Say No More

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  The stuffy main hallway of One Pemberton Square was in half-light, doors closed. A row of framed drawings of stern-looking men, all high-collared and mustached, some with pipes, lined the wallpapered hall to room 412D. As she passed, the portraits changed to photos, men with shorter hair and Windsor-knotted ties, then, evoking Jane’s thumbs-up salute, to a woman in a floppy-bowed blouse, followed by a darker–skinned woman with an artfully arranged scarf. The last photo on the wall showed a pale woman with a pageboy, careful makeup, and a pin-striped suit. Krista Santora, the current DA.

  The hallway gallery had plenty of room for more photos. If Santora screwed up, or fell out of favor, or lost the next election, another framed face would take her place. Balancing law and order with power was always in the forefront for DAs. Keeping the public happy often meant putting miscreants away. Even if sometimes they were not exactly guilty.

  “Jane!”

  The voice came from behind a just-opening door, a few steps farther down the hallway. A pin-spot light hit McCusker—in his signature bespoke suit, expensive for a taxpayer-salaried employee.

  “Thank you so much for coming this late. I’m sure you had other plans.”

  Anything but being here, Jane thought.

  “No problem,” she said.

  Room 412D, institutional neutral with predictable furniture. Red accordion files lined the wall to the left of McCusker’s desk, with cardboard boxes along the right. He pointed her to a ladder-back chair, its beige woven seat frayed and sagging.

  “Apologize for the, uh, digs,” McCusker said. “We use what we’re given—taxpayer dollars and all.” His phone buzzed, and he shrugged, apologizing. “Gotta take this.”

  “No problem,” Jane said again. Let’s get this over with, she thought.

  Truth was, the hard line between journalism and law enforcement was a dilemma some couldn’t understand. Both professions sought justice, but they required separate—sometimes opposite—ways of achieving it. Once a journalist took sides in a battle, or abandoned objectivity, it was impossible to be neutral again. That’s what Jane thought, at least. Her boss clearly didn’t.

  McCusker was still on the phone, scowling, talking in monosyllabic code: yes, no, fine. “That’s what I’m attempting to find out,” he said. He flickered a glance at her.

  She pretended to be looking out the open window. Across Pemberton Square, a few lights illuminated a row of windows in the limestone façade of the newish Superior Court. The night had darkened, finally, and the end of August had that tender feel of a closing, a change in the works, even though the breeze that riffled into the room still held the unmistakable warmth of a New England summer night.

  She felt like a bug on a pin, caught and spiked and without any choice. Sometimes you made a debatable decision, took one little step over the line, and it seemed fine. Then, the next line appeared, a little more dim, and the next one even more so, and the next moment you were somewhere you couldn’t believe you’d ever be.

  She sighed. Maybe she just had low blood sugar.

  The phone receiver rattled back into its port. McCusker cleared his throat, adjusted his yellow-striped tie, and looked at her across his desk, smiling. “Jane?”

  “Right here.” She tried to put a fraction of an edge in her voice, beyond reproach, but enough to telegraph she wasn’t going to be a doormat.

  “Good job on the fender-bender license number,” he said. “We grabbed video from a couple of surveillance cameras in the area, but it’s all black-and-white, and fuzzy as hell. So all we could get was that the car was light-colored and a sense that it was full-sized. Car was big. The delivery van’s worse off than it seemed. The driver’s okay, but the owner is pissed. Our focus is that it’s a hit-and-run. Santora’s hard-line about that, even though the property damage is not huge. Sets a precedent.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jane said. So far, so good.

  “What color was the car you saw?”

  “Silver,” Jane said.

  “Make?”

  “Cadillac.” It was on the surveillance tape. They could figure that out, Jane knew, no matter how fuzzy it was.

  “Yeah.” McCusker nodded. “That’s what we have, too. And a silver Caddy matches the license number you gave us. Which also gives us the driver. Well, the owner. That’s where we are now.”

  “Great.” She felt herself sitting up taller, optimism straightening her spine. Maybe this encounter wouldn’t be so bad. “Another case successfully closed.”

  And then, before she’d even mentally formed it, the question came out. “Who was it, anyway? The driver. Where’s he now? You charge him?”

  “Well,” the ADA said. “Thing is. The owner insists he wasn’t driving. That he was out of town.”

  “Really?” Oh, right, Jane thought. As convincing as I just had two beers, officer. I didn’t see the speed limit signs. I thought I was in the turn lane. That old story.

  “That old story, right?” McCusker read her mind. “And that’s why we need you to testify.”

  “Tes—?”

  “—ti-fy,” McCusker finished the word, nodding. “In court. Tomorrow.”

  “No!” She stood, fists on hips, and then sat down again. Put up both hands, conciliatory. She’d kind of yelped that no. “I mean…”

  She paused, thinking about the instructions from Marsh Tyson. She’d help McCusker, because she’d agreed, reluctantly, to do that. But testifying was a different deal. Testifying was public. It would put her in a completely indefensible position. It would be precedent-setting for other journalists, too. She’d be held up as the Judas goat, the one who caved, even if it was her station’s idea. Yes, she was still gun-shy over being unfairly fired, even though that was four years ago, and yes, possibly she was overreacting.

  But no, she wasn’t. Working reporters didn’t testify in court. She’d agreed to help Frank McCusker, but she’d never agreed to sit in a witness box and point the finger at someone. She yearned for the station’s lawyer, for anyone, to help argue her out of this. But she was on her own.

  “Maybe we can avoid that,” she said, trying to be part of the solution. “Why don’t I tell you right now what the driver looked like? That’s what my news director told me to do. I don’t like it, not at all. But if I’m required to, I can describe him. To you. Not in court. He was—”

  “No. Don’t tell me.” McCusker put up both palms, came out from behind his desk, shaking his head. “Really. Don’t. The judge has ordered what’s called a nonsuggestive identification hearing. That means you come to court, our suspect will be in the audience, or not, and you point him out. If you see him. Remember, he or she might not be there.”

  Middle-aged, Caucasian, widow’s peak, gray hair, pointy cheekbones, thin lips, clean-shaven. She mentally recited the description, the face in her head as clear as it was the moment she’d seen the guy. She’d recognize him anywhere, no problem. But this seemed …

  “Weird,” she said.

  “Not really.” McCusker laced his fingers together, touched them to his chin, then pointed two forefingers at her. “It’s all about the gaps in eyewitness identification. Eyewitness mistakes are the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions. True fact. People really think they know what they’ve seen. But so many studies, and overturned verdicts, prove they get it wrong. And if we showed you photos, like a typical lineup? You’d think it must be one of them, and your memory would change. Irrevocably. We now understand that’s how people’s brains work, so we can’t have you subject to any kind of suggestion.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen those studies,” Jane said. The 60 Minutes experiments where the “crazy person” comes running into the classroom, and after he leaves, the descriptions of him are all over the map. And a couple years ago, a Boston reporter had revealed a case where cops used a phony suspect photo in a lineup to railroad an innocent person. But this was different. Completely different. “But I—I mean, I’m sure I’d recognize him.“

  “I believ
e you. That’s why we need you. There’s a defense attorney who’s demanding the identification be unassailable. So—that’s how it’s done. Open court, face-to-face. Or, as I said, maybe not. Depending. It’ll take only a few minutes.”

  “But why does it have to be in court?” She had to push harder. “Can’t you show me a photo array?”

  McCusker shook his head. “Wish I could. But defense attorney wants the nonsuggestive, and the judge ruled in his favor.”

  From somewhere down the hall came the Doppler hum of a vacuum cleaner. McCusker looked at her, his chest rising and falling, waiting for her response. Calculating his next move. Like a reporter trying to convince someone to talk, Jane realized. And now she was in the opposite role, the convincee.

  “Let me just say…” McCusker’s voice had a quiet but persuasive tone Jane recognized. Again, she’d used it herself. He sat on the edge of his desk, planted his feet. The toes of his wingtips almost touched Jane’s black flats, and she pulled them away. “If you don’t testify? He’ll get away. There’ll be nothing we can do. The owner says it wasn’t him driving. We think it was. You’re the only one who can break the impasse.”

  “But it’s only a—”

  “There’s no ‘only a,’ Jane. There’s the law, and there’s ignoring it. My job is to make sure reckless and dangerous drivers don’t try to use the system to get away with doing damage and running away. You are all that stands between order and chaos. You saw him. You were honest and honorable enough to tell us that. Now you have to decide whether you are honorable enough to tell the court. To really make a difference.”

  McCusker’s desk phone rang. Jane flinched, then looked at it with a flash of hope. Maybe it was a reprieve. Maybe something else had happened. Maybe she was off the hook.

  McCusker ignored the phone.

  “Jane?”

  “What if I just said no?”

  “Are you saying no?”

  Could she even say no? People said no to her all the time, people like Tosca. And the Adams Bay guy this afternoon. What was Jane’s response? To ratchet up the pressure. She began to grasp why people always trotted out the reporter’s most hated excuse: “I don’t want to get involved.” Because talking made you involved.

  But truth be told, she was involved. She couldn’t “un-know” something that she’d admitted—volunteered!—she knew.

  “That means he saw you, too,” Fiola had reminded her. Now that was the least of it. If she pointed out this guy in open court, everyone on the planet, including the lawbreaking, scene-leaving, Cadillac-driving bad guy, would know who was identifying him. Jane Ryland, public figure, Channel 2 reporter. Jane Ryland, easy to find.

  She sighed, wondering what she’d decide if she had the whole day to do over.

  “Whatever,” Jane said, giving in. But what was she giving up? “Tell me when and where.”

  14

  JAKE BROGAN

  “This is a sucky idea.” DeLuca’s protest followed Jake as the two of them turned onto yet another flagstone walkway, headed to yet another Reserve brownstone. “We got nothing, and we’re gonna continue to get nothing.”

  Jake ignored his whining. They’d done well on this canvass, so DeLuca’s complaint was not only annoying, it was unjustified. It wasn’t always necessary to do a formal sit-down with a person, especially those who insisted they didn’t know anything. But sometimes human nature, that need to show how smart we are, Jake reflected now, provided him with one tidbit, one morsel, offered up to prove the speaker wasn’t completely out of the loop. Jake would put all those tidbits together, and up would come a blue-plate special of information.

  Clearly he was hungry.

  But Jake’s point had been proved at each brownstone this evening. The wary but infinitely polite residents would first shake their heads, no, they hadn’t seen anything. Or heard anything. And no, they really had nothing more to say. But when Jake pushed, just a bit, they unwittingly added their sound bites. No, they didn’t really know Avery Morgan—but wasn’t she a screenwriter from California? one asked. She had admirers, obviously, another said.

  “Yes, so we’ve heard,” Jake lied to the silver-haired woman in bright blue capris. His mother’s age. “Can you point us in the right direction regarding the admirers?”

  “Oh, dear no. Who knows about kids these days,” the woman had said.

  Kids, Jake thought. College kids? Came to see Avery?

  “Did she have visitors from, uh, Boston University?” Jake asked at the next door, questioning a tight-faced woman in a flowered dress. She kept one hand on the doorjamb as she used a tanned leg to prevent a persistent tabby from escaping.

  “BU? She taught at Adams Bay, didn’t she?” The cat made a dash, orange-striped tail swiping, but the woman was faster. Scooped up the thing, which writhed and mewled. Popcorn, Jake thought. They’d have to do something about the dog.

  “Did she?” Jake said. “Teach at Adams Bay?”

  “I’m busy now,” the cat person said. “I’m sure you can call the school.”

  “People come and go,” said the guy with the pipe. Who still smoked a pipe? “All hours.”

  “Her Adams Bay students, you mean?” Jake asked. So Avery had visitors. They’d be on the home security video. If there was a home security video. “When? I mean, what times of day? Or was it at night?”

  “We don’t really watch.” The man shook his head, puffed. “It’s The Reserve.”

  One step at a time, Jake thought. So. Avery Morgan was a teacher at Adams Bay, which Officer Pereira had probably already discovered. But Jake and D now knew her students, or someone’s students, had come to visit at all hours. They also knew Morgan’s snooty neighbors might pretend to keep themselves hidden, but in reality very little got by them.

  Jake turned the flagstone corner, headed to maybe the tenth place on the block. Streetlights were full-on now, the August moon a celestial peach. Yeah. Hungry.

  “No one likes to answer the door in the middle of the night,” DeLuca persisted, dragging his feet, voice pouty as a teenager’s. “Much less talk to the cops.”

  “There’s a possible homicide in their neighborhood, and it’s like, eight-thirty,” Jake said. “You got someplace to be?”

  “We’re on OT now,” D said. “Unauthorized. Supe Kearney will freak.” He pulled out his cell, texting as he talked. “I like the bucks as much as anyone. But I have a life. Dinner plans. Don’t you?”

  Jake did, happily, and he’d text Jane as soon as he finished with this door knock. D was right about the OT. Unlikely they’d catch a fleeing bad guy tonight, Jake had to admit, and even homicide detectives hungry for answers didn’t—couldn’t—work every minute of every day. Crime Scene was still at the Morgan House. They’d give that a good-night look before they called it a day. Start again tomorrow.

  So far, no search warrant. All the personal stuff would have to wait. He might be off the clock, but he wouldn’t forget about Avery Morgan. It was that personal stuff that got him. The books. Her garden. The little dog, snippy as the thing was, his crate broke Jake’s heart. Avery’s bed, somehow. Her home, unprepared for her absence, haunted him. She was gone, now, forever. But his job made him her champion. He wouldn’t let her down. The clues to her death were there. Somewhere.

  “One more house,” Jake said.

  EDWARD TARRANT

  The footsteps were coming closer.

  The corridor outside his office had been empty as he sneaked down to Avery’s. All the other doors in the hall had been closed, no telltale strip of light coming from beneath any of them. If Mack was on his security rounds, he might or might not stop and look into this room—the room Edward had unlocked with a key he wasn’t supposed to have. But what if the footsteps weren’t Mack’s?

  Edward snatched at Avery’s mouse, clicked the screen to black and the room to darkness. Had the monitor been on when he came in? He let his shoulders sag, hearing another footstep. The carpeting muffled the weight of it, so no way to
know if it was Mack’s heavy work boots or a student’s rubber-soled running shoes. His eyes narrowed as he rewound the mental video of his actions. Had he touched anything?

  And then, in the murky silence, surrounded by lofty bookcases and shapeless unfamiliarities and suspended time, he realized it didn’t matter. No one but Avery knew how she’d left her office. And she certainly wasn’t telling.

  Now? Only two options. Hide, or stand his ground behind her desk. Hiding was absurd—he’d be caught, and the very fact he attempted it would strand him on shaky ground. The hallway footsteps were coming closer, the tread deliberate. Purposeful. But to what purpose?

  If the door opened …

  He’d left it closed but unlocked, assuming he’d be the only one to enter her office. If the door opened, letting in the light, he’d be cordial. Kind, with a tinge of amusement. He’d smile and say he was about to turn on the lights, that Avery had sent him on an errand for a forgotten … He thought back, envisioning how the room had looked when he’d entered. His fingers landed on the thin cloth on the back of the desk chair, unseeing. Scarf. Exactly. And she’d been … how would he put it? Embarrassed. To admit she’d left her door unlocked. Which, for flower-child-impulsive Avery, would be entirely plausible. Calling him, too. They’d been more than collegial. Everyone knew that. Avery was only in residence here because of Edward Tarrant.

  Or maybe … and yes, here was the answer. His lungs filled again. He could breathe. In truth, Mack, or whoever it was, wouldn’t bat an eye. He was Edward Tarrant, after all. Everyone knew who he was. Everyone understood his stature and access. How dare they question him? He had a right to be here.

  He moved out of the sight line of the windowed doorway anyway. If the hallway person was simply headed to the elevator and happened to glance this way, no need to telegraph that someone was inside. His body clenched as he watched for an approaching shadow on the smoky glass. At least he’d see them first.

  His ears strained at the silence, and he felt his eyes close. The darkness was unchanged. His eyes flew open.