Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
“I could kill you right now,” the voice went on. “I could stab your freaking eyes out, too, and then what would happen to your little career as a photographer?”
This person knew him?
“Have you talked to anyone about what you saw? Have you?”
“No.” Bobby managed to get the word out, it was true, thank crap. He hadn’t told the reporter anything. The lawyer woman hadn’t asked. He didn’t say anything to the cops either. That detective Brogan seemed, like, in a hurry to get out, and they’d set up the interview time for tomorrow morning. Would there even be a tomorrow? He opened his eyes, wide, looking for a way out. “No, nothing, no one, I promise, I haven’t talked to—”
“Lucky for you, little man,” the voice said.
Bobby opened his eyes, desperately trying to wrench himself away. They were right in the gloom, right where the streetlights didn’t reach. No one in sight. If he yelled, called for help, he could get stabbed in one second. He twisted again, frantic, then felt the threat of the blade through his thin T-shirt.
Good-bye.
The thought floated into his consciousness, then settled in to stay.
Good-bye.
Jane looked at her watch, calculating. The maître d’ at the Brookline Taverna had asked her when the other two guests would arrive. And no one knew the answer.
It was now nine
P.M.
They’d been here thirty minutes. It felt like three hundred. The not-missing stepfather and not-missing daughter had not appeared. Robyn clutched her cell phone, checking it periodically. The phone stayed silent.
How long could it take to fix a tire? What was taking them so long? Where were they?
Laughter from other tables of happy diners only underscored the gloom cloud looming over theirs. Jane was starving. She craved a glass of wine. And a fork to stab herself in the throat. First meetings were often awkward, but this one was Emmy-winning awful.
Melissa had told Jane that Daniel’s plane was still delayed, that she hadn’t told her fiancé anything about Gracie, and that she was freaking out. Not the most auspicious mental state for her sister to meet Jane’s boyfriend. Now Melissa’s “conversation” with Jake sounded more like a prosecutorial grilling. Jake was clearly distracted, his answers almost brusque.
Lucky Daniel,
Jane thought. More fun to be stranded in an airport than be sitting at this table.
There must be some kind of Heisenberg effect for families, Jane thought, some force that mutates a perfect beau into a perfect stranger. Real Jake, intelligent and thoughtful and warm, was nothing like this icily argumentative table Jake. She wondered if she had changed in Jake’s eyes, too.
They had to talk. Without family. She and Jake were sitting so close they could touch each other—but they couldn’t say an important word. Not about each other. And not about the dead man in Curley Park.
Robyn, red-eyed and fidgeting, was regaling Jake with a nostalgic anecdote about Gracie. Robyn’s cardigan, now unbuttoned, revealed an ice-blue silk blouse underneath. Also unbuttoned. Farther than Jane might have recommended.
“I mean, Jake, she’s the cutest!” Robyn had the fingers of one hand curled around Jake’s forearm, leaning in. Her other hand still clutched that phone.
Jake cleared his throat. Took an impossible sip from his empty water glass. Melissa looked as if she’d like to stab someone, anyone, even herself.
Stab.
That was the second time she’d mentally used that word. Jane allowed herself to think, briefly, about Channel 2 and the Curley Park incident. What had been on the six o’clock news? She yearned to call Marsh Tyson, somehow make amends. She’d left four hours ago explaining her defection as a family emergency. At least what she’d thought then was an emergency. Tyson had seemed to be understanding, and they’d parted with the agreement that she’d talk to him tomorrow. Their new relationship had started auspiciously. Now it felt like a loose end.
“And then, I remember one time…” Robyn’s reedy voice, relentless and persistent, carried to Jane’s end of the table. Melissa escaped toward the ladies’ room. Jane escaped into her own thoughts, making sure her face was pointed, politely, in Robyn’s direction.
Loose ends. One, she should inform Marsh Tyson that Gracie was okay. He’d want to know, if only because a missing nine-year-old and her stepfather were a potentially headlining news story. Now, thank goodness, it wouldn’t come to that.
Two, what had happened in Curley Park?
And three, if Jane did start working at Channel 2, should she be having dinner with Jake in public?
She looked at him, now tête-à-tête with the just-returned Melissa, immersed in a verging-on-argument about a Supreme Court decision on life sentences for juvenile offenders.
Lovely,
Jane thought.
This is a bad Lifetime movie.
She felt a touch on her thigh. Jake’s hand, hidden under the edge of the white tablecloth, gave her leg a surreptitious squeeze. She put a secret hand over his, silently reassuring, connecting. Okay, then, she almost smiled, they’d make it through this together. A wretched family dinner was almost a rite of passage.
Everything would be fine. As soon as Gracie and Lewis arrived.
The waiter appeared with a dripping pitcher of ice water, hovering behind Melissa. Jake’s cell phone vibrated on the table, moving, in infinitesimal jumps, across the tablecloth.
Robyn stopped talking. Her phone was ringing, too.
* * *
“You come back here, right now!”
Tenley heard her mother yelling behind her as she raced up the stairs to the second floor. She’d ignore her, she didn’t have to do what her mother said, she was eighteen and—
“Right now!” Her mother’s voice came closer, and Tenley could hear her bare feet slapping on the hardwood steps. Tenley could run faster than her mom, especially since she was fueled on coffee and not sauvignon blanc.
Tenley yanked open the door of her room, stared at the unmade bed. Her suitcase was in the closet.
“What on earth are you talking about, Tenley Rebecca Siskel? Moving out? You are not moving out, not as long as—”
Tenley whirled to see her mom, hands planted on hips, in the hall behind her. Mom’s blouse had come untucked from her skirt, a white silk tail hanging over the gray linen. Her hair had come out of its ponytail. One strand now straggled, limp, over one cheek. She looked all off balance, one-sided, and Tenley figured that was a pretty great metaphor for their entire lives.
“As long as what?” Tenley shot back. “You can’t make me do
anything
.”
“Oh, yes I can, missy.”
Her mother’s face was getting red. Seriously, Tenley wished this whole thing had never happened, but her mother had started it, and now it seemed like it was impossible to undo. And maybe it was time for the shit to hit the fan. They’d all tiptoed around the whole thing for so long, maybe they all needed to face reality. Whatever reality was now.
Tenley stepped into the hall, slammed her bedroom door closed with one yank of her arm, and in another swift motion, opened the door to Lanna’s room. Sacred, sacred Lanna’s room. There the pristine white bedspread lay unwrinkled over a float of pillows, lacy and lacier, and a smiling teddy bear perched, reclining, on top of them, endlessly grinning at the emptiness.
“She’s gone,” Tenley said. Her voice sounded different than it ever had. She picked up Teddy, held it at her mother, accusing. “This is a stuffed bear, an old stuffed nothing bear that used to be hers, and you keep it. Why?”
Tenley hurled the bear across the room. It bounced off the silver-and-white wallpaper and landed on a tufted stool, then toppled to the pale blue carpet. She couldn’t believe she was doing it, it was kind of a tantrum, but the pretending should be over. Over! She wanted a life, her old life, her real life. When she mattered.
Her mom leaped across the room, grabbed Teddy, clutched the stupid stuffed thing to her chest. Shouldn’t she have clutched her daughter? Comforted
her
? Wouldn’t
that
have been the right thing to do?
“See, you care about the bear more than you care about me. It’s still all about Lanna, right? Your dear Lanna. Why did you even
have
me?”
Tenley found the knob of the closet door, pulled it open. A puff of lavender and cedar scented the room.
“What are you doing? Don’t—” Mom, still clutching the smiling bear, held out the other hand as if to stop her.
Hell,
nothing
was going to stop her. Tenley felt her chest get tight. The way it did when the police came to tell them about Lanna. The way it did at the funeral.
She could barely see now. Her mind was short-circuiting as she stared blindly at the rainbow of Lanna’s clothes, all lined up like that in the closet, all the whites at one end, blacks at the other, colors in the middle. She reached in, grabbing, wild, not caring, yanked out hanger after hanger, using both hands, crazy upset, she was
crazy
upset, but whatever, whatever, whatever.
She threw the hangers to the floor, the curved metal tangling the silk and cotton and knits. She knew she should stop. But the space behind her eyes was white, and all she could see was the past, and how it had killed her future. Unless she just—stomped it all out. Talked about it. Until her mother faced it.
“Give this stuff
away,
” she yelled, or whispered, she didn’t really know. And all she could hear was her mother sobbing, having sunk to the floor, her hands clawing through the chaos of fabric and hangers, trying to unscramble it. “Make room in
our
lives!”
“Where? When?” Jake knew it was bad form to answer his cell at the dinner table, but he was a cop, and sometimes these things were life and death. People understood that. He’d reluctantly taken his hand from Jane’s leg—touching her had been the only good moment of this entire evening so far—when he saw the caller ID:
DeLuca.
He hunched his shoulders, shielding the conversation.
“What’s his condition?” Jake asked. This was the last thing he’d expected. “Wait—he was on the street? Walking? Walking where? Hang on, okay? I can barely hear you.”
Jane touched his shoulder, head tilted, eyes narrowed, inquiring.
Hang on,
he lifted a finger at her. She’d been with Bobby Land in the alley. Did she know anything about him? From what DeLuca was now saying, that kid had been mugged only a couple blocks from police HQ.
“But I just saw him—” Jake stopped midsentence, calculating. He’d raced out of HQ to get to the restaurant, not exactly lights and sirens, but fast enough. Jake stood, putting a contrite expression on his face.
“Sorry, you all, excuse me, one moment,” he said, and headed to the restaurant’s back corridor, away from the bustling waiters and the buzz of conversation.
“So he was walking?” Jake covered one ear with a hand, and DeLuca’s voice finally came through.
“Yeah, on Vernon Street, looks like, possibly on the way to the T, ya know?” D said. “He’s in bad shape, gotta say. Iffy, I gotta say. Transported to MGH. I’m almost to his room. How long till you get here?”
“Fourteen minutes. Twelve, maybe.” Jake estimated the time, the Beacon Street traffic. He thought about what must have happened to Bobby Land, whose day, Jake was certain, had not in any way turned out as the young man expected. “Next of kin?”
“Yeah, we’re looking, but so far nada. There’s a blue billion Lands in Boston, not to mention the burbs and Cambridge, and he’s got no ID on him now. We’d have gotten it when we interviewed him, but that never happened. Remember? Hewlitt’s legal stooge got there first, and it was adios.”
“What the crap is up with the ID thing?” Jake said. John Doe No. 1, the dead guy, and John Doe No. 2, maybe-tattooed guy, hadn’t had IDs either. He eyed the dinner table across the crowded restaurant, saw Jane now leaning toward Robyn, who had her cell phone up to her ear. Gracie and Lewis must be close by now, and though he’d regret—in a parallel universe—missing the dinner, this was duty calling, and undeniably socially acceptable .
“I know, but if the kid was robbed, they’d take his wallet and ID, right? Kinda SOP for a bad guy, Harvard,” DeLuca said. He’d never let up on the Harvard thing, like Jake was the only cop who’d ever graduated from there. “They probably tossed it, they always do. We’ll find it, no sweat. You on the way?”
Jake stared at the wall, envisioning what might have happened. Bobby Land at the cop shop, waiting, he has a phone, maybe. Okay. Hewlitt and lawyer, whoever, meet with him and “make it right.” Do they give him money? They both leave HQ, where do they go? Land then leaves HQ, Jake encounters him in the lobby. Jake leaves, gets in his cruiser. Land leaves, walking. And then—
“Jake? Earth to Jake.” DeLuca’s voice in his ear.
“Here’s my thing,” Jake said. “How’d anyone know Land would be there? On that street, at that time?”
The sounds of the restaurant swirled around him, DeLuca silent, as Jake walked toward the table, pausing to let tray-balancing waiters go by, then stepping aside to let a harried-looking young woman carry a fussing pinafored toddler toward the bathrooms. He’d need to say his good-byes and make it right with Jane. And everyone. There’d be other times. He hoped.
“Maybe they didn’t know,” DeLuca finally said. “Maybe it was random.”
“Yeah.” Possible. But unlikely. “Two–three blocks, you said, from HQ? A ratty-looking kid in a stupid T-shirt? Why would anyone jump him? There? And then? Hey, is there surveillance video?”
“Yeah, I—hang on,” DeLuca said.
Jake arrived at the table. All eyes were on Robyn, talking into her cell, then frowning, then talking again.
“Jane?” he whispered, leaning close to her. She turned, looking up at him. She’d shredded the white cocktail napkin that had been under her water glass. A nest of damp paper crumbles littered the place mat in front of her. “I’ve got to—”
“Better hurry, Jake,” DeLuca interrupted. “I’m here. And the doc is saying it looks bad.”
* * *