Olive directed Gin to a neat ranch-style house on a manicured lot. They went in the side door, where the kids deposited their shoes and backpacks in cubbies designated for that purpose.
Christine was in the kitchen, arranging cupcakes on a tiered stand. Balloons and streamers were the only notes of color in an elegant beige and chrome kitchen. A buffet of sandwiches, chips, and fruit was laid out on the table.
“Have all the kids go to the backyard,” Christine said. “Olive, answer the door when people come and please remember to thank them for coming to your party. Austen, do not touch anything until everyone is here, do you hear me?”
“But I’m starving!” Austen protested. Christine handed him a polished apple from a pottery bowl.
“Make do.”
With the kids out of the kitchen, Christine took off her apron and hung it from a hook by the refrigerator. She was wearing tailored black pants and a silk blouse, looking polished and professional. Next to her, Gin felt underdressed in her shorts and tank top.
“I’ve got to go shopping,” Gin said. “I’m completely out of clothes, but Mom’ll kill me if I interrupt her laundry routine, and I can’t bring myself to wash a load that isn’t full.”
“Does that mean you’re staying longer?” Christine said. Gin couldn’t tell if she was pleased at the prospect.
The doorbell rang before she could answer, and soon the house was filled with kids and their parents. Neighbors mostly, according to Christine, who greeted each warmly while directing the kids outside to where she’d set up games. Soon, the kids were playing Red Rover while the adults clustered near the refreshments.
Gin recognized only a couple of names, but all the guests knew her parents and expressed their condolences for Lily. She thanked them and stayed to the edges, helping with the food and an occasional child who needed a Band-Aid or a bathroom, which was how she overheard the discussion veering to Lawrence’s death. She’d forgotten how quickly news moved through a small town.
“Well, I don’t approve of suicide, but that man’s been through hell.” A woman’s voice. Gin was around the corner, trying to find the napkins Christine had sent her to look for in the linen closet. She froze, riveted. “I mean, come on, with what his son put him through? What he did to that poor girl?”
“That’s awful, Jean,” another woman said.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make Jake innocent. I mean, there’s something wrong with a guy who drives forty minutes to shop for groceries.”
“So, just because he doesn’t like to associate with you, that makes him guilty?” a man interjected. “Maybe he’s just picky. Seems like there’ve been plenty of other women willing to overlook his shopping habits.”
A crying child interrupted the talk, his mother taking him outside to settle an argument, and conversation moved on to other things. Gin continued to help, and answered the door to find her own parents holding a brightly wrapped gift. She covered her surprise; after all, she should have assumed that they had remained close to Christine.
Later, after the cupcakes and ice cream were served, the adults repaired to the living room, drinking wine while the children watched a movie upstairs.
Lawrence’s name probably wouldn’t have come up again, if it weren’t for Richard. “Your mother tells me Jake’s going to hold Lawrence’s service as soon as they release the body,” he said to Gin rather abruptly. She could smell the wine on his breath. The small circle fell silent; she could feel everyone’s attention shift to her father.
“Richard,” Madeleine muttered warningly.
Christine looked to Gin, her eyebrows raised. Gin had a bad feeling about where the conversation was headed. She didn’t trust her father to stay silent about his dislike of Jake, even in the face of Lawrence’s death.
“Dad, please,” she said quietly.
“No, come on. All I said was that I hear the service is going to be soon.”
“We can talk about that later,” Madeleine said tightly. She was on her second glass of wine; Gin wondered if she should bundle both of her parents into her car and take them home, and come back for their car tomorrow.
“Lawrence’s passing is such a loss to the town,” one of the other guests said diplomatically, after an awkward beat had passed. “He was the heart and soul of the police department.”
“I’ll never forget the time he brought Anthony home at three in the morning after he got drunk after a football game,” one of the mothers said. “I credit him for keeping our boys out of trouble.”
Conversation turned to reminiscences about the many kind acts Lawrence had performed, on and off the job.
“I guess Lawrence was a regular hero,” Richard mumbled, slopping more wine into his glass from the bottle on the table. “Although if he were all that good, he would have found my daughter’s killer years ago.”
“Richard, I’m leaving if you don’t stop,” Madeleine said. Then to the others, “I’m sorry. We’re both a little tense right now.”
The other guests were quick to reassure her, and Richard seemed mollified, apologizing for his remarks. At least Lawrence was well regarded, Gin thought. He’d be remembered fondly.
“I have to thank you all for your kindness,” Madeleine said, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. “I think we’ve been through every emotion there is at this point—from grief, of course, to . . . But no matter what we are dealing with as a family, I’m going to have to make a statement as deputy mayor. We can’t have people going after each other’s throats over something that happened so long ago. This town doesn’t need that. I trust the police to do their job, and I’m going to hold a press conference Monday morning saying so.”
There was a moment of shocked silence at Madeleine’s announcement. Richard got angrily to his feet, knocking over a vase full of colorful carnations. Water pooled on the coffee table, and several guests scrambled to mop it up with paper napkins.
“Madeleine, this is hardly the place—”
“These are our friends, Richard,” her mother said firmly, though a tremor at the corner of her mouth gave her away.
“Mom,” Gin muttered, leaning close, “please, save this discussion for later.”
“I don’t want to discuss it. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Without asking the rest of us? Me and Dad?” And Jake, she thought—Jake, whose father had been dead less than twenty-four hours. “Please reconsider.”
Tears rimmed Madeleine’s carefully made-up eyes, and the other guests appeared both embarrassed and riveted, busying themselves with cleaning up the mess. Richard seemed to be on the verge of leaving, until Christine came into the room carrying a tray of cupcakes.
“Okay, the kids have stuffed themselves and now—what happened?” she said, surveying the ruined flowers, Richard’s stony expression. The guests looked at each other.
“I was just saying that I’m going to hold a press conference at city hall,” Madeleine said, recovering her voice.
“Nothing’s decided yet,” Gin interjected. She had to find a way to stop her mother; she couldn’t bear the thought of the latest developments becoming prime-time fodder, throwing more controversy into the investigation and possibly hampering its progress.
“Maybe it’s a good idea,” Christine said carefully, setting the platter down and sitting next to Madeleine on the couch. She took the older woman’s hand. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be, but keeping it out in front of the public eye—that’s got to be a good thing. Keeping up the pressure on whoever killed Lily.”
“It might even get national attention,” one of the men said. “That’ll force them to keep on it until they solve it.”
“I’ve always said they stopped looking for the hitchhiker too soon,” his wife agreed.
Gin stood and took her father’s arm. “We should probably go, Dad,” she said, trying to keep her fury in check. “You coming, Mom, or should I drive Dad home?”
“I don’t need to be driven anywhere,” Richa
rd snapped. “I think I’ll walk.”
Madeleine rose with a sigh, but before she could detach herself from the group, Gin ushered both her parents out of earshot.
“Listen,” she said in a low voice, “this is Olive’s party. A thirteen-year-old girl is out there with her friends trying to celebrate her birthday. Do you really want to turn this into a circus?”
Madeleine’s defiant gaze dropped a little; Richard wiped his hand over his face. Her parents were falling apart in front of her. Gin wasn’t sure how much more either of them could take.
“You’re right, sweetheart,” Richard said in a heavy voice. “We should go.”
“I didn’t mean any harm,” Madeleine said woodenly. “Everyone is going to hear what I have to say on Monday anyway.”
Her parents huddled together while Gin made their excuses, thanking Christine and apologizing to the guests. Gin decided she would wait until another time to speak to Olive, rather than interrupting her among her friends.
Christine drew her into the kitchen. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Maybe I should have just canceled the party.”
“No, no. Olive deserves to have things as normal as possible. None of this is the kids’ fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault, Gin,” Christine said, folding her into a brisk hug. Gin could smell her hairspray, feel the crisp starch in her cotton shirt. “No one but whoever killed Lily.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been better if she’d never been found,” Gin confessed. She’d seen the stress an unsolved case could put on a family—both in her years at Cook County and remembering back to the aftermath of Lily’s disappearance. But knowing the truth about Lily had brought little peace so far. “I don’t know if my parents can go through this again.”
“Your mom is tough,” Christine said, pulling away. “And your dad—he’s just trying to help. Dealing with things in his own way. My dad’s the same way, he has a hard time coping with his emotions, so they end up coming out at the worst possible time.”
For a moment, both women were silent, Gin thinking about their fathers’ friendship, a decades-old bond that had grown more tenuous over time, an echo of the distance that had asserted itself between Gin and the others. The loss of Lily had altered so many things about their lives. It made her profoundly sad.
“Please tell Olive I enjoyed myself,” Gin said. “Maybe I could take the kids out for ice cream or something while I’m here.”
“That would be great,” Christine said. “And I’d love to get together, too. Just us.”
As Gin herded her parents to the cars, she flashed back to other occasions in the distant past, the end of long evenings when the two families parted. Christine and Gin doing their best to exclude Lily, Tom tormenting all three girls. Spencer waving from the door, always seeming a little melancholy. Gin had never understood why he didn’t remarry, didn’t find a new mother for her friends. Only now did she see that relationships were far more complicated than she’d ever imagined then.
“See you back at the house, Virginia,” her father said, as he got into the passenger seat of Madeleine’s Lexus.
But when Gin turned the key in her own ignition, she let the SUV idle for a moment, thinking about the road to Jake’s place, about the beautiful home and the broken man who lived there.
23
Gin and her parents spent Sunday together, by tacit agreement avoiding talking about anything significant. After church and brunch downtown, Richard left for his garden, and Madeleine and Gin played tennis at the club. Gin appreciated that her parents were making an effort to back away from the case, as she had requested, but by the time dinner was over, she was exhausted from the effort of staying politely detached.
When she was finally alone in her room, she checked her e-mail and discovered a message from Stephen Harper. “This won’t be released until we’ve got a definitive COD, but I thought you’d want to see the preliminary findings. Call when you’ve read it.”
He’d attached Lawrence’s preliminary autopsy results. Gin scanned the report carefully. Then she read it again, focusing on the images of the entrance and exit wounds and the drawings and measurements made during the examination.
With a growing sense of unease, she dialed Harper’s home number. He picked up almost immediately.
“Gin. Thanks for calling back.”
“I suppose you’ve already noticed this, but the bullet trajectory doesn’t support suicide,” Gin said without preamble.
“Yes. I noticed that, too. I was thinking he could have managed it if he’d had something to support his arm, or if he’d raised his elbow as high as possible while standing, but I agree—it would have been awkward.”
“Maybe,” Gin said doubtfully, “but I think it’s far more likely that someone else pulled the trigger. The entrance wound is clean and there is no residue on his fingers. And there’s another thing . . . I saw you noted the peri- and myocarditis.”
“Yeah, it was considerable for a man with no other signs of incipient heart failure—”
“But what if it was chemically caused? Say by a chemotherapeutic agent—they’re known to cause cardiotoxicity. Couldn’t he have been injected with something?”
“I don’t know . . . I guess so. It seems like a reach, though. Cardiotoxicity usually builds over time at therapeutic doses . . .”
“But not always,” Gin said excitedly. “And not if someone deliberately injected him. What are we looking at for a turnaround on the tox?”
“Probably over six weeks, at the moment—but I can give you some good news there, at least. Harvey was getting a lot of pressure from Captain Wheeler on this one, and somehow we came up with funds to send it out.”
“Out—you mean, outside the county lab?”
“Yes, there’s a private company we’ve used a few times. They bumped it to the top of the queue. We’ll still be waiting at least a week for some of the tests, but the preliminary screen just came in. I’ve just started going through it, and I’ll bring it up this afternoon at rounds, but I wonder if you’d mind looking it over to see what jumps out at you.”
“I’d be more than happy to,” Gin exclaimed. “Would you mind e-mailing it to me?”
“Already typing.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Stephen,” she said softly. “I don’t really know how to thank you.”
“How about I thank you? We’re really short-staffed. People don’t quit dying just because my colleagues go on summer vacation. And we’re getting a lot of pressure on this one, as you might imagine.”
After hanging up, Gin refreshed her e-mail over and over until the report arrived, then scanned it anxiously. A pattern of details began to emerge the second time through, and she checked it once more and dialed Stephen back.
“Suppression of protein synthesis,” she said when he answered. “And elevated calcium homeostasis. There had to be an anthracycline present in the blood.”
“That’s the conclusion I reached, too,” Harper said. “But other than the swelling, there was no evidence of long term cardiotoxicity—”
“Which we’d only expect to see if he was being treated for cancer,” Gin said. “That wasn’t the case here. And that suggests an extraordinary dose of an anthracycline must have been present.”
“A potentially fatal dose in this case—”
“Though it wouldn’t have mattered. As long as he was already unconscious, there is no way he could have shot himself.”
Someone else had pulled the trigger. Someone else had wanted Lawrence dead.
“We’ll know in a few days,” Harper says. “I’m guessing Doxorubicin. Meanwhile, I’ll call Stillman, but I can’t give him anything official.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But listen, that isn’t all. Harvey rushed the DNA, too. We had it tested against all the samples from the investigation, as well as CODIS.”
“And?” Gin’s heart thudded from the suspense.
“Th
is won’t be public yet, but there was no match. The father of the baby wasn’t anyone that they took samples from. Of course, they’ll be expanding the pool as the investigation continues.”
Gin blinked, and let out the breath she had been holding. Seventeen years ago they hadn’t taken any DNA samples, because the cops were convinced Lily had simply run away. But once Lily’s body had been found, they’d taken samples from the entire family—and Jake, frontrunner among suspects.
Jake wasn’t the father of the baby.
“I—I appreciate the call, and all the information,” Gin said shakily.
“Of course. I’m sure we’ll speak again soon—and I’ll be in touch if I learn anything more that might be useful.”
Gin managed a rote good-bye, even though her mind was now swirling with thoughts. Jake hadn’t fathered Lily’s child. Someone had killed Jake’s father. Gin’s remaining doubts about Jake disintegrated and vanished.
Stillman and Witt were bound to take DNA from Tom now, whether he liked it or not. Surely, that would at least clear up the identity of the baby’s father. But what if it didn’t? Who else could possibly have been such an intimate part of Lily’s life, without Gin knowing? No match had been found in the database, but that only proved that the father hadn’t been convicted before. That left countless possibilities.
But maybe they were getting closer to the truth.
***
In the morning, Gin took a long run, showered, and still managed to arrive at the press conference ten minutes before it was due to start. She’d dressed in a simple shift she’d borrowed from her mother’s closet and twisted her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her sunglasses completed what she hoped was an adequate disguise, but she took the precaution of tucking a book in her handbag to disappear behind and the gift which, in the confusion of the party’s end, she’d forgotten to leave. If anyone stopped her to talk, she’d just explain that she had to leave to deliver the gift to Christine’s house.
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