by Lisa Gardner
Bruni was still beside him, dragging him out of the traffic and talking low and fast. “Pay attention to me, Bobby. Pull yourself together and pay attention.”
Bobby found a streetlight to cling to. He wrapped his arms and legs around the cold metal. Then he hung his head and fought to get a grip.
“All right,” he said. “I’m together.”
Bruni looked skeptical, but he grunted in acquiescence. “Do you know what a clerk-magistrate hearing is?”
“A clerk what?”
“Clerk-magistrate. The clerk-magistrate reports to the Chelsea District Court of Suffolk County. That’s the civil side of the county’s judicial system, versus the criminal side. You probably didn’t know—hell, I sure didn’t know—but any person can seek a clerk-magistrate hearing for probable cause that (a) a crime has been committed, and (b) that the defendant did it. If the clerk-magistrate finds in favor of probable cause, then the clerk-magistrate can issue criminal charges against the defendant, even though it’s a civil court. Basically, any civilian can run around the DA’s office and, using the clerk-magistrate, pursue their own criminal case, with their own personal lawyer and their own personal funds. You might want to ask, Bobby, what this has to do with you.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Bobby asked wearily.
“At four forty-five this evening, Maryanne Gagnon, wife of Suffolk Superior Court Judge James Gagnon and mother of Jimmy Gagnon, filed a motion for a hearing with the clerk-magistrate. She’s arguing there’s probable cause that a murder was committed, and that you did it.”
Bobby made the mistake of closing his eyes. The world promptly spun sickeningly.
“Judge Gagnon’s not waiting for the DA’s office, Bobby. He doesn’t give a damn what their investigators find, he doesn’t give a damn what the hell our department finds. He’s gunning for you himself.”
“I thought … I thought as Massachusetts state employees we were protected from all that. The Mass. Tort Claims Act. As long as we’re on the job, someone can only sue the state, not us.”
“Yeah, nobody can bring a civil suit against you specifically. But this isn’t a civil suit, Bobby. This is a probable cause hearing to press criminal charges. This is a felony. This is, if you’re found guilty, you go to jail. This isn’t some guy looking to ease his bereavement by collecting cold hard cash, Bobby. This is a guy looking to destroy your life.”
Bobby’s legs gave out and he went down hard, tilting wildly to the left, before Bruni caught his arm and brought him back to center. The lieutenant joined him on the curb. They sat, tucked hidden between two cars, and for a while, neither of them spoke.
“Jesus,” Bobby said at last.
“I’m sorry, Bobby. Honest to God, I’ve never heard of anything like this. Do you have a lawyer?”
“I thought the union provided a lawyer.”
“Union can’t help. This is a case brought against you personally, not the State of Mass. or the department. For this, you’re on your own.”
Bobby placed his head in his hands. He was too tired, too drunk for this. He felt as if November had leached all the fight out of his bones, and he had nothing left.
“It was a righteous shoot,” he said.
“No one I know is saying otherwise.”
“The man was going to kill his wife.”
“I listened to the tape of the command center’s conversation this afternoon. You followed procedure, Bobby. You documented events, you detailed what was happening, and you did what you were trained to do. Maybe no one else will ever say this, but I’m proud of you, Bobby. You had a job to do, and you didn’t back down.”
Bobby couldn’t talk anymore. He had to pinch the bridge of his nose to quell the moisture suddenly stinging his eyes. God, he was tired. Worse, he was drunk.
“Will it work?” Bobby asked at last. “Guy’s a judge. He’s got money, he’s got influence. Shit, I can’t afford a real suit on what I make. Does that mean he wins?”
“I don’t know,” Bruni said, but he sighed heavily, which meant he knew enough.
“I don’t understand. Jimmy had a gun. Jimmy was pointing it at his wife and child. Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone? To even his parents?”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“Why, because he’s rich, because he’s got a house in Back Bay? Beating your family is beating your family. I don’t care how much money you got!”
The lieutenant grew quiet.
“What?” Bobby demanded to know. “For God’s sake, what?”
Bruni sighed heavily. “In the court papers, the Gagnons aren’t denying that Jimmy had a gun. And they’re not denying that he pointed it at his wife. But they’re saying …
“They’re saying the wife’s the problem in that house, Bobby. According to the court papers, Catherine Gagnon’s been abusing her son. And if Jimmy was threatening her, it was only because he was trying to save his son’s life.”
Chapter
7
Nathan had been throwing up all day. He was finally asleep now, a pale, exhausted form that looked much too fragile against the pile of soft blue blankets. His eyelashes formed dark smudges against his cheeks. His sunken face appeared both too small and too old for a child who was only four.
When Maryanne and James had arrived first thing this morning, allegedly having bolted out of bed the minute they saw the news, but appearing strangely well groomed for a couple who had been wrenched from sleep by word of their son’s death, they had eyed Nathan carefully.
Maryanne had been performing her favorite damsel-in-distress act, of course. All oversized blue eyes, pale face, and trembling hands.
“I simply can’t bear it,” she’d said again and again in her overwhelming Southern lilt. Forty years of living in Boston, and the woman could still sound as if she’d stepped straight out of a Tennessee Williams play.
In between all the theatrics, however, Catherine could see both Maryanne and James making mental notes: Boy is thin, lethargic, and obviously stressed. Boy does not move toward his mother, but clings to his nanny. Boy has fresh bruise on forehead.
Twice Maryanne tried to pull Catherine aside for “a quick word.” Both times, Catherine held her ground. Prudence, the English nanny, was well trained and had been imported by Catherine for her dutiful nature and inherent sense of discretion. She was still new, however, so while Catherine had given her strict orders never to leave Nathan alone with his grandparents, she had no idea how the girl would hold up under pressure. James could be very charismatic when he chose. For all Catherine knew, he’d convince the girl to fetch him a cup of tea, and that quickly, the war would be lost.
Catherine couldn’t afford that kind of risk. Not these days.
Maryanne and James had offered to let her and Nathan stay with them, of course. After the “terrible events” of the night before, surely they needed someplace to stay, somewhere far away from this “tragic scene.” For God’s sake, Catherine, think of the boy. Surely, he doesn’t look well.
Finally, James had lost his patience. The minute Prudence escorted Nathan from the room—most likely to throw up again—the judge had turned on Catherine in a terrible rage.
“Don’t think you’re going to get away with this. Jimmy told us what was going on. Do you think you won last night? Do you think killing Jimmy solved your problems? Because I’m telling you now, they’re just getting started.”
And for a moment, Catherine had honestly panicked. She thought wildly of Jimmy’s new security system, installed six months earlier. The power light had gone off. She swore she saw the power light off. Then she realized that the silence had dragged on too long, that James was still regarding her with that cold accusing stare, so she drew herself up to her full height and said as regally as she could, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, James. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to plan a funeral for my husband.”
She’d swept out of the room, heart pounding, hands trembling, and a few minute
s later, heard her in-laws storm out the door. Then the house was quiet again, except for the sound of Nathan dry-heaving down the hall.
Nathan hadn’t cried. Not last night, not today. He probably wouldn’t. In that way, he was Catherine’s son. He faced everything—the doctors’ appointments, the endless needles, the horribly invasive tests—dry eyed and solemn browed. The nurses loved him, but even when they touched him, he flinched.
He would have nightmares tonight. Horrible dreams where he would thrash wildly, then wake up screaming of pain and needles and demanding that the doctors leave him alone. Sometimes, more rarely, he cried out against the darkness, complaining of suffocating and needing every light to be turned on in the house. It both fascinated Catherine and frightened her that her personal nightmare had become her son’s own.
Prudence would tend to him. As had Beatrice before her, and Margaret, Sonya, Chloë, and Abigail before that. So many faces, Catherine barely recalled them all. Of course she remembered Abby, who had been the first. Jimmy had hired her when Nathan was only one week old. Catherine hadn’t wanted a nanny. Catherine had thought she’d care for her son herself, even nurse. But a week later, she roamed the house in a sleepless daze, the baby continuously vomiting on her milk-stained breast. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t eat. She compulsively turned on lights.
She held this creature, so small and helpless he mewed more than he cried, and she was overwhelmed by his sheer vulnerability, by all the things that could go wrong. Babies died. They starved, they were beaten, they died of the flu. They fell out windows, they died of SIDS. They were snatched out of cars, they were lured away from playgrounds, they were abused by priests. And there were fates worse than that. She knew of those, too. How some adults were actually excited by the cries of small children. How even a baby, a weak, helpless baby, could fall into the wrong hands and through no fault of its own, become a predator’s toy.
How many babies were crying of hunger right now and being beaten for their trouble? How many babies were looking up hopefully into the eyes of their caretakers and receiving a smack to the side of the head? How many infants were born each day, innocent, boundless, sweet, only to be ruined by the very people who had given them life?
She wasn’t going to be able to handle this. The world was too evil and Nathan too small. He would need her and she would fail him and that would destroy her once and for all.
She couldn’t bear to hold him, but she couldn’t stand to put him down. She couldn’t bear to love him, but she couldn’t stand to be apart. She was disintegrating into a million and a half tiny little shards, a sleep-deprived new mother, roaming the halls with her newborn son and quietly falling apart.
On the seventh day, Jimmy appeared with a young girl in tow. He explained it to Catherine gently, speaking slowly and using small words, which was about all she could understand. Abby would take Nathan now. Abby would feed him. Abby would tend to him. Catherine should go to bed. Jimmy had a glass of juice for her. And two pills. All she had to do was swallow and things would be better.
So that’s how it happened the first time. Catherine traded her baby for a dose of Valium. After that, it wasn’t so hard to spend a few days at a spa, then a week in Paris, two weeks in Rome.
The first nanny arrived, and Catherine had been visiting her child ever since.
Abby had done well by Nathan. Gotten him on a soy-based formula that briefly settled his finicky stomach. She read him his first story, earned his first smile, watched him take his first step. In the evenings, Catherine would hear them down the hall, Abby reading Goodnight Moon in her soft lilting voice, Nathan making small, snuggly murmurs as he curled up against her chest.
At Nathan’s first birthday party, he’d fallen down. When Catherine tried to scoop him up, he’d screamed harder and, in front of all the parents, demanded his nanny. Then he’d flung his arms around Abby’s shoulders and buried his face against her neck.
Catherine fired the woman the very next day. And Nathan had cried for a month.
After Abby had come Chloë, another one of Jimmy’s choices. She was a petite, generously curved Frenchwoman, and Catherine hadn’t even been surprised to come home and find her and Jimmy in bed. What did you expect when your husband brought home a “nanny” who by her own admission had never changed a diaper?
Catherine took over the hiring after that. She stuck to older women, true professionals who knew the ropes and could maintain a certain distance from their young charge. They were too mature to appeal to Jimmy, too respectful to comment on how much time Catherine spent away from her son, and too self-righteous to ever know of the nights Catherine stood in Nathan’s room, watching her frail son sleep and feeling her heart beat wildly in her chest.
Nathan had made it all the way to four years old now, and still sometimes in her mind’s eye, Catherine would see a beat-up blue Chevy turning down their street: Hey, boy, I’m looking for a lost dog.
Of course, Nathan didn’t need a stranger to haunt his dreams. The danger for Nathan had come from right between these four walls.
Two a.m. She should go to sleep. She already knew she wouldn’t. The press remained parked outside, impatient vultures still digging for dirt. From time to time, squad cars passed as well. Checking the scene, monitoring the press, staring up at the fourth floor.
She had given her first statement to the police within hours of Jimmy’s death. She’d been proud of herself, cool, calm, and collected. My husband has a temper. He drinks, he gets angry; this time, he found a gun. What had we fought about? Does it matter? Does anything justify a man aiming a gun at his wife? Yes, I was afraid. In all honesty, Detective, I thought I was dead.
They had wanted to talk to Nathan as well. She’d put them off. My son is too tired, too traumatized, too sick. It had bought her some time. For now.
The investigators had spent most of last night and this morning in the master bedroom. Now the room was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. Parts of the carpet had been removed. Shattered glass gathered. Bedding whisked away. Plastic sheeting covered the hole where the sliding glass door used to be. The cold wind sliced effortlessly through the plastic, however, and carried a host of smells to the rest of the house.
Blood. Urine. Gunpowder. Death.
Her neighbors probably thought she was crazy to stay. The press and police, too. Maybe she was traumatizing Nathan. Or maybe she was insane. Truth of the matter was, where else did they have to go? Her father didn’t know how to handle these kinds of situations; arriving at her in-laws would be akin to stepping into the lion’s den.
Or maybe there was something more sinister at work. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to leave. This house, this room, it was all of Jimmy she had left. And though no one would believe her, least of all her in-laws, in her own way, she had loved Jimmy. She had hoped, she had prayed with what little faith she had, that it would not come to this.
Now she ducked under the crime-scene tape. Now she entered the master bedroom, a chill, ghostly chamber of black and white. Gauzy curtains stirred, while the plastic over the shattered slider heaved and sighed. The smells were richer here. A pungent rusty odor that made her nose recoil even as it triggered memory.
She crossed to the bed, running her hand over the bare mattress and staring at the darker splatters of blood. She lay down in the middle of the vast empty space.
Jimmy seeing her for the first time and flashing that crooked grin in the middle of the crowded department store. “Hey, perfume lady. What’s a guy gotta do to get a little spritz?”
Jimmy making love to her, then, afterwards, realizing that she hadn’t felt a thing and trying to be kind about it. “Hey, honey, you know what? We’ll just have to practice more.”
Jimmy fumbling the ring as he got down on one knee to propose. Jimmy staggering wildly as he carried her over the threshold. Jimmy promising her nine, ten children. Jimmy deliriously happy when she became pregnant with their first. Jimmy showering her with diamonds and pearls. Jimmy ta
king her on whirlwind shopping blitzes where he bought out half the city.
Jimmy sleeping with the maid, the nanny, her friends. Jimmy heading to the bar the first time she had to rush Nathan to the emergency room. Jimmy putting his fist through the wall when she dared to say he should drink less. Jimmy slamming his fist into her ribs when she dared to say something might be wrong with Nathan.
Then, six months ago, Jimmy coming upon the cache of letters written to her from her lover. He’d entered their bedroom at four a.m. He’d flipped her onto her stomach. He’d pinned her to the mattress, and then he’d sodomized her.
“Maybe I should’ve tried that in the very beginning,” he’d said when he was done. “Maybe you would’ve felt something then.”
Hours later, they’d sat across from one another at the breakfast table and made small talk about the weather.
Catherine curled up on the bare mattress now. She put her hand on the empty spot where her husband used to lie. And she remembered the last look on his face, during that instant right when the bullet found the tender spot behind his ear and right before it came shattering out the hard bone at his temple—an expression that was not handsome, not dashing, not charming, but totally, utterly betrayed.
And she wondered now, what had disappointed him most—his own imminent death, or the fact that he hadn’t been able to kill her first?
A crash sounded from Nathan’s room. Prudence started calling her name and Catherine scrambled down the hall, as surprised as anyone by the tearstains on her face.
At the hospital. Orders hastily shouted and promptly obeyed. One sharp needle and a nurse had drawn blood. Another sharp poke and the IV was in place. A third probing stab and Nathan had been catheterized.
Nathan’s twenty-six-pound frame writhed in the middle of the hospital bed, jerking continuously as he fought to sit. His cheeks were on fire, sweat rolling down his limbs. His abdomen protruded painfully while his chest appeared concave as he gasped and heaved for breath.