by Lisa Gardner
“Can I ask you a question?” Hamilton asked suddenly.
“Me?” Startled, D.D. blinked at the lieutenant colonel, then nodded.
“Do you fraternize with your fellow detectives? Grab a beer, share cold pizza, catch the game at one another’s homes?”
“Sure. But I don’t have a family,” D.D. pointed out. “And I’m older. Tessa Leoni … you’re talking about a young, pretty mom dealing with a barrack of entirely male officers. She’s your only female trooper, right?”
“In Framingham, yes.”
D.D. shrugged. “Not a lot of women in blue. If Trooper Leoni wasn’t feeling the brotherly love, can’t say I blame her.”
“We never had any complaints of sexual harassment,” Hamilton stated immediately.
“Not all women feel like doing the paperwork.”
Hamilton didn’t like this assertion. His face shuttered up, he looked intimidating, harsh even.
“At the barracks level,” he stated crisply, “we encouraged Leoni’s commanding officer to create more opportunities for her to feel included. Let’s just say it met with mixed results. No doubt it is difficult to be the lone female in a dominantly male organization. On the other hand, Leoni herself did not appear inclined to bridge the divide. To be blunt, she was perceived as a loner. And even officers who made an effort to befriend her—”
“Such as Trooper Lyons?” D.D. interrupted.
“Such as Trooper Lyons,” Hamilton agreed. “They tried and failed. Teamwork is about winning the hearts and minds of your fellow officers. In that regard, Trooper Leoni got it half right.”
“Speaking of hearts and minds.” Bobby sounded apologetic, as if sorry to reduce the LT down to the level of gossipmonger. “Any reports of Leoni being involved with another officer? Or perhaps an officer who was interested in her, whether she returned the interest or not?”
“I did some asking. Trooper Leoni’s closest associate seems to be Trooper Shane Lyons, though that relationship is more through the husband than Leoni.”
“Did you know him?” D.D. asked curiously. “The husband, Brian Darby? Or her daughter, Sophie?”
“I knew them both,” Hamilton answered gravely, surprising her. “At various cookouts and family functions over the years. Sophie is a pretty little girl. Very precocious, that’s my memory.” He frowned, seemed to be wrestling with something inside himself. “You could tell Trooper Leoni loved her very much,” he said abruptly. “At least, that’s what I always thought when I saw them together. The way Tessa held her daughter, doted on her. The thought …”
Hamilton looked away. He cleared his throat, then clasped his hands on the desk before him. “Sad, sad business,” the LT murmured to no one in particular.
“What about Brian Darby?” Bobby asked.
“Knew him even longer than Tessa. Brian was a good friend of Trooper Lyons. He started appearing at cookouts a good eight, nine years ago. Even joined us a couple of times to see the Boston Bruins, attended poker night every now and then.”
“Didn’t know you and Trooper Lyons were so close,” D.D. stated, arching a brow.
Hamilton gave her a stern look. “If my troopers invite me to a function, I always try to attend. Camaraderie is important, not to mention that informal gatherings are invaluable for keeping the lines of communication open between troopers and the chain of command. Having said that, I probably join Trooper Lyons and his ‘posse,’ as he calls them, three or four times a year.”
“What did you think of Brian?” Bobby asked.
“Followed hockey, also liked the Red Sox. Made him a stand-up guy in my book.”
“Talk to him much?”
“Hardly at all. Most of our outings were of the male-bonding variety—catching a game, playing a game, or betting on a game. And yes,” he turned to D.D. as if already anticipating her complaint, “it’s possible such activities made Trooper Leoni feel excluded. Though from what I remember, she also follows the Red Sox, with the whole family attending many of the games.”
D.D. scowled. She hated it when she was so transparent.
“And Trooper Leoni’s alcoholism,” Bobby asked quietly. “That ever come up?”
“I was aware of the situation,” Hamilton replied just as evenly. “To the best of my knowledge, Leoni had successfully completed a twelve-step program and remained on track. Again, no history of incidents or complaints.”
“What about that whole matter of her shooting and killing someone when she was sixteen?” D.D. asked.
“That,” Hamilton said heavily, “is gonna bite us on the ass.”
The bluntness of his statement took D.D. by surprise. She had a moment, then got it. The press digging deeper into Boston’s latest femme fatale, demanding to know what the state police were thinking, hiring a trooper who already had a history of violence …
Yep, the LT would have a lot of explaining to do.
“Look,” the commanding officer said now. “Trooper Leoni was never charged with a crime. She met all of our candidacy requirements. To refuse her application—that would’ve been discrimination. And for the record, she passed the Academy with flying colors and has performed exemplary in the line of duty. We had no way of knowing, no way of anticipating.…”
“You think she did it?” D.D. asked. “You knew her husband, her child. Think Tessa killed them both?”
“I think the longer I stay in this job, the less I’m surprised by all the things that should surprise me.”
“Any talk of marital problems between her and Brian?” Bobby asked.
“I would be the last to know,” Hamilton assured him.
“Noticeable changes in behavior, particularly the past three weeks?”
Hamilton tilted his head to the side. “Why the past three weeks?”
Bobby merely studied his superior officer. But D.D. understood. Because Brian Darby had only been home for the past three weeks, and according to his personal trainer, he’d returned from his last tour of duty not very happy with life.
“There was one situation that comes to mind,” Hamilton said abruptly. “Not involving Trooper Leoni, but her husband.”
D.D. and Bobby exchanged a glance.
“Probably six months ago,” Hamilton continued, not really looking at them. “Let’s see … November. That sounds right. Trooper Lyons arranged an outing to Foxwoods. Many of us attended, including Brian Darby. Personally, I took in a show, blew my fifty bucks in the casino, and called it a night. But Brian … When the time came, we couldn’t get him to leave. One more round, one more round, this would be the one. He and Shane ended up in an argument, with Shane physically pulling him off the casino floor. The other guys laughed it off. But … It seemed pretty clear to me that Brian Darby should not return to Foxwoods.”
“He had a gambling problem?” Bobby asked with a frown.
“I’d say his interest in gaming appeared higher than average. I’d say that if Shane hadn’t yanked him away from the roulette table, Brian would still be sitting there, watching the numbers spin around.”
Bobby and D.D. exchanged glances. D.D. would like this story better if Brian didn’t have fifty grand sitting in the bank. Gambling addicts didn’t normally leave fifty grand in savings. Still, they studied the lieutenant colonel.
“Have Shane and Brian returned to Foxwoods lately?” Bobby asked.
“You would have to ask Trooper Lyons.”
“Trooper Leoni ever mention any financial stress? Ask for extra shifts, more OT hours, that sort of thing?”
“To judge by the duty logs,” Hamilton said slowly, “she’s been working more hours lately.”
But fifty grand in the bank, D.D. thought. Who needed OT when you had fifty grand in the bank?
“There is something else you probably should know,” Hamilton said quietly. “I need you to understand, this is strictly off the record. And it may have nothing to do with Trooper Leoni. But … You said the past three weeks, and as a matter of fact, we launched an internal investi
gation exactly two weeks ago: An outside auditor discovered funds had been improperly moved from the union’s account. The auditor believes the funds were embezzled, most likely from an inside source. We are trying to locate those monies now.”
D.D. went wide-eyed. “How nice of you to mention that. And to volunteer it so readily, too.”
Bobby shot her a warning glance.
“How much are we talking?” he asked in a more reasonable tone.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Missing as of two weeks ago?”
“Yes. But the embezzlement started twelve months prior, a series of payments made to an insurance company, which it turns out, doesn’t exist.”
“But the checks have been cashed,” Bobby stated.
“Each and every one,” Hamilton replied.
“Who signed for them?”
“Hard to make out. But all were deposited into the same bank account in Connecticut, which four weeks ago was closed out.”
“The fake insurance company was a shell,” D.D. determined. “Set up to receive payments, a quarter of a million dollars’ worth, then shut down.”
“That’s what the investigators believe.”
“Bank’s gotta have information for you,” Bobby said. “Same bank for all transactions?”
“The bank has been cooperating fully. It supplied us with video footage of a woman in a red baseball cap and dark sunglasses closing out the account. That has become internal affair’s biggest lead—they are pursuing a female with inside information on the troopers’ union.”
“Such as Tessa Leoni,” D.D. murmured.
The lieutenant colonel didn’t argue.
23
If you want someone dead, prison is the perfect place to do it. Just because the Suffolk County Jail was minimum security didn’t mean it wasn’t filled with violent offenders. The convicted murderer who’d just served twenty years at the state maximum security prison might finish up his or her county sentence here, completing eighteen months for burglary or simple assault that had been in addition to the homicide charge. Maybe my roommate Erica was locked up for dealing drugs, or turning tricks, or petty theft. Or maybe she’d killed the last three women who’d tried to get between her and her meth.
When I asked the question, she just smiled, showing off twin rows of black teeth.
Unit 1-9-2 held thirty-four other women just like her.
As pretrial detainees, we were kept separate from the general inmate population, in a locked-down unit where food came to us, the nurse came to us, and programming came to us. But within the unit, there was plenty of intermingling, creating multiple opportunities for violence.
Erica walked me through the daily schedule. Morning started at seven a.m., with “count time,” when the CO would conduct head count. Then we would be served breakfast in our cells, followed by a couple of hours “rec time”—we could leave our cells and roam unshackled around the unit, maybe hang out in the commons area watching TV, maybe shower (three showers located right off the commons area, where everyone could also enjoy that show), or ride the squeaky exercise bike (verbal insults from your fellow detainees not included).
Most women, I quickly realized, spent their time playing cards or gossiping at the round stainless steel tables in the center of the unit. A woman would join a table, pick up one rumor, share two more, then visit a neighbor’s cell, where she could be the first to provide the big scoop. And around and around the women went, table to table, cell to cell. The whole atmosphere reminded me of summer camp, where everyone wore the same clothes, slept in bunks, and obsessed over boys.
Eleven a.m., everyone returned to their assigned cell for the second session of count time, followed by lunch. More rec time. Count time again at three. Dinner around five. Final count time at eleven, followed by lights out, which was not to be confused with quiet time. In prison, there was no such thing as quiet time, and in a corrections facility that housed both men and women, there was definitely no such thing as quiet time.
The females, I quickly learned, occupied the top three floors of the Suffolk County “tower.” Some enterprising woman (or man, I suppose) determined that the plumbing pipes from the upper floors connected to the lower floors. Meaning that a female detainee—say, my roommate Erica—could stick her head inside the white porcelain toilet bowl and proceed to “talk” to a random male on the lower floor. Though, talking isn’t really what any man wants to do. Think of it more as the prison version of sexting.
Erica would make lewd comments. Nine floors beneath us, a faceless man would groan. Erica would make more lewd comments: Harder, faster, come on, baby, I’m rubbing my tits for you, can you feel me rubbing my tits for you? (I made that up: Erica didn’t have tits. Meth had dissolved all the fat and tissue from her bones, including her breasts. Black teeth, black nails, no boobs. Erica should be starring in a public service announcement targeting teenage girls: This is your body on meth.)
Faceless man nine floors below us, however, wouldn’t know that. In his mind, Erica was probably some buxom blonde, or maybe the hot Latina chick he’d spotted once in Medical. He would whack off happily. Erica would start round two.
As would the woman in the cell beside us, and the cell beside her and the cell beside her. All. Night. Long.
Prison is a social place.
The Suffolk County Jail involves multiple buildings. Sadly, only males in the lower floors of the tower could communicate via the toilets with the females on the top three levels. Obviously, this posed a great hardship for the men in other buildings.
The enterprising males in Building 3, however, figured out that we could peer down at their windows from our cells. As Erica explained to me, first thing in the morning our job was to check for messages posted in the windows of Building 3—say, an artful arrangement of socks, underwear, and T-shirts forming a series of numbers or letters. Only so much could be spelled out with socks, obviously, so a code had been developed. We would write down the code, which would direct the women of 1-9-2 to various books during library time, where a more complete message could be recovered (fuck me, fuck me, do me, do me, oh you’re so pretty can you feel me get so hard …).
Prison poetry, Erica told me with a sigh. Spelling wasn’t her strong suit, she confessed, but she always did her best to write back, leaving behind a fresh note (yes, yes, YES!) in the same novel.
In other words, inmates could communicate between units, female pretrial detainees to males in general pop and vice versa. Most likely, then, the entire prison population knew of my presence, and an inexperienced detainee in one unit could gain assistance from a more hardened inmate from another.
I wondered how it would happen.
Say, when my entire unit was escorted down nine floors to the lower-level library. Or the couple of times we’d go to the gym. Or during visitation, which was also a group activity, one huge room filled with a dozen tables where everyone intermingled.
Easy enough for a fellow inmate to saddle up beside me, drive a shiv through my ribs, and disappear.
Accidents happen, right? Especially in prison.
I did my best to think it through. If it were me, a female detainee trying to get at a trained police officer, how would I do it? On second thought, maybe not overt violence. One, a cop should be able to fend off an attack. Two, the few times the unit was on the move—walking to the library or the gym or visitation—we were escorted by the SERT team, a bunch of hulking COs prepared to pounce at a moment’s notice.
No, if it were me, I’d go with poison.
Time-honored female weapon of choice. Not hard to smuggle in. Each detainee was allowed to spend fifty bucks a week at the canteen. Most seemed to blow their wad on Ramen noodles, tennis shoes, and toiletries. With outside help, no problem stashing a little rat poison in the seasoning packet of the Ramen noodles, the cap of the newly purchased hand lotion, etc., etc.
A moment’s distraction and Erica could stir it into my dinner. Or later, out in t
he commons area when another detainee, Sheera, offered me peanut butter on toast.
Arsenic could be combined into lotions, hair products, toothpaste. Every time I moisturized my skin, washed my hair, brushed my teeth …
Is this how you go crazy? Realizing all the ways you could die?
And if you did, how few people would care?
Eight twenty-three p.m. Sitting alone on a thin mattress in front of a thickly barred window. Sun long gone. Gazing out at the frigid darkness beyond the glass, while behind me, the relentless fluorescent lights burned too bright.
And wishing for just an instant that I could bend back those bars, open up the high window and, nine stories above the churning city of Boston, step out into the brisk March night and see if I could fly.
Let it all go. Fall into the darkness there.
I pressed my hand against the glass. Stared into the deep dark night. And wondered if somewhere Sophie was gazing out at the same darkness. If she could feel me trying to reach her. If she knew that I was still here and that I loved her and I was going to find her. She was my Sophie and I would save her, just as I had done when she’d locked herself in the trunk.
But first, we both had to be brave.
Brian had to die. That’s what the man had told me, Saturday morning in my kitchen. Brian had been a very bad boy and he had to die. But Sophie and I might live. I just had to do as I was told.
They had Sophie. To get her back, I would take the blame for killing my husband. They even had a few ideas on the subject. I could set things up, argue self-defense. Brian would still be dead, but I’d get off and Sophie would be miraculously found and returned to me. I’d probably have to quit the force, but hey, I’d have my daughter.
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, my ears ringing from gunfire, my nostrils still flared with the scent of gunpowder and blood, this had seemed a good deal. I’d said yes, to anything, to everything.
I’d just wanted Sophie.
“Please,” I’d begged, begged in my own home. “Don’t hurt my daughter. I’ll do it. Just keep her safe.”