Intent to Kill

by James Grippando

  Ryan’s publicity headshot flashed on screen as the taped conversation replayed in its entirety, culminating in Babes’s dramatic confession: “I killed my sister!”

  It pained Emma to hear it again, but it hurt even more to watch the video footage of Ryan fighting his way through a veritable journalistic frenzy, just to walk to his car in the radio station’s parking lot. She could see in his eyes how raw his emotions were, capped off with the look of utter contempt that he threw someone as he was getting into his car. There was no on-scene audio, just Doug’s voice-over, but Emma knew that a reaction like that from a guy like Ryan had to have been goaded by some photographer angling for a money shot. She’d had to deal with similar situations in her high-profile prosecutions, though most of the insults hurled in her direction involved the C-word. And people complained about the ethics of lawyers.

  “Daniel Townsend remains at large,” the anchorwoman said, as the clip ended and a color photograph of Babes appeared on the screen. “He is twenty-four years of age, five feet nine inches tall, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. Police warn that he is armed and dangerous. Stay tuned to Action News for more on this developing story.”

  “Armed and dangerous?” Emma said to the TV, the words coming like a reflex. “Babes?”

  She immediately muted the television, picked up the telephone, and gave Doug flak about that that last point.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I’ll double-check our facts. But I’m pretty sure that’s the way the police described him.”

  “Well, they shouldn’t have. Babes is not a violent suspect. He confessed to the whole world on live radio.”

  “Which is something I wanted to talk to you about,” said Doug. “Remember how I offered to give you more media coverage on the Chelsea James investigation in exchange for some kind of an exclusive?”

  Emma knew she was now talking to Doug Wells the reporter, not Doug the new potential boyfriend.

  “It wasn’t some kind of an exclusive,” she said. “It was an exclusive on the next tip from the anonymous source.”

  “Right. But that’s a moot point now.”

  “What are you getting at?” she said.

  “Here’s my thought: If Babes calls into Ryan James’s radio show again, maybe you could talk Ryan into taking the call off the air.”

  “But Babes wants to be on the air.”

  “I know. I heard him say that. But as long as he talks to Ryan on the radio, nobody gets the exclusive.”

  “Wait a second,” said Emma. “You want me to lean on Ryan to take the next call from Babes in private—which would make it harder for the police to hear potentially incriminating statements from a vehicular homicide suspect—and then I’m supposed to feed you the exclusive story?”

  “Well, not if you’re going to put it that way. But a deal is a deal.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open. “I’m going to say good-bye now,” she said in an even tone. “Hopefully, when I wake up in the morning, I will have decided to let myself forget what you just said.”

  She hung up, fuming, but the doorbell chimed before she could give any further thought to Doug and his tactics. She went to the door and answered it.

  It was Brandon Lomax. He didn’t look happy.

  “May I come in?” he said, after a few moments of silence.

  Emma was so surprised to see him, and still so flummoxed from Doug’s phone call, that she’d forgotten her manners.

  “Of course,” she said, showing him inside. She led him to the couch in the living room, but he insisted that she sit first. Then he remained standing—the position of power. Paternal power. Emma felt seventeen again, as if at any minute her best friend, Jennifer, would be sitting beside her on the couch, the two “summer sisters” having to answer for an empty beer bottle Mr. Lomax had found on the sailboat.

  “I heard some disturbing news today,” he said.

  “We all did.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the on-air confession,” he said, his tone taking on an edge. “This has to do with the crime lab down in Kingston.”

  That one hit her like a brick. “What did you hear?”

  “Someone sent a hair sample of mine down there for comparison to DNA that was taken from the scene of Chelsea James’s crash. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

  Emma swallowed the lump in her throat. Honesty was the only policy. “I sent it in,” she said.

  “I see,” he said flatly. “Have you heard anything yet?”

  “No. The lab is backed up, and this doesn’t involve a sexual assault against a minor or a violent assault that would get us priority. Officially speaking, we don’t even have a known suspect.”

  Lomax started to pace—something he did only when he was furious and trying not to explode. “Let me save you another phone call,” he said. “Apparently, the sample you sent consists entirely of hair strands. What did you do, steal my comb?”

  Emma didn’t answer. It was awful enough just to be accused.

  “Pleading the Fifth, are you?” he said. “As you know, hair shafts are a pretty iffy source of DNA, unless the hair roots are included in the specimen.”

  He was right. She knew from many rape cases that broken bits of hair strands alone, taken from combs or brushes, were always a long shot.

  Lomax stopped pacing, and Emma felt the weight of his stare. “So it should come as no surprise to you that the test results are inconclusive.”

  Emma was looking down at the rug. “How did you find out about this?”

  “A reporter. Isn’t that a hell of a way for me to hear this kind of news? The story leaked from someone in the lab, and a journalist coldcocked me with a report that Emma Carlisle—my sweet Emma—is checking out my DNA.”

  Emma closed her eyes in pain. It was exactly the scenario that Chief Garrisen had warned her about: a leak from the crime lab that could label Brandon Lomax as a suspected drunk driver, hit the newspapers, and derail his campaign for the Senate. “Are they going to run the story?”

  “Fortunately, we’re dealing with a reasonable journalist who won’t go to print without two sources. We’re denying it, and as far as I know, there’s no credible corroboration. So the damage is under control. For now.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  The question had no anger in it. It was pure disappointment—and it crushed her. “I felt like…I had to.”

  “You had to? You’ve known me since you were eleven years old. I thought of you as my own daughter.”

  “That didn’t make it any easier. But I had to do my job.”

  He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Taking a hair sample for DNA testing without telling me about it, treating me worse than you would treat a common criminal, forcing me to hear about this from some investigative reporter—that isn’t doing your job. If you wanted a DNA sample, all you had to do was ask for it, Emma. I would have given it to you gladly.”

  Emma could barely speak. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late to be sorry,” he said sharply. He started toward the door.

  Emma followed him. “Please, don’t leave like this,” she said.

  He opened the door, then stopped and said, “I’m going over to the hospital right now. The lab will have a proper DNA sample first thing in the morning. I’ll do whatever I can as former attorney general to get you the results in forty-eight hours. If not sooner.”

  “That’s not necessary,” she said.

  “Apparently, it is,” he said, his expression turning colder as he closed the door in her face.

  28

  INSIDE THE DAWES FAMILY CRYPT, BABES HAD LITERALLY RETREATED into a corner.

  He’d barely moved since making the on-air phone call to Ryan. His back hurt, his legs were cramping, and he needed to go to the bathroom. But those discomforts were hardly punishment enough for the secret he’d finally gotten off his chest. It was over. Done.

 
; Now what?

  The last vestiges of daylight were streaming through the crypt’s colorful stained-glass window. Darkness was not far off. Sunset would come at 6:58 P.M., two minutes sooner than yesterday, and two minutes later than tomorrow. The march toward the winter solstice was not always two minutes per day, however. If he stayed here another month or so, the sun would set at 6:06 P.M. on October 13, and on the next day it would set at 6:05 P.M. And if he stayed all the way past Christmas, the sunset would come at the same time, 4:21 P.M., on December 26 and 27. It was the kind of statistical trivia that Babes easily committed to memory and could spout off at the drop of a hat.

  You have to sleep here. In the dark.

  He was strangely okay with the idea—except for the cold. All of New England was experiencing sunny days and increasingly cool nights, a weather pattern that would make for the perfect autumn blaze of color in two weeks’ time. Babes’s hooded sweatshirt had kept him plenty warm during the day, but with nighttime temperatures dipping into the forties, the crypt offered all the warmth and comfort of an unfinished basement with no heat.

  Babes climbed to his feet and stood with his back against the wall. The crypt was rectangular in shape, the open area roughly the size of Babes’s bedroom. The stained-glass window was behind and above him in the gabled end of the crypt, and he was looking directly at the wrought-iron gate that was the entrance on the opposite wall. Interment niches lined each of the long side walls, and a white marble bench suitable for two or three visitors was in the center.

  His sneakers squeaked on the polished concrete floor as he crossed the crypt and went outside for a quick bathroom break. When he returned, it seemed even darker inside. The lock was broken, but he pulled the gate shut tightly and prepared to spend the night.

  Loneliness wasn’t an issue. In middle school and as a teenager, Babes had spent countless hours here alone and content. He was always happiest by himself, as long as he was engaged. Boredom was his enemy. He didn’t have his baseball cards with him now, which was a huge departure from the old days. The crypt hadn’t been part of his routine in quite some time, but it still didn’t feel the same without his cards. Babes didn’t handle any type of disconnect very well, especially when he was tired and hungry. He could feel his anxiety rising, which frightened him far more than the thought of spending the night alone in a cemetery. In the day’s last remaining light, he tried to keep his mind busy memorizing the memorials chiseled onto the stone facades of the niches: Robert Dawes, Leslie Dawes, generations of dead Daweses from another century, probably whom no one had thought about in decades.

  Then he noticed something. Several of the niches in the far column closest to the gate had no memorial. In the years since his last visit to the crypt, he had forgotten about his secret hiding spot—the vacant crypt right beside Barbara Dawes. Back in middle school, he used to hide his baseball cards in there.

  Maybe they’re still here!

  He nearly leaped across the crypt and grabbed the stone facade. It was like a dresser drawer with no handles. With both hands, he jimmied it from side to side, wiggled the facing free, and peered inside.

  “Whoa!” he said, a reflex.

  Inside was a treasure trove of cool stuff, all kinds of things he needed: a coat, a flashlight, a candle and matches, some plastic bags. There was also food: a half-full box of vanilla wafers. He tried one. Still good! And behind it all, way in back, was an old brown shoebox.

  My cards!

  Babes had hit the jackpot. And he was starving. He gathered up his loot and carried it over to the marble bench. It was almost too dark to see, so he tried the flashlight. No batteries. He struck a match and lit the candle. It was more than enough light.

  He devoured the cookies while sorting through the cards. Then he lined them up on the floor in perfectly straight columns, one for each team. He arranged them first in alphabetical order—Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and so on—then he rearranged them according to won-loss records for last season, which he knew from memory. He smiled each time he came across one of his old favorites, but seeing them made him realize that it had been much longer than he’d thought since his last visit. He had at least a hundred cards faceup on the floor, and the newest one was five years old.

  No way were those vanilla wafers five years old.

  He was deep in thought, calculating the team on-base percentage for the 1999 Boston Red Sox, when he heard footsteps outside the crypt.

  Babes blew out the candle, gathered up his cards, and hid in a dark corner. Someone was fidgeting with the latch on the iron gate. He seemed to know that the lock was broken, and the gate swung open. Babes held his breath, but it took every ounce of strength not to freak out. He hoped and prayed that the intruder would just go away. The door closed, and in a sliver of moonlight, Babes saw a man’s shadow stretching across the stone floor.

  The silhouette stepped forward, found the matches on the marble bench, and struck one.

  Babes let out a helpless whimper.

  The man looked at Babes and spoke in a voice that chilled him.

  “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

  29

  RYAN AND HIS IN-LAWS REGROUPED IN THE KITCHEN FOR A LATE dinner.

  Ryan had taken Ainsley out of school early and was in Pawtucket by one o’clock. It was always an emotional jolt for Ryan to visit Paul and Rachel Townsend, to see the old brownstone and the upstairs apartment where he and Chelsea had started their life as husband and wife. It felt even stranger drawing up a search plan, identifying everyone they should call and every place they should look for Babes. Rachel spent the afternoon at home with Ainsley while Ryan and Paul drove around town hitting all the likely spots—near McCoy Stadium, the Modern Diner, the library, even his favorite sports memorabilia store all the way down in Warren. Babes was nowhere to be found, and no one they talked to had seen him.

  “I want a cheeseburger,” said Ainsley. She was digging in the sack of food that Ryan had picked up at the drive-through.

  “Cheeseburger it is,” said Ryan.

  “But no bun,” said Ainsley.

  That seemed odd, but Ryan was okay with it. “All right. No bun.”

  “And no meat,” she said.

  “So…you want a piece of cheese?”

  “No! I want a cheeseburger. But no bun. And no meat.”

  Another lesson in the big picture from Ainsley: life’s a cheeseburger, and some people eat just the cheese. Ryan let her watch SpongeBob SquarePants during dinner so that the adults could talk.

  After Ryan put Ainsley to bed, he tried Tom Bales on his cell again. He’d been trying to follow up on Dr. Fisch’s accomplice theory all day long, but Tom wasn’t answering—making Ryan all the more suspicious. But the priority now was to find Babes. The plan was for Paul and Ryan to split up and continue to search for Babes tonight, all night if necessary. Ryan had a list of additional places he wanted to check out in south Pawtucket and northern Providence. By eight o’clock Ryan was ready to hit the road again, but Paul stopped him before he could grab his coat.

  “Rachel has something to tell you,” said Paul, his wife standing next to him.

  If she did have something to say, Rachel didn’t look happy about it.

  “Actually, I have something to show you,” she said, and she led Ryan down the hall to Babes’s bedroom. Paul followed them.

  She switched on the light, and Ryan was immediately struck by the amount of stuff Babes had collected over the years. But he was even more taken with how organized everything was. Against an entire wall, floor to ceiling, were banker’s boxes stacked on top of one another in perfect columns. Each box was labeled and dated. Ryan stepped closer to read some of them at random: Baseball Daily News 1995–2000, Japan Baseball Daily 2004–2006, PawSox Programs 1989–1996, Red Sox Magazine 2001–2005, and on it went, all in alphabetical order. The other side of the room was like a memorabilia store. Posters of Red Sox players, including an autographed “Fathead” of Ivan Lopez, cover
ed the wall like wallpaper. Shelf after shelf displayed neatly organized collectibles, everything from a Boston Red Sox dog collar—Babes didn’t have a pet—to a PawSox versus RedWings “33 Innings” pin, which commemorated the longest game in baseball history.

  On the nightstand, right beside Babes’s pillow, was a baseball signed by Ryan and the rest of his Texas Longhorn teammates from their national championship season, which, for a moment, sent Ryan’s mind drifting in another direction entirely.

  “I found this while you and Paul were out,” said Rachel, interrupting his thoughts.

  Ryan took a seat beside her on the bed. Paul leaned against the wall, standing near the door. In Rachel’s lap was an old wooden cigar box. On the lid, written in Babes’s distinctively poor handwriting, was just one word: Chelsea.

  Rachel opened the box. Ryan looked inside, and he didn’t know what to make of it at first. It was almost full, but it contained nothing recognizable. He saw little jagged pieces of plastic and broken metal, all mixed together with shards of glass and chips of paint.

  Rachel said, “Babes visits the scene of the accident. I don’t know how often, but I think it’s a lot. He’ll stay there for hours if he has to, until he finds something, like a little piece of Chelsea’s car that didn’t get cleaned up. Part of a taillight, a chip off the bumper, a pellet of glass from the shattered windshield—whatever he can spot. He keeps it all in this box.”

  “Tom told me about this,” Ryan said, moving his gaze to Rachel. She was gently raking her fingertips over Babes’s precious collection, as if it meant even more to her than to her son. It wasn’t right, a mother burying her daughter.

  “What really happened that night?” asked Ryan.

  Rachel was still looking down into the box of broken mementos. “You bought Chelsea and Ainsley tickets for the game,” she said. “But you didn’t get one for Babes.”

  This was old ground. “It was the right decision,” said Ryan. “In hindsight, it might have saved his life. He could have been killed if he’d been in the front seat next to Chelsea.”