“You must be getting hammered at trial.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“See you at noon.”
I call Kevin, and he offers to come, but I tell him I’ll have more luck with Josh solo. I grab my car key, then change my mind and taxi to Harvard Square. Bartley’s doesn’t offer valet parking, and I don’t need the added stress of fighting traffic and circling around, looking for an open meter.
We zip across the river, and the driver drops me off on Mass Ave. The line to get into Bartley’s runs all the way past the Harvard Book Store and around the corner. I text Josh. I’m in line. He texts me back. I’ve got a table.
I make my way in the front door and take in the familiar smell of grease. The décor hasn’t changed since we were in law school; it looks like a college dorm room, decorated with street signs and sports posters. The daily specials are written on a chalkboard. One thing that has changed, however, is the addition of gluten-free and vegetarian dishes to the menu.
I find Josh at a table in the back of the room. He stands when he sees me and pulls out my chair, like he did when we were dating. The gesture is both sweet and chauvinistic, the parts of Josh I remember fondly.
The waiter taps the top of his pencil against his green pad, anxious to take our order. Bartley’s isn’t a place to dawdle, which is one of the reasons I chose it. I get the Fiscal Cliff, well done, which comes with blue cheese and bacon, and a plate of onion rings. Josh asks for the Taxachu$ett$, rare, which comes with baked beans and a side of fries.
“You’re the only woman I know who is still a proud carnivore,” he says.
“I’m thinking about taking up yoga,” I say.
“I’ll believe it when I see it. One of these days, your vices are going to catch up with you.”
Our lunch arrives quickly, eliminating the need for more small talk.
“Thanks for meeting me.” I dip an onion ring into a glob of mayonnaise.
“Watching you squirm is a bit of a turn-on,” he says.
I bite into the juicy burger and chew slowly, preparing to negotiate. I wait for Josh to shovel a spoonful of beans into his mouth before talking.
“We have a strong case against your clients,” I say.
He swallows and wipes his napkin across the lower half of his face.
“So you’ve said.”
“We have computer records and financial statements. A bunch of fraternity brothers are lined up to testify. And the Greenoughs’ client list will be exposed, causing a lot of problems for everyone involved.”
“Fine by me.” Josh smiles. “If people didn’t have problems, I’d be out of business.”
I push my almost untouched plate away. The smell of grease is suddenly making me nauseous.
“Are your clients interested in a plea?” I say.
Josh swallows carefully and takes a long haul on his vanilla frappe.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.
The waiter comes by. “Anything else?”
“No, everything is perfect,” Josh says.
The waiter clears the plates and drops off the check. Josh doesn’t move to pick up the tab, so I take out my wallet.
“What are you offering?” Josh says.
“Is Tommy willing to testify?” I say.
“Sure, if you give him the right incentive.”
“What will they take?” I say.
“Two years’ probation.”
The waiter returns and hovers, waiting for us to pay and leave. He clears his throat.
“All set here?” he says.
“Ten years in state prison,” I say.
“I’ll come back,” the waiter says.
“Forget it,” Josh says.
“I’m prepared to take out drug trafficking charges against Tommy.”
“Based on what? No drug dealer will ever testify against a Greenough.”
“Freddie Craven will.”
“Who?”
“He’s your client’s drug supplier.”
The last thing Josh wants to do is go back to the office and tell the Greenoughs that instead of getting a sweet deal, they’re facing new charges of drug trafficking.
“Two years in the house of corrections,” he says.
“Five years in state prison, and Tommy testifies against Chip.”
“Deal.”
His wipes his greasy paw with a paper napkin, but it still feels slippery when he reaches across the table, offers it up, and we shake.
“Deal,” I say.
Chapter Fifty-Four
First thing Monday morning, Josh and I contact the court and arrange to come in early and meet with Judge Swanson. When we arrive, the clerk knocks on the door to her chambers and gestures us inside. She’s standing in front of a full-length mirror, zipping a black robe over her loud floral dress. We tell her that the Greenoughs want to plead guilty, and she’s so giddy with relief that, for a minute, it looks like she might kiss Josh on the lips.
“I knew you’d see it my way,” she says as if she had something to do with it.
The Greenoughs are brought in from the lockup, and Judge Swanson keeps things moving at record pace, to assure that no one backs out of the deal. It’s barely eight o’clock, too early for anyone but the most ambitious reporters and avid court watchers. As the clerk calls the case, Carl slips in the back of the room and throws me a look; he’s annoyed I didn’t give him a heads-up.
The clerk swears in the Greenoughs, and the judge makes the requisite inquiry. Are you doing this freely and voluntarily? Have you had any medication today that could cloud your judgment? Do you understand the implications of a guilty plea? And my personal favorite: Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty, and for no other reason?
They both say yes. Tommy is slightly hunched over; Josh nudges him to stand up straight. The senator speaks clearly and tries to project confidence, but neither man looks like he’s been faring well in jail. Most of the inmates know about Greenough’s tough-on-crime bill, seeking to eliminate good-time for prisoners and reestablish chain gangs. As a result, the Greenoughs are being held in solitary confinement.
“Ms. Endicott, I’ll hear your statement of the case,” the judge says.
I didn’t have time to memorize my recitation of the facts, so I read from notes. “The defendants were engaged in a conspiracy, aimed at procuring prostitutes. They ran a lucrative business, profiting from the exploitation of young women, some of whom fell prey to a serial killer.”
Josh can’t help himself; he butts in. “May the record reflect that my clients had absolutely nothing to do with the murders of these unfortunate victims.” His remarks are geared more to the audience than the judge.
I want to correct the record—Tommy Greenough did have something to do with the murders. Chip was Tommy’s client; Tommy introduced Chip to my victims and charged a hefty fee. But I remain silent—I don’t want to kill the deal.
Judge Swanson accepts the pleas and imposes our agreed-upon sentence of five years in state prison. By now, the gallery is full, and the chatter level rises, inducing the judge to gavel the audience.
“Silence,” she says.
The voices quiet as the Greenoughs are cuffed. I let the chief court officer know we need Tommy to remain nearby, because I’m going to call him to testify this morning.
“What do you want me to do with the senator?” the court officer says.
“Send him to the prison.” As I say this, an unexpected tinge of satisfaction catches me off guard.
Before he is shackled and taken away, the senator gives his son a bear hug. He owes him; without Tommy’s cooperation, he’d be doing an extra five years. After a short recess, the jury is brought back to the courtroom, and the trial resumes. Chip tries not to appear flustered by the turn of events, but his eyes dart back and forth as he calculates his next move.
I stand. “The Commonwealth calls Thomas Greenough Jr. to the stand.”
A couple of jurors take out their pencils and notebooks. The teacher
puts on her glasses. The dermatologist leans forward. We all look at the door as it bangs open and Tommy Greenough is escorted in, flanked by two court officers.
He looks pathetic without his swagger. He stares at the clerk, hanging on to every word in the oath. Anything to avoid eye contact with the jurors. He swears to tell the truth, and I hope he means it.
As much as I want the jury to hate him, I need them to believe him, which is no easy task. As soon as he opens his mouth, he transforms from pathetic loser to pompous ass. His Boston accent has the stretched a’s of a Kerry or a Kennedy, not the chopped ah’s of an Average Joe. I attended Haavaad, not I went to Hahvid. For outsiders, it’s a subtle difference, not so to a Suffolk County jury.
“Do you know the defendant, Chip Aldridge?” I say.
“Yes.”
Josh, who is standing by his side, has clearly advised him to only answer the specific question, not to offer any extraneous information, making it as tough on me as possible.
“In what context did you know him?”
He sips water and takes his time putting down the cup. “We had a business relationship.”
“Please explain what you mean by that.”
“He was a client. I organized parties and invited women, and he paid to attend.”
The jurors are listening, scribbling in their notebooks.
“Did you introduce him to Rose Driscoll?” I say.
“Yes, the night before she was found.”
“You mean the night before she was found murdered?”
Tommy looks at Chip, then back at me. “Yes.”
“What about Caitlyn Walker?”
“I introduced them two nights before she was found.” He doesn’t wait for my follow-up. “I mean murdered.”
“And Valerie Jackson?”
He nods. “They met through me.”
He is growing more unlikable by the minute. I drag as much as I can out of him and then sit down. I don’t want him too closely associated with my victims.
Chip moves to the podium and launches into his cross-examination.
“Is it fair to say that you invited other men to these parties?”
“Yes.”
“And you introduced the deceased women to other men as well.”
“Yes.” Tommy crosses his arms tightly across his chest.
“And you don’t know much about those other men, do you?”
“Not personally, but I had an exclusive clientele.”
“You don’t know any more about them than you did about me, correct?”
“I suppose.”
Chip lets that hang. He knows how to heighten drama and emphasize his point.
“You have no idea if any of those men are abusive,” Chip says.
“I guess.” Tommy shifts in his seat.
“Or sadistic?”
“No, not from personal experience.”
“Any one of these men could have been the murderers, isn’t that true?” Chip looks at the jury and raises his eyebrows.
“Objection. Calls for speculation,” I say.
Judge Swanson is so mesmerized by Chip’s finesse that she seems to have forgotten that it’s her, not him, who is in charge of the proceedings.
“Your Honor?” I say.
“Overruled,” she says.
Chip scored big, manages to keep the momentum. “In fact, you don’t know who killed these women, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” Tommy looks like he’d rather go to prison and start serving his sentence than spend any more time in this courtroom.
“By the way, where is Valerie?” Chip says.
Tommy looks at me. “You’ll have to ask the prosecutor.”
I’d been hoping to string this out a little longer, but I can’t lie.
“Valerie Jackson is a missing witness,” I say.
The jurors exchange looks with one another. I have to get to sidebar.
“May we approach?” I start to move toward the bench.
Judge Swanson stops me. “No, you may not. Where is the witness?”
“We hope to produce her before the end of trial.”
Chip throws up his hands. “This proves what I’ve been saying all along. She’s been abducted by the real killer. Someone else committed these heinous crimes.”
The jurors look at me. Where is she?
I feel my face heat up. “There is still time to locate Ms. Jackson. Our evidence is that she fled out of fear for the defendant.”
No matter what I say, Chip has undone any progress I made on direct. I’d be better off if I’d never used Tommy as a witness. It was a waste of a plea.
“No further questions,” Chip says. “Thank you for your testimony.”
Chip has managed to make it look like Tommy was his witness, instead of mine. The judge excuses him and calls a recess. On my way out of the courtroom, I nod at the families, trying to exude confidence, even though I don’t feel any.
Kevin and I huddle in the stairwell.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he says. “You’ve still got a fighting chance.”
“I’m losing to a fake lawyer,” I say.
“He’s a con man. There’s a fine line between a liar and a lawyer.” Kevin nudges me, tries to get me to smile.
I can’t muster up any cheer, not even for Kevin. “I need Valerie.”
Valerie has been through a lot, and I can’t really blame her for not wanting to tell her story to a roomful of strangers and a national television audience. Unfortunately, while her absence is understandable, it’s devastating to my case, and it could be the reason a serial killer is set free.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I’m up most of the night, spinning worst-case scenarios in my mind. I land on Valerie is dead, and Chip is acquitted and kills again. Sometime before dawn, my anxiety shifts to politics. It’s election day, and if Max wins the mayor’s race, the governor will appoint his successor within the next week or so. My life could change drastically. I’ve been so consumed with my trial that I haven’t read or heard anything about how I’m doing in the polls. Maybe the Greenoughs’ guilty plea gave me an uptick.
I get ready for court, but first make a stop at my polling place, the Boston Public Library. A dozen sign holders are standing out front; half are holding LOMBARDO FOR MAYOR signs, and the rest are split between the remaining candidates. If I weren’t on trial, I’d be expected to spend today outside, in the cold, passing out literature and waving a sign, as I’ve done every election day since I joined the DA’s office.
When I step in the booth and pull back the curtain, I examine the ballot: Lombardo, Maxwell (D). A shiver of excitement blasts through me as I imagine my name listed here.
After casting my vote for Max, I head to the courthouse. Crossing through the Public Garden, near the equestrian statue of George Washington, I see my brother. He’s talking on his cell phone and doesn’t notice me; I think about pretending I don’t notice him. We’ve always gotten along well, but lately, there’s been a lot of tension between us. Mostly, it’s because we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to my mother. We agree there’s a problem, but disagree about the solution. I want to get her help. Charlie, a true laissez-faire conservative, has taken a more hands-off approach.
I shout out to him. “Charlie!”
He ends his call, comes over, and gives me a hug.
“Abs,” he says. “I’ve been watching your trial on TV.”
“Sorry I’ve been MIA.”
“I hope you can still make it to dinner.”
“Of course.”
I’d completely forgotten Charlie and Missy are celebrating their first wedding anniversary this week.
“It’s tonight, at our house, just family,” he says. “Bring Ty.”
I avoid eye contact. “Ty is out of town,” I say.
Charlie and Missy love hosting dinner parties. There’s only one reason they would limit the guest list to immediate family and hold it at a private venue: to avoid the embarrassment of
being in public with my mother. Things must have gotten worse.
I promise to be there and continue on to the courthouse. When I arrive, Kevin tells me they haven’t made any progress finding Valerie. Her father stopped coming to court and has made himself impossible to reach.
The first half of the day flies by. I start the morning with the creepy-crawler guy, who testifies about Caitlyn’s and Britney’s approximate times of death. Chip senses my squeamishness and drags out his cross-examination, taking particular sadistic pleasure during the show-and-tell portion of the testimony. He plops a jar containing live maggots on my table and doesn’t retrieve it until the end of his questioning, which seems interminable. I almost gag watching a cluster of the slimy larva inch up and down the length of the glass.
I have no appetite for lunch, which works out, since Kevin is busy, looking for Valerie, and I don’t have time to go out and buy a sandwich. During the break, I call Valerie a couple of times, just in case, and check my phone every five minutes, hoping for word, but nothing comes.
When we start up again, I summon FBI agent Stan Alvarez to the stand. He testifies about Chip’s childhood, emphasizing that he didn’t find any indications that Chip’s parents were abusive.
“Chip grew up in Wisconsin. His father drove long hauls, and his mother worked on an assembly line. He ran away when he was sixteen. He came east, hid out in boarding schools, and leached off wealthy students, particularly girls,” Stan says.
The jury seems interested to learn about Chip’s college education, how he moved from one Ivy League school to the next, never gaining admittance or paying tuition at any. They exchange looks when they hear that he snuck into law school classes.
Stan isn’t allowed to testify about Chip’s criminal past; the previous allegations of rape and fraud are considered irrelevant and inadmissible. Stan also isn’t allowed to testify about his conclusion that Chip fits the profile of a serial killer.
“That’s for the jury to decide,” Judge Swanson says.
Stan is, however, allowed to posit an opinion about Chip’s mental state. “He is an extreme narcissist, with an IQ of 158, which puts him in the category of Very Superior. His sociopathic tendencies and high intelligence are a very dangerous combination.”
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