Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
Now they could avoid all that complicated stuff. Forget about her. Starting now.
She didn’t answer.
“Tenley? I know you’re in there. Listen, honey?” her mother said. “I know we need to talk, I really do. But I have to go out. It’s a work thing.”
Tenley frowned. That was the last thing she expected to hear. Her mother had to go out? At this hour? It was, like, midnight. Or later. What work thing? Why? But if she asked, she’d have to talk. And she refused to have a conversation. She didn’t care about it that much. Her mother could go wherever she wanted.
I hope she’s not driving,
Tenley thought.
She pressed her lips together, reminding herself not to care, and not to answer. It didn’t matter where her mother was going. And, all in all, it might make Tenley’s life a lot easier. Things were finally working out.
* * *
Catherine stood in the hallway, shoulders sagging, tears welling. The phone in her hand almost felt hot from the call she’d just received. It was well after midnight.
Could it not wait?
It was all too much. How much could she be expected to handle?
She’d try one more time to connect with her daughter. Then she had to go. If her husband was so concerned about Tenley, where the hell was he now? She’d feel better about leaving if Greg were home. If Greg were
anywhere
she could find.
“Tenley, it’s important. I know you’re angry, I now you’re upset and…”
I’m sorry.
The words stuck in her throat, but an adult had to make the first move. This was her daughter. Her only remaining daughter. “I’m sorry, Tenner. I don’t want us to be upset with each other. I know it’s horribly late, but I have to go. Okay?”
Silence.
She paused, flattening one palm against the white-painted wood of the bedroom door. Geographically, her daughter was inches away. Emotionally? Across an endless universe of misunderstanding and sorrow. Right now, Catherine didn’t have time to fix it.
“I know you hear me, honey,” she said. “I’ll be at my office, okay? If you need me? Come see me when you get in tomorrow. Okay?”
Silence.
* * *
Tenley waited. Waited. Waited. Listened for footsteps. Heard her mother walking away.
That
was, like, ironic, right? That her mother was leaving? She imagined herself telling the story to Brileen with lots of clever inflection and just the right cool words. They’d be sharing an apartment. It wouldn’t matter that Brileen was a little older. They’d compare notes on classes and guys and real life, without any dumb parents hovering over them like prison guards. Brileen and her roommate were looking for a third, she’d said. Their old roommate had moved out, but the girl’s parents had paid the rent for the rest of the year. How cool was that?
The thick metal zipper sounded extra loud, extra final as Tenley closed the bag. She slid her computer into the outside padded flap. She slung the bag over her shoulder, feeling the weight of all her possessions, all that she was taking with her from her past. Heavy, and light at the same time. She could come back, right? Someday? If she needed anything? Now, she needed her freedom.
She felt the corners of her mouth turn down, felt, somehow, like she was about to cry. Suddenly the poor stuffed animals crammed into the plastic bags seemed so sad, shelved and unloved. She’d never hear her big sister’s laughter again—Lanna was dead. What were all those years for, anyway? Eighteen years of breakfasts and vacations and graduations and pictures on the fridge? Lanna got beautiful, her mother got powerful, and her father,
Daddy,
who’d always protected them and provided for them and made them feel safe, seemed to have faded from their lives along with his doomed daughter.
That left her, Tenley. On her own.
One last look around the room. Tenley had always loved how the streetlights made little speckles on the ceiling through the fluttering lace curtains. Long after she gave up the princess bedspread, she would fall asleep pretending the tiny lights were dancing fairies, protecting her and coming to wish her sweet dreams.
She lifted one curtain to peer outside. One story below, her mother’s car was backing out between the budding white rosebushes lining the Siskels’ paved driveway. Her mother was leaving.
Fine. Tenley was leaving, too.
Jane coughed, blinking, trying to get her bearings in the half-light of her bedroom. The air conditioner hummed, chilling with a white noise that made sleeping under the downy white comforter a delicious luxury. Her cell phone was rumbling across her glass-topped nightstand. She squinted at her alarm clock. Middle of the night.
Uh-oh.
Coda muttered a protest meow, her sleep also disturbed by the ringing phone.
“She’s fine, Sis,” Melissa’s whisper hissed in her ear.
“She’s fine? Gracie? Great.” Jane was glad to be awakened, this was good news. “Lewis, too? Melissa, why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “But see, if Gracie were
my
daughter, I’d have gone right out to pick her up. I mean, she’s nine! And I’m calling you because—Janey, how am I supposed to know what to do? I can’t make a big deal out of nothing, but it doesn’t feel like nothing. Daniel is relying on me. I can’t
lose
his daughter, for God’s sake. We’re about to get
married,
and—”
“But they’re not lost, right? They’re fine.” Jane wiped the sleep out of one eye. “So where are they?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” Melissa paused, either sighed or yawned. “Robyn went to sleep, but I’d been sitting in the living room, watching out the front window. But no one came home.”
“So Lewis called, or what?” Jane sat up, plumping the pillows behind her so she wouldn’t doze off. Coda, a dark silhouette, jumped onto the comforter, turned a circle, did it again, then nestled in the curve of Jane’s knee.
The night Gracie wasn’t missing,
Jane had called it. Seemed like she was right. Hurray.
The long and complicated day seemed distant now. Marsh Tyson. Gracie. The murder at Curley Park. The altercation in the alley. Two ambulances. Two victims? Unfinished stories.
Where was Jake? Did he already know how the stories ended?
“Jane?”
Jane started at the voice in her ear. She must have been half asleep. Missed something. “I’m here. What again?”
“Like I
said,
they’re at a motel,” Melissa whispered. “Robyn came to the kitchen, got a drink of water or something. She saw me in the living room and got all flustered. She said they’d called, and she was sorry she didn’t tell me, but she ‘thought I was asleep’—what an
idiot
—and they told her they were ‘zonked’ and would be home in the morning. Lewis told Gracie they were having ‘an adventure,’ and she was thrilled with the little motel soaps and all the pillows, and they’d be fine.”
“A motel?” Jane tried to decide if that was reasonable. Nothing was reasonable in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, they’ll be home in the morning. Turned out it’s better that I’m here.” Melissa’s voice was so low Jane could barely hear it. “Oh, Janey, I’m so sorry to bother you. I just needed someone to—maybe I’m silly to worry. But the woman is so unreliable. Seems like her husband is, too.”
“No, I hear you, I’m glad you called. I agree it’s—unusual,” Jane said. “And you’ll be a good stepmom, Lissie. Daniel knows that.”
Silence. Jane could hear Melissa yawn again, or sigh. “Thanks, Sis,” she said. “I hope so.”
* * *
At the employee garage, Catherine Siskel punched in her code—L-A-T-E—on the flat black pad. LA-TE stood for Lanna and Tenley. Now it was also about the time of night.
Or, morning.
Almost two thirty. She waved at the blinking security camera above her, the all-seeing eye that recorded everyone who entered. The yellow-and-black-striped barrier arm lifted, allowing her into the basement shadows, the murk of the parking area pin-spotted with dim orange lights. An array of empty spaces stretched in front of her, white stripes with stenciled names spray-painted at the edge of each one.
SISKEL COS
, hers read. The chief of staff got the slot right next to Mayor Elihu Holbrooke, who, in all likelihood, was home with his wife and beagle, asleep in their overdecorated Beacon Hill brownstone. If she had to wake him up, it wouldn’t be pretty.
It was her job to make sure the mayor was
not
called, unless there was a dire emergency or an arriving celebrity. Or contributor. Tonight was none of the above, which made it Catherine territory. She shifted into Park, took a swig of tepid water from her plastic bottle, checked her face in the car’s pull-down mirror. She’d slapped on a little makeup every time she’d stopped at a red light. It would have to do.
Ward Dahlstrom would be there already, probably still seething that Catherine had kept the job—and parking spot—he wanted. So would Kelli White Riordan, the veteran city attorney who insisted on her middle name to amplify her old-Boston political genealogy. As if anyone cared.
Catherine tapped her fingers on the chrome railing as the elevator lifted her to the executive level. They’d read the subpoena, then see if there actually
was
any surveillance video for this afternoon. The traffic cams, where Tenley worked, recorded only if someone hit the cache button. If they had video, they’d hand it over.
It was all part of her job—the bad news as well as the glory. The e-mails had flown all afternoon, and she’d expected the subpoena, just not in the middle of the night. Still, a man had died in a city park, right across from City Hall. They had a victim in the morgue and a John Doe under police watch in the hospital. When crimes were solved quickly, the cops looked good and the mayor looked good. Which made Catherine look good. And she knew that when they identified the victim, someone’s family would be in mourning. So if Catherine was a little tired, hey, she’d get over it. She knew what mourning felt like.
The Fourth of July was imminent. Boston’s biggest tourist attraction. The pressure was on to close the case before the Esplanade fireworks. If it wasn’t, there’d be fireworks of another kind.
Who would kill in broad daylight? she wondered as the elevator doors opened. A killer on the loose was bad enough. One operating in the middle of a million holiday picnickers would be like a bad thriller movie. And a murder right outside City Hall? Probably the first time in history. She might have seen it herself if she’d been looking out the window at the right time.
Be disturbing if Tenley had seen anything. Her daughter hadn’t mentioned it, but then Tenley never mentioned anything about anything.
Catherine pushed open the glass doors into the reception area. A wide-windowed foyer designed to accommodate favor seekers and job hunters, it had been outfitted with lumpy low-slung couches and old magazines to discourage supplicants from hanging around. The receptionist, a dire wolf in cardigans who’d been around since the Flynn years, ruled the place with stabbing fingernails and a practiced glare.
Her reception desk was vacant at this hour. The corridors had been darkened by the city’s vaunted automatic energy-saving program, the air conditioners barely humming. For an off-hours meeting like this, that made the atmosphere close and gloomy and stuffy. Like being inside a submarine.
Or a sinking ship.
Dahlstrom stood in the middle of the room, holding a flat plastic CD holder, waving it at her as she entered. “It’s all here,” he said.
“What’s all here?” Catherine nodded at Kelli Riordan. Even in her trademark pencil skirt and starched white blouse—at this hour!—the woman looked disheveled and sleep deprived.
“You mean the CD?” Catherine asked.
“The murder,” Dahlstrom said.
“He’s in a coma?” Jake rubbed a hand over his face, staring at the ICU doctor. Bobby Land, beaten and bleeding internally, was on the verge of death. Hard to grasp that this poor kid, now wired with tubes and monitors, was the same one who’d assured Jake everything was copa-cetic. All smiles, hiding five grand in his pocket.
One thing was sure. If he died, the mugging of Bobby Land would no longer be simple assault and maybe robbery. If he died, it’d be murder.
Either way, cops’ point of view, now two victims from the Curley Park episode. Connected, had to be. Should he send someone to watch Calvin Hewlitt?
“You’re sure?” Jake instantly regretted the words. Of course the doctor was sure. But it was three
A.M
., and Jake’s brain was running on empty.
Black embroidered script on a white lab coat identified him as Antonio Piva, MD. “I’m sorry.” The doctor quickly surveyed the empty waiting room. “Are you calling the next of kin?”
“We don’t know who that is,” Jake said. This night had crashed and burned. Bobby Land on a ventilator. All they’d gotten from him was a wallet and a cashier’s check.
Calvin Hewlitt,
Jake thought again. He and his lawyer certainly must have asked where the kid lived. That alone would give Jake a reason to go knock on Hewlitt’s door. But first Jake needed to finish with the doctor. “We’re looking.”
“We’ll wait to hear from you, then.” Dr. Piva flapped his aluminum folder closed, took a step toward the double doors of the ICU. “I’ll let you work.”
“You, too,” Jake said as he left. “Thanks.”
Land’s family must be missing him, whoever they were. Maybe they’d be smart, and lucky, and call the cops. Lucky, in this case, meant they’d learn their son was in a coma. If they weren’t so lucky, no one would ever know who this kid was, and if he died he’d be buried by the next funeral home in the city’s charity rotation. Jake wiped one eye, from fatigue and frustration.
If
he died.
His phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, looked at the caller ID. DeLuca, who was upstairs in maybe-tattooed guy’s room.
If that guy was dead, Jake was quitting and going to law school, like his mother always wanted. Lawyers got to sleep. And their wives could be reporters.