Move to Strike

by Sydney Bauer

  ‘The fact that you don’t want anyone else trumping your precious exclusive,’ finished Joe.

  Rigotti shrugged. ‘So shoot me.’

  Joe was still shaking his head. ‘Here’s the thing, Rigotti, you may be a mate and God knows I have walked the line between moral and professional responsibility in the past, but you and I both know, that when it comes to investigating the origin of a murder weapon, there is no “we” no matter which way you look at it.

  ‘I might agree to make some enquiries as to the identity of this Nagle, even deign to fill you in with whatever information I deem appropriate, but we are talking about a serious criminal investigation here, and the last thing I need is an overzealous reporter rattling some supposed sharp-shooter’s cage while I am trying to get to the truth.’

  Rigotti went to open his mouth, until David shot him a look which said, ‘not a good idea’.

  ‘Even if we discount Garretson’s statement,’ Joe went on, ‘and even if this Nagle exists, finding him may not be easy. My guess is you have already scanned the Nevada white pages and Googled his name ad nauseam only to come up empty.’

  Rigotti shrugged again, before giving the slightest of nods.

  ‘And then there is the matter of the lack of a gun-related paper trail,’ said Joe. ‘Buying a gun in Massachusetts is a hell of a lot different from purchasing one in Nevada. Here we require licences and keep gun sale records and have consumer safety standards and undergo background checks on purchasers and enforce gun sale waiting periods. But in the Silver State none of those requirements exist.’

  ‘You don’t even need a permit?’ asked David who, despite what he had heard about the liberal gun laws in other parts of the country, was taken aback by the seemingly ‘open slather’ attitude to firearms in the ‘All For Our Country’ state.

  ‘Not unless your weapon is concealed,’ said Joe. ‘Which means this Nagle, if he even exists, could be very difficult to find.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just put the heavy on Blackmore to produce his details?’ said Rigotti, asking the obvious.

  ‘Because . . .’ Joe began, ‘in the incredibly slim chance that he is involved with the Logan case somehow, Blackmore could simply ring this Jason Nagle and . . .’

  ‘Tip him off,’ said David, relieved that they had not lost Joe altogether.

  Joe reached into his pocket to retrieve a twenty, an indication that this meeting was over, at least for the time being.

  ‘Let me start by rechecking Tyler’s gun purchase details. I’ll talk to Calvin Garretson again, go over the paperwork, confirm his ID.’

  David nodded as Joe rose from his seat. ‘Thanks, Joe,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ said Joe, his face now contorted in an expression of discomfort as his hand ran across his stomach. ‘Shit, Cavanaugh,’ he said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have ordered the eggs.’

  25

  Nora Kelly was in an exceptionally contemplative mood. Not in the negative sense – in fact on the contrary. She was feeling more than a little upbeat about the issues she was considering this morning in the quiet of the deserted office around her. All said, the sixty-something widow was extremely pleased with her lot, and while her expression of such contentment may often have been corralled by her prim and proper demeanour, she had to admit that her life, despite setting her on roads unexpected, had turned out to be one filled with direction and purpose and love.

  Of course there were those who might argue that her work was her life, a situation that spoke of narrowness and loneliness and regret. But in Nora’s case, working with a man who she respected, and two young people she had grown to love as her own, meant that coming to work every day was like spending time with her family – and helping them brought her great pleasure and gratification and pride. They had never once refused to include her. She was invited, or more to the point expected, to sit in on important discussions regarding their cases at hand. They asked her opinion, sought her advice, and never once dismissed her observations as being in any way inferior to their own.

  While Nora had never been the emotional type, preferring to disguise her affection in wit, she hoped that her determination to ease their load – a resolve now strengthened by the impending birth of Sara’s baby (a child she already thought of as her surrogate grandchild) – was evidence of how much they meant to her and, hopefully, what she meant to them in return. So, as she opened the mail and separated it into piles, she pondered on the Logan case and how she might be able to assist. This one was going to be demanding in more ways than one given David’s relationship with the poor deceased mother and the situation befallen her two troubled children. And while she could not think of any specific task she might undertake to relieve the burden at present, she promised herself that she would do everything she could to support her co-workers at this extremely busy time. For she had always believed, that despite arguments to the contrary, the law was designed to bring people together – not tear them apart.

  The first thing that unnerved Sara after Chelsea Logan answered the front door of her family’s Beacon Hill mansion, was the haste at which she closed it once again. Silence, nothing . . . until ten seconds later when Chelsea, her wide blue eyes now set with an expression of pure guardedness and perhaps the slightest trace of anticipation, opened the door for a second time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she offered. ‘I had to turn off the alarm.’ Which made no sense whatsoever given Chelsea was already inside the house and would have been setting off motion sensors left, right and centre of her very own accord.

  But Sara did not draw attention to this, realising that if they were right about her father, the kid had to be living in a constant state of trepidation.

  ‘Father is not home,’ Chelsea said then, still hugging the side of the door.

  ‘I know,’ replied Sara.

  It had been Sara’s idea to try to catch Chelsea alone. Jeffrey Logan had told them last night that he would be heading down to Plymouth to visit J.T., and while that created its own problems – problems David had a plan to subvert at least temporarily – Sara suggested she should try to ‘corner’ Chelsea, and hopefully learn more about exactly what went on behind the blue painted door the girl now seemed determined to cling on to.

  ‘Can I come in?’ asked Sara.

  ‘I . . . oh,’ Chelsea began, her eyes hitting the floor, until she jerked her head up again as if a new idea had entered her previously cautious mind. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Miss Davis.’

  ‘It’s Sara,’ smiled Sara, attempting to break the ice. ‘And I would kill for a coffee if that’s okay. I told David I would ration myself to one a day,’ she added, gesturing at her stomach. ‘But maybe I could sneak an early one in here, before heading back to the office.’

  Chelsea smiled, taking Sara’s hand with such enthusiasm that she practically dragged her into the hallway. ‘Coffee it is, come on into the kitchen,’ she said, after turning quickly to punch a set of numbers into the flashing home security system.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Chelsea, as she pushed through the dented, white painted louvred door – the same one that just days before had been showered with her own mother’s blood.

  Less than four days after her first gruelling visit Sara noted that the Logan kitchen was now sparkling clean, the only traces of what had been being the strong smell of lemon antiseptic in the air, the absent under-sink doors and the missing sixth white wicker chair that once sat at the head of the table.

  ‘Milk?’ asked Chelsea.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said Sara, now removing her jacket to place it on a cleared kitchen bench top. ‘So, you are on your own, then?’ asked Sara, needing to check if they were indeed alone. ‘I thought Ms de Castro might be keeping you company.’

  ‘No,’ said Chelsea, as she returned the milk to the refrigerator. ‘My father was going to visit her before he went to see J.T. He bought her a necklace, from Tiffany’s – a thank you for helping us out. He even had it engraved, one locket with a
“J”, the other with a “K”.’

  But then Chelsea, who seemed determined to regurgitate this little story, did the strangest thing. She left the room quickly, without warning, returning seconds later with a computer printed receipt.

  ‘See, it is one of those silver ones with tiny lockets hanging off of it.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Sara, looking at the picture of the necklace on the receipt and not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Then you should keep the print-out,’ she said almost too quickly. ‘In case you want to get one for yourself.’

  ‘Ah . . . thanks, Chelsea, but your dad might need this for . . .’

  ‘It’s a copy of a copy,’ she forced the issue. ‘Please . . .’

  So Sara put the receipt in her handbag and the girl relaxed her shoulders – just an inch.

  Sara was at a loss. When Chelsea Logan had answered the door she had sensed an immediate chill in her cool blue eyes, but now she was seeing something else – a desperation to be acknowledged, a stifled cry for help.

  But something told Sara that this fact-finding mission was not going to be as easy as she had initially hoped, for even though the teenager was alone, her obvious anxiety told Sara that her words, her actions, were still being controlled – either out of habit, or by something more concrete.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ said Chelsea after a time, carrying Sara’s coffee with one hand and signalling at that now infamous kitchen table with the other. ‘I made it pretty milky, in case you were worried about the strength,’ she said.

  Sara smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said, before taking her seat at the door end of the table, thinking Chelsea would probably be more comfortable as far away from the other end as possible. But then she was proved wrong yet again. For in that moment Chelsea Logan not only headed for her mother’s end of the table – the space where the sixth chair once rested – she pulled a chair from the side and dragged it round to her mother’s former position, so that she might stare directly across at Sara, just as Stephanie Tyler was reported to have done last Friday night when her son allegedly entered the room with his father’s rifle.

  ‘I’ll try to move the hat stand for you if you like,’ she said, gesturing at the chipped red oak stand two feet away from Sara in the right kitchen corner.

  ‘Oh no . . . it’s fine,’ said Sara.

  ‘Silly really, having a hat stand in the kitchen,’ Chelsea offered. ‘But Mother would put her yellow sunhat on it and it would stand there in the corner looking like a person all on its own. It actually belongs in the hallway. But it’s so darned heavy. I don’t have the strength to move it alone so . . .’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sara then. ‘Do you want me to . . . ?’

  ‘Help me? Goodness no,’ said Chelsea. ‘I kind of like it where it is. You just sit and enjoy your coffee.’

  Sara nodded, taking a sip of her brew.

  ‘Too milky?’ Chelsea asked.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ managed Sara. ‘Different to what I am used to, but that can’t be a bad thing.’

  ‘Different is good. Mother used to tell us that. “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.” ’

  ‘She was right.’ Sara smiled. ‘In fact, I think I’ve heard that quote before.’

  ‘Anne Frank,’ said Chelsea. ‘She spent two years in an attic with her family and four other people. A prisoner in her own home.’

  Sara met Chelsea’s eye, hoping the girl would go on, but when she didn’t elaborate Sara found herself unable to hold her question in any longer.

  ‘Chelsea, are you okay? I mean, this past week, it must have been so hard on you, on J.T., and . . .’ She stopped there, on purpose, hoping Chelsea would note the lack of reference to her father.

  ‘Not just us. Hardest on someone else too, don’t you think?’

  ‘You mean your . . .’

  ‘Mother, of course,’ she interrupted, as if determined to get it out. ‘Considering . . .’

  Sara nodded. ‘My point is that . . .’

  But Chelsea interrupted again. ‘I take my SATs in a few weeks’ time,’ she said.

  ‘Ah . . .’ said Sara with a sigh, sensing that Chelsea needed more time. ‘That’s early, isn’t it? I mean, your dad says you only just turned sixteen.’

  ‘I am a year ahead,’ she said. ‘I am going to study law, like my mother. I want to do pre-law at Harvard and then transfer to Princeton or Yale or Columbia.’

  ‘But why transfer?’ asked Sara, broaching the obvious question, and in that moment sensing that it was exactly what Chelsea was hoping she would do. ‘I mean, Harvard has one of the best law schools in the world.’

  ‘I am waiting for J.T. to catch up with me, so we can transfer interstate together. He wants to be an architect and all three universities have excellent post grad schools so . . .’

  ‘You could leave home together.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said.

  And with that, Sara decided it was time for another try.

  ‘Chelsea, I want you to know that if you need someone to talk to . . . It is just us two right now, and as your brother’s attorney, anything you tell me in regards to this case is privileged.

  ‘What I am trying to say is that sometimes things are not as they seem. Sometimes we feel obliged to take a certain path simply because someone else has forced us to do so. But that doesn’t have to be the case, Chelsea – for you, or for J.T.

  ‘I know you are scared. But in the end you and your brother, you really need to trust us. David was a friend of your mom’s,’ she said, hoping this might make a difference. ‘They went to college together and he says she was . . .’

  The teenage girl stared directly at her, the tears now trailing slowly down her smooth, pale cheeks. And then she shook her head as if what Sara was proposing was impossible, before taking a breath to say, ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘What?’ asked Sara, but she could see the urgency in the young girl’s eyes, the silent but desperate plea that Sara do as she asked.

  Sara stood, and looked down at the girl, just as Stephanie’s killer had done. And in that moment Sara knew she was trying to tell her something – to show her exactly what had gone down.

  But she could not see it . . . she could not SEE IT and Chelsea was unable to tell her – unable or too terrified, and Sara sensed the latter was more likely the case.

  ‘I can’t reach it,’ said Chelsea then, still sitting but extending her hand towards Sara’s belly. ‘I wanted to feel if your baby was kicking.’

  ‘Chelsea, I wish . . . I could . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Chelsea, the tears now splattering on the table before her. ‘That’s okay. He can hear us though, can’t he? Your baby, I mean, even though he isn’t really here yet, he can hear what we are saying and when you think of it that way, there are really three of us in this room.’

  Sara nodded, the magnitude of it hitting her square in the face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand, Chelsea. Three.’

  26

  ‘You are going to have to do something about that,’ said child psychologist Barbara Wong-McGregor as she met David at the front door of the Plymouth Juvenile Detention Unit, shaking David’s outstretched palm with one hand and shoving a copy of this morning’s Boston Tribune into his chest with the other.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ said David in reply, more than a little taken aback by the woman’s direct approach to an introduction. ‘And thanks for meeting me on such short notice.’

  Not long after Rigotti had left them, and David had explained to Joe that he was on his way to Plymouth to see J.T. Logan, Joe had made a call to an old friend by the name of Barbara Wong-McGregor. She was a respected child psychologist and, according to Joe, one of the best juvenile shrinks in the business. After a minute of to-ing and fro-ing on his cell – including some talk about Joe owing Wong-McGregor big time – the respected expert agreed to meet David in the detention unit’s lobby in a little over an
hour so that she might give him an early assessment of his client and some idea of what the hell might be going on in his traumatised head.

  ‘I read the paper, Ms Wong-McGregor,’ said David, guessing the ‘call a spade a spade’ expert was talking about this morning’s report. ‘And to be honest, as hard as it is to believe, it is pretty much a fair representation of what went down in court yesterday.’

  ‘It’s Barbara,’ she said, shaking her head before turning her back on him to head towards the front security desk behind them. ‘And I am not talking about the main story but the break-out piece on page five, the one that leads with a header stating: “Furious, Fourteen and Armed”. The press is already throwing your kid in the basket with the likes of the Columbine killers, and that is no good for anyone, least of all your client.’

  David began to see why Joe spoke so highly of this woman after all.

  ‘That kind of stuff labels our kid as a loon from the get-go.’ David had never heard a child psychologist refer to a ‘patient’ as a ‘loon’ before, but he guessed there was a first time for everything.

  ‘And,’ Barbara went on, ‘it pollutes our jury pool before we even have a chance to get started.’

  Our . . . we . . . the woman was already on board – and despite her rather odd demeanour, David had to admit he was grateful. ‘We don’t want him labelled as having serious psychotic tendencies,’ said David then.

  Barbara nodded. ‘The jury think he’s crazy, they’ll be sympathetic but they’ll convict,’ she said, raising her left hand. ‘The jury think he’s a victim, they’ll be sympathetic but they’ll acquit,’ she added, now raising the other. ‘You see the difference?’

  ‘I . . . sure,’ said David, realising Wong-McGregor had not only listened to Joe’s very brief description of the case, but also read between the lines.

  ‘Right.’ She nodded as she accepted her security pass from the desk personnel as if she did this every morning, which she probably did. ‘Thanks, Walter,’ she said to the guard who also handed David his own red-coloured pass before moving around the desk to escort them into the building proper.