The Murder List

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Files? List?”

  “Files you get on the case. Discovery, whatever they call it. And, yeah, about the women. The illicit relationships. Whatever that mysterious ‘interviewee’ person said. Does someone have a record of it?” Rachel put her hands over her face for a moment, then took them away. “I mean, from a Human Resources standpoint. I’m chief of staff here. I’m in charge. If there’s an employment situation, I’m the one who has to handle it. You know? If Senator Rafferty—between us, I cannot even bear to imagine that level of imbecility—but if the senate president is screwing around on my watch, that’s not only going to tank his career, it’ll tank mine. I cannot allow that. So, Jack? For my own self-preservation? If you have access? I’d appreciate it.”

  Her face softened, and he saw how fragile she was, how on the edge. He didn’t blame her. It was hardly business as usual, and she was at the center of it.

  “Does it exist?” She put her palms together, as if praying for him to say yes.

  She knew there was a killer out there. Someone who’d killed a colleague, someone from her own office. He was used to thinking about murder. He’d learned to compartmentalize and analyze, stay on the emotional outside. But Rachel? She was trying to hide her fear, he could tell.

  “I’m trying to stay normal,” she went on, taking a sip of coffee. “But I’m having a little difficulty with that. As you can imagine. I’m terrified. Looking over my shoulder every second.”

  Jack drank his coffee, too. Good old coffee, the useful stall. She knew he was stalling, and he knew she knew, but there you had it. If the case went forward, then sure, he’d be given the transcripts of the confidential informant who’d supposedly ratted out Tom Rafferty’s transgressions. But if the case was nol-prossed—as he had to hope it would be—essentially dismissed and Nina no longer charged, then he’d be getting zippo. Because he’d have no reason to be given anything. That information, whatever lists there were or weren’t, would languish in Danielle Zander’s files. Until—if ever—they brought charges against someone else. Some cases go unsolved. Stay cold.

  He explained all that to Rachel, and she seemed to understand.

  “I’ll wait,” she said. “As long as it takes.”

  “Speaking of files.” He’d thought of something. Not necessarily a good thing, but a valuable thing. A probative thing. “Let me ask you something.”

  Problem was, he couldn’t figure out how to make this seem casual, mainly because it wasn’t casual. He could subpoena it at some point, if it came to that, so maybe asking Rachel was a mistake. But in witness questioning, when you want to sidetrack the target from your goal, you put your focus question in the middle of a series of items, so the target is distracted. For this question, if the results were to be provided without time-consuming legalities, it was now or never.

  “I’m also wondering if you could give me the senator’s schedule for the past few weeks. And I also wondered”—he talked faster, to distract her from his focus on Tom Rafferty’s whereabouts—“whether you’d like to have lunch with me today?”

  PART

  THREE

  NOW

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  RACHEL NORTH

  I hardly think about Dani Zander anymore.

  The realization overwhelms me as I look at the name my fellow intern Nick Soderberg has printed on the conference room whiteboard. Danielle Zander.

  I take my place at the long table, seating myself apart from the other interns, the ones who were on time for this meeting, and grateful that the general buzz is not directed at latecomer me but at Leon Colacetti, who, praise all that protects us, had just carried in a distracting tray of sugary doughnuts and a cardboard box of Dunkin’s coffee.

  Martha Gardiner is writing on a yellow pad and acknowledges my entrance with a fleeting smile.

  “Glad you could make it,” she says. “In time for refreshments. We’ll take five minutes.”

  “I’m so sorry, Martha,” I begin. “But Jack didn’t tell—”

  She holds up a palm. I stop.

  The interns pounce on the doughnuts.

  Is this what Gardiner was alluding to at Salamanca? What we’ll be working on so closely? I need to decide what this means. Danielle Zander? From what’s written on the whiteboard, they must be reopening the case. My brain stops. Reverses. Spins to another time.

  Danielle Zander. I’d assumed and accepted, with all my being and understanding, that what happened that gruesome day six years ago would haunt me forever. Endlessly. Relentlessly. As well it should. That I’d always be looking over my shoulder, flinching at strangers, afraid to walk alone at night. After that day, my world had transformed. Shifted, changing color and position, like a Rubik’s Cube gone mad.

  Tom Rafferty had to resign. His wife, humiliated, left town for parts unknown after the charges against her were dropped. Apparently, her alibi held up. The rest of the senate office staff dispersed. It wasn’t like Danielle’s presence in our office—or her absence—was noticed and relived every day. None of us were in the office anymore to feel it, or to miss her. It was no longer “our” office. It was incredibly disturbing, and everyone constantly worried about what might have happened, and about the killer, who remained at large. It wasn’t some crazy serial murderer, they said, since no similar crimes followed. I felt guilty, of course. Survivor guilt, I guess. And also because, truth was, I never liked Danielle.

  I was steamrolled by the whole thing in another way, too, of course. “Illicit relationships” was never far from people’s thoughts back then. And I felt guilty about that, too, as if they were all thinking “illicit,” and then labeling me. Finding me guilty of something I didn’t do. You can’t be guilty of wanting something. That’s just—life.

  But I didn’t leave town, as I’d considered and probably should have, but I’d definitely pulled back. Flown under most everyone’s radar. Stayed inside, lost a lot of weight. A few weeks later, after Jack’s approval, of course, I cut my hair and bleached it to the current streaky blond.

  After Senator Rafferty resigned, though, there was hardly another whisper about his illicit relationships. The legislative powers that be, and everyone else, moved on to the next shiny-thing scandal. Little me, not specifically named in the court case, became old news, so two years ago, then four. Now six. And my colleagues at the law school, college kids back then, teenagers, have no idea. Not that they mention to me, anyway. I became peripheral, a bystander at a disaster, a bit player, good for one sound bite and then oblivion. Jack and I never discussed it, that black hole of murder—I’m still feeling dramatic about it—that brought us together and binds us in silence. He thinks he won the case. I agree. And our lives go on. Such as they are.

  Because the murderer is out there. I cannot forget that. The fear haunts me, no matter how much I try to make myself into another person with another life.

  Such as life is right now. I’m angry. So angry. I’d heard the phone ring this afternoon, heard Jack answer it. And he’d “gotten distracted”? Forgot to tell me Martha called this meeting? I can’t believe he passive-aggressived me into being late. I hope Martha isn’t angry. It’s hard to tell with her.

  Nick begins again, after swiping powdered sugar from his lips.

  I listen to his Zander cold-case update—it’s still hard to fathom those words—but Gardiner’s phone buzzes. She picks up with a terse “Gardiner,” and then starts listening to whoever called her.

  That puts the meeting on hold again. Andrew DiPrado, in Gardiner-worthy pressed khakis, and Eli Lansberry, who’s even wearing a tie and sport coat. They’d been on time, clearly, and sit next to each other on the good-kids’ side of the table. Nick Soderberg, positioned at the whiteboard and wearing a navy blazer and white T-shirt over modest jeans, looks like J.Crew designed a campaign poster for campus president. No one talks. I’m the outlier, the old one, the latecomer. I try to look like I belong.

  Back then, Danielle’s murder case had languished. The lead dete
ctive on the case, pit bull death star Lewis Millin, retired soon after, moved away. Danielle had no family that anyone could find, so no agonized mother or firebrand sister kept poor dead Danielle in the headlines. There’d be a tiny update in the newspaper from time to time, a Where are they now? kind of thing. But soon after, even the persistent Clea Rourke had left town for some big job. She’s back now, after all those years, her hair redder and her lips weirdly puffy. I couldn’t figure out if she’d made the connection about me when we saw each other outside the courthouse after the Jeffrey Baltrim pizza-delivery-case arraignment.

  Jack finally admitted he and Clea had been “a thing,” briefly, more in her head than his, he insisted. That the dinner at Gallery had been the end of it, he said, and they’d parted company amicably. Clea Rourke and Jack. Gimme a break.

  Martha Gardiner, in disgrace, had pretended the reason she was leaving the Suffolk County DA’s office back then was that she’d been offered a higher-status position in Middlesex County. Which everyone knew was a lie. Jack had ripped her case against Nina Rafferty to shreds, humiliated her and her boss, and, bottom line, Gardiner had lost. The cardinal sin. She was fired, no matter how she’d tried to gild it.

  It was like a Broadway show. Where at the end of the run, the cast disperses. But at curtain close of this particular drama, the death of Danielle Zander, there was no big reveal of the bad guy.

  I doodle on my yellow pad, making boxes like I always do. Perspective, I think, exactly what I need right now.

  As the world forgot about Danielle, I had, too. Almost. And, ironically, if that’s the proper use, I came out on top after that fiasco. Her murder is why I got married.

  Jack and I first compared notes about Danielle Zander at lunch, then about the missing—he called it “vacationing”—Nina Rafferty, who’d paid him some retainer but then nothing else, figuring, correctly, the charges would be dropped.

  “I’d have done anything to prove she didn’t do it,” Jack had told me. He’d orchestrated a booth in the back of Explorateur that day, and, ignoring the noontime bustle, we sat opposite each other on brown leather seats, drinking white wine from water glasses in case anyone noticed us. “Anything. They had a semi-case with that jealousy motive, you know, and the … other personal stuff. Whoever ratted Tom out, I have no idea. Or if it’s even true. I was ready to go nuclear, but turned out Nina had that alibi.”

  “What was that?” I’d figured, now that the heat was off, off Nina, he might tell me.

  He’d played with his BLT, rescuing an escaping shard of bacon. “Yeah, well,” he finally said, “let’s simply say it wasn’t the greatest of all airtight alibis. But it was sufficient. Set and match.”

  Later, over prosecco at Spiga, we talked about the Deacon Davis jury, Jack’s crusade back then. But, telling him the least amount possible, I convinced him there’d been nothing untoward in the deliberations. And there wasn’t anything untoward, not that I knew of, or even suspected. Jack finally accepted the loss. As much as, I was to learn, as much as he ever accepted a loss. Which was never. We went on to dinner, immersed in conversation about the law and politics and power.

  Then a few nights later, we had dinner without talking about any cases at all. Simply talking about us. We did the same thing at breakfast the next day. I told him about my past and my long-gone mom, even the truth-book story, I think, and about my lawyer-father, who’d usually only criticized me. Jack, rubbing my shoulders, told me I’d make a terrific lawyer. And I admit, I’d been thinking about that myself. Lawyers know the rules, and that was the only way to get ahead. Soon after, I’d resurrected my LSATs. Nailed them. Then moved in with him. Happily before my savings ran out. We’d gotten married at Boston City Hall. Hardly anyone even knew about it, and hardly anyone made a big deal. Or cared.

  Life went on. I cooked. I read. I kept house. Jack supported me. He continued his relentless battles, defending hopeless cases. And winning more than his share. I made it into Harvard and through two years, vowing to spend my life defending people, protecting them, giving them a chance. Jack lost the Marcus Simmons Dorn murder case, and faced the DORN DID IT headlines. I, now signed on for the summer with Jack’s sworn enemy, had investigated a murder with her my first day on the job.

  And now the name Danielle Zander is front and center again. And Martha Gardiner had put it there. She must have engineered this. Made it happen. But why?

  And I’m equally concerned about how.

  I’m still learning the rules, but I definitely understand jurisdiction. And I think this might be the key. If Dani Zander was killed in Suffolk County, by the dumpster in the statehouse parking lot, it’s a Suffolk County case, and under the auspices of Suffolk County law enforcement. The only way Gardiner, an employee of Middlesex County, could get jurisdiction—I feel myself frowning, as if I’m taking a Criminal Procedure quiz.

  Oh. Easy one. The crime must be prosecuted in the venue where it took place. Does Gardiner possibly think Dani’s murder didn’t happen at the dumpster? That it happened in Middlesex County?

  I feel the world shift. This office might reopen the Danielle Zander murder because the murder took place here? That would change everything.

  Gardiner’s off the phone. She slides it back into her tote bag. Raises a hand, signaling Nick to go on. I tune back in to Nick’s recitation of the case, facts I know all too intimately.

  “A gold necklace, found clasped around the victim’s neck under her turtleneck”—Nick pulls out an eight-by-ten photograph from a manila folder, magnets it with a shiny red dot to the whiteboard—“was traced to Tiffany, the one on Newbury Street. Police later found a gold clip-on earring at the scene. The earring was not Ms. Zander’s. They couldn’t trace it. And they held that fact back from the media.”

  I put two fingers to one earlobe, even though I have pierced ears. The necklace. I cannot get over that damn necklace. Even now, I can feel its weight around my neck, the gold warmed by the heat of my skin, how I’d pretended it was Tom’s own touch. Even now, every cell in my body remembers, intensely, humiliatingly, the winter day when I wished I could sink into the earth. Tom Rafferty. What a total idiot.

  Nick pulls something else out of the manila file.

  “Police found this photo in the Globe.” He clicks a blue-dot magnet to one corner of what looks like a photograph printed from a website, and posts it on the whiteboard. I lean forward to see better. It’s Tom Rafferty, smiling in a tux, a be-gowned Nina on his arm. I remember that night, his expression and hers and the flashing cameras. I’d worn my little black, but, of course, I’m not in the photo. I don’t like being in pictures. Even my statehouse profile had a faceless avatar. This particular photo of the happy couple had been in the “Names” section. The mini-headline says SENATE PRESIDENT AND WIFE ATTEND GALA FUND-RAISER.

  “And wife.” Wonder how she liked dealing with that, playing second fiddle. Easy to see why the cops would suspect her. Would she be dumb enough to wear earrings to kill someone, did they think? If so, was she dumb enough to lose one at the scene? Maybe they figure it was the heat of passion. Maybe they figure she didn’t realize she’d lost it. And when she did, she realized she certainly couldn’t go back to retrieve it.

  “As you can see,” Nick points out, “the earrings are clearly the same. However—”

  “Mrs. Rafferty refused to confirm the one found at the murder scene was hers.” Gardiner interrupts Nick’s recitation of the evidence. “She refused to confirm anything, in fact, since her lawyer…” Martha pauses, looks at me with that knowing face she uses, then goes on. “Refused to let her speak with us. As Rachel well knows. You all remember she worked in that office, correct?”

  I try to make my expression convey Ain’t life funny? and I say nothing. And obviously Nick, Eli, and Andrew know precisely what she’s talking about. There’s not a confused face in the bunch. No one asks “What office?”

  Will anyone ask how this case got here, to Middlesex, though? And why Gardiner is so int
erested? I change my look to attentive. Participatory. Team player. And wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MARTHA GARDINER

  Martha Gardiner untied the dark red string around the accordion file, unwrapping it a bit more slowly than necessary, letting Rachel wonder what was going on. After the meeting ended, she’d asked Nick to leave the file behind, so she and Rachel could have a private chat. Rachel being late was perplexing, and if it seemed to matter, she’d ask about it. But later. Rachel now sat across from her at the conference table, silent.

  Martha pulled the file open, the dark cardboard pockets expanding, wide enough to let Rachel see there were tabbed files and manila folders inside. She glanced up to see if Rachel was attempting to read them. She wouldn’t dare, not at this point, but the woman was nothing if not ambitious. Hungry for information. Rachel certainly knew more than she’d revealed about the Zander murder. That husband of hers definitely did.

  “Martha?” Rachel asked, her swivel chair squeaking with the abruptness of her question. “Who do you think killed poor Danielle?”

  Rachel couldn’t help but ask about it, Martha figured, and didn’t blame her. An impossible thing, this murder. So personal. So close. But Martha wasn’t totally sure of anything. That’s what this summer was about.

  “What do you think we think?” Martha inquired, looking eager to hear. “There’s a whole list of people who might be guilty, right? A whole list of potential murderers? Ha ha, the murder list. Your husband would love that, wouldn’t he? Anyway. That’s why you’re here. You have insight, I know it. Maybe there’s something you don’t realize you know. Maybe you heard something or saw something, or someone told you something back then. Even years later. Maybe we can discover it together. Is that possible?”

  She saw Rachel’s face darken.