RYAN OPENED HIS FRONT DOOR AND NEARLY STEPPED ON THE
envelope from Emma, which the courier had slipped through the mail slot. He tore it open, not even taking the time to sit before reading it.
The first line was jarring enough: “Why haven’t you arrested him? Are you going to LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THIS?” The sender’s screen name was a seemingly random sequence of numbers, not a recognizable name. Ryan read on into the body of the message:
The first clue said I know who did it. The second one said it’s him. Didn’t you see the picture of XXXXXXXX?
The name was blacked out. Apparently Emma had taken the added precaution of redacting all references to Brandon Lomax, just in case Ryan let the letter slip into someone else’s hands. The e-mail continued:
What more do you jerk-offs need? Maybe this will help: VOMIT. You know what I mean. That bastard XXXXXXX was so drunk that he vomited when he got out of the car and saw what happened to Chelsea. The cops kept that juicy tidbit a secret, didn’t they? I never read anything in the paper about any vomit being found at the scene. But I don’t believe for one sec your CSI guys fucking missed it. Soooo…NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME?
There was nothing more.
Ryan put the e-mail down. The vomit made sense—it must have been the reason the police were so convinced that the driver had been drinking. Alcohol would have shown up in the sample, though proving that it was in the driver’s blood would have been another matter. Ryan wasn’t sure why they hadn’t released that information to the public, but he had heard of police withholding pieces of evidence for strategic reasons, and the e-mail was right on: nowhere and at no time in the past three years had there been any public mention of the vomit found on the scene.
Emma had first suspected that Babes might be the tipster when she sat on the Townsends’ front porch and saw the circled words and handwritten anagrams on Babes’s copy of the
New York Times.
Ryan tended to agree with Chelsea’s father that Babes would not have held on to evidence that could have revealed the drunk who had run Chelsea off the road. But the e-mail presented a different problem entirely.
It just didn’t sound like Babes.
Ryan put the e-mail in his coat pocket, headed back to his car, and took one more detour before heading down to Pawtucket to see Paul and Rachel.
Fifteen minutes later, he was in the office of Dr. Fisch, Babes’s neuropsychiatrist.
“Thank you for making time to see me, Doctor,” said Ryan.
“My pleasure. So what is it you would like me to read?”
“This,” said Ryan, as he laid the printed copy of the e-mail message on the desk before him.
Dr. Fisch picked it up, but he didn’t read it right away. He was Babes’s neuropsychiatrist because he was a gentle human being who took the time to know his patients and their families. He seemed to notice that Ryan was wound a bit too tightly.
“How have you been sleeping, Ryan?” he said.
“About as well as you would expect.”
“A colleague of mine over at Brown has had very impressive results with cognitive behavior therapy and insomnia. That’s something you may want to look into.”
Everyone always had “the cure,” from counting sheep to melatonin. Even the receptionist at the radio station had put in her two cents last week: a coffee enema. Ryan was somewhat more inclined to go with Dr. Fisch’s recommendation.
“Thank you, I will definitely check that out. But if you could take a look at the e-mail, I’d really appreciate it.”
The doctor read it once then looked up and said, “How can I help you with this?”
“The question I have is whether there is any way for you to tell if this e-mail came from Babes.”
He removed his eyeglasses, clearly not needing to reread the message to answer the question. “People with AS can be very talented writers. Their handwriting is often poor, but as long as they can type, that’s not an issue.”
“I wish I could address this only in general terms, but I’m afraid I need specifics: Does this look like it could have been written by Babes?”
The doctor paused, obviously uncomfortable with specific questions about his patient.
“Doctor, I understand your concerns about patient confidentiality. But I was married to Chelsea, and Babes just went on my radio show to tell the world that he killed his sister.”
“I’m aware of that. I spoke with his mother ten minutes ago.”
“Then you understand the urgency.”
“I do,” he said. He pondered the matter a moment longer, an internal debate raging as to how much he could say without betraying Babes. Finally, he folded his hands on top of the desk and spoke in a tone that would have been suitable in a courtroom.
“When Babes addresses a person of authority, he uses an even more formal language register than one might expect. Rarely in any context—and never in writing—does he use profanity. Babes also has a tendency to overpunctuate his writings. For example, he uses more semicolons than a neurotypical writer, and he often uses them incorrectly.”
“Anything else?”
“I think that should be sufficient for your purposes.”
Ryan reached across the desk and gave the e-mail another read, bearing the doctor’s comments in mind. “I don’t see any of those traits in this writing,” he said. “This is breezy, like barroom talk. Profane in places. Not formal and overpunctuated.”
“I would agree,” said Dr. Fisch.
“So, your opinion is—what?”
“Between you and me, this e-mail was not written by Babes. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless someone helped him.”
The doctor’s words gave him something to think about. Ryan thanked him and left his office, his mind abuzz as he descended alone in the elevator.
For whatever reason, collaboration was a possibility that he had not yet considered. An accomplice was certainly an interesting notion.
Perhaps it was one he should discuss with Babes’s oldest friend—Tom Bales.
EMMA ATE DINNER ALONE AT HOME: MICROWAVE POPCORN, A
tangerine, and for dessert, a scoop of low-fat Chunky Monkey ice cream with sugar-free chocolate sauce. It was the only food in the house, and she was too stressed and too tired to worry about nutrition.
She’d tried to reach Ryan and Babes’s parents right after her meeting with Chief Garrisen, but they hadn’t answered her phone calls. Emma wasn’t surprised. When a relative confessed to a crime, families often avoided the prosecutor until all the ducks were in a row. She was forced to convey Chief Garrisen’s deadline in a voice-mail message: “I’m sorry to tell you this, but in light of Babes’s confession, we’ll have to issue an arrest warrant unless he contacts us and arranges a meeting within twenty-four hours. You and an attorney are, of course, invited to come with him.”
It wasn’t often that Emma hated her job, but that phone call was definitely one of those moments.
She sank into the couch with her bowl of ice cream, grabbed the remote, and switched on the local evening news. Babes was the top story, and her friend Doug Wells was the crime reporter on the scene. Archived photographs of Chelsea and the crash site flashed on the television screen as Doug reminded viewers of “the tragic death of the young wife of Boston radio host and former PawSox star Ryan James, whose two-year-old daughter, Ainsley, survived the crash.”
Emma’s image appeared next—for once, a great photo of her.
Gotta give the boy points for trying to keep me happy.
Doug’s report continued: “Investigators have suspected all along that Chelsea James was run off the road by a drunk driver, but there were no suspects or meaningful leads in the case until the recent three-year anniversary of the crash, when prosecuting attorney Emma Carlisle received an anonymous tip. Then today, a bombshell exploded when Ryan James received this on-the-air phone call from his brother-in-law, Chelsea’s younger brother, during the final segment of
Jocks in the Morning,
the top-rated sports talk-radio show in Boston.”
Ryan’s publicity headshot flashed on screen as the taped conversation replayed in its entirety, culminating in Babes’s dramatic confession: “I killed my sister!”
It pained Emma to hear it again, but it hurt even more to watch the video footage of Ryan fighting his way through a veritable journalistic frenzy, just to walk to his car in the radio station’s parking lot. She could see in his eyes how raw his emotions were, capped off with the look of utter contempt that he threw someone as he was getting into his car. There was no on-scene audio, just Doug’s voice-over, but Emma knew that a reaction like that from a guy like Ryan had to have been goaded by some photographer angling for a money shot. She’d had to deal with similar situations in her high-profile prosecutions, though most of the insults hurled in her direction involved the C-word. And people complained about the ethics of
lawyers.
“Daniel Townsend remains at large,” the anchorwoman said, as the clip ended and a color photograph of Babes appeared on the screen. “He is twenty-four years of age, five feet nine inches tall, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. Police warn that he is armed and dangerous. Stay tuned to
Action News
for more on this developing story.”
“Armed and dangerous?” Emma said to the TV, the words coming like a reflex. “Babes?”
She immediately muted the television, picked up the telephone, and gave Doug flak about that that last point.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’ll double-check our facts. But I’m pretty sure that’s the way the police described him.”
“Well, they shouldn’t have. Babes is not a violent suspect. He confessed to the whole world on live radio.”
“Which is something I wanted to talk to you about,” said Doug. “Remember how I offered to give you more media coverage on the Chelsea James investigation in exchange for some kind of an exclusive?”
Emma knew she was now talking to Doug Wells the reporter, not Doug the new potential boyfriend.
“It wasn’t
some kind
of an exclusive,” she said. “It was an exclusive on the next tip from the anonymous source.”
“Right. But that’s a moot point now.”
“What are you getting at?” she said.
“Here’s my thought: If Babes calls into Ryan James’s radio show again, maybe you could talk Ryan into taking the call off the air.”
“But Babes wants to be on the air.”
“I know. I heard him say that. But as long as he talks to Ryan on the radio, nobody gets the exclusive.”
“Wait a second,” said Emma. “You want me to lean on Ryan to take the next call from Babes in private—which would make it harder for the police to hear potentially incriminating statements from a vehicular homicide suspect—and then I’m supposed to feed you the exclusive story?”
“Well, not if you’re going to put it that way. But a deal is a deal.”
Emma’s mouth fell open. “I’m going to say good-bye now,” she said in an even tone. “Hopefully, when I wake up in the morning, I will have decided to let myself forget what you just said.”
She hung up, fuming, but the doorbell chimed before she could give any further thought to Doug and his tactics. She went to the door and answered it.
It was Brandon Lomax. He didn’t look happy.
“May I come in?” he said, after a few moments of silence.
Emma was so surprised to see him, and still so flummoxed from Doug’s phone call, that she’d forgotten her manners.
“Of course,” she said, showing him inside. She led him to the couch in the living room, but he insisted that she sit first. Then he remained standing—the position of power. Paternal power. Emma felt seventeen again, as if at any minute her best friend, Jennifer, would be sitting beside her on the couch, the two “summer sisters” having to answer for an empty beer bottle Mr. Lomax had found on the sailboat.
“I heard some disturbing news today,” he said.
“We all did.”
“I wasn’t talking about the on-air confession,” he said, his tone taking on an edge. “This has to do with the crime lab down in Kingston.”
That one hit her like a brick. “What did you hear?”
“Someone sent a hair sample of mine down there for comparison to DNA that was taken from the scene of Chelsea James’s crash. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Emma swallowed the lump in her throat. Honesty was the only policy. “I sent it in,” she said.
“I see,” he said flatly. “Have you heard anything yet?”
“No. The lab is backed up, and this doesn’t involve a sexual assault against a minor or a violent assault that would get us priority. Officially speaking, we don’t even have a known suspect.”
Lomax started to pace—something he did only when he was furious and trying not to explode. “Let me save you another phone call,” he said. “Apparently, the sample you sent consists entirely of hair strands. What did you do, steal my comb?”
Emma didn’t answer. It was awful enough just to be accused.
“Pleading the Fifth, are you?” he said. “As you know, hair shafts are a pretty iffy source of DNA, unless the hair roots are included in the specimen.”
He was right. She knew from many rape cases that broken bits of hair strands alone, taken from combs or brushes, were always a long shot.
Lomax stopped pacing, and Emma felt the weight of his stare. “So it should come as no surprise to you that the test results are inconclusive.”
Emma was looking down at the rug. “How did you find out about this?”
“A reporter. Isn’t that a hell of a way for me to hear this kind of news? The story leaked from someone in the lab, and a journalist coldcocked me with a report that Emma Carlisle—my sweet Emma—is checking out my DNA.”
Emma closed her eyes in pain. It was exactly the scenario that Chief Garrisen had warned her about: a leak from the crime lab that could label Brandon Lomax as a suspected drunk driver, hit the newspapers, and derail his campaign for the Senate. “Are they going to run the story?”
“Fortunately, we’re dealing with a reasonable journalist who won’t go to print without two sources. We’re denying it, and as far as I know, there’s no credible corroboration. So the damage is under control. For now.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“How could you do this to me?”
The question had no anger in it. It was pure disappointment—and it crushed her. “I felt like…I had to.”
“You
had
to? You’ve known me since you were eleven years old. I thought of you as my own daughter.”
“That didn’t make it any easier. But I had to do my job.”
He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Taking a hair sample for DNA testing without telling me about it, treating me worse than you would treat a common criminal, forcing me to hear about this from some investigative reporter—that isn’t doing your job. If you wanted a DNA sample, all you had to do was ask for it, Emma. I would have given it to you gladly.”
Emma could barely speak. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late to be sorry,” he said sharply. He started toward the door.
Emma followed him. “Please, don’t leave like this,” she said.
He opened the door, then stopped and said, “I’m going over to the hospital right now. The lab will have a proper DNA sample first thing in the morning. I’ll do whatever I can as former attorney general to get you the results in forty-eight hours. If not sooner.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said.
“Apparently, it is,” he said, his expression turning colder as he closed the door in her face.