The Murder List Page 15

  “True, but you can volunteer anything you like.” He smiled, as if this wasn’t a potentially pivotal moment. “And you can also ask me anything. I can answer if it’s not confidential.”

  The light changed, giving him a moment to regroup as they crossed, narrowly avoiding a speeding right-turner in a blue Crown Vic, another cop car. Rachel watched it go by, putting her hands over her ears to block the siren. She’d spilled that Roni Wollaskay was an NG. A not guilty. Shit. He’d sure called that one wrong. As a result, he’d let Wollaskay go without a fight.

  Rachel pushed through the coffee shop’s revolving door. Took off her hat as she entered, shook out her hair, headed for an empty booth. He signaled for a server, then followed her.

  Jurors often faded into a blur of forgettable faces after a trial, and there was no longer any need for Jack, or any lawyer, to remember who they were. He’d remembered Rachel, though, her random tumble of dark curls—the opposite of the coiffed Clea, he realized, and with a tenth of the makeup. He remembered her intelligent eyes and even, when the judge made a dumb joke, her genuine-looking smile. He remembered the way she’d checked her watch when it got close to lunch and recess. A juror who was hungry or impatient or both was a risky commodity. If a juror wanted the trial over, they’d agree to anything if it would expedite their departure. Had the Davis jurors reached their verdict based on something other than what was put in evidence? That’s why he was here.

  “Okay, then let me ask you this.” Rachel slid into one side of a booth perpendicular to the window, hugging the corner. “Seems like you thought you knew how each juror would vote. How’d you peg me?”

  He slid in across from her. Watched as she took off her sunglasses, eyes darting to all corners of the wide-windowed coffee shop. Another police car, siren blaring, raced by. Rachel cringed at the sound. Talk about body language. She was hiding something from him. If it was something big, he could use it to try for a new trial.

  “How’d I ‘peg’ you? Well, the verdict was guilty,” Jack said. “And it had to be unanimous, so I suppose that’s moot. You were the foreperson, after all.”

  Did you engineer that verdict? Jack wanted to ask. How? But that was beyond the scope of the law. She looked at him, unreadable.

  “So,” he said. “About my letter.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  RACHEL NORTH

  I was nervous as hell in the café’s too-small booth. I should have asked for my coffee to go. I fiddled with my sunglasses, something to fill up the time as I waited for the coffee I shouldn’t have agreed to. And the discussion I shouldn’t have agreed to. The senator didn’t know where I’d gone, and it was barely four. I was relieved that Jack—it felt odd to call him that—couldn’t ask me anything about the deliberations. He said he could only inquire about whether we took into account anything that wasn’t evidence. Which, I could say, I hadn’t.

  He’d predicted I was a guilty vote anyway. Which got me off the hook. That hook, at least.

  Another police car zoomed by, again in the direction of the statehouse. Was that the third one? I calmed myself, spooked. Boston. Cops everywhere.

  “So, yes, my letter,” Jack was saying. He’d unbuttoned his coat but didn’t take it off. Which meant he wasn’t planning to stay long. I’d told him I had ten minutes. Eight to go.

  I’d never seen Jack Kirkland this close up, funny, except for that night at Gallery, and even though I’d had three glasses of birthday champagne, I remembered him trying to hide behind his menu. He was maybe fifteen years older than I? Twenty? And certainly more personally engaging now than he was that night—but that was during the trial, so there were probably rules. There were probably rules for right now, too. I wished I knew them. Lawyers always had the advantage.

  “Let me ask you,” he went on. “Did anyone say anything about my client having a criminal record?”

  I blinked, struggling to keep focus, wondering what he knew. Who else he’d talked to. There were eleven other people who could tell him the answer to that, so I played it straight. “I think the subject came up, but we agreed it wasn’t in evidence.”

  “So, it was discussed. Did you see a story about it on TV?”

  “Nope.” Truth. Dani Zander had seen it, but she wasn’t me.

  Jack nodded. “Did you vote guilty because you’d heard he had a criminal record? Did anyone?”

  I felt like this coffee shop was a courtroom, with me on the witness stand. But Jack Kirkland couldn’t know what I thought when I voted guilty. No one could. I wanted this all to be over.

  “No. Does he have a criminal record?”

  “He does now,” Jack said.

  A barista, lavender streaks in her blond hair and wearing a black T-shirt, served our coffees along with a sheaf of brown paper napkins. She set down the white ceramic mugs, then pointed to an array of shiny aluminum pitchers and multicolored packets on a stand nearby. “Milk, sugar?” she asked. “Over there.”

  Jack handed her a twenty, waved away the change.

  My phone vibrated against my thigh. I pulled it from the pocket of my tote bag and looked at the text ID. RAFFERTY, it read. 911.

  “I have to call in,” I said. My stomach lurched, I couldn’t help it. Tom Rafferty’s idea of an emergency ran the spectrum from potential nuclear annihilation to the loss of his yellow tie with the sailboats. But I was the one who should always be there for him. That was my job and my life. He needed me. I should have stayed at the statehouse, ready and available.

  Jack raised a palm. “Take your time,” he said. He leaned back in the booth, stirred his coffee, looked over my shoulder and out the window.

  “It’s me,” I said when the senator picked up.

  Another police car screamed by, siren so loud it distorted what Rafferty told me.

  “What?” I said.

  “What?” Jack leaned across the table, one hand reaching toward me, but not quite getting there. “Rachel? What’s going on?”

  I tried to listen to the senator. Tried to process. Dead. Murdered. Dumpster.

  “Who? Who’s dead?” I had to ask.

  “Behind the statehouse,” Rafferty said.

  I pictured it as he spoke, under the weeping willow, in the cul-de-sac where no one ever went except those dealing with the daily cleanup of the statehouse. The dirty work. “In the dumpster? Are you okay?”

  “What?” Jack persisted, his frown deepening. He was interrupting my phone conversation, which was rude as hell.

  I put one hand over my non-phone ear and closed my eyes, blocking him out. This was none of his business.

  “Senator Rafferty? Senator?” But Rafferty’s voice had vanished, and the dull silence on the other end of the phone line taunted me. I opened my eyes and looked at the timer. We’d been talking for two minutes and fifty-three seconds. But the call had ended. Rafferty hung up. Or something happened.

  “What?” Jack said. “Rachel, your face is—What happened? Are you okay? Anything I can do?”

  I placed my phone on the table, faceup. I had plenty of battery. I had bars. It was nothing wrong on my end. The senator had hung up. Or something. But mid-sentence?

  “It’s a … colleague.” I said. “A woman who’s … who was … on the senator’s staff. Danielle Zander. She’s—” I stopped, regrouped, tried to convince my mouth to say the words. The lavender-haired barista appeared at the table, stopped, took one look at us, pivoted, and left.

  Jack put his hand on my arm, his long fingers curling around the wrist of my coat sleeve.

  “Rachel?”

  “I have to go back,” I said. “I … we … she…”

  When my cell rang again, I recoiled, terrified. RAFFERTY. 911. Grabbing the phone, my elbow hit my mug of coffee, sloshed it onto the table, and a brown splash of darkness pooled on the slick red surface. It had a mind of its own, forming a thick trickle that rivered off the edge of the table and dripped onto the terra-cotta floor below. Jack took a napkin and sopped the spill away.
/>   “Senator?” I said into the phone. “Hello?”

  But it was not Tom Rafferty.

  “Who?” I squinted my ears as he told me a name. “Lewis? Millin?”

  Jack snatched my phone from my hand, and in an instant, hit the red dot to break the connection.

  “What the hell?” The entire world was collapsing, all the rules broken. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “You can call him back, say you dropped the phone,” Jack said. “But Lewis Millin? Boston police homicide detective Lewis Millin?”

  “Yes. Homicide.” I felt my eyes widen as I tried to decode his meaning. Then I shook my head, clearing it. “Give me back my cell.”

  “Sure,” he said. “If you want to go to jail.”

  “What?”

  “Lewis Millin is the pit bull of detectives,” Jack said. “The death star. If he wants to talk to you, that’s a…”

  I saw his chest rise and fall. His dark suit and soft red tie showed underneath his coat.

  “It’s a situation.” He finished his sentence. “And you’re lucky I’m here, I’ve gotta say. What’d he tell you?”

  “He only got as far as saying he wanted to talk to me, Jack, and then you took my phone. And exactly how am I lucky?” I was anything but lucky. Though luckier than Danielle Zander.

  My cell rang again.

  “Give me that, Jack!” I said, and I knew my voice sounded strange because the people at the table across from us both turned and stared, concerned, probably wondering if they’d need to step in to avert a domestic quarrel.

  “Who is she?” Jack whispered. My phone kept ringing. He held it, a hostage, apparently, until I told him. “Someone you know? Work with? Have a relationship with?”

  “Give me that.” I plucked it from his hands. I hit the button, my heart pounding. I never should have come here. I never should have left the office. But what would have happened if I’d stayed?

  “Blame it on them,” Jack instructed. “The dropped call.”

  “Hello?” I said. It was Millin.

  “I worried we’d lost you, Miz North. Where’d you go?”

  “Where’d you go?” Jack was right. I shouldn’t be defensive. “I was talking to Senator Rafferty, and suddenly there was nothing. What happened?”

  Jack nodded, approving. Like I needed his approval.

  “Where are you right now, Miz North?” The detective’s voice was cordial but unmistakably predatory. I imagined some kind of special police GPS thing, tracking my cell, pinging Boylston Street, zeroing in on Café Coffee, targeting this very table. Cops arriving, even as we talked. I twisted in the booth, looked over my shoulder to see if I was right. I wasn’t.

  I turned back, unsettled, watching Jack listen.

  “Where am I? I’m…”

  Jack shook his head. Made a time-out sign. Slashed his throat with one finger.

  “We need to talk to you,” Millin continued.

  “Talk to me?” I was purposely repeating this for Jack now. Because Jack knew who Lewis Millin was. A homicide detective who wanted to talk to me. Jack had been in this position before. I hadn’t. Jack reached into his suit jacket. Pulled out a brown leather case holding a white index card and then a capped Bic pen. He pulled the cap off with his teeth and wrote on the card.

  Find out why.

  “Absolutely. How can I help?” I paused as Millin answered. And then did my repeating thing again. We were a good team. “Yes, I worked with Danielle, but I didn’t know her very—”

  Jack jabbed his pen at his next printed message.

  “I’m happy to do whatever I can,” I read his words. “But I don’t know anything about—Oh. Her personnel file? Well, sure, but that would be the senator’s decis—I mean, sure.”

  Jack pen-tapped the index card so hard I was sure this detective could hear it over the phone. I looked at it. He’d written WHEN?

  “When?” I couldn’t believe how guilty this cop made me feel, though he’d only been polite. Danielle Zander was dead. Behind the statehouse. I envisioned it, but my brain, protecting me I suppose, showed me only darkness.

  Poor Danielle.

  “Right now,” Millin said.

  My hand ached from clutching the phone. And someone must have turned down the heat in here. I drew my coat closer, shivering. I couldn’t get warm enough. I had to hold myself together. “She wasn’t at work today, I just realized.”

  “You ‘just realized’?” Millin’s voice honed to a sharper edge. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “The last time I saw her?” I repeated for Jack, then tried to make my brain work. My coat was suffocating me. I put the phone between my shoulder and cheek and shrugged off one sleeve, then changed hands and did the other side. I calculated, closing my eyes to imagine a calendar. I remembered a ham sandwich with mustard and a pickle. Almost gagged.

  “I saw her all the time,” I managed to say, thinking about the day during the trial when she’d brought me lunch. I tried to keep my stomach from twisting. Tried to keep my voice steady. When had I last seen her? “Like, Thursday, maybe? Friday, certainly. And then she was going to an event with Senator Rafferty.”

  I stopped. Even to me it sounded like I was babbling. Jack’s edgy concern made me nervous. With the Deacon Davis trial raw in my memory, I kept imagining myself on the witness stand. And Lewis Millin, repeating to a jury what I’d told him in the first moment of hearing that poor Danielle had been murdered. Two murders I was now involved in. One, Deacon Davis, as a result of whyever they called people to jury duty. The other the result of—well, I guess I didn’t know that.

  My brain raced, spiraling. Was there anything I should have known? Had I missed something? And now someone would have to write a statement for the senator. Counsel the rest of the staff. Handle the press. I looked at my watch. Four thirty. I almost stood up. I had to get out of here.

  “Miz North?” Millin was saying. “We’re in the senator’s office. But where are you right now? Are you in a place where you can sit tight, stay until we get there?”

  “I’ll come back to the statehouse, if it’s—safe?” I pictured Rafferty pacing, bitter, frantic, calculating. Grieving? Wondering where the hell I’d gone. Was Millin trying to keep me away from Beacon Hill? Did he think it was dangerous? Somehow, even with all this, the statehouse was my base. I knew it didn’t make sense, but nothing did right now.

  “How fast can you get here?” Millin asked.

  “Ten minutes.” If he wanted me to come back, that meant he didn’t think there was a killer lurking in the statehouse halls. And if there were, he sure wouldn’t be on the phone with me. I looked at Jack, now longing for his advice. “But I don’t know—”

  I stopped mid-sentence, biting the inside of my mouth. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. That’s why they were investigating. I took a deep breath and spooled it out, trying to remember normal. And real. And how to be. I had nothing to hide. I’d do anything in the universe to help.

  “Whatever I can do,” I told him. I could handle this. This wasn’t about me. They cared about poor Dani. Who’d lived a life I knew nothing about and showed up at some wrong place at the wrong time. Her killer was still out there. “This is horrible. Heartbreaking. I’ll see you in my office, ten minutes.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” Millin said. And he hung up before I could.

  “I’ll come with you,” Jack said.

  “I don’t need a lawyer.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Jack picked up his index card, tore it to bits, and dropped the ink-scrawled pieces into his half-full coffee cup. “Though you have an alibi.”

  “Huh?” I’d almost got my coat in place again, which was more than I could say for my equilibrium.

  “An alibi,” he repeated. “You were here with me.”

  I stopped in the middle of tying my belt, hands poised at my waist.

  “Is that supposed to be funny somehow?”

  “Who knows,” he said. “But I’ll
come with you. As a friend. Protector. Can’t hurt. Right?”

  JACK KIRKLAND

  They hadn’t walked half a block from the coffee shop when Rachel lost it. She’d jabbed the crosswalk button and let her arm fall to her side. But when the light changed to GO, she didn’t move.

  “Rachel?” Jack said, taking one step onto Boylston Street. “You coming?”

  He turned. And saw her face go pale. Saw her chest rise and fall. Then saw her tears begin, falling hard and furious and unhidden. He grabbed her arm, steadying her. He felt her weight against him, her shoulders shaking, and Jack smelled flowers and coffee and the chill of the coming twilight. Rachel stayed there, sobbing, her face buried in his coat, as the lighted numbers on the crosswalk sign counted down to one, then changed back to stop.

  “Whoa. Sorry.” She moved away in one quick motion and blinked at him, as if remembering where she was. She used both gloved hands to swipe the tears away as she tried—not very successfully—to smile. “I only … for a moment there, you know? It got me. Sorry. I’m okay now.”

  He’d wondered about her, back in the coffee shop. Wondered why she hadn’t freaked out, or burst into tears, or simply leaped up and raced to the statehouse. Any of those things would have been understandable. Not helpful, certainly, but understandable. Her tears were somehow reassuring.

  “It’s so … impossible.” Her eyes widened as she looked at him. The white-orange of the halogen streetlights began to emerge, changing the shadows on her face. “I’m honestly terrified to go back there. I can’t imagine being in that parking lot. I’ve been there a million times! Now I want to … to go home and hide under the covers. Forever. Who do you think could have done such a horrible thing? Why?”

  There was nothing reasonable to say. Nothing. How many times had he heard this? Even as a defense attorney. The exact question, from every family, every friend, every lover or spouse or parent of a murder victim. The answers were always a complicated amalgam of simple elements. Money, sometimes. Drugs. Love. Jealousy. Power. All of those. When the cops got closer to finding the motive, they’d be closer to finding the suspect and making an arrest. That’s usually when he got involved. This time was different.