“No, I better get back to work.”
She walked down the hall to her own office. When she’d told Warren that everything was on track, that hadn’t been quite true. The Penn Law on-campus interviews had consumed a whole day, and that was time she would need to scramble to make up. Her PC was full of documents that needed reviewing, briefs that needed writing, and emails that needed answering. And her phone was already ringing.
She recognized the internal extension and picked up. “Jessie Black.”
“Hey, Jessie. There are some people here to see you. Carrie Keeley and Maynard Travers. They say you’re expecting them?”
Jessie let out a breath. Maybe giving the girl her business card the day before had not been her brightest idea. Should she turn her away? She considered that, but found herself unable to do it. “Tell them I’ll be ready in a minute. Let me grab a conference room.”
“When I gave you my card, I wasn’t expecting you to drop by the next morning,” Jessie said as she ushered her visitors into a conference room. “I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you that I didn’t already say yesterday. And don’t you have school?”
Carrie shrugged. “School kind of sucks when the death of your woman-beating dad is all over the news.” She walked to one of the conference table chairs and sat down. She wore jeans and a sweater—different than the one she’d worn yesterday, but equally baggy. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with a few strands escaping to spiral around her face. There was no mistaking her beauty, although it was dimmed by the distress in her eyes. She didn’t bother to introduce her companion, who stood stiffly by the door.
“Your name is Maynard Travers?” Jessie said. He looked too old to be one of Carrie’s friends—mid-thirties at the youngest. He wore khaki pants and a plaid button-down shirt. “Are you a friend of the family?”
“Kind of.” Travers shifted his weight awkwardly, then cleared his throat.
“He’s my dad’s sponsor,” Carrie said. “From Domestic Violence Anonymous.”
Jessie had heard of the program. The victim advocates who worked with the DA’s office sometimes referred people to it. It was a twelve-step program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, for men and women dealing with violent behavior.
“I didn’t know Corbin Keeley participated in the program,” Jessie said.
“That’s the anonymous part,” Carrie said, with only a trace of sarcasm in her voice. She looked at Travers. “Tell her.”
The man’s discomfort seemed to deepen. “I, uh.” His voice faltered.
“You were Corbin’s sponsor?” Jessie prompted.
“Everyone in the program gets one—someone with experience, available to help with the process. I’ve been in the program for, ah, six years. I was Corbin’s sponsor for about a year. Before him, I was sponsor for a couple other guys. I’m here because Carrie wants me to tell you what I told her. Corbin stuck to the program. Better than anyone I’d sponsored before. He was really dedicated to making it work. He never missed a meeting. He studied all of the literature. He even did the prayers. I do not believe the stories on the news. I don’t believe Corbin was hurting his new girlfriend.”
“Okay?” Carrie said, as if this settled everything. “Do you believe me now? Brooke Raines is a murderer. Are you going to prosecute her?”
Jessie looked from Carrie to Travers, and back to Carrie, gathering her thoughts. “I appreciate that you came to see me. Mr. Travers, I appreciate your candor and your willingness to share this sensitive information with me. But the police already conducted an investigation. They concluded that the shooting was in self-defense. I’m sorry, but that’s not something I can brush aside just because you don’t believe it’s true.”
Carrie launched from her chair. Her face twisted in anger. “This is bullshit! I’m telling you the truth, and you don’t care. This whole system, it’s a joke! You don’t care about justice. You certainly don’t care about my dad.”
Before Jessie could respond, Carrie shoved past her, flung the conference room door open, and left. Maynard Travers offered a sheepish shrug.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “She’s a kid, you know? She doesn’t understand how things work in the real world. I’ll make sure she gets home okay.”
After they were gone, Jessie returned to her office too distraught to focus on her work. She was angry with herself, frustrated. A teenage girl in pain had come to her for help, and how had she handled it? Terribly. Even worse than that, Travers’s words echoed in her mind: She doesn’t understand how things work in the real world. Implying that in the real world, a daughter shouldn’t expect justice for her father. That wasn’t something she wanted Carrie Keeley to understand. It wasn’t what Jessie believed.
She chewed her lip. She knew she should try to put all of this out of her head and focus on her work—on the murder cases, all of them supported by police investigations, that she needed to handle. But she couldn't.
Jessie thanked her Uber driver and hiked up the walk to Carrie Keeley’s house. Carrie lived with her mother in a large colonial in Manayunk, a pleasant neighborhood in the northwestern section of the city. When Jessie had called Nina Long (the former Ms. Keeley, who’d reverted to her maiden name after the divorce), the woman had seemed cold and distant, but had reluctantly agreed to a visit when pressed. Now, as the car sped away and she faced the house, she wondered if coming here had been a bad idea.
Everything’s on track, she’d told Warren earlier that day. But what track, exactly?
The front door opened. Carrie Keeley stood in the doorway. As Jessie approached her, the girl tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “My mom said you were coming. Did you change your mind? About my dad?”
“I didn’t like how we left off this morning. I want to talk.”
Carrie frowned, but took a step backward and beckoned Jessie into the house. Jessie followed her through a small foyer and into a kitchen. Everything about the room felt expensive, from the smooth hardwood floors to the custom cabinets. Stainless steel appliances gleamed under bright lights. There was a woman seated at the table. She looked to be in her late-forties or early fifties. She regarded Jessie with pursed lips and a tightened jaw.
“This is my mom,” Carrie said.
Jessie approached the woman and extended a hand. “We spoke on the phone. I’m Jessie Black.”
“Yes.” The older woman shook her hand, but did not rise from her seat. She had close-cut brown hair, a slightly lighter shade than her daughter’s. Carrie pulled out the chair next to her mother, causing its legs to squeal against the floor. The woman flinched, but Carrie didn’t seem to notice. She dropped into the chair next to her. Side-by-side, the similarity in their faces was so striking that Jessie would have guessed they were mother and daughter even if she hadn’t already known.
Jessie sat down across from them. Nina Long’s face looked smooth, flawless, but in her mind, Jessie could also see her face the way it had looked in the photograph that had burned itself into her memory. She realized she was staring, looked away, and cleared her throat.
“I understand Carrie tried to convince you that Corbin was murdered,” the woman said. She had a clipped, almost aristocratic manner of speech, and Jessie imagined she’d filled her role well as the wife of a city councilman before she’d divorced him. “I told her that would be a waste of time, but….” She shrugged, as if to say, kids, what can you do?
“It’s never a waste of time to speak your mind,” Jessie said.
“Well, maybe not. But no one is going to bring charges against that woman, are they?” Nina seemed calm, but Jessie noticed her hands vibrating where they rested on the table, betraying at least some emotion beneath the smooth veneer. And there was something … skittish about her. Like the way she’d flinched at the sound of the chair a moment before. Jessie had observed that sort of body language in other victims of domestic abuse, so seeing it now didn’t surprise her, but it did make her sad. Here was a woman who was clearl
y still suffering, yet her daughter was focused on avenging the man who’d terrorized her.
Carrie looked from her mother to Jessie, and her eyes flashed. “I don’t know what you’re doing here unless you’re willing to prosecute my dad’s murderer!”
Nina shot her daughter a warning look. “Carrie—”
Jessie said, “It’s okay.” She offered a sympathetic smile to both women. Neither returned it.
“Why don’t you tell us why you are here,” Nina said.
“Thanks.” Jessie felt like she was in unexplored territory. After over a decade in the DA’s office, she was used to talking to the family and friends of homicide victims. Forming good relationships with these survivors was both critical to her work as a prosecutor and personally fulfilling to her. Any death of a loved one was emotionally traumatic, but a murder increased the trauma to another level. The people left behind were emotionally devastated. There wasn’t much Jessie could do for them—she was a lawyer, not a therapist—but she always did what she could. She listened to them, even when their shock made communication difficult. She made sure to keep them apprised of the case on a daily basis and to check in with them after even the most routine hearings, whether the news was good or bad. She scheduled sessions for them with victim advocates. She gave them tours of the courtroom and prepped them for what they would hear and see there. Most importantly, she made sure they understood that she was on their side. That she was fighting for them and for the victim they loved. But she couldn’t say any of that today. And she didn’t know what to say instead.
“You’re the one who asked for this meeting,” Nina said after a few seconds of awkward silence.
“I’m here because Carrie is clearly very upset about the decision not to prosecute Brooke Raines. It’s important to me that she—that both of you—understand the facts. This is a case of self-defense, which, under the law—”
“No, it’s not,” Nina said.
“What?” Jessie came up short. She’d expected to face more resistance from Carrie, but had assumed that Nina, as a victim of Corbin Keeley’s violence, would understand the unpleasant reality of the situation. Her ex-husband hadn’t changed. If anything, he’d gotten worse.
“The self-defense claim is a lie,” Nina said. “Just like Carrie told you.”
“How can you of all people say that?”
Nina’s stare was unwavering. “Because I know Corbin. I know how hard he worked to change, after our divorce. He stopped drinking. He joined a program. He changed. This woman he was dating, Brooke Raines, is lying. And the police are simply taking her at her word, assuming she’s telling the truth because of Corbin’s sordid past.”
“The police didn’t simply take her at her word, or assume anything,” Jessie said. “There was a full investigation.”
“How do you know?”
Jessie opened her mouth to answer, but no words came. How did she know? “Why would Brooke Raines lie? If Corbin Keeley really changed, like you believe, why would she feel the need for a gun? Why would she shoot him?”
Nina offered another shrug. “Good questions. Did the police ask them?”
“I don’t think the police asked any questions,” Carrie said.
Jessie felt tendrils of doubt in her mind. How could these women be so utterly confident that the police had gotten it wrong? Siding with a loved one was natural, but Nina had personally experienced Keeley’s attacks, and still seemed certain that Raines couldn’t have been justified in shooting him. Were they in denial? The thought was frightening.
“I’m sure the police did their job,” she said, “but if it would make you feel better, I can talk to the lead detective and take a look at the police report. I can come back to you after I’ve seen exactly what the police found and how they reached their conclusion, and then I’ll be able to tell you firsthand how thorough the investigation was.”
A look of relief filled Carrie’s face. “Thank you!”
Nina, looking less enthusiastic, simply nodded.
“But,” Jessie said, “you need to consider carefully whether you really want me to do this.”
“You know I want you to,” Carrie said.
“Think about this for a minute. If I find what I expect to find, that the evidence supports self-defense, that would mean that your father, as much as you love him, wasn’t able to change. Some people can’t conquer their demons, no matter how hard they try. Do you really want to learn that your father couldn’t conquer his?”
“I won’t need to,” Carrie said, “because you’re going to find out that Brooke Raines’s story is a lie.”
“Nina….” Jessie said, looking to the girl’s mother.
Nina did not look concerned. “We’re not afraid of the truth.”
Jessie nodded. “Then I guess I have some work to do on this. I’ll be in touch soon.”
She forced a confident smile, but on the inside, she wondered what the hell she was doing. She wasn’t a psychiatrist. Would her intervention help the women—which was what she wanted—or would she only wind up making things worse? Rising from the table, she knew that whatever the answer was, there was no turning back now. She was committed.
3
The Roundhouse, the headquarters of the Philadelphia Police Department, had acquired its nickname by virtue of its curving shape. The building had become as familiar to Jessie as the DA’s office and the courthouse. It was here that the police built the evidentiary foundations of the cases she handled. Or, in the case of Corbin Keeley’s death, didn’t handle.
She rode a creaking elevator that smelled of body odor and disinfectant, walked past an overflowing trash can and a wall of wanted posters, and entered the Homicide Division’s squad room. Only about a quarter of the desks were being used at the moment—murder was a nonstop business in Philly, and most of the detectives were out at crime scenes, hunting down witnesses, or testifying in court. She’d checked ahead of time to make sure the lead detective on the Keeley investigation, Detective Kyle Fulco, would be here. But she’d never met him and didn’t know what he looked like.
“Jessie Black,” a familiar voice boomed to her left and she jumped as a man approached her. His was a face she recognized—Toby Novak, a veteran detective who’d been here for as long as anyone could remember.
“How are you doing, Toby?”
He smiled warmly. “Living the dream. If you stopped by to see Emily, you just missed her.”
Emily Graham, another detective in the Homicide Division, was Novak’s partner. When Jessie first met her during the investigation of a school shooting, she and Graham had not exactly hit it off, but the heart-wrenching case had brought them together. Now she considered Graham one of her closest friends.
“I’m actually looking for someone else,” she said. “Kyle Fulco.”
Novak made a face. “Full-of-shit Fulco? Look no further.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of a cluster of desks to their left. At one of the desks, a man sat in a swivel chair, one shoe propped against the edge of the desk, twirling a pen between his fingers as he stared into a boxy monitor that looked older than Toby. “Right over there,” Novak said. “Hard at work as usual.”
“I called earlier and told him I’d be stopping by.”
“I’m sure he appreciated an excuse to hang around and surf the web all day.”
Jessie studied Novak’s wry expression and tried to guess if his criticism was serious or just sarcastic cop humor. She couldn’t tell. His words might mean nothing. She’d known cops who shared a bond stronger than blood but who spent their days ribbing one another mercilessly. Still, given her reasons for being here, his dismissive tone troubled her. “Full-of-shit Fulco?”
Novak shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to mind the nickname.”
“I’m sure he loves it,” she said dryly.
She crossed the squad room. Fulco seemed to sense her approach, dropping his foot from the desk and turning to watch her. When she reached his work area, he rose from the chair an
d extended his hand. “I guess you’re Jessie?”
They shook. “Good to meet you,” she said.
“Likewise. I’ve heard good things about you.”
“Really?” She thought it best not to mention what she’d just heard about him from Toby Novak.
“You’re the rising star at the DA’s office, right?”
“I don’t know about that.” She hoped he couldn’t see the blush she felt in her neck and cheeks. She’d worked hard to advance through the ranks at the DA’s office to become a homicide prosecutor, but even though she knew she was good at what she did, she still felt like she was fighting hard to justify her place there every day.
A crooked grin formed on his narrow face. “On the phone, you said you wanted to talk about Keeley?”
“Yes, if you have a few minutes. Could you walk me through the investigation?”
His smile faded slightly. “Everything’s in my report.”
“I know, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
“Why? You think I missed something?”
“No.” The conversation was veering in a bad direction. She forced a smile. “I’m sure you were thorough—especially with a high-profile case involving the shooting of a city councilman. The reason I’m here is someone close to Keeley approached me. They’re … well, they seem in denial about Keeley. About what he was capable of. I want to assure them that our reasons for not charging his shooter are sound.”
“So assure them.”
“I will. After you bring me up to speed.”
“Is that really necessary?”
Jessie Black Box Set 2 Page 2