“I’m off to six.”
“Sex?” The New England accents were still a challenge for Ryan.
“No. Building six. Around here, all but the residences are referred to by number, not names.”
“Ah,” said Ryan. Would a campus full of human calculators have it any other way?
Ryan thanked him, and Tom hurried after the Tommy Bahama brunette—close encounters of the nerd kind. He was a good guy, Ryan supposed, even if he did have a decade-long crush on Chelsea. After too much champagne at the Townsend/James wedding, Tom had sidled up to Chelsea and told her that if her new husband ever broke her heart, he’d be waiting for her. Chelsea had laughed it off, but Ryan sensed that it hadn’t been just the liquor talking.
The midday clouds had completely dissolved, and it was turning into a beautiful September afternoon. The rowing crews on the Charles River seemed to skim the waves toward Harvard Bridge. Ryan watched them for a few minutes and then walked off campus. He was a block away from the Kendall/MIT subway station when his cell rang. It was Emma, calling to apologize for the way things had gone with Chelsea’s parents before Ryan got there.
“Rachel told me everything,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“So you’re not angry?”
“No. I understand how they might be upset about your questioning their son. But I also understand that you’re just doing your job.”
She sounded grateful for that, but she quickly turned to business.
“I know it’s a long shot,” she said, “but the fact that this phony Lieutenant Benjamin seemed so determined to talk to Babes alone really has me thinking.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” said Ryan. “I just spoke with Babes’s best friend. Seems Babes has spent countless hours at the scene of the accident, just puttering around. If the drunk who ran Chelsea off the road lives anywhere around Pawtucket, maybe he’s seen Babes there.”
“And if he has any fear of getting caught, maybe he’d really like to know what Babes knows.”
“Bad enough to play phony detective and interrogate Chelsea’s parents?” said Ryan.
“Depends on how much he has to lose by getting caught, I suppose.”
“Which is why I don’t take offense at the questions you asked Paul and Rachel. We need answers.”
Emma hesitated, then said, “I hope you don’t think I pushed it too far by taking it to the next step.”
“What next step?”
“I just left the crime lab. We were able to pull a latent print off my BlackBerry, which I let Babes use while I was at the house.”
“You’re checking Babes’s prints?”
“We got a ton of fingerprints from the newspaper that the tipster left on my windshield. At some point in time, the newspaper must have been in a library or at a bus station, where it was handled by a number of readers. But not one of them turned up a match in the database. So I asked our analyst to compare Babes’s print from the BlackBerry to the prints on the newspaper.”
“And?”
“No match.”
“So Babes is definitely not the tipster?” said Ryan.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “It could mean nothing more than the fact that Babes’s right index finger showed up on my BlackBerry and the newspaper only had prints from his left thumb, right pinky, or whichever. Or it could mean that he wore gloves to handle the newspaper, or that for whatever reason the old newsprint just didn’t pick up a clean set of his prints.”
“It doesn’t bother you that Babes lives in Pawtucket and your car was parked in Providence?”
“The two cities are so close together that Babes could have walked. It’s definitely an easy bus ride.”
“So your bottom line is what?” said Ryan.
She paused, as if fearful of upsetting Ryan. “Honestly, I have this vision of Babes listening to your show and hearing Tony from Watertown saying ‘accidents happen.’ Something snaps inside him. He leaves the flowers saying ‘It was no accident’—maybe the message is for you, maybe it’s for himself, maybe it’s for Chelsea. Who knows? Then he gets down to business and drops the tip on my windshield.”
Ryan took a few seconds to process what she was suggesting. “So where do we go from here?”
“I’d like to get a complete set of his fingerprints, but I’m going to let your in-laws cool down a little before I make another approach.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Ryan.
“Meanwhile, if you think of anyone else I should talk to, you call me, okay?”
Tom Bales came to mind, but putting Babes’s friend on the police radar just because of his crush on Chelsea seemed petty.
“I’ve got your number,” Ryan told her.
11
EMMA HAD PROMISED HERSELF SHE WOULD NEVER DO IT. BUT SHE knew she had to. On Wednesday she met Doug Wells for lunch on Federal Hill.
For some, it was the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University that put Providence on the culinary map. For Emma, it was Little Italy. Doug said he’d take her anywhere that didn’t serve broiled haddock or Yankee pot roast, and while that left a plethora of choices in one of America’s best small-restaurant cities, Emma chose Andino’s on Atwells Avenue, the main drag on the hill. It was a pleasant and sunny afternoon—perhaps one of the last of the year to see temperatures climb into the seventies—so they took a table for two on the quiet back patio and sat in the shade of a big umbrella. Emma’s chicken Andino was excellent, as usual, and Doug was all the things she hadn’t expected: charming, funny, attentive. So charming, in fact, that he didn’t lose any points when he had to excuse himself to take a call on his cell.
“It’s fine,” Emma said with a smile.
The waitress came to clear their plates. Emma could have eaten every last bit of her angel hair pasta, but that would have meant another half hour on the treadmill. She restrained herself and let the waitress take it away.
The lunch crowd was thinning out, most of the remaining patrons lingering over coffee. The man at the next table was alone and reading the Providence Journal, which Emma noted only because Brandon Lomax was on the front page again. He seemed to be everywhere lately, and by all accounts his campaign for the U.S. Senate was becoming a veritable juggernaut. Emma was happy for him, and not just because he was her old boss. It was much more personal than that.
Emma couldn’t remember a time when her father hadn’t been sick. On occasion he had found the strength to give his little girl piggyback rides or play with her on the swings, but mostly he watched her from the sidelines as he rested. It was often frustrating for young Emma. She even called him lazy once. Not until after the funeral did she understand that it was a three-year battle with cancer, which finally took his life five days before her sixth birthday. They had the cake two weeks early so that he could watch her blow out the candles. Emma would never forget the sympathy card she made for her mother. On the outside, she colored a giant yellow flower with black pistils for eyes, tears falling to the ground. Inside she wrote, “I’m sorry your husband died.”
Emma spent many of her subsequent childhood years with her best friend, Jenny, the only child of Brandon and Sarah Lomax. Each school year, Jenny somehow managed to get the same teacher as Emma. (Jenny’s dad had more than a little something to do with that coincidence.) They took dance classes together and played on the same soccer team. Summers with the Lomaxes were the only family vacations Emma ever had. By the time summer rolled around, Emma felt like her last name could have been Lomax. The weekend sailing trips started in late May with Nantucket Sound’s annual Figawi Race—so named for the New Englander sailor’s foggy-day refrain, “Where the F*** ah we?”—and continued through the first week of August. Then Emma would spend three weeks with the Lomax family in their home in the Berkshires. Emma and Jenny told everyone in Great Barrington that they were sisters. One summer, Emma kept the ruse alive by calling Brandon Lomax “Dad.” It was a game, but she liked playing it.
“I’m baaaack,” said Doug, seemingly in a playful mood as he returned to the table. The phone call must have gone well.
“So I’m just curious,” he said. “What made you give me another shot?”
Emma was deadpan. “Complete and utter desperation and loneliness.”
“That’s what I thought. Which leads to my next question. When you said we could start over, clean slate, did you mean that literally?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is this our second date or our first?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Well, a year from now, I just want to know the right date of our anniversary.”
“Doug?”
“What?”
“Cut the bullshit. Now you’re trying too hard.”
“Damn. And I was doing so well.”
The waitress came and offered coffee. Emma shook her head. She wasn’t trying to cut things short, but she did have to be back in court. Doug handed the waitress his credit card.
“We’ll split it,” said Emma.
“My treat.”
“Then I should have ordered lobster,” she said jokingly.
“Next time?” he said.
She smiled. “Yes. Next time.”
The busboy came by to fill their water glasses, then left.
“Not to talk too much business,” said Doug, “but how much play did you get from your media pitch on the anonymous tipster?”
“Your eleven o’clock segment was great. Thank you again for that. The Rhode Island media jumped all over it. Parts of Massachusetts picked it up as well, fueled, I’m sure, by the Red Sox connection and by Ryan’s popularity on Boston radio.”
“Congratulations. You worked it hard.”
“I did. But the emergence of an anonymous tipster after three years without leads was legitimate news.”
“I agree. That’s why our station ran with it.”
“Unfortunately, it’s only news for a day. Then once again—silence.”
“Nothing more from your tipster?”
She paused. The sheriff’s department had not yet gone public with the Lieutenant Benjamin impostor. Until they officially determined that he wasn’t a current or former officer, they were treating it as an Internal Affairs matter, so Emma couldn’t mention it. “No new tips,” said Emma.
“Any leads as to who it might be?”
“One,” she said, meaning her own theory about Babes. “But a fingerprint check took some of the steam out of that idea.”
“He might still come around.”
“I’m hoping. But I feel like I’ve taken my best shot, and already the media have moved on to the next story, the next middle-school teacher to have sex with a student, the next Hub cop to get drunk and shoot a fellow officer in the ass. Chelsea James is old news all over again.”
The waitress brought back Doug’s credit card. He signed the receipt, and they started the walk back to their cars on the street. Doug seemed pensive as they joined the flow of pedestrians along Atwells Avenue.
“What are you thinking?” asked Chelsea.
“This James case seems really important to you. And I want to help.”
“That’s sweet of you, but you’ve done your part.”
“Here’s a thought. How about giving me an exclusive on the next anonymous tip?”
“Why on earth would I want to do that?”
“A little quid pro quo. You give me the exclusive, I give you sex. You drive a hard bargain, but hey, I really want that exclusive.”
“Very funny.”
“Sorry, bad joke. But I’m serious about the exclusive.”
“Am I missing something, or does that sound more like me helping you than you helping me?”
“Not at all. You believe you need another jolt from the media to draw out your tipster. Unfortunately, media interest is now down to zero. But if you give me an exclusive on the next tip, I could probably talk the producer into giving the Chelsea James story more coverage. We could maybe even do a feature on the tireless prosecutor and the three-year-old unsolved case that still haunts her.”
And the story of the phony detective who went knocking on Paul and Rachel Townsend’s front door—if she could convince Internal Affairs to go public.
“That’s kind of interesting, actually.”
“So what do you say?”
“I like it,” said Emma. “Let me run it by Chief Garrisen.”
“Great,” he said. They stopped at Emma’s car. “Business is closed. Now for the important stuff. Do you kiss on the first date?”
“Only if I like the guy.”
He smiled, leaned closer, and gently kissed her on the cheek.
“This was fun,” he said.
“I’ll call you,” she said, then got into her car. Doug watched and waved good-bye as she pulled away.
Emma was smiling as her car passed beneath the big arch with the symbolic Italian pinecone that marked the entrance to Little Italy, but crossing the river put her right back to business. She stopped by the office before heading over to the courthouse for jury selection in her next trial—another fun-filled afternoon of “Juror number seven, can you be fair and impartial; will you return a verdict of guilty if the state proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt; will you please not hold it against me when I walk over and strangle the defendant’s scumbag attorney?”
“Mail call,” her secretary said as she dropped a bundle on Emma’s desk.
Emma thanked her and thumbed through the stack. Bonnie was old school—still called herself a secretary, not an administrative assistant. “More organized than the Rhode Island mob,” she liked to say of herself. As always, the court orders were on top. Letters from lawyers were next. MC—miscellaneous crap—was on the bottom. It was the MC that caught Emma’s attention today—specifically, the manila envelope with no return address. It was postmarked Providence.
Had she not been waiting for the tipster’s next move, she probably would have thought nothing of it. Her antennae were up, however, and she had a hunch about this one. She took a pair of latex gloves from her top drawer—she always wore them when handling evidence—and pulled them on. With the envelope flat on her desk, she sliced across the top with her letter opener and peered inside.
Her heart skipped a beat. It contained a page from the newspaper.
She picked up the envelope by one corner, gave it a little shake, and let the contents slide out onto her desktop. It was the front page of the Providence Journal. Two days old.
Emma remembered stopping on the sidewalk to buy a copy of this same newspaper after her trial on Monday, the three-year anniversary of Chelsea’s death, right before she had found the tipster’s first message on her windshield. The big color photograph of her old boss, Brandon Lomax, was staring back at her again. “FRONT-RUNNER,” was the headline, followed by the lengthy article about his steamrolling campaign for the U.S. Senate. In this copy, however, certain words were underlined and numbered by hand, just as they had been in the tipster’s first “I know who did it” message. This time, the message contained just two words, which Emma put together right away. In the context of the tipster’s previous message, it made her stomach churn.
“It’s…him,” she read in disbelief.
12
RYAN PICKED UP AINSLEY AFTER SCHOOL AND TOOK HER TO SEE the Emerald Necklace. At least that was the promise.
“We’re here,” said Ryan.
“Where’s the necklace?” said Ainsley.
“You’re standing on it.”
Boston’s Emerald Necklace consists of an eleven-hundred-acre chain of nine parks linked by parkways and waterways. Considered a shining (green) example of Frederick Law Olmsted’s genius, it was designed to connect Boston Common, scene of everything from Colonial era hangings to hourly duck crossings, to Olmsted’s crown jewel “in the country,” Franklin Park.
Ainsley wasn’t impressed by Ryan’s history lesson in landscape architecture.
“You
owe me a green necklace, Daddy.”
Ryan smiled. Good thing he hadn’t promised to show her the Green Monster. He’d owe her a ballpark.
The Public Garden was across the street from the Common, and together they formed the northern terminus of the seven-mile chain of parks in the necklace. The area west of Charles Street was once a salt marsh, so the nation’s first botanical garden came with tons of fill and an equal amount of planning. The manicured look didn’t exactly conjure up memories of Texas rodeos and dusty cattle drives on the plains, but it was still one of Ryan’s favorite places. The summer before Chelsea died they had brought Ainsley here, and Ryan would never forget the way their little girl giggled herself silly on the famous swan-boat ride.
It was also convenient to the Ritz-Carlton Residences, where the newest Red Sox star enjoyed the penthouse lifestyle.
“Uncle Ivan!” Ainsley shouted as soon as she spotted him, running over.
Ivan scooped her up and whirled her around. “How you doin’, munchkin?”
“I can’t believe you’re here!” she squealed.
Ryan gave him a quick wink to keep the game going. Ryan had set up the “chance” encounter, but he wanted it to be a surprise for Ainsley.
“What luck,” said Ivan. “How weird is this?”
Ivan’s wife and young son were with him, and Ryan greeted them warmly. Ivan had been a true ladies’ man when he and Ryan had played ball together, but he had settled down with a Boston Brahmin who astounded her blue-blooded family by marrying a first-generation Hispanic American to become Jacqueline Ward Lopez.
Jacqueline said, “I’m going to take the kids to see the swans.”
Before Ryan could say, “I’ll come with you,” Ivan said, “You go ahead.”
Ivan seemed determined to get his best friend alone, so Ryan braced himself for a lecture as the two men continued their walk around the pond.
“I got a call from your housekeeper,” said Ivan. “She tells me she found you passed out drunk in the living room.”
“I wasn’t drunk. I took a sleeping pill at four A.M.”
“If you’re going to take the meds, take them at bedtime, fool.”
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