The Graves

by Pamela Wechsler

  “District Attorney Max Lombardo is ahead in the polls, but his opponent, City Council President Brenda O’Neill, is chipping away at his lead. If Lombardo wins, his highly coveted seat will be up for grabs. Two women are emerging as the front-runners to replace him: Cassandra Lester, who specializes in white-collar crimes, and Abigail Endicott, the battle-scarred homicide prosecutor who, last year, was a victim herself. Currently, Endicott is assigned to the high-profile coed-killer investigation, involving the Greenough family. The outcome of the case could make or break her efforts.”

  My phone sounds. I grab it.

  “Carl Ostroff is a dimwit. Don’t listen to him.” I can hear the disgust in Kevin’s voice.

  “Who’s Carl Ostroff?” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  We agree to meet at Bulfinch. I hang up, turn off the TV, and start to dress. When I bunch up my pantyhose and slide in my right foot, the fabric catches on a broken fingernail and snags. So much for saving money on manicures. A dab of clear nail polish stops the run from advancing, but when I step into the other leg, I discover a longer run. I toss the hose in the trash. This is the fifth pair in as many weeks; it’s another luxury I can’t afford, but I’m not ready to sacrifice the delicate shimmer of Donna Karan for the cheaper, more durable brands. I take off my skirt and put on a pantsuit.

  Kevin and I arrive at my office at the same time; each of us stopped to pick up coffee for the other. I went a few blocks out of my way for Kevin’s favorite: coffee, regular, from Dunkin’ Donuts. He went to Starbucks to pick up mine: grande soy latte.

  He hands me the green-and-white cup, plus a paper bag.

  “I’ll see your coffee and raise you a chocolate croissant,” he says.

  I take a bite. “You win. I fold.”

  Case folders are stacked on my desk: forensic reports, autopsy results, the FBI profiler’s analysis. I grab a couple of files.

  “Let’s put the papers aside,” Kevin says, “and go out in the field.”

  “I’ve got my walking shoes on.”

  We decide that the former Alpha Beta members are a good starting point. Since the fraternity has been vacated, we drive to the former vice president’s new residence, a dilapidated apartment in East Cambridge. His girlfriend tells us he’s not here, he’s gone home to Michigan for the rest of the semester. When I call his house in Grosse Pointe, his mother answers and says he’s going to take the Fifth. Kevin locates the fraternity ex-treasurer’s new apartment in Brighton. He answers the door and tells us he’s lawyered up.

  “I’m detecting a pattern,” Kevin says once we’re back in the car.

  “I can call his attorney and try to negotiate,” I say.

  “No offense, but you’re thinking too much like a lawyer. We’re going at it all wrong. The frat boys may look like a bunch of preppies, but they’re really just an organized group of scumbags covering up a crime. We need to ask ourselves, if they were drug dealers or gun runners, what would we do?”

  Kevin is onto something. But for the khakis and the boat shoes, the Alpha Beta guys are no different from any other gang we deal with. They don’t merit special treatment.

  “Let’s start at the bottom rung and work our way up,” I say.

  Back in the office, I pull the file with the names of the newest members of the fraternity. Ned Halstead is the youngest pledge, and he has the highest GPA. Hopefully he’ll cave quickly.

  MIT police help us track him down on campus, in the Hayden Library. He’s seated at a desk overlooking the river, cramming for an astrophysics exam. When we approach, he sees the gold badge clipped to Kevin’s belt, jumps out of his chair, and raises his hands over his head in surrender, as though it were a stickup. It looks like he’s mocking us, and I’m about to scold him for being disrespectful when I realize he’s about to hyperventilate. He’s completely serious.

  “We’re not going to shoot,” Kevin says. “You can put your hands down.”

  “Please, I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t arrest me.”

  A couple of students are watching; one takes out his phone and videos us. The MIT police officer asks them to find another place to study, and they pick up their books and move away.

  Kevin hands Ned a subpoena. “This is for the grand jury.”

  Ned studies the paper; his hand trembles. “I have class in the morning, and my experimental study group meets in the afternoon.”

  “We’ll talk to your professors,” I say.

  He wipes sweat from his forehead. “Can I have the questions ahead of time?”

  Kevin doesn’t want to waste any more time bargaining with a nerdy nineteen-year-old. “This isn’t a take-home exam,” he says.

  In most cases, we sit down with our witnesses and review their testimony. Right now, Ned seems like he’ll go with the program, but by tomorrow, he could turn out to be a hostile witness. We want to catch him off guard, before he has time to map out his answers.

  “Can’t I just give you a statement?” he says.

  “If you don’t show up, I’ll be back to arrest you,” Kevin says.

  Ned slumps down into his chair, head in his hands. Another satisfied customer.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next day, Ned Halstead arrives at the courthouse wearing his best suit, looking like he’s here for a job interview. I’m not surprised he brought a lawyer, most likely retained and financed by the fraternity. The lawyer asks to speak with me alone. We leave Ned in the waiting room, sandwiched between a jittery junkie and a gangster who has bulging biceps and a teardrop tattoo under his eye.

  Ned shuffles a few inches closer to the junkie, who nudges him.

  “Hey, man. You know where I can score some crystal?”

  Ned crosses his arms and stares straight ahead.

  When Ned’s lawyer gets me alone, he does what he’s paid to do; he tries to dissuade me from calling his client as a witness. I smile and think for a few seconds, pretending to mull over his argument.

  “Sorry, Ned is a necessary witness,” I say.

  In the grand jury room, I let the panel know we’re about to get started. They had a bake-off earlier, and they’re passing around the last plate of treats, my favorite: old-fashioned Toll House cookies. I can’t resist taking one. I gobble it down, make sure I don’t have chocolate on my teeth, and call Ned to the stand.

  When I raise my right hand to swear him in, he ignores me. There’s something he has to get off his chest.

  “I told them it wasn’t right. I told them to stop.” His voice cracks. “I did, I swear.”

  I look at the lawyer, who whispers. You have to wait for her to ask a question. Ned looks at me, and I guide him through the preliminaries: his education, his fraternity affiliation, how he knows the Greenoughs.

  “Did you see Caitlyn Walker on the Thursday night before her body was discovered?” I say.

  He leans in to the microphone, eager to get the ordeal over with. “Yes, she was at the fraternity.”

  “Was there a party?”

  “It wasn’t really a party. We were drinking, playing pool. Tommy told us to come upstairs. There were five of us. I didn’t even know Tommy that well. I know his brother, Robbie.” He’s trying to tell the story in one breath.

  I toss him a softball, try to slow him down. “Did you go upstairs?”

  “We all did.”

  “What did you see?”

  “The dead girl. She was there.”

  I’m not going to let him off the hook by depersonalizing my victim. She had a name. “Caitlyn Walker?”

  He nods. “Robbie was with her.”

  “On the third floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were Robbie and Tommy Greenough doing?” I say.

  “They were drinking, straight out of the bottle. I think it was rum. They were both pretty wasted.”

  “What about Caitlyn Walker? Was she drinking?”

  “She wasn’t drinking, but she seemed like she was on something.” He takes a breat
h. “They were, you know, doing sex acts.” Ned starts to mumble, looks down at the floor. “At first it was just Robbie and Tommy, but then a couple of the others joined in.”

  “Did Caitlyn say anything?”

  “She … Caitlyn … told them to stop.”

  A couple of the jurors flinch; one looks down and shakes his head.

  “Did they rape her?” I say.

  “Rape her? No, it wasn’t like that. She told them to stop because she wanted more money from Tommy.”

  “Money?” says the postal worker in the back of the room. “You mean the girl, the one who went to Wellesley, was a hooker?”

  There’s not a lot that surprises me anymore, but this catches me off guard. I wonder if Rose was also getting paid for sex. I push forward as though I’ve been expecting his disclosure.

  “Do you know the nature of the financial arrangement that Caitlyn had with Tommy Greenough?”

  “He said he had already paid her for two guys. She wanted extra because there were a few more. Tommy agreed. That was it.”

  I resist the urge to run out into the hall and grab Kevin, let him know that we have a huge break in the case. Sometimes having everything recorded is inhibiting, but today I welcome the device. I want to capture every word.

  “Did you see Caitlyn leave the fraternity?”

  “Yes, I saw her. She walked out the door.”

  So much for our theory that she was killed in the hot tub. The killer, whoever he is, forced her underwater someplace else and washed away the evidence.

  “Did anyone leave with her?”

  “She left alone.”

  Even though we don’t have a smoking gun, Ned’s testimony has been more fruitful than I could have imagined.

  I start to wrap up. “Is there anything else that you can tell this grand jury, to assist in their efforts?”

  Ned thinks, then looks at his lawyer, who nods him on. “You saw the video, right?”

  The postal worker and I speak at the same time: “Video?”

  Ned looks down, ashamed. I want to shake him and ask why he pledged that fraternity. Was it simply peer pressure, the desire to belong? Worse, what caused him to go upstairs to witness such despicable activity? Whatever the reason, I’m glad he did.

  He takes out his phone and holds it up. “Do you want to see it?”

  I grab an evidence bag and tell Ned to drop the phone inside. Then I take a yellow evidence sticker, affix it to the bag, and seal it.

  “This shall be marked as grand jury exhibit number one,” I say.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kevin and I go to police headquarters, where we sit in his cramped cubicle and watch Ned’s cell phone video. The images on the screen make my skin crawl. The quality of the video is poor, the faces are blurry, and the background has streaks of glare, but it’s clear enough for us to see exactly what’s transpiring: one lewd act followed by a lewder act. I squirm in my chair.

  Caitlyn is naked; Robbie is clothed. She doesn’t speak, but there are four distinct male voices on the recording, including Tommy’s and Robbie’s. They cheer each other on. Go. Go. Go. Go. Robbie. Robbie. Robbie. Robbie. The instant Robbie unzips his pants, I look away, wishing I could get up and leave. I’ve listened to my victims recount the horrific details of sexual assaults, and witnessed their injuries, but I’ve never seen actual video of an attack. Even though the encounter is technically consensual, it’s violent and demoralizing.

  The scene quickly devolves into chaos. Naked men, each taking their turn with Caitlyn. At one point she stops to argue about money.

  “This wasn’t our deal.” Her speech is slow, and her words are slurred.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it,” Tommy says.

  She looks around the room. “It’s $200 for each guy.”

  Tommy agrees to the new terms, and the activity resumes. Kevin and I sit elbow to elbow, frozen in place, until the last frame. After the video is over, Kevin busies himself with his computer. I take some water out of my tote and drink a series of small sips, capping and uncapping the bottle each time.

  “It’s depraved, but consensual,” I say.

  “There’s got to be something we can lock them up for,” Kevin says.

  “Like what?”

  “How about drunk and disorderly?”

  “They’re inside their own home.”

  “They videotaped her without authorization. That could be a violation of the wiretap laws.”

  “Without Caitlyn’s testimony, we can’t prove lack of consent.”

  He turns off the computer.

  “The Greenoughs had something to do with her murder.”

  “You’re singing to the chorus,” I say.

  We go downstairs to the computer forensics lab, where we find Sasha Phelan, the department’s cyber sleuth. Sasha spends her days trolling through other people’s computers, reading their e-mail, examining their Google searches and website clicks. She is seated at a table behind three computer screens. The room is musty and windowless, reminding me of a solitary confinement cell. There are at least two hundred plastic spuds scattered around her desk, windowsill, and bookcases; each figurine is outfitted with its own accessories. Mustaches, glasses, top hats, baseball mitts, holsters. It’s hard to take her seriously until she speaks.

  “Rose Driscoll and Caitlyn Walker were definitely paid escorts.”

  “Can you link them to any men in particular?” I say.

  She nods. “They had ads all over the Internet. Backpage, Craigslist, Seeking Arrangement. They were sugar babies, targeting old guys who would help pay their tuition and give them spending money.”

  Sasha clicks a website and brings up Rose’s profile. We scroll through the photos, which are rated PG, compared to the video that we just watched. Caitlyn has her own website, where she offers herself up for dates and parties.

  My stomach turns at the thought of telling the Driscolls and Karen Walker what their daughters were doing to earn money. I’ll have to make the call soon, before the tabloid reporters do it for me.

  “Did you find a connect with Tommy Greenough?” Kevin says.

  Sandra nods. “He was in contact with both of the women.”

  “When did he meet Caitlyn?” I say.

  “Their first communication was on the night she died.”

  Sasha shows us a screen. Tommy: Meet me at Crazy Fox in Cambridge. Caitlyn: Cash up front. Tommy: If chemistry is good, we’ll have a party. I keep scrolling.

  “That’s it? That’s the only communication between them?” I say.

  “So far,” Sasha says.

  “What about Rose?”

  “Rose was more of a regular. She met Tommy through one of her personal ads. He e-mailed her, and they met at the same bar to discuss the arrangement. Then he brought her to sex parties.”

  “Where did the parties go down?” Kevin says.

  “Mostly private clubs, fraternities, and people’s homes.”

  “Who’d they invite?” I say.

  “CEOs, athletes, Secret Service agents, a couple of congressmen, and a governor.”

  Tommy Greenough was a pimp with an exclusive client list. A large percentage of the names will probably be familiar. I may even know some of them personally. I hope none are relatives.

  Sasha shows us a spreadsheet. “He arranged for parties, brought in the girls, but instead of charging per encounter, he charged the huge fees. There was a membership fee and an entry fee to the parties.”

  “Sounds like the Harvard Club, minus the hookers,” I say.

  Tommy doesn’t strike me as a deep thinker, but he’s not as dumb as he looks. Clearly, he’s savvy enough to have consulted with someone who advised him how to skirt the solicitation laws. He made his business appear legal, as though he were hosting parties. Once inside, consenting adults can do what they want.

  “It makes sense,” Kevin says. “Greenough was one of their own. That’s who you trust when you’re doing something illegal? Someone wh
o has as much to lose as you do.”

  “How many women were involved?” I say.

  Sasha pulls open a file. “I don’t have a final tally yet, but there were a lot, dozens. And he split the profits fifty-fifty.”

  “He had a partner?” My heart pounds. “Please don’t tell me Josh King is involved.”

  “I didn’t see that name.”

  “What about Tommy’s brother, Robbie?” Kevin says.

  Sasha shakes her head.

  “It’s got to be someone with knowledge of the law,” I say. “And someone who has a way to launder the money.”

  “Like a small business,” Kevin says.

  “Or a political campaign,” I say.

  I ask Sasha to search through the records, using the senator’s name. Kevin leans over his shoulder, eyes the screen.

  “Our senior senator has his paws all over this,” Kevin says.

  “Why would he take a risk like that?” Sasha says.

  “For a guy like Greenough,” I say, “it’s about three things: money, power, and secrets. He’s got dirt on a lot of rich and powerful guys. He could bring them down with a phone call. Which means he owns them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ty takes the red-eye back from California. He’s been away for a few days, and we haven’t spoken since he left, and I’ve barely had time to send a couple of texts. I’m half asleep when I hear the lock on the door click open. I roll over and sit up in bed.

  “Hey, babe,” he says.

  “Join me,” I say. “I missed you.”

  He gives me a kiss, and I allow myself to get lost in the warmth of his embrace and the softness of his skin. I feel a rekindling of the desire that I experienced when we first met, before my fear of connection and rejection set in.

  After showering, I find him in the kitchen, making breakfast: organic coffee, cage-free eggs, artisanal sausage, and gluten-free toast, most of which he picked up at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. So much for his lectures on economizing. Ty’s financial weakness is food; mine is everything else.