Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
Back to reality. “Yeah?”
“Developments,” D said.
Jake dropped his head back, closed his eyes for a defeated second. He knew it. “Yeah, developments here, too.”
“You go first,” D said.
“Bobby Land’s in a coma.” Jake was still wrapping his brain around it.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. So tell me maybe-tattooed guy is hanging in.”
“Who?”
“Room 606,” Jake explained. D didn’t call him tattoo guy, of course. “The stabber.”
“Oh, him. He’s, yeah, hanging in. Worse than they’d thought, though. Medically, it’s iffy,” D said. “Legally, he’s screwed. Cuz here’s my news. You know we subpoenaed City Hall surveillance. That’s still pending, but Supe knows a guy who knows a guy who says City Hall might have gotten the whole thing.
Might
have. Pre-show, stabbing, and aftermath. We’re supposed to confirm. Wouldn’t that be a slam dunk?”
“They…” Jake pictured it. The whole crime caught on camera. Not from some random tourist snapshot, the hoped-for bonanza that so far produced nada. But from a flat-out kick-ass freaking videotape of the entire freaking thing. Good-bye to speculation, good-bye to conjecture, good-bye to interviews and court procedure and warrants and neighborhood canvasses and story-changing vision-impaired witnesses.
Good-bye to doubt.
“So it’s possible we could—”
“Yup,” D said. “Get some popcorn, bro. We might be going to the movies.”
* * *
For the five millionth time, Tenley put her hand on her bedroom doorknob. This time, for sure, she was ready. Her bag slung over her shoulder, good-byes said, decisions made. Hours ago. Her whole new life waiting. This time,
for sure,
she was ready. She put the bag down. But now it was, like, middle of the night.
She pictured what she’d have to do. Though thinking about it now, when did the buses stop running? Or start? She could check that on her cell. She should have done that first. Maybe …
She took her hand off the doorknob. Stared at the closed door. She could take one more minute to figure stuff out.
Okay. Her mother wouldn’t be home anytime soon. She’d told Ten to come to her office tomorrow.
And her dad sure wasn’t going to show up. He’d obviously dumped both her and Mom. Gotten tired of them, or too upset. Always acting strange. Always gone. Actually, if she allowed herself to think about it, he was weird even before Lanna had—
anyway.
She sighed, still creeped out over this afternoon. Someone had gotten killed, somehow, right where she kind of was.
Oh.
That’s probably why her mother had to leave. Called in to—what did Mom call it? Spin. Put spin on it. A murder outside City Hall was gonna need a lot of spinning.
Tenley lowered herself to the floor and rested her head on her tote bag, using it like a big lumpy pillow. Crossed one ankle over a knee, stared at the ceiling. Flapped one black flat against her foot.
Thought about it all.
What if she waited? Went to work, like always, but took her bag of possessions. Her mom would never notice, and if she did, she could say it was for … she’d make something up when the time came.
And really, why hadn’t she and Bri planned it that way in the first place? She’d been so excited about getting out of here and starting over that she’d—
She took out her cell phone, went to messages, punched in Brileen’s number. Still lying on her back on the pale blue bedroom carpet, she held the phone up in front of her.
RTG.
She typed. So Brileen would know she was ready to go. Then:
Woot.
So Bri would understand she was excited. And then:
Sorry so late, tho. Mom at work thing. How abt CU in AM?
She hit Send.
The cell phone transmitted, and she imagined her words flying toward Brileen. She watched, her eyes blearing with exhaustion and kind of fear and kind of, whatever the word was for wondering if this was the right thing to do.
2nite!
The message popped up, with its little trill of arrival.
Tenley stared at it. Tonight? Tonight what?
Should she respond? Or did Brileen have more to say? She typed
2nite what?
and a new message appeared.
We come get u! U home?
We?
Tenley thought.
Yes.
Tenley typed, because what else would she say? But Brileen didn’t know where she lived, so she’d still push for tomorrow. Tomorrow would be much easier.
But another message from Brileen appeared before Tenley could formulate her new plan, let alone type it.
K! On way. C U in 5 mins, k?
Tenley stared at the words. Was it okay? Was it?
* * *
“The murder? Is on the DVD? Did you see it? Who else has seen it?” Catherine yanked open the door to her inner office, waved Kelli Riordan to the guest chair.
Ward Dahlstrom was pacing, wiping his glasses with a white handkerchief. She noted how disheveled he looked, his checked shirt for once not starched to perfection, a lock of hair for once come loose.
Catherine punched the green button on her coffeemaker. Four
A.M.
She’d need a lot of damn coffee. Absolutely no way she was going to call Mayor Holbrooke, not until she heard the whole story. Her brain revved, questions piling on top of each other.
“The traffic room, right? So who pushed the twenty? When?”
She paused. No one had answered her yet. “So?”
Dahlstrom cleared his throat and waved toward the city attorney. “You want to take this, Kelli?”
“Take what?” Catherine selected an ultra dark roast from the spinning pod holder. Might as well go big. “Anyone else want coffee?”
“No thanks,” Riordan said. “Here’s the situation. You know how the traffic video works.”
Riordan always had to communicate step by agonizing step, as if listeners could not keep up with her agile legal brain. Faster to let her explain it her way. Even though Catherine simply wanted to see the video. In about one second, she was going to play it, explanation or not.
She worried, since it was a traffic cam, that Tenley might be involved. She was probably asleep now, shoes probably still on and arms splayed over her plaid bedspread. They’d solve the family issues in the morning. They were still family, after all.
“Sure, I know how it works.” Catherine poured sugar into her coffee. Maybe she could hurry this along. “It’s all what you see, live surveillance, not taped, unless someone hits the cache button. That was our compromise with the ACLU types. We don’t keep any traffic cam video. So like I said, who pushed the twenty? When?”
Catherine saw Riordan and Dahlstrom exchange glances. Clearly she wasn’t up to speed.
“What?” she said. “You’re scaring me here.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Riordan said.
“It’s fine.” Dahlstrom had moved a pile of files from Catherine’s wide windowsill, making room for him to lean against the wooden ledge.
“You want to fill me in?” Catherine’s patience evaporated. It was too late—or early—to screw around. “Kelli? Now?”
The lawyer shifted in her chair, uncrossed her legs, crossed them again. Moved her briefcase to the other side. “Bottom line,” she said, “we actually
do
tape.”
Catherine tilted her head, blinked, trying to understand. “Do tape what?”
“The traffic cam. There is no ‘cache,’ you know? It’s all—well, the bleeding hearts made such a stink over it, we had to agree not to tape. But according to the mayor, it was essentially a public safety issue. He decided public safety trumped the right to privacy—”
“If there is such a thing in this day and age,” Dahlstrom interrupted.
Riordan ignored him. “So the mayor made an executive decision that all traffic cam video would be recorded and stored.”
Catherine stared at the lawyer, hearing the buzz of the coffeepot, smelling the first fragrant note of dark roast. No matter what was said next, they were doomed. Their own miniversion of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abscam.
Politics, lies, and videotape.
“Did you know this, Dahlstrom?” Catherine tried to calculate their exposure. Like trying to measure the temperature of the sun. Why even bother? Screwed was screwed. “Who else knows?” Catherine had to ask, even though she knew it was even too late for that. There were no secrets in politics, not unless everyone was dead. And these days, even that didn’t help. Because video never dies.
“No one knew, pretty much,” Riordan said. “Except me and Ward and the mayor. It’s all digital, transmitted to an off-site cloud storage company. The company has no idea what it’s getting, of course. And we can access it if need be.”
Riordan shrugged. “So that was our predicament today, as you can now understand. When the police subpoena said—” She clicked open her leather briefcase, took out a folded piece of paper. Scanned it, then read. “‘Any and all video surveillance footage of Curley Park on … blah blah today’s date, yesterday, actually, and blah blah a time span of ten in the morning until three in the afternoon,’ then we had to decide whether to hand it over. Or lie.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t the mayor tell me?” Catherine’s brain churned with the possibilities, the conflicts, the legality. She almost wished she could talk to Greg about it. They used to discuss things like this, political dilemmas, and destiny, and the role of the truth. The goals of being a public servant. Who were you serving, really? But Greg was gone, who knew where, and she was on her own. With an epic can of worms.
“That’s a topic for discussion,” Riordan said, “but hardly the point right now, correct? We can’t admit, publicly, that we have video of anything that happened in Curley Park—or on any of our traffic cams. That’d be political suicide for Mayor Holbrooke.”
“It would show he’s a liar,” Catherine said.
Riordan didn’t answer.
“Which would be true,” Catherine said.
Riordan didn’t answer.
“So what’s your suggestion?” Catherine asked.
Riordan didn’t answer.
Catherine sank into her swivel chair, barricading herself behind her wooden desk, looking at the lawyer who was about to ruin the mayor’s relationship with just about everyone in the city. Constituents, cops—hell, who knew what other evidence those tapes might contain. Catherine shook her head as the choking possibilities unspooled. Lawyers. Crap. They’d start issuing subpoenas for every bit of video that existed. Reopen court cases, criticizing the city for withholding evidence. Which, if she was understanding correctly now, would be completely and devastatingly true. And the press. Double crap. The press would go completely nuts.
This was one of those moments where careers were made or broken. They’d taught her Pythagoras at the Kennedy School. “Choices are the hinges of destiny.” Which, okay, seemed a bit portentous for this occasion, but nevertheless, her choice right now would be massively important. It could even bring down the city government.
The mayor was an idiot. Even a fifth grader knew the cover-up was always worse than the crime. Not that there was a crime. Was there?
“What’s our legal exposure?” Catherine asked. “Can we claim some kind of public safety exemption?”
Riordan took a deep breath, blew it out in a long sigh. “Here’s how I envision—” she began.
“Wait,” Catherine said. No more explanations or rationalizations. Time for the main attraction. “That DVD. Before we decide anything. Let’s see it.”
Jane knocked the rumbling phone onto the floor. 6:04
A.M
. Lovely. She scooped it up just in time to prevent the voice mail from kicking in.
Private number,
it said. It had better not be a sales call.
“Hello?”
“Janey.”
Melissa. “What? Are they home? Lewis and Gracie?”
“No. And it’s kind of—a mess,” Melissa said, her voice low. “I’m trying to stay calm. Someone has to. Robyn is in her room, sobbing. Lewis isn’t answering his phone. I’m in the hall, about to call the police. Do you have an inside number?”
Jane sat up, shaking off sleep. A litany of horribles paraded through her brain, but no reason to mention them. She’d wait to hear reality.
“What kind of a mess?” Jane said. Coda opened one eye, inquiring, went back to sleep. “Melissa? I didn’t dream it, right? Last night you said they were fine.”
“No. Yes, but—here’s the deal. Remember yesterday Lewis was supposed to pick Gracie up at school. At lunch?”
“And they had a flat tire, and then it had to be fixed, and then they stayed at a motel.”
“Well, turns out Gracie never got to school,” Melissa said. “She was never there yesterday. The school just sent some automated e-mail to Robyn, asking if Gracie was going to be sick again today—”
“Sick?” Jane threw off the comforter, rolled her shoulders, tried to focus. The room was still dim, the early-morning sun edging through the slatted blinds. “Again?”
“Yeah. Apparently Lewis called her in sick yesterday. But she wasn’t sick. What if he took Gracie
yesterday,
hours before anyone even would miss her? And now they’re who knows where? What if all those phone calls were—”
“To give them time to get farther away?
Whoa.
Didn’t Robyn even wonder? I mean, didn’t you think it was strange, from moment one? The whole thing?” Jane stood up, her white T-shirt, one of Jake’s BPD hockey team jerseys, hanging almost down to her knees.
“Completely! Like I told you last night,” Melissa said. “But what was I supposed to do, right? I’m the—” She paused, and Jane could hear the frustration in her silence. “The new girl. The interloper. She’s Daniel’s
daughter
, after all, and that woman is her mother, and now Gracie’s out there, with some nut of a stepfather, and—”
“Hey. Hey. Sweetheart, I know its seems … ungood.” Jane couldn’t think of a word that conveyed “potentially hideous and alarming” without terrifying her sister any more than she was already. “But Lewis
did
call last night, right? Saying they were fine?”
Which might not have been true,
Jane didn’t say.
“Whatever. I think Robyn should call the police.” Melissa’s voice, harsh and bitter, still had a soft edge of sorrow. “I mean, why not? But she won’t. So Jane? Could you—”