Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) Read online

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  Always remembering You Never Know Day

  August 18, 1995

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Unending gratitude to:

  Kristin Sevick, my brilliant, hilarious, and gracious editor. Thank you. The remarkable team at Forge Books: the incomparable Linda Quinton, indefatigable Alexis Saarela, and copy editor Julie Gutin, who noticed everything, thank you. (Sometimes, I repeat words. Imagine.) Talia Sherer, hilarious empress of libraries, I am so grateful. Bess Cozby and Desirae Friesen, you are terrific. Seth Lerner and Vanessa Paolantonio, thank you for turning words into pictures with another incredible cover. Brian Heller, my champion. The inspirational Tom Doherty. What a terrifically smart and unfailingly supportive team. I am so thrilled to be part of it. Thank you.

  Lisa Gallagher, a wow of an agent, a true goddess, who changed my life and continues to do so.

  Francesca Coltrera, the astonishingly skilled independent editor, who lets me believe all the good ideas are mine. Editor Chris Roerden, whose care and skill and commitment made such a difference. Ramona DeFelice Long—your insights are incomparable. You all are incredibly talented. I am lucky to know you—and even luckier to work with you.

  The artistry and savvy of Madeira James, Charlie Anctil, Mary Zanor, and Jen Forbus. To Linda Miele and Chris Wayland and Ed Ansin and Bob Leider, who understood.

  The inspiration of Linda Fairstein, John Lescroart, Mary Jane Clark, Tess Gerritsen, Suzanne Brockmann, Lisa Unger, William Landay, Nancy Pickard, Michael Palmer, and Robert B. Parker.

  Sue Grafton. Mary Higgins Clark. And Lisa Scottoline. And Lee Child. Words fail me. (I know, a first.)

  My dear posse at Sisters in Crime. Thank you. And at Mystery Writers of America—Reed Farrel Coleman, Jessie Lourey, Dan Hale, and Margery Flax.

  My amazing blog sisters. At Jungle Red Writers: Julia Spencer-Fleming, Hallie Ephron, Rosemary Harris, Roberta Isleib/Lucy Burdette, Susan Elia MacNeal, Jan Brogan, Deborah Crombie, and Rhys Bowen. At Femmes Fatales: Charlaine Harris, Dana Cameron, Kris Neri, Mary Saums, Toni Kelner, Elaine Viets, Donna Andrews, and Catriona McPherson. At the old Lipstick Chronicles: Nancy Martin and Harley Jane Kozak, who brought us all together.

  Financial insiders who, yes, will remain nameless, thanks for the scoop.

  My dear friends Amy Isaac, Mary Schwager, and Katherine Hall Page, and my darling sister Nancy Landman.

  Dad—who loves every moment of this. And Mom. Missing you.

  And Jonathan, of course, who never complains about all the takeout dinners.

  Do you see your name in this book? Some very generous souls allowed their names to be used in return for an auction donation to charity. To retain the magic, I will let you find yourselves.

  Sharp-eyed readers might notice I have tweaked Massachusetts geography a bit. It is only to protect the innocent. And I adore it when people read the acknowledgments.

  Keep in touch, okay?

  http://www.hankphillippiryan.com

  http://www.jungleredwriters.com

  http://www.femmesfatales.typepad.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Also by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.

  —Jane Austen

  1

  “I know it’s legal. But it’s terrible.” Jane Ryland winced as the Sandovals’ wooden bed frame hit the tall grass in the overgrown front yard and shattered into three jagged pieces. “The cops throwing someone’s stuff out the window. Might as well be Dickens, you know? Eviction? There’s got to be a better way.”

  Terrible facts. Great pictures. A perfect newspaper story. She turned to TJ. “You getting this?”

  TJ didn’t take his eye from the viewfinder. “Rolling and recording,” he said.

  A blue-shirted Suffolk County sheriff’s deputy—sleeves rolled up, buzz cut—appeared at the open window, took a swig from a plastic bottle. He shaded his eyes with one hand.

  “First floor, all clear,” he called. Two uniforms comparing paperwork on the gravel driveway gave him a thumbs-up. The Boston cops were detailed in, they’d explained to Jane, in case there were protesters. But no pickets or housing activists had appeared. Not even a curious neighbor. The deputy twisted the cap on the bottle, tossed away the empty with a flip of his gloved hand. The clear plastic bounced on top of a brittle hedge, then disappeared into the browning grass.

  “Oops,” he said. “I’m headed for the back.”

  “That’s harsh,” TJ muttered.

  “You got it, though, right?” Jane knew it was a “moment” for her story, revealing the deputy’s cavalier behavior while the Sandovals—she looked around, making sure the family hadn’t shown up—were off searching for a new place to live. The feds kept reporting the housing crisis was over. Tell that to the now-homeless Sandovals, crammed—temporarily, they hoped—into a relative’s spare bedroom. Their modest ranch home in this cookie-cutter neighborhood was now an REO—“real estate owned” by Atlantic & Anchor Bank. The metal sign
on the scrabby lawn said FORECLOSED in yellow block letters. Under the provisions of the Massachusetts Housing Court, the deputies were now in charge.

  “Hey! Television! You can’t shoot here. It’s private property.”

  Jane felt a hand clamp onto her bare arm. She twisted away, annoyed. Of course they could shoot.

  “Excuse me?” She eyed the guy’s three-piece pinstripe suit, ridiculous on a day like today. He must be melting. Still, being hot didn’t give him the right to be wrong. “We’re on the public sidewalk. We can shoot whatever we can see and hear.”

  Jane stashed her notebook into her tote bag, then held out a hand, conciliatory. Maybe he knew something. “And not television. Newspaper. The new online edition. I’m Jane Ryland, from the Register.”

  She paused. Lawyer, banker, bean counter, she predicted. For A&A Bank? Or the Sandovals? The Sandovals had already told her, on camera, how Elliot Sandoval had lost his construction job, and they were struggling on pregnant MaryLou’s day care salary. Struggling and failing.

  “I don’t care who you are.” The man crossed his arms over his chest, a chunky watch glinting, tortoiseshell sunglasses hiding his expression. “This is none of your business. You don’t tell your friend to shut off that camera, I’m telling the cops to stop you.”

  You kidding me? “Feel free, Mr.—?” Jane took her hand away. Felt a trickle of sweat down her back. Boston was baking in the throes of an unexpected May heat wave. Everyone was cranky. It was almost too hot to argue. “You’ll find we’re within our rights.”

  The guy pulled out a phone. All she needed. And stupid, because the cops were right there. TJ kept shooting, good for him. Brand new at the Boston Register, videographer TJ Foy was hire number one in the paper’s fledgling online video news department. Jane was the first—and so far, only—reporter assigned.

  “It’s a chance to show off your years of TV experience,” the Register’s new city editor had explained. Pretending Jane had a choice. “Make it work.”

  Pleasing the new boss was never a bad thing, and truth be told, Jane could use a little employment security. She still suffered pangs from her unfair firing from Channel 11 last year, but at least it didn’t haunt her every day. This was her new normal, especially now that newspapering was more like TV. “Multimedia,” her new editor called it.

  “We’re doing a story on the housing crisis.” Jane smiled, trying again. “Remember the teenager who got killed last week on Springvale Street? Emily-Sue Ordway? Fell from a window, trying to get back into her parents’ foreclosed home? We’re trying to show—it’s not about the houses so much as it is the people.”

  “‘The people’ should pay their mortgage.” The man pointed to the clapboard two-story with his cell phone. “Then ‘the cops’ wouldn’t have to ‘remove’ their possessions.”

  Okay, so not a lawyer for the Sandovals. But at least this jerk wasn’t dialing.

  “Are you with A&A? With the bank?” Might as well be direct.

  “That’s not any of—”

  “Vitucci! Callum!” The deputy appeared in the open front door, one hand on each side of the doorjamb as if to keep himself upright. He held the screen door open with his foot. His smirk had vanished. The two cops on the driveway alerted, inquiring.

  “Huh? What’s up?” one asked.

  “You getting this?” Jane whispered. She didn’t want to ruin TJ’s audio with her voice, but something was happening. Something the eviction squad hadn’t expected.

  “Second floor.” The deputy pulled a radio from his belt pouch. Looked at it. Looked back at the cops. His shoulders sagged. “Better get in here.”

  2

  “Why would he confess if he didn’t do it?” Detective Jake Brogan peered through the smoky one-way glass at the guy slumped in the folding chair of Boston Police Department’s interrogation room E. What Jane would probably call “skeevy”—too-long hair scraggling over one ear, ratty jacket, black T-shirt, tired tan pants. Thin. Late thirties, at least, more like forty. How old would Gordon Thorley have been in 1994, when Carley Marie Schaefer was killed? Late teens, at most. Around the same age as Carley. “This guy Thorley just shows up here at HQ and insists he’s guilty? You ever seen that? Heard of that?”

  “Let’s get some lunch. Ask questions later.” DeLuca jammed his empty paper coffee cup into the overflowing metal trash bin in the hall outside the interrogation room. “Sherrey will get all we need, give us his intake notes after. Could be a bird in the hand.”

  “Not exactly ‘in the hand,’” Jake said. “If he’s a whack job. There’s also that old ‘innocent till proven guilty’ thing.”

  Jake flipped through the manila case file, a disorganized jumble of flimsy-paged police records, scrawled judge’s orders, and blurry prison logs. Who was this Gordon Thorley, anyway? Seemed like no one—not the cops, not the DA’s office—had ever heard of him in connection with Carley Marie Schaefer. In connection with an armed robbery back in the 1990s, sure; in connection with a chunk of prison time, sure. He’d been out on parole almost five years now. Record since then looked clean.

  “Mr. Thorley?” Investigator Branford “Bing” Sherrey’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Let’s do this one more time. Start with Carley Marie Schaefer. What was your relationship with her? Why’d you come forward now? Why not before?”

  The man picked up the can of diet ginger ale from the table in front of him. He examined the label, then, from the looks of it, slugged down the whole thing. He paused, swallowing. Then shrugged. “I get why you don’t believe me. I know I should have owned up. But I was just a—okay. Again. Carley and me, we met in high school. We … had a thing. We kept it secret. I was older. She lived with her parents, out in Attleboro. Then she tried to break it off. I didn’t want that. We went to our special place in the…”

  “Whack job,” D said. “Why do you want to hear this again?”

  “Maybe it’s true,” Jake said. “And we’ll clear this case. Finally. My grandfather was still on the job when Carley Marie was killed. I was maybe fourteen. Boston went crazy, I still remember it. Girl’s body discovered by a family on a picnic. The Lilac Sunday killer.” Jake blew out a breath, picturing those thick black headlines in the Register and the Record. “Grandpa would talk about it, nights. It was a huge deal. Weighed on him. How Carley’s family was so distraught. He ‘went to his grave,’ Grandma Brogan still says, regretting his squad of murder cops never caught the Lilac Sunday killer.”

  “You think this is him?” D scratched his nose, looked unconvinced.

  “Lilac Sunday’s only a week away. We could do with a big solve,” Jake said. “Even one that falls into our laps.”

  Behind the window, Thorley was talking with his hands, illustrating the heavy coil of rope he’d stashed in the trunk of his green Celica, the circumference of the tree trunk in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, the tight twist of the knots he’d made to hold Carley Schaefer in place. Thorley jabbed the heel of his palm toward the window. Jake flinched. Carley’s neck had been snapped. Huh. Thorley seemed like too much of a wimp for that.

  “And gimme a break, D,” Jake added. “If we’re getting this guy’s case, we need to hear his story. Sucks that the Supe didn’t call us till now. We should have been doing the questioning. Not Bing.”

  “Won’t matter. The guy’s prolly a wannabe. A nut.” DeLuca shook his head. “It’s like, he read some old newspapers or whatever and now he’s making himself into a scary killer. He wants a TV movie, who knows. Lifetime presents the Lilac Sunday Killer. Crap. We’re supposed to spend time on this sucker when Homicide’s working on three open cases? New ones?”

  Jake stared through the glass. Gordon Thorley—hands now clasped on the pitted metal table, looked straight ahead, eyes not quite focused. Third time through the Carley Marie story, Jake caught the same inflection, the same word choice. Had Thorley practiced? Contemplated his confession so often that it set in stone?

  “It’s as if he’s been told what to
say.” Jake closed his file, took out his cell phone.

  DeLuca rolled his eyes. Pointed to Thorley. “Oh, yeah. Why didn’t I think of that? This is why I’m proud to be your partner. Basking in the glory.”

  “Stuff it, D.” Jake tried to talk and dial his cell at the same time. D was a good guy and a solid partner, but like the entire Homicide squad, overworked and under-successful. Boston had too many murders, not enough arrests. Only a fourth-year detective, Jake was low man in seniority, which meant high man on the Supe’s dreaded blame list. It didn’t help to be grandson of a former police commissioner. Jake’s blue-line “legacy” admittedly provided a leg up at entry level, but not job security or acceptance by his colleagues. D, ten years his senior, and in the “from the ranks” club, didn’t always feel the pressure to go the extra mile. If D could close a case, faster was better. Jake still thought “right” was better.

  He held up a palm, putting his partner on hold so he could hear his phone call. “Hello? This is Jake Brogan, Boston Police. Not an emergency, but I need talk to Dr. Nathaniel Frasca. He around? Yes, I’ll hang on.”

  “Who’s that?” DeLuca narrowed his eyes. “Doctor who?”

  “You’ll see,” Jake said. “And maybe I’ll let you bask in the glory.”

  3

  “Go. Go. Get closer.” Jane almost pushed TJ forward, guiding him across the short driveway and toward the postage-stamp front porch. The Boston cops had dashed inside, radios crackling. Suit guy had slammed himself into the front seat of his fancy Lexus, punching buttons on his cell phone the whole way. “You’re rolling, right?”

  “On it,” TJ said. He held the camera steady, targeting the door, but glanced over at her. “And I got this, you know, Ryland? Chill. I’m white-balanced, I got batteries, I’m up on sound. You don’t have to keep checking.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Ignore me.”

  Would she ever lose her fear of failure? Her mom used to tease her—probably half tease, half worry—each time Jane predicted certain disaster. She’d fail the test, miss the cut, come in second, lose the story. It never happened. Hardly ever. Maybe fear was good. Maybe fear’s what kept her in the game.