Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
Jane glanced left, right, scanned the crime scene. Ambulance gone, cops still questioning clumps of possible witnesses. Traffic had started again, lunchtime returning to almost normal. Except for the bloodstain on the sidewalk. Two other TV stations had arrived, including her ex-employer, now competitor, Channel 11.
Ha.
With a bit of luck and a lot of fast driving, she’d beaten everyone on this story, and now they had to play news catch-up.
Little late,
she imagined the fun of telling them.
Excitement’s over.
They’d get aftermath, that was all. Score two for Jane.
Was this kid about to provide score three? This day was not playing out as she’d imagined. Not anywhere near.
“Okay, Bobby,” she said. She’d already started walking toward the alley, turning her back on her competitors. “Show me.”
* * *
The moment her computer flipped to 1:00
P.M
., the minute she saw the double zeros, Tenley clicked the mouse, putting her computer station to sleep and setting herself free. Forty-five glorious minutes. Outside, maybe in the sun. Where life happened for real, not on video.
She had to admit she was curious. Something was going on in Curley Park. Even though Dahlstrom stopped the recording, that didn’t make it not exist. You couldn’t erase reality. She was bummed about the deleted video, but it wasn’t her fault. They better not blame her for it.
Out in the City Hall corridor, around the corner, she ducked into the ladies’ room—four stalls, all empty—and rolled up the waistband of her skirt so at least she looked cool. She untucked the tail of her T-shirt,
EFFING AWESOME
it said, and tied her cardigan around her waist. She looked in the mirror, just long enough to remember her earrings were gone, but her hair would cover all those little holes. Now if she could get out of here without running into her mother. Mom’s office was on a different floor, so all she had to do was pray to the elevator gods to protect her from coincidence. She hardly ever saw her mom at City Hall. It wasn’t like bring-your-daughter-to-work time around here—
that’d be the day.
Tenley looked again at her mirror image, frowning. She was sorry she was such a disappointment.
But that’s how the cookie crumbled, huh, family? One daughter dead, the other a disaster.
She pushed open the door, checked the time on her cell phone. Forty minutes to go. Down the zigzag staircase, out past floor three, no mother, past two, alone, past one, banging out the metal side door into the surprising glare of sunshine on Congress Street.
It was usually crowded at lunchtime, but today the swirl of cars and pedestrians had a feel of—
off.
Cops all over the place, some in uniforms directing traffic. Globs of bystanders milling around by the statues. She looked both ways on Congress, ignoring the crosswalk—pretty funny if someone upstairs was watching when she jaywalked, ha ha—and stepped onto the sidewalk by the park. A strip of yellow tape—
CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION—
prevented her from getting any closer to whatever she’d already missed. An empty brown paper bag caught the breeze, puffed up, and blew away.
She’d seen the ambulance arrive, but it was gone now. She was too late.
She was always too late.
How could she get the scoop on whatever happened? Seemed like some kind of law enforcement guys were interviewing people on the street. She sidled over to the back of one group, assimilated herself into the crowd. She’d stand there, try to blend in, see what she could pick up. No one cared about a college kid.
She looked up at City Hall across the street, counted two squares of plate glass down and three across. That was her mother’s window. Right next to the mayor’s.
Mom could look out here and see me in the park.
She considered waving, thought better of it.
“I got here after I picked up my sushi.” One poseur in a too-tight suit was holding up a glossy black paper bag, as if to prove his lunch to the woman taking notes on a little pad with a cheap-looking Bic. A cop, must be.
“Did you see anything?” the cop asked.
What was sushi guy going to say? Tenley took a tentative step closer, then another, so she could be sure to hear. No one noticed her, seemed like.
This time that was a good thing.
* * *
Jake cringed as the ambulance driver attempted to make the three-point turn to exit Franklin Alley. Fourth try now. Detective Angela Bartoneri, of all people, who’d been at the crime scene, would ride in the back, babysit the suspect. Thanks to the alphabet, Angie Bartoneri had always been seated next to Jake at the BPD’s continuing education sessions. He and Angie also shared coffee, then dinner, and almost a hell of a lot more, but then he’d made detective before she did. Their relationship never recovered. Just as well, Jake told himself at the time—three years ago? four?—since the divorce rate for cops married to cops was probably about one hundred percent. Plus, if one person in a relationship couldn’t be genuinely happy for the success of the other, it wasn’t much of a relationship. Angie’d moved on professionally and had recently been promoted to detective in the white-collar unit, assisting homicide when they needed backup. Working shoulder to shoulder with Angie again was—a trip. He’d also heard she’d now hooked up personally with some computer whiz. Very Angie. More power to her.
Jake had moved on, too. To Jane. And all that entailed. Now that Jane was no longer with the
Register,
the two of them had new decisions to make. Decisions that might be—Jake shook his head, clearing his thoughts of the mental tangent. Funny how fast your brain could plow ahead, even at the most unlikely time.
Before the rear ambulance doors closed, Jake had finished giving Angie the quick lowdown on the man she was chaperoning. “This guy didn’t say a word, and no easily accessible ID,” Jake added. “Maybe you’ll have better luck. I read him his rights, so if he does decide to talk, you’re covered.”
“I’m clear on Miranda,” Angie said. “Hope he heard you.”
Jake ignored her sarcasm, outwardly, at least. “The guy in the cuffs—we’ll check his ID now, see if we can get confirmation. Says he’s a security guard.”
“One phone call,” Angie said. “I’ll do it.”
“Thanks,” Jake said. Maybe he wasn’t ignoring her as much as he imagined. “Anyway, Angie, the cadets are canvassing the eyewitnesses, getting cell phone photos. This guy should be a cinch to be ID’d, so once the photos come in, it’s case closed.”
“You know your stuff,” Angie said. “I can see why you were promoted so early. Before
I
was, I mean.”
“After all this time?” Jake couldn’t stop himself. He looked around quickly. D, standing nearby, was focused on Hewlitt, the medics were moving their patient into the vehicle. “Are we really still gonna do this?”
“Do what?” Angie gave that smile. “I’m teasing, Jake.”
Teasing? Not exactly the time for that. He’d go by the book.
“Bartoneri? You’ll stay with him—whoever he is—at Mass General. Let me know the instant he says anything. I’ll contact you when the witness photos come in. If they’re potentially confirmatory, I’ll bring them to the hospital. We’ll get an arrest warrant, go from there. Questions?”
“No, sir,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Yes, sir.”
Angie’s dark hair—Jake remembered it all too well—was twisted up under her navy patent-billed cap. If any woman could look good in a cop hat, Angie could. He watched her clamber into the back of the ambulance. She’d been a dancer, Jake remembered, until she’d gotten impatient with the food restrictions and turned to law enforcement instead. He’d felt twinges of jealousy over the other cadets lined up to spar with her in defense training. She’d been aware of their attention, too. Teased them, with that throaty voice of hers, then kicked their asses, every one, every time.
She stood, framed by one still-open white back door. Fluttered her fingers at him. “Detective? Hope our paths cross again.”
She closed the metal door before he could answer.
Dammit. And dammit again. The back of his neck prickled, and it wasn’t from the sun. He would not let Angela Bartoneri get under his skin. She was history.
The ambulance’s piercing back-up beeps yanked him back to reality. Fifth try to turn around now. The driver stopped a fraction of an inch from the liquor store’s redbrick wall, shifted into Drive, and crept toward the giant green Dumpster. The
Dumpster.
“A guy in a Dumpster”—that’s what the cadet had relayed to him.
He and DeLuca had never looked in the Dumpster.
Cursing her too-tight skirt and too-high job interview heels, Jane finally caught up to Bobby. Running down a cobblestone and brick backstreet was the last thing she’d expected to do today.
“The ambulance is still in there, Ms. Ryland.” Bobby had stopped at the entrance of Franklin Alley, pointing. “Hear the beeps? It’s really narrow in there, so the driver’s gotta turn round in the dead end. That’ll give us time. You ready?”
“All set.” She checked the viewfinder of the Quik-Shot, confirmed the stand-by light. She’d roll on everything, couldn’t hurt. Bobby, now on the run, had his camera, too. Between them, they’d get whatever there was to get.
Go.
Around the next curve, she saw Bobby’s T-shirt disappear again. They had to be close to the end. She held a palm to her chest—the gym starting tomorrow, she promised—drew in a deep breath, and went for it. Then she heard the rev of an engine, and more back-up beeps. This ambulance was on the way out.
“Missed it,” she whispered. “Damn.” Now she’d never get to see who was inside. But at least she’d get—
A blast from a horn and a wail of the siren flattened her against the alleyway’s brick wall. She watched the red from the whirling lights hit the side of the buildings. As the engine noise grew louder, she felt the red glare wash over her. There was barely room for her to stand if the ambulance was to pass. Bobby was nowhere to be seen. He’d clearly managed to reach the end.
The front of the white-and-orange van appeared. She held her ground, pointed her camera.
Rolling.
“Move it, lady!” A voice from the open passenger-side window, elbow over the edge, one hand waving Jane away. A face peered at her, frowning, the sun glinting directly overhead on the medic’s dark-tinted shades.
“Sorry, can you get by?” Jane grimaced, embarrassed. Kind of tacky trying to shoot video when you were part of the problem.
The medic in the front seat muttered something Jane couldn’t hear, probably a good thing, buzzed up the window. Jane got as close as she could to the wall, plastering her black suit against the bricks as the ambulance edged by. She watched it gather speed, made sure her camera stayed steady, and the van disappeared from the viewfinder.
Got it.
But what—or who—was still down there? Jane hurried toward the end of the alley, wincing less with each step now. She’d gone from one hundred percent skeptical of Bobby Land to joining his team in four minutes flat. Sure hoped her instincts were right. The black metal housing of an air-conditioning unit appeared, then, just around the next curve, and the dark green hulk of a Dumpster.
Almost there.
* * *
Death was all around her. It haunted her. Tenley sat on the curb in front of the bank, facing the park, seeing a forest of feet and legs, and looking up through the trees at City Hall, toward the blind-slatted window of her mother’s office.
First her own sister dies. Now this. A man stabbed right here in Curley Park. She heard it from the sushi guy, then two others told the cop the exact same story. One man just standing by the statue, another man walking up to him, and next thing they knew there was yelling and one of the men lay on the ground with a knife in his back. And the other was gone. Could they recognize the assailant? the police had asked. No, they’d all said—white, male, that’s about all. Had anyone taken photos? No, each had said. It all happened too fast. So now a murderer was out there. Maybe even standing near her. Pretending. Waiting for another chance to hurt an innocent person.
She hugged her knees, making herself small.
Was there any way to avoid it? Would death always follow her? Haunt her? It would have shown up on her traffic surveillance video if she’d been on that screen. She would have
seen
it.
Tenley wished she could run up to her mother’s office, climb on that long pillowed couch like she used to when she was little, babysitter Lanna suggesting fort or voyage to Mars or princesses trapped by the scary evil monster.
But that was all play, and all gone, and her life would never be happy again. Yet the evil monsters existed, that was the scary part.
No.
The scary part was you didn’t know who the monsters were. Or where.
She could just imagine the drama if she showed up in her mother’s office now. Her mother probably couldn’t stand the sight of her, probably still blamed her, deep down—or not so deep—for what happened to Lanna. Would Tenley ever stop thinking about that? She wouldn’t. She couldn’t even envision a time when she wouldn’t think about Lanna every day.
What kind of life would that be? All those years, stretching out in front of her, all those years of just … loss?
The sun baked her back, and she knew her skirt would be dusty from sitting on the curb. She stuck her legs out into the street, one bare knee bruised from where she’d banged it on the side of her desk. She checked the lighted number of the big clock outside the bank—fifteen more minutes of her “lunch” hour. She should get something to eat, even though she was not hungry anymore.
“Hey!” A guy running by almost tripped over her, and she pulled her legs back, looked up in time to see him head away from the Curley statue. Right after him, a woman in a black suit, trying—ridiculously—to run in high heels.
Was the woman chasing the kid? Why? The woman carried a tote bag over her shoulder, so it wasn’t like he’d stolen her purse or anything.
She hopped to her feet, patted the dust off her rear and adjusted her skirt, then watched the two figures disappear around the corner. Maybe she should go see?