The Murder List

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “That’s not my case, Rachel.”

  “All the more reason for me to tell you! It’s mine!” I’ve raised my voice a notch, so I bring it down. “And by participating, aren’t I potentially in trouble, too? We take one step over the line, a line that seems okay at the time, then we take another step and another, and at some point we’re way into the weeds and entangled, and my career is over before it even begins.”

  Jack brushes a strand of hair from my face, and I close my eyes at his touch. “You might be making too much of this, Rach. All lawyers—well, there are shortcuts and concessions and things we all do for the greater good. For expedience. Marcus Dorn was a sick puppy, Rach. Vanishing witness or not, he was toast. And yeah, I hate to lose, but—sometimes they’re guilty.”

  He leans over, kisses my cheek, his touch a whisper. “And I’ll deny I said any of that, of course.”

  I twist away, crossing my arms in front of me, undeterred.

  “No. Listen, Jack. Listen. You were right, you were completely right. She’s predatory. And I get so upset when I think now that I didn’t listen to you in the first place. I wanted to learn the ropes so we could work together. But these aren’t the ropes I want to learn. Jack? Look what she did to Nina Rafferty. Humiliated her and her husband, and didn’t even check out that flimsy alibi. If you hadn’t been such a brilliant lawyer, she might have…”

  To let him think, I take a swig of water from the bottle on my nightstand. I can’t tell whether Jack’s with me yet. Our bedroom is illuminated by streaks of light coming through the white shutters, slashes of streetlights banding the ceiling and striping the wall. The shutter slats rattle after each impatient puff of breeze. Jack’s hair is nighttime straw, his chest bare, the white blanket only up to his waist.

  “Honey?” He’s staring straight ahead, his back against the headboard. “It’s the middle of the night. Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”

  “We interviewed Tom Rafferty today,” I say. “And yesterday Logan Concannon.”

  “What?” Jack’s turned to me now, full on. “Why?”

  “Is it okay if I tell you?” I gather our blanket up around me. This is risky territory, personally, professionally, and in every other way. But the wheels are in motion, and if I don’t guide them, I’ll be crushed under their inevitable path.

  “Is it okay? Rachel? You woke me up, talked for fifteen solid minutes, it’s after one in the morning, and now you’ve decided to ask permission?” Jack scratches his forehead, then waves one hand in an arc above our heads. “We’re in the bubble. This is off the lawyer record, off the professional record, off all the records. This is you and me, husband and wife. As confidential as anything can be.”

  “You sure?”

  “Rachel.”

  That’s his enough-is-enough tone. Good.

  “Martha’s reopening the Danielle Zander case.” I pause, letting that megaton bombshell crash into our suburban bedroom.

  “What? The Danielle—but that was—six years ago. And it’s…”

  I stay quiet, watching Jack’s mind assess and calculate, can almost see the cogs and gears churning through case law and precedent, through issue, rule, analysis, conclusion.

  “It’s not in her jurisdiction,” Jack pronounces, coming to the critical realization. “Which means—shit, Rachel, is this what you were asking me about? With poisoned chicken and all?”

  “You got me,” I pretend to confess.

  “Clever,” he says. “Who’s she looking at for it?”

  “She hasn’t told me.”

  Jack’s perplexed, I can tell. Join the club. “Is there a grand jury? She can’t open the case without some theory of the case.”

  “Which is why I’m concerned.” I nod, encouraging this line of thought. “What if she’s like, so obsessed with the loss…”

  I bite my lower lip, thinking. I hadn’t thought of it until this very second. “Listen. Would there be a way she could do this under the radar? Under the guise of reopening the case, but in reality, for herself? Like Javert in Les Misérables? And she’s using me like bait?”

  “Bait?”

  “Yeah.” An intriguing thought, and believable. “To keep those people, Tom and Logan and whoever, unsettled or frightened, and see if she can get someone to say something to maybe incriminate Nina? Or even Tom?”

  “Using you.”

  “Yeah. Because she can’t stand to lose. Especially to you. And she knows because I’m such a goody two-shoes, I’m never going to tell you. You were right. This is why she chose me. To get back at you.”

  I let that settle, just for a beat. Then go on.

  “But what if it’s not only this case? I mean, she’s ruthless. Take the whole Deacon Davis thing. Momo and Roni. And he was killed after Roni told the judge what happened!”

  I let that settle, too.

  “But Martha doesn’t know I know about that. And you’d never have known if not for me. And what if she ‘disappeared’ your slasher witness? And what if she’s trying to railroad Jeffrey Baltrim? What if she has a whole list of murder cases, and she’s—I don’t know. Making sure she wins, no matter how. She was so freaked out over your victory at the Nina Rafferty arraignment, who knows what she might do to win? She could indict Nina in Middlesex now, couldn’t she? If Dani was killed there?”

  “Is that what she’s planning? To indict Nina again?” He’s wide awake now, wrenches the twist top off his water bottle, frowns at it. “Son of a—What does she have on her? Is there new evidence?”

  “I don’t know,” I honestly say. “But it’s exactly as you said, Jack. She asks me about you all the time. Milks me for information about you. And she told me a whole bunch of stuff about you—things she hoped would upset me. You were so right. This summer isn’t about me. It’s about you. We have to stop her.”

  “Stop Martha Gardiner.”

  “Yes.” I nod, agreeing with myself. “She’s obsessed. I’m all about justice, and I know you are, too. She wants to nail someone for Dani’s death, and that’s admirable. But she’s over the edge. Nuts. Dangerous. She’s obsessed with you, Jack, not true justice. Obsessed with Nina, and with her own defeat. She can’t deal with it.”

  “You think she’s after Nina? Rach? You have to tell me.”

  “She’s like—you’re her white whale,” I tell him. All true. “She hates you. What if she decides to put Nina—or even Tom, or both of them, or an innocent person?—away simply to torment you? But it’s too much for me. I can’t do it alone. We have to get her off that case. And, even better, off the job. Think how much better our lives will be, too. Kirkland and North.”

  The next morning, I smile, remembering, as I carry my coffee in an aluminum travel mug. Usually I brew my Double Black Diamond myself, but this morning Jack presented it to me, along with a blueberry muffin he’d wrapped in plastic and a surprisingly lingering kiss. No scrawly dismissive notes on yellow pads. No disdainful silence. No earlier-than-me departures. It felt like it did before, sexy and entangled, like when we were first married. My newly admitted suspicions and animosity toward Martha Gardiner seem to have rekindled our relationship.

  Today my goal is to see if I can get her to let me in closer. There are things I need to know. For me, for Tom, for Jack. But mostly for me. Martha says she wants to work with me, that she sees something in me. Let’s see what I can get her to tell me.

  The enemy of my enemy, and all that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MARTHA GARDINER

  “It’s only June. It’s too soon to be excited about the Red Sox.” Martha Gardiner had shut down this afternoon’s driver in mid-chat. She needed to marshal her thoughts. She buckled herself into the front seat, to convey to Rachel that yesterday’s backseat side-by-side was not the norm.

  Rachel had started to feel comfortable with her, that was good. If Rachel was a pipeline to Jack, that’s exactly what Martha had hoped. She watched the woman stride across the parking lot, noticing how Rachel
had chosen her clothes—black skirt, black jacket—to mimic Martha’s own. Almost a team uniform. Perfect. Time to harness Rachel’s goodwill. Tap in to her curiosity. See what she could discover.

  “Where’re we off to?” Rachel tossed her briefcase into the backseat, then slid in beside it, juggling a coffee mug and her cell phone.

  “Hi, Rachel,” Martha said. “I see you have your afternoon coffee—good. Thanks for doing all that filing this morning, much appreciated. We’re efforting another interview, but it’s unconfirmed. In the interest of efficiency”—Martha glanced over into the backseat, making sure Rachel was listening—“and optimism, we’re headed there as if it’ll happen. I’ll let you know when we know. So. This is Officer McGann, by the way.”

  “Shawn,” he said, adjusting the rearview.

  “Hi,” Rachel said. “Great.”

  “So, Rachel.” Martha began her experiment as Shawn pulled their black Charger into the street. “What questions do you have for me? While we drive?”

  Rachel coughed, then coughed again, holding her hand over her mouth. Holding her coffee mug away from her.

  “You okay?” Martha asked, turning to check. “Want us to stop?”

  “No, no,” Rachel’s voice was a choking whisper. “Went down the wrong way. The coffee.”

  “That’ll happen. Put your coffee in the cup holder.” Martha could almost picture the inside of Rachel’s brain, first surprised at Martha’s sudden openness, and then trying to come up with a question that didn’t make her sound incompetent or needy or too ambitious. Choking on her surprise, not her coffee, Martha diagnosed.

  They drove in silence, headed toward the outskirts of Boston, the crazy-quilt neighborhood called Brighton. Martha waited, letting Rachel recover, allowing her own mind a moment to evaluate the trimmed gardens rolling by outside her window.

  Homes with front lawns and driveways. And families. Everything Martha would never have. Had chosen not to have. Was she wrong?

  A woman in a white visor and turquoise tunic clipped plump red peonies and laid them across a wide wicker garden basket. Had she, or any of her neighbors, faced a loss, a death, a withering injustice? Martha knew, so often, what lay behind innocent-looking closed doors. The regret and the sorrow. The framed photos of now-lifeless faces, the ones whose murders were never truly resolved. Like Danielle Zander’s. The killers who Jack Kirkland and his comrades managed to extricate from the jaws of truth. Her blood ran cold with it. That’s why Martha did what she did. Had to.

  Rachel cleared her throat. Martha focused herself back into the present.

  “Tell me about unsolved cases,” Rachel finally said. She held up her cell phone. “I did some research on cold cases, and it says there are lots of them, like two hundred thousand. And one study said there’s a one-in-three chance that the police will never identify the killer.”

  Martha saw Shawn roll his eyes. She longed to do the same thing but didn’t want Rachel to feel hesitant about asking questions.

  “Oh, sure.” Martha could see Rachel’s reaction in the rearview. Another plus of having her in the back. “Technically, a person can get away with murder. Sure. We—we’re not happy with that. But numbers are numbers. And remember, that one in three you point to encompasses the cases that aren’t quickly solved. The difficult ones, the complicated ones, the outliers. It doesn’t mean the perpetrator is smart. More like, lucky. As in the Danielle Zander case.”

  “True,” Rachel says. “But what makes you open a cold case? How do they usually get solved?”

  “In general?” Martha should teach Rachel that to get specific answers, lawyers had to ask specific questions. But it’d be instructive, and possibly revealing, to nail down precisely what Rachel was interested in. And especially what she already knew. Some of it might have come from Rachel’s potential pipeline of a husband. What he’d learned in confidential conversations with the first suspect in the case. Or, perhaps, what Rachel herself knew about Nina Rafferty. Or Tom Rafferty. Or a few other people.

  Martha was counting on Rachel not being able to keep track of it all. She twisted her body toward the backseat again, looking her intern in the eye. “Or are you asking about Danielle Zander?”

  “Well, either. In general, or Dani’s case in particular.” Rachel coughed again, looking embarrassed. “I mean, is there DNA? Don’t you have to be a criminal or a soldier or a government hotshot to be in the DNA database? How do you find someone who’s not in the database? Or can you? If the bad guy’s DNA isn’t there, there’s nothing to compare the crime scene DNA to. Except if you have those ancestry things, I suppose.”

  Martha almost laughed. Questions were so often also answers. A window on someone’s thoughts or fears or plans. Or inexperience. Or an insight about who really wanted to know. Like, perhaps, the questioner’s husband.

  “Sure, DNA’s a pitfall,” Martha said. “Did Jack ask about that? Your husband certainly knows that even in those ancestry files, a relative’s DNA must be there in the first place. In reality…” She tilted her head, deciding exactly how to put this. “Cold cases often rely more on the emergence of new witnesses.”

  Martha turned to look again, couldn’t resist.

  Rachel’s eyes had widened. “Is there a new witness in Danielle’s case?”

  “Good specific question.” Martha nodded her approval. “Does Jack know of anyone? Speaking of which, have you been back to that dumpster? What can you see from there?”

  Rachel closed her eyes, maybe envisioning it. Opened them. “Apartments, I guess. Statehouse windows. It was snowy then, I think. It was a long time ago.” She shook her head. Looked out her window for a beat. “No one liked to go back there. I certainly didn’t.”

  “I’m not surprised you felt that way,” Martha said. “Anyone would, after such a tragedy. Were there surveillance cameras? Did Nina Rafferty tell Jack about them?”

  “They were broken,” Rachel said. “You mentioned that in the hearing.”

  “Tom Rafferty knew that?”

  Silence.

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes. He’d written a dear-colleague letter about it, calling for his fellow legislators to appropriate money to get it fixed. He was angry that the surveillance was so unreliable. It was a big deal to him.”

  “So he knew,” Martha said again, confirming. “Did Nina? Did Jack say anything about that?”

  “I don’t remember him saying anything, no.” Rachel looked down, fiddled with her cell phone.

  As if she wanted to call someone. Martha bet she knew who.

  “But Martha, now it’s my turn to ask you.” Rachel first pointed to herself, then Martha. “You’re investigating. And you’re Middlesex, and that means the murder must have taken place in Middlesex. So—”

  “Very good, Rachel,” Martha nodded her approval. “I see you know your jurisdictional stuff. That was a little test. Which you passed.”

  Rachel cleared her throat again. Martha’s cell phone pinged a text. She read it. Good.

  “We’re a go, Shawn,” Martha said.

  “Gotcha, Ms. Gardiner.”

  “Rachel?” Martha pointed ahead of them, “Our destination is two blocks from here. So—you can have one more question.” She turned to look over the seat back again. “Go.”

  “Um.” Rachel looked at the phone in her hand again. “Do you think the killer is someone Dani knew? Because no one else has gotten killed like that since then.”

  “Possibly.” Martha nodded, as if considering. “You set with your yellow pad?”

  Shawn had steered them into an almost-legal parking spot in front of a yellow vinyl house. A cottage, Martha thought, with an intensely manicured lawn and regimented red tulips.

  “It’s someone from your old office,” Martha said. “Ready?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  RACHEL NORTH

  It crossed my mind, as we turned down the narrow Brighton street, that Danielle Zander was somehow still alive. And that’s who we were about
to see. It almost brought tears to my eyes, that impossible possibility. I imagined, in the flash of a second, how different my life would be if that were true. Tom and Nina still married, maybe. Tom a powerful state leader. Dani, who knows what?

  And Jack, would we have bonded? He’d been with me that afternoon when I’d gotten the word that they’d found Dani. Watched my reaction, caught me when I probably almost fainted. He’d supported me and reassured me, even stood up for me when Lewis Millin—I’ll never forget that name—tried to interrogate me.

  If Tom Rafferty hadn’t seen Jack with me in the Communications Office at his news conference, he might not have hired him to represent Nina, and who knows what might have happened to her? It was Jack’s skill—and Martha Gardiner’s arrogant decision not to check out Nina’s alibi—that got her off. A lesser defense attorney might have capitulated, figuring an attack on the prosecutor’s credibility might make it worse. Nina might have been held without bail. Who knows what a jury might have decided.

  If Jack and I’d simply gone out for coffee that afternoon, and he’d tried to get me to talk about the Deacon Davis jury, and if I’d stayed on my ten-minutes-tops schedule, our relationship would have stopped after that brief and chilly encounter.

  But that’s not what happened, and Dani’s dead, and her murder is unsolved.

  Tom’s essentially ruined. Nina’s off somewhere.

  I’m married to Jack, and almost a lawyer myself.

  And Martha Gardiner is still the bad guy.