her. But then, she’d been feeling irritated before Leo’s arrival.
“Do you remember Lynn Ingram?”
“She’s not someone you’d forget,” he said without guile. “No, I suppose not,” Nat said.
“She coming up for work-release transfer?”
Nat nodded. “What do you think?”
Leo leaned against the wall beside the window, hands jammed into the pockets of his blue sports jacket. Nat noticed that he looked thinner, his face drawn. Stress? Brought on by the job— by her—by Suzanne—any combination thereof ?
Welcome to the club.
“What do I think?” he echoed. “I think it could be dicey.” “Did you agree with the guilty verdict?”
“She confessed.”
“To self-defense.”
He shrugged. “The jury thought otherwise.”
“I followed some of the trial.”
“Who didn’t?”
“Her doctor confirmed that she had suffered a great deal of bruising, which supported her story that Matthew Slater viciously attacked her.”
“And the jury believed that she acquired those bruises as a consequence of Slater trying to defend himself against her attack on him.”
“What did you believe, Leo?”
“I don’t see the point of the question. She was tried by a jury of her peers—”
“ ‘Peers’? How many transsexuals were on her jury?”
Leo exhaled slowly. A few seconds passed. “I liked her. She was nothing like the stereotype. No affectations. No sign of vanity. No hint of any confusion on her part about who she was— not just in terms of gender, but who she was as a person. Do you want to know what I came away from the whole ugly business feeling the most? Sad. Was she guilty of murder? I honestly don’t know.”
“Did you know Ingram and Suzanne were cellmates at Grafton?”
JsTat saw by his expression that this was news to him. And the news wasn’t sitting well.
“Apparently they were friends,” Nat added. “I’m going out to Grafton to talk to Lynn Ingram. Before I do, I think I should have a few words with Suzanne about her.”
Leo, usually so good at maintaining his poker face, was having a rough time of it today. “It’s been—what?—three years?”
“You think Ingram’s any less memorable to Suzanne than she is to you?” Nat countered.
“She’s having a rough time of it, Natalie.”
“I assume you mean Suzanne.”
“I doubt she needs any more headaches.”
“And by ‘headaches,’ I assume you mean Lynn Ingram.” “Suzanne’s only got a few more months to go before she’s out of here.” .
Nat could feel the tension radiating through her body.
Then what?
Suzanne Holden’s exit interviews wouldn’t begin until four weeks before her release date. Nat did know from Sharon Johnson that the owner of the boutique where Suzanne had been placed for work-release had offered her a full-time position once she was free. But Suzanne had not, as yet, accepted the offer. Nat felt guilty for hoping Suzanne wouldn’t take the job. That she wouldn’t stay around the Boston area. Around Leo. She was from the central part of the state. There were plenty of job opportunities there—
“Has Suzanne told you what her plans are once she’s out?” Nat tried for a professional tone that fell dismally flat.
Leo let what they both knew was a loaded question hover in the air, which only served to accelerate the rate and flow of Nat’s anxiety. Leo had told her long ago the drama of errors that led up to his getting Suzanne pregnant, which in turn led up to his son’s birth. Suzanne, who’d served time for prostitution and drug possession, had met Leo shortly after a mandatory stint in a drug treatment center. Actually, Leo’s mother, a volunteer at the treatment center, had brought them together. Anna Coscarelli, who’d lost her only daughter to a drug overdose, had taken to mothering Suzanne. She even cajoled her into enrolling in soriie college classes when she got out of rehab. Which was where Leo came into the picture. Anna talked her son into tutoring Suzanne. He was attracted to her. He admitted that openly. But he never intended for anything to happen.
His libido ultimately won out over his intentions. Only one time, according to Leo, after which he felt guilty as hell. Then he found out Suzanne was pregnant. And that she was planning to abort the pregnancy. Leo talked her out of an abortion only by agreeing to raise the child on his own. Suzanne was adamant about wanting nothing to do with Jacob Coscarelli. Right after she was released from the maternity ward, she handed the newborn over to Leo and disappeared, determined never to see the child again.
Who knew if Suzanne might have relented over time? Who knew if she and Leo might have worked out their relationship if she’d stayed off drugs, as she’d assiduously and faithfully done throughout her whole pregnancy? She didn’t stay off drugs once she ran off. And while under the influence of crack, she got into a row with her dealer/lover who wanted her to go back to working the streets to pay off her mounting drug debts. She claimed he pulled a knife on her. They struggled. And the knife ended up in the guy’s gut. No one on the jury mourned the death of the drug dealer, nor did they feel much pity for a longtime drug user and hooker. Any more than Ingram’s jury had felt much pity for a transsexual.
While serving time for first-degree manslaughter at CCI Grafton, Suzanne consented to visits from her son and his grandmother, on the condition that Jakey not know she was his mother. He was simply told that Suzanne was “a special friend of the family.” Early on, Leo had visited as well, but Suzanne had asked him to stop coming, because having a cop as a visitor wasn’t winning her any favors among her peers or “the screws.” Since she’d been at Horizon House, the pressure had lifted and Leo reentered her life. What it meant to him or to Suzanne was not something Nat had been able to figure out. Maybe neither of them had, either. Still, no question that, as Jakey’s parents, there was a bond between Suzanne and Leo, whether they liked it or not—whether Nat liked it or not.
“Is Suzanne any closer to telling Jakey the truth?” Nat asked, not even bothering to keep the strain out of her voice.
Leo shook his head, clearly not happy about it. “Since he started nursery school, Jakey’s been asking a lot of ‘Mommy’ questions. The other morning at breakfast, he asked his grandmother if he could call her Mommy instead of Grandma. Then he could have a daddy and a mommy.”
There was such a note of sorrow in Leo’s voice that Nat felt ashamed of her own selfish concerns. She placed a hand on his sleeve. “Would it help if I talked to Suzanne?”
Leo’s eyes locked with hers. “She knows about the two of us.”
Nat pulled her hand away as if it had been burned, “What? You told her? You told Suzanne we were ...” For a moment she was so frazzled, she was at a loss what to call them.
“I didn’t go into detail. But I felt she had a right to know we’re involved.”
“My private life is not the business of any inmate in this institution,” Nat said hotly.
“My private life is the business of my child’s mother. I’m sorry that impinges on your need for privacy, Natalie.” Leo paused, his expression softening. “Anyway, I think Suzanne would have figured it out whether I said something or not. Jakey told her a while back that you’re his secret mommy.” "
Nat stared at Leo, dazed. Speechless. Her anger punctured, seeping out of her.
“You wanted to see me, Superintendent?”
There was a marked edge of nervousness in Suzanne Holden’s voice, much like that of a child being called to the principal’s office and not knowing what she’d done wrong.
“Sit down, Suzanne.” Nat gestured toward one of the tweed-upholstered armchairs across from her desk.
Suzanne hesitated, looking around the office as if it held some clue as to why the superintendent had ordered her there. In those same moments, Nat took the opportunity to observe the inmate more closely. The stylish, soft-rose-colored dress she was wearing most likely had been purchased with an employee discount at the boutique. The jersey material followed the svelte lines of her petite body while managing not to cling provocatively. Which, ironically, made her look even sexier.
“Please.” Nat’s hand was still gesturing toward the chair.
Despite her attempt to sound unthreatening, Nat knew Suzanne heard it as an order. And hearing it as such, she obeyed. It was the same with most inmates, and Nat usually made a concerted effort to say something to ease the tension they were feeling. But she couldn’t find the words now. Probably because she was at least as tense as Suzanne. The fact that Leo hadn’t told
v
Suzanne any of the details of his personal relationship with Nat in no way assuaged Nat’s upset or discomfort. Sometimes, saying a little was worse than saying a lot. It left so much open to the imagination. Did Suzanne imagine Leo and Nat were more deeply involved than they were in reality? Did she assume they were living together—perhaps contemplating marriage? And if she'owned any of these thoughts, was she jealous—angry—resentful? Could Suzanne possibly feel as awkward as Nat was feeling?
“Have I busted some rule I don’t know about?” Suzanne avoided meeting Nat’s gaze—or was Nat the one avoiding meeting the inmate’s?
Agitation more than anything else made Nat leap abruptly to the point: “Do you remember a former cellmate of yours at Grafton—Lynn Ingram?”
Suzanne’s first reaction was confusion. Clearly, this was not the direction she thought this meeting would take. Her relief was palpable. She almost smiled.
“Lynn? Yeah, sure. Sure, I remember her,” Suzanne said. “She was great.” She stopped.
Nat watched the inmate’s features slowly darken. “It was horrible, what they did to her.” She muttered this under her breath, but Nat caught her words.
Nat presumed Suzanne was referring to the attacks and not to her cellmate’s having been put into protective custody. “Was it other inmates—officers—both?”
She spied a flicker of alarm on Suzanne’s face and then, in the proverbial wink of an eye, blankness. “Huh?”
Nat had seen that look on many inmates’ faces. It was invariably contrived, a deliberate battening down of the hatches. The message was clear:
Don’t go there.
“Lynn Ingram may be transferring to Horizon House. I haven’t made my decision yet. Is there some information you have that could affect the decision I make?”
Suzanne’s reply came after a lengthy pause. “No.”
“Would she be in any physical or psychological danger that you know of?” Nat persisted. Both her body language and her brittle responses suggested to Nat that Suzanne knew more than she was saying; they also suggested her fear. Ratting out another inmate, male or female, put any inmate in serious jeopardy. Ratting out an officer could put an inmate in hell.