What You See

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

“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.”

  29

  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—”

  “Call Jake? Or give you his number?” Jane finished the sentence. Just like she’d done all the years growing up together. Jane babysat her little sister when Jane was fifteen and Melissa nine. Before that, she’d shared her stuffed animals, let her little sister win at Candyland, taught her to play War and Spit and how to do a French braid. “The girls,” their father had called them, as though they didn’t have separate personalities. Then Jane went off to college, and Melissa gloried her way through high school. When J
ane came home, it was as if they didn’t know each other anymore. Melissa continued to exceed expectations. Their mother died. Their dad favored Melissa. Jane was outgrown. Unnecessary. Third wheel. Childhood’s end.

  And now all of that was in the past. Jane was the older sister again. Protective and in control.

  “Yes, would you, Janey?” Melissa asked. “I mean, it might all be fine. But I can’t help but worry Gracie’s in trouble. Don’t you?”

  * * *

  Catherine heard the whir of the computer mechanism as her disc drive opened, felt the hesitation as she settled the DVD into place, pushed it in carefully, delicately, the way she’d done so many times, until the door clicked closed. She heard the spin of the player as the disc engaged, watched the first screen of the illicit video pop up in the center of her screen.

  “Hit the green triangle to make it play,” Riordan said. “There’s no sound.”

  Catherine held her tongue. She knew how to make it play.

  She clicked the mouse.

  The time code said 11:55:42. First, a tree-lined Curley Park, bustling with tourists and businesspeople, an ordinary June day. It was sunny, she could tell by the shadows, the majority of faces with sunglasses.

  Surveillance tapes used to be impossible to watch. She’d seen endless clips of unrecognizable bank robbers, no mask necessary, identities blurred incognito by the primitive recording capabilities. The action in Curley Park was several stories down and a block away from the camera. This was clearly a new-generation video, not fuzzy or jumpy, but still not as sharp as a movie or TV. The faraway faces were tiny. Featureless.

  “You can’t recognize anyone,” Catherine said, hoping she was right, as she watched the tourist parade, balloons and shopping bags, lots of little kids. She put the action on pause, turned to Riordan and Dahlstrom. “It’s leaves and tops of heads. This is just a blur, far as I can see.”

  Her colleagues stood behind her, one leaning over each shoulder, peering into the monitor. Kelli Riordan smelled green and summery, like she had showered in citrus rainwater. Ward Dahlstrom smelled like coffee and musk, thick with tension. Catherine wished they would back off, let her see it, let her think, but there was no way to say that. The video clip was brief, they’d told her. Fifteen minutes.

  “Well, watch,” Dahlstrom said. “Yeah, there’s trees, but see how the park itself is in the open?”

  “Ward.” Riordan raised a palm. “Shut up.”

  They watched in silence as the secret movie of a Boston noontime unspooled. These people had no idea they were being watched, let alone taped, Catherine thought, no idea their actions would later be scrutinized by three nervous staffers trying to decide whether to launch a full-scale cover-up to protect their big-time boss. Whether to hide evidence from the police.

  Catherine saw a few people sitting on the various park benches, hats and feet, shopping bags. A kid touched Mayor Curley’s bronze knees, supposed to be lucky. She’d done that a few times herself. It was all she could do not to fast-forward. Let’s see it, she thought. Get this damn thing over with.

  When the time code hit 11:56:42, one of the people on the bench stood up, a guy, it looked like, in a T-shirt, maybe. The others on the bench moved farther away from each other, reallocating the space. The man moved toward the center of the park.

  “That’s him,” Dahlstrom said.

  “Shush,” Riordan said. “Let her watch.”

  “Watch what?” Catherine said. The time code read 11:58:59. Then 11:59:00. The man didn’t move. “What?”

  Fifteen seconds later, a man carrying a shopping bag walked into the park, then stopped next to the man in the T-shirt. His back was to her, but she could see he was wearing a baseball cap, white shirt, and tan pants. There was something about his stance that seemed—

  Catherine leaned forward, as if getting closer would make the out-of-focus images more distinct. It didn’t help. Squinted. That didn’t help, either. The image nagged at her.

  And then it happened, so quickly Catherine almost didn’t see it. When she hit Rewind, moved the white dot backward along the video line to replay the scene, she still could not grasp what she witnessed.

  “My God,” she whispered.

  She heard Kelli Riordan puff out a breath, felt her stand. Heard her brushing down her skirt, moving away. “I know. Hard to watch. They exchange the bag, he dumps out the—I don’t know. Phone book? Then he just turns and stabs the person. Then whoever it is, cannot see his face for shit, just runs. Dammit. It’s right there.”

  The screen had gone to black. And so did Catherine’s brain. She wrestled herself to the present moment with every ounce of human resolve she could muster.

  “I need to think,” she said, surprised that she recognized her own voice. Surprised she could even speak. She looked at her watch. “Give me an hour. We don’t have to do anything this second. This is a lot to digest.”

  She had to get them out of her office. Had to, had to, had to. She quieted her mind, willed her heart to be still, willed her hands not to shake. “Ward? Kelli? Go home. In the morning, we’ll brainstorm. Decide what to do.”

  “Do we have to admit we have this?” Ward asked. “I mean, what if we simply, ah, pretended—”

  “It’s a subpoena,” Riordan interrupted, her voice tinged with sarcasm. “If we actively fail to provide materials we are aware are in existence, any judge would rule that’s an illegal—”

  Catherine didn’t care what these two thought. Not now.

  She held up a hand, calling on every bit of her self-restraint. Their speculation and bickering had to stop. “Kelli, I need you to check the precedents for something like this. Local option executive privilege, extraordinary powers potentially granted to the mayor, public safety exemptions. I mean—anything. And we’ll reconvene at seven thirty.”

  “Eight,” Kelli said. “Or, say, eight fifteen.”

  Had Tenley seen this? Oh, my God. Her daughter. Her daughter who she’d fought with, and yelled at, and left alone. Her daughter who, according to Dr. Maddux, thought she’d never be understood, never be happy, never have a real family again. Maybe she was right.

  “Fine,” Catherine said. Let Kelli micromanage. “Eight fifteen.”

  Her office door slowly clicked shut, sealing out the rest of the world and leaving Catherine alone with the video. She stared at the freeze-frame on the screen. This was life, and it was real, and by the ridiculous vagaries of the universe and technology, it was all caught by the uncaring eye of the surveillance camera.

  Did they have to tell the police they had it? What if there was a way for the police to solve this crime without knowing about the video? If the point was to catch the bad guy, wouldn’t any method of coming to that conclusion be satisfactory? And then the mayor’s pompous and arrogant decision wouldn’t destroy them all. Politically, at least.

  She should call Tenley. But she couldn’t do it. She’d let her sleep. Let the poor child have one more hour of her world. And maybe—Catherine was wrong. Maybe she was mistaken about what she’d seen.

  Catherine’s hand felt odd, heavy and uncooperative as she lifted it to her white plastic mouse. Her engagement ring shimmered under the halogen desk light. Her wedding band, a thin platinum circle that matched her husband’s, reminded her of the day they were married, a gorgeous July afternoon, blue skies, puffy clouds, she and Greg, smiling, surrounded by friends and possibilities. Two weeks from now, she realized, was their anniversary.

  She clicked again on the little green triangle, dragged the dot to 11:59:00.

  And watched, once again, the videotaped murder of her husband.

  30

  “Can you talk?”

  Jake heard the tension in Jane’s voice. If she was up now, calling his cell phone at just after six, it was important. He hoped she’d gotten some sleep, at least. He sure as hell hadn’t, dozing all night in an uncomfortable chair, waiting for maybe-tattooed guy to show his arm or wake up. The man might be a killer, and Jake still
had no idea who he was.

  “Sure, I can talk,” he said. “Are you okay, Jane? Where are you?”

  “Home,” she said. “Trying to get dressed. You’re on speaker. And yeah, I’m okay. But—”

  “Gracie? And Wilhoite? They home?” That awkward dinner at the Taverna seemed decades ago. He needed food. Jake frowned. He had to check on Bobby Land, too, hadn’t heard from upstairs for three hours now. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the Curley Park murder. Was he any closer to the solution?

  His frown deepened as Jane spun out the story. Gracie had never been at school? And now Jane was telling him Wilhoite was not answering his phone.

  “Does Robyn think—” He stopped. Better not to put words in someone’s mouth. “What does Robyn think?”

  “Who knows?” Jane said. “I’m getting it all by way of Melissa. She wanted me to call you and find out what to do. She can contact you, right? I gave her your number.”

  “Jane?” Damn. His call-waiting had clicked in, interfering with what Jane was saying. He’d been trying not to picture her getting dressed, since that wasn’t the point, but she’d mentioned it, and after that it was hard to resist. He’d rather think of her getting undressed, rather see it in person. Now someone was interrupting. Maybe word on Land? Or maybe D with the video? Jake could happily stay awake long enough to see that. “Hang on,” he said.

  “Jake?”

  “One second.” He clicked away to the new call. “Brogan.”

  “Detective Brogan?”

  “Yes?” A familiar voice, but he couldn’t quite—

  “It’s Angie Bartoneri,” she said. “How quickly they forget. Anyway, Detective. I have a call you might want to take. I called Missing, but they insisted I give it to you. Transferring now.”

  “Who?” Jake started to ask for details, then realized, after the click and change in tone, that Angie had already transferred the caller. Always a game with her. “This is Detective Brogan,” he said.

  “My name is Catherine Siskel,” the voice said. “And I’d like to report a missing person.”