Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland)

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “You know I didn’t kill her,” Sandoval said. “The judge let me out.”

  “Because we asked her to let you out,” Jake said. “To see where you’d lead us. See who’d come out of the woodwork. Sadly, there’s a rat in your nest. And he, sir, has ratted you all out. Brian Turiello? Your “employer”? Emily-Sue Ordway? Ring a bell? We know that wasn’t an accident. What happened, she surprise you? And you bashed Shandra Newbury with that two-by-four because you were batshit over losing your house. Dumb of you to leave the two-by-four there. Turiello even showed up to make sure the place was clean. Too bad he couldn’t get inside in time to retrieve it.”

  “Too bad,” Sherrey said.

  “So, Mr. Sandoval,” Jake went on. “That’s the problem with mixing steroids and payoffs. Makes you overreact. Like right now. Sherrey? Cuff him.”

  Sandoval took a step back. Then stopped. Smiled. “Do what you will, Officers. But cuff me? You take me in? You’ll never know what happened to Jane Ryland. Your call.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Jake said.

  “Try me,” Sandoval said.

  “Prove it,” Jake said.

  Sandoval cocked his head toward a pile of two-by-fours. “See that bag?”

  Jake edged toward the bag, never taking his eyes off Sandoval and Sherrey. Saw Sherrey adjust for his weapon. Saw Sandoval’s fist tighten over the hammer.

  Jake grabbed the black leather bag, didn’t need to look inside, he’d seen it a million times. Jane’s. He yanked it open. Her phone, right on top. She hadn’t answered his message. Because she’d been separated from her phone. She’d been here, absolutely. So where the hell was she now?

  “If she’s in this house…,” Jake began.

  “Well, there’s a thought,” Sandoval said.

  Sherrey hovered by him, waiting for Jake’s signal.

  “Her car’s not here.” Jake’s brain raced to figure out where this was going. Was Jane upstairs? Was she okay? What was that noise? He glanced at Bing, then upstairs.

  “Good idea,” Sandoval said. “Why don’t you go look up there? Meanwhile, I’m outta here.”

  “Not a chance, you incredible jerk,” Jake said. “Sherrey. Stay here. Cuff him.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Sandoval said. “No cuffs, or no Jane. There might be something you need to know. Something she might have—eaten. And you’d want me to tell you.”

  The chocolate? Like they’d given Liz McDivitt? Jane had no reason not to trust Sandoval. If they’d drugged her, he’d need to know what it was.

  “Do not move,” Jake said. Did he have a choice? Sandoval had the cards. He had Jane. How could Jake risk calling his bluff? Jane had to come first. Any victim had to come first. “I’m checking upstairs. Do not move.”

  He drew his weapon as he headed up the stairway. That infernal noise, whatever it was. Halfway up. “You okay, Sherrey?” He called out.

  “Ten four. Got the cuffs.”

  Jake took the rest of the steps, two at a time. Followed the noise. An orange Rent-All wallpaper steamer chugged and bubbled, that was the noise. No Jane. Opened the closet, nothing. Next room, nothing. Closet, nothing. Bathroom, nothing. Attic? No attic he could see.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he called out over the steamer sound as he raced back down the stairs. “Sandoval, there’s no one—”

  He stopped, one hand on the banister. The other holding his Glock.

  Sandoval had Sherrey in the cuffs. Was standing over him, hammer in one hand. Bing’s police-issue Glock in the other.

  “Bummer about your partner,” Sandoval said. “Shoulda frisked me. Isn’t that cop 101?”

  “Asshole,” Sherrey said. “Sorry, Jake.”

  “Let. Him. Up,” Jake said.

  “Not. A. Chance,” Sandoval said. “Well, actually, there is a chance. You let me go, I’ll let him go. That seems fair.”

  “Where’s Jane?” Jake aimed at Sandoval’s center mass, but the man had his weapon right at Sherrey’s head.

  “Well now, that’s where the deal goes out of whack, doesn’t it?” Sandoval said. He twisted his lip, sniffed like he smelled something bad. “You get two things, and I get one? I don’t think so. You want me to let your partner go? Or you want to know where Jane is? You get to choose one.”

  65

  Peter felt the weight of it under his coat, his small-caliber gift from Dianna, the one he’d argued, all those years ago, he’d never need.

  He sat in the font seat of his Jeep, parked across the street from the stone-facade two-story on a side street in Jamaica Plain. No McMansions for Eddie Walsh, man of the people, only a modest mid-century suburban split-level. Walsh’s Cape house, however—an ostentatious Corinthian-columned boondoggle in Osterville Peter found online—that was a different story. Two sides to the man. Two sides to his real estate.

  Peter wouldn’t need the gun now, most likely. He was a lawyer. He thought for a living, he didn’t shoot people. But if former Parole Board chairman and well-connected big shot Edward Walsh was monstrous enough to kill Carley Marie Schaefer twenty years ago, then bribe a dying man to take the fall, Peter might need more than words to come out on top.

  He hoped not. He was not here to be the aggressor. He was here only to find the truth.

  Tonight the Jamaica Plain house was dark, the carefully trimmed hedges surrounding lush grass and meticulous landscaping. No lights in the windows.

  That meant their confrontation, well, conversation, Peter should call it, would have to wait a while. Exactly like poor Gordon Thorley, waiting in a jail cell. Waiting for the truth. Sick and dying and trying to do one last good thing.

  Peter would wait, too. Long as it took.

  * * *

  “Father?” Liz McDivitt saw his silhouette first, framed in the open door of the Superintendent’s office.

  He exploded through the doorway, came right for her. “Honey—Lizzie—at first I thought you were—”

  Liz felt her father’s arms around her, she couldn’t remember the last time that happened, and she couldn’t let go. She peered over her father’s tweedy shoulder, saw Rivera watching them.

  “Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. McDivitt,” Rivera said. “There was no way we could bring you into this right away. Question was—”

  “What if I were involved. I understand.” Her father had ended the hug, but kept one arm around her. Liz could feel the weight of it on her shoulder, feel the weight of the years and the arguments, the years of misunderstandings and distance. “And?”

  “Let’s put it this way.” Rivera sank into a massive black vinyl chair, his muscular bulk filling the space, his head almost reaching the brass floor lamp beside him. “Your Mr. Gianelli and Mr. Ackerman are downstairs, right now, in separate rooms. My detectives are now waiting to see which one will tell the whole story first. I’m sure whole teams of lawyers will arrive soon. Then we’ll know. But at this point no one has mentioned your name.”

  A tightness in her chest. She stepped away from her father. Had he been involved in Aaron’s scheme? She tried to calculate what that might mean. “Father, are you—?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Sorry about the protective custody,” Rivera was saying. “And positioning our plainclothes cadet at your house to hold off the press. But if your daughter was targeted, you might have been next on the list. Even when Liz was safe, we had to wonder—was it you who’d called them off? So far, nothing links you to any of it.”

  “And it won’t,” her father said.

  “But then, what really happened, Superintendent?” Liz asked. “Was someone really coming to kill me? Who?”

  “That’s still under investigation,” Rivera said. “And exactly what I’m about to go check on. I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Liz watched the door close behind him, leaving her alone with her father for the first time in forever.

  “So. You’re okay?” He assessed her, up and down. “Are you sure? You’re very brave, honey. If those peop
le had—”

  “They didn’t.” Lizzie sat on the arm of a big chair, balancing, one toe touching the carpet. “It’s over. I didn’t know what to do, or who at the bank might be involved. So I went to the police. Told them everything I knew, or suspected. The drugs found in that chocolate thing proved I was right. So that night, officers were waiting there with me, hiding. When whoever it was didn’t show—they decided to go ahead as if he had. See what happened. I’m sorry you had to think I was—”

  Her father stood, walked to the window. She’d never seen his shoulders sag before. She’d always thought of him as a bear, a big stocky lumbering bear in pinstripes. Now he seemed diminished.

  He turned, outlined in the last dusky glow of Friday’s sunlight. “I’ll have to resign,” he said. “The idea that those two—and whoever else—could be stealing from us, right under my nose.” He shook his head. “Did I know about it? Of course not. But not knowing, that’s equally as damning.”

  “We’ll see.” Funny, or not so, how he was thinking about himself. Not about how his only daughter had been targeted for murder. Still, Liz wanted to comfort him, because he was right. The scandal would change their lives.

  And there was her own dilemma. Her father still didn’t know the whole story, not at all. Not what she’d done, too, right under his nose. This was the moment, she knew. The moment she should tell the truth.

  “Father,” she began. She stood, touching the chair with the fingertips of one hand. Not trusting her knees quite yet.

  “Your mother would be so proud of you,” her father interrupted. “She always was, you know. She was never very good at saying it. Neither of us was.”

  Liz felt tears welling, all the pressure and the fear, and the deception. And now this, what she least expected, compassion. She’d made some terrible decisions, like with Aaron. Would she make the right one now?

  What was the right one?

  “Can we weather this one together?” Her father came toward her, smiling. Stretched out both arms to her. “I know I’ve ignored you, I know I’ve focused on the damn bank. But we could come through this, you know. We could.”

  Could they? If Liz revealed what she had done, those families would lose their homes. Her father would face even more humiliation and disgrace—his own daughter, manipulating bank records. She could imagine the headlines: “Bank Prez Daughter Is Robin Hood.”

  She held out her hands, as her father came closer. There’d only been, what, six families she’d “helped”? And though Aaron and Colin Ackerman had ripped off the bank to get money, she was in it only to do good. How could that be wrong?

  She’d stop. She’d watch the numbers, and make sure no one ever discovered it. And if someone found out—well, she’d cross that bridge then.

  “You’re my father,” she said. They linked fingers for a moment. Looked into each other’s eyes. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  She hoped that was true.

  66

  Choose?

  Jake could feel his face go white. His fingers clenched around the handle of the Glock, and with all his heart he longed to blast this guy into the stone age. But if he did, he’d never know what happened to Jane. He couldn’t risk that.

  Choose?

  And this jerk Sandoval. Smirking. Enjoying it. The ridiculous clanking and hissing of that damn machine upstairs, he should have unplugged it, the steam now heating up the entire place. This was hell.

  “Last chance,” Sandoval hissed out the words. “You want me to let your partner go? Or you want to know where Jane is? You get to choose one.”

  The sound of the gun behind him.

  Sandoval, with one crazed expression of bewilderment, seemed to rise, pause mid-air, then crash to the floor, his gun skittering away. Not another motion. Except for the rapidly growing pool of red on the hardwood floor.

  Sherrey rolled, three times, hit the wall, struggled to his feet. Kicked the gun down the hall.

  Jake whirled, saw the open doorway. Saw who stood there.

  Jane.

  And Paul DeLuca, holding his own Glock.

  “Darn,” Jane said. “I wanted to hear who you’d choose.”

  67

  “I kept wondering, where was Peter?” Jane watched out the windshield of Jake’s cruiser, relieved to be a pretend-cop in the front seat, now that she was safe. And Jake was safe. “Sandoval had told me Peter would be there, but he wasn’t. I knew there was something off. And then—MaryLou. She’s the one who clinched it for me. Brian? Paying the legal bills? Why? She knew, huh? That her husband had killed Shandra?”

  Jake stopped at the light, no emergency now, and she tried to read his expression. Relief? Surprise? Affection? Maybe all of those.

  She reached over and took his hand. “Hope there’s no surveillance cam in your cruiser,” she said.

  She felt him squeeze her hand, let go to adjust the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a guy out here now, at the sister’s,” Jake said. “But I suspect MaryLou knew something. About Emily-Sue Ordway, too. Apparently that wasn’t an accident. We’ll find out. Turiello must have been in on that cover-up, too. Makes it easy if you’re also the one hiring the cleanup guys.”

  “She’s pregnant,” Jane said. She clutched her tote bag, none the worse for its adventure. Still, might be time to retire the thing. Those memories she could do without.

  They made the turn onto Mass Ave., heading back to retrieve her car at the cop shop. She’d broken every speed limit on the planet to get there, ecstatic to see DeLuca back on the job. He’d let her explain on the way. Now he was back handling the mess at the Rawson house with the rest of the cops who’d swarmed in to help.

  Jake shook his head. “We’ll do the best we can for her.”

  “Yeah. Whatever that is. Peter will—” Peter. Sandoval was his client. He had no idea of this. They’d promised to work on this story together, though it hadn’t turned out the way either of them predicted. Still, justice had been done. Or was on the way to being done. She had to call him.

  She dug into the tote bag, trying to ignore where it had just been. Found her phone, checked the messages.

  “You called me?” she asked Jake.

  “Yeah, to warn you to stay away from Sandoval. For what good that did.”

  “He couldn’t have killed Liz McDivitt, though, you know?” Jane said, as she punched in numbers on the cell. “Because he was in custody when Liz was killed.”

  What was that look on Jake’s face?

  “What?”

  “Jane?” Jake said. He paused. “You should know that—”

  Jane put up a palm, listening to the phone ring. “Hang on.”

  * * *

  “What?” Peter clenched his phone, listening to Jane, kept his eyes on the front porch of the Walsh house. Nothing. Wondered if Walsh maybe wasn’t coming home. This was Friday night, after all. Wondered if that was the universe, telling him to go home, too. Leave this stuff to the police. He was the justice end of it, not the enforcer. He couldn’t believe what Jane just told him. “Sandoval?”

  “I know. Shot in the shoulder, apparently. Looked worse than it was. They’re taking him to the hospital now.” Jane’s voice came over the speaker, sounded like she was in a car, too. “He’d told me you’d be there, too, and when you weren’t—well, I didn’t call you to check, and then later—I couldn’t. Since…”

  “Yeah,” Peter imagined it, Sandoval, shot by the cops as he threatened Brogan and his partner. “But why did—huh?”

  Jane told him to hang on, clearly talking to someone else, muffled, like she was covering the phone.

  “Peter?” Her voice crackled over the speaker. “I’m with Jake Brogan. And he says to ask you—did your guy say anything more? Whatever that means? And he says, where are you?”

  “Can he hear me?” Peter said.

  * * *

  Jake pulled his cruiser behind Peter’s jeep. The Walsh house was freshly landscaped, hedges trimmed judiciously so a burglar coul
dn’t hide. Probably had motion-detector lighting, meaning he’d be blasted with light the instant he approached. Front windows were dark, garage door closed. Impossible to tell if anyone was home.

  He opened the car door, put a foot onto the curb. Turned to Jane. “I’ll be back,” he said.

  “But I want to—,” Jane began.

  Headlights. A high-beam glow swept around the corner, hesitated as it hit the two cars, then a black Lincoln pulled into the driveway. The automatic lights popped on, spotting the front door, the garage, a stand of hedge to the right. The left side of the two-car garage slowly began to move, the Lincoln idling as the door lifted.

  “Police business,” Jake said. “Stay here, Jane.”

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He closed the car door, leaving her inside.

  Hardesty was getting out of his Jeep. Two steps, and he’d stopped him, too. “No,” Jake said. “My job.”

  “You’re talking to him alone?”

  “I’m a cop,” Jake said. He patted his chest, where he kept the Glock. “I’m never alone.” He paused, couldn’t believe he was about to say this to Hardesty. “Go get Jane, okay? Take care of her?”

  Jake ignored the front walk, got to the driver’s side door as the Lincoln began to pull into the garage. He walked alongside the car, flapped open his badge wallet, held it to the closed car window.

  “Edward Walsh?” Jake knew that doughy face, all chin and jowls, seen him at hearings, and on TV. Ex-sheriff, Jake remembered. As Parole Board chairman, he’d held prisoners’ lives in his hands. He’d let Gordon Thorley out—then, years later, strong-armed him to cover up his own crime. “I’m Detective Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”

  The car stopped. The ignition went off. The garage door stayed open.

  “May I speak to you for a moment?” Conjecture was not a standard-issue weapon in police work, but sometimes a good bluff was. This might be the time to try it.

  Edward Walsh, brown plaid sport jacket, narrow brown tie, thinning hair, saluted Jake as he got out, stood in the pool of light on the driveway.