The Murder List Page 19

  “We will not be requesting bail.” He even raised his voice a little, making sure the damn TV cameras could pick it up. There were few times in a lawyer’s career when they got to stomp the shit out of the prosecution. Move over, Clarence Darrow. Jack Kirkland was in the house. “Because we are asking that the court dismiss all charges against Nina Rafferty. Mrs. Rafferty has an ironclad alibi for the time of the murder.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  RACHEL NORTH

  Crazy crazy crazy was all I could think. Tom Rafferty and I hustled out of the courthouse as fast as we could. I wrapped my arms around myself, fighting off the biting March air that knifed through me. It was threatening snow again. The steep and narrow hill to the statehouse became a wind tunnel, the climb and the cold and the stress intensifying everything. We were headed to the bank.

  The press, surrounding us, incessant, unceasing, had finally let us go. After the court officers took Nina—sobbing uncontrollably—away, that Clea Rourke person, her red hair motionless but her mouth nonstop, had led the questioning in the crowded courthouse hallway.

  “Will you make the bail? How soon?” Rourke had challenged the senator to answer, pointing a stick mic at him. “What’s your reaction to the judge’s decision to set it so low? Is Drybrough a campaign contributor?”

  We hadn’t been able to snatch a moment to confer, so at this point, Rafferty was on his own. I’d step in if needed, but decided it was better to keep my mouth shut. The senator was savvy enough to steer the press to the bottom line, that Nina was free. I wondered, though, how he’d handle the “illicit relationships with other female members of his staff” part. But the big story had to be Nina’s alibi. Her alibi meant someone else killed Dani Zander. Someone still out there.

  Rafferty had given me his overcoat to hold, knowing it’d look better on camera for him to be in his suit jacket.

  I’d tamped down my ego and stepped back. It would be bad optics for us to be in the same photo if the headlines were about those provocative “relationships” accusations.

  “Let me say this, and let me make this loud and clear.” Rafferty used his campaign voice, strong and authoritative. The court officer, Hector, stood, arms crossed, in front of the closed door, and seemed to be taking in Tom’s every word. “I am relieved—but not surprised—at this outcome. It is impossible—let me say it again, impossible—that my dear wife had anything to do with this tragedy. I am grateful for the legal skill and tenacity of Jack Kirkland, one of the finest attorneys in Massachusetts, who in this chaotic time drilled to the heart of the matter and proved that this prosecution was ill-advised, ill-conceived, injudicious, and rash. In fact, I am appalled that the district attorney would allow these cruel charges based on such shabby evidence. This was a rush to judgment, pure and simple, and I am grateful that this debacle is behind us.”

  “Yeah, well, the judge didn’t drop the charges, Senator.” Clea Rourke jabbed her mic closer. “So are you confident he will? What will happen if the Commonwealth finds more evidence?”

  “And how about what Gardiner called your illicit relationships, Senator? Was she correct?”

  I couldn’t tell which reporter had the guts to ask that. Part of me, frankly, wanted to hear how he’d answer. But not in this predatory arena.

  “Are you going to resign?”

  “When will she be released?”

  It always amused me how reporters never waited for the answers to their colleagues’ questions. I waited, hugging Tom’s sleek vicuña coat. Darkest navy, it smelled like citrus and leather and power.

  “What are you going to say to your wife about—”

  I’d stepped in front of Tom then, clutching the coat. Optics be damned. “The senator is grateful for the outpouring of public support in this case,” I said. “As you can imagine, his first concern is seeing his wife released. And that is what he is about to do. We ask for your patience while this matter is resolved, and that you allow the senator and his wife some privacy while they—”

  “No way, Rachel,” one reporter called out, trampling my attempt to wrap up the onslaught. “Kidding me? Senator, what’s your reaction to the illicit-relationship charge? Are you going to resign?”

  “And since the judge did not drop the charges, your wife remains charged with murder. Did your wife kill Danielle Zander?”

  “Do you think the killer is at large?”

  “Are you a suspect, Senator?”

  “Hey. Hey. We’re done here.” I interrupted the barrage, stolidly kept my position in front of the senator, and handed him back his coat. “You heard the lawyer, Mr. Kirkland, say Mrs. Rafferty has an ironclad alibi for the time of the murder. That’s why the bail is so low. We fully expect…” I was improvising at that point, but figured it couldn’t hurt. “We fully expect the charges to be dropped. And now, if you will excuse us.”

  We made it to the elevator, swimming through a sea of questions. As the doors closed in front of us, Tom Rafferty, hands mashed into his coat pockets, had not said a word. From the grim look on his face, now was not the time for questions.

  It was driving me crazy, though. I yearned to ask him about those “illicit relationships.” I kept imagining them. Picturing them. Every explicitly lurid possibility. Tom would have to face those accusations, pretty damn soon.

  We shouldered out of the wind tunnel and through the revolving doors to the lobby of the bank, its brittle gilt and marble walls so opposite from the sunshine and bluster of outdoors. Two sullen guards, motionless, observed us as we entered, barely registering the imperious but flustered man and his doting subordinate. Almost another world, glass-walled cubicles and the unseen vaults behind them. But this was the world where Rafferty could get a cashier’s check, made out for the five thousand dollars, and buy his wife’s freedom.

  For now, at least.

  If the case against Nina fell through, that meant the murderer was still on the loose. A chill rattled my entire body, and it wasn’t because of the weather.

  JACK KIRKLAND

  The morning after the Nina arraignment, Jack walked past the uniformed guards at the statehouse. The lobby, lofty and smoky-walled, possessed an ominous stillness. As if everyone inside were holding their breath to see what would happen next.

  Elevators were empty. Doors stayed closed. Somewhere down the long corridor a phone rang, then instantly fell silent. Jack’s footsteps echoed, the sound bouncing off the centuries-old stone walls. This historic building had certainly weathered worse. But not recently.

  Jack had the morning Globe tucked under his arm as he pulled open the door to the senator’s Communications Office. Unnecessary to bring it, he realized, as he saw the same newspaper, folded open to the front-page headlines, on Rachel’s desk. She’d already read it. He saw the yellow sticky note stuck smack in the middle, between the words SHOCKING and FREE.

  Jack, wait, back five mins.—R.

  The Globe had split the front page, overwhelmed by the journalistic tug-of-war created by yesterday’s events. The once-celebrated Nina Rafferty, accused murderer of a young senate staffer, was released on bail and without even an ankle bracelet. That story, with a photo of Nina and Jack snapped over the heads of a swarming clump of reporters, got the prime upper-right placement. Her husband, once a legislative rock star, had been humiliatingly trashed in court by the assistant district attorney and accused of infidelity and adultery and general perfidy. That story, with a photo of a gesticulating Rafferty taken in the courthouse hallway, was upper left.

  What a freaking mess.

  Jack had to hand it to himself, though, he thought, as he stared at the photos. He’d stayed cool, asked the right questions, done his job. Did Nina kill Danielle Zander? She’d insisted she couldn’t have. That wasn’t his problem. He’d won. Yesterday, at least.

  What the future held, no one could guess. But Nina had made good on the retainer, so he was totally on board.

  He looked at his watch. Five minutes, Rachel’s note said. But five m
inutes from when? Where was she?

  Jack tossed his paper into the empty wastebasket, then paced to the wide four-paned window and perched on the wide wooden sill. He looked out over a courtyard, a blotch of snow-speckled brown grass dotted with pointy shrubs surrounding a statue of a seated woman, all wide skirt and demure dress. Mary Something, he half remembered. Right. Dyer. Mary Dyer. She’d been hanged, in 16-something. On Boston Common, exactly like he’d reminded Rachel the other day. Hanged for … something.

  There had been a moment in court, Jack had to admit, when he’d worried. Because certainly Nina could have cooked up this alibi story, knowing that he’d never have time to check it out, but neither would Gardiner. That she’d been on “semi-sabbatical”—her description—at some inn in Maine and shut off from cell service wasn’t the most slam dunk of excuses. Or the most original. But who the hell cared. If he got her out on the strength of it, that was one step closer to not guilty. Or even, he dared to hope, to dropping the charges altogether.

  Yup, he had to hand it to himself. He’d stood before the court, knowing this was a roll of the damn dice, but they were the only dice he had.

  “Your Honor,” he’d argued, “we will be filing a notice of alibi as soon as time allows, but due to the truncated timeline of this rush to judgment, suffice it to say that Mrs. Rafferty has assured me that she was not even in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the time of the murder, as my colleague sets the timeline as ‘on or about Sunday of this week,’ nor was she in this state in the several days prior to that. As a result of the Commonwealth’s ill-advised presumption and its shoddy investigation, my client has been unfairly maligned, and unjustly forced to face a charge that not only is deplorable in its subject but devastating in its scope.”

  And if the investigators for the imperious Gardiner hadn’t been savvy enough to track down her whereabouts, then screw ’em. Although they’d have faced nothing but dead ends. Nina hadn’t told them anything. And Rafferty insisted he hadn’t known where she was. Some relationship. But for their purposes now, Rafferty and his wife’s seemingly icy marriage served the case well. No one else but Nina, no one he knew of, had known she was off in Maine. Where in Maine, and who with? And why? That she wasn’t saying. At this point, she didn’t need to.

  “Mrs. Rafferty is a pillar of the Commonwealth, Your Honor.” He’d almost smiled with the power of what came next. His less-prominent clients, gangbanger murder listers, provided no such pedigrees. “She is the wife of the president of the state senate, as you are well aware. She has immeasurable ties to the community, no criminal record, is no danger whatsoever to anyone, and is no more of a flight risk than you are, Judge.” Jack had risked that personal addendum, hoping it proved how confident he was. He was relieved to hear an approving murmur from the audience. And the judge’s scowl did not deepen.

  “The evidence against her—the so-called evidence—is weak,” he’d gone on. “At best. In fact, I would argue it is nonexistent. A necklace? And a concocted motive? Your Honor, we ask that you put an end to this before the Commonwealth suffers even further public embarrassment.”

  He wished he’d had the nerve to look at Gardiner then. She must’ve been peeing her pinstripes. Served her right. Jack did have the pleasure of seeing the indecision on Drybrough’s face. The judge obviously knew the shit was hitting the fan and would splat on him next. He’d wheeled his chair away from his lofty desk, as if trying to distance himself from having to make a decision. Good luck with that.

  Gardiner, almost spluttering, had used the only weapons she had. Derision and sarcasm. “This is laughable,” she’d said. She’d pulled out “Who’s to say this is true?” and “We’ll certainly investigate.” She’d wound up with “This makes no difference to the evidence we have already amassed in this case,” and “As a result, we strenuously object to a minimal bail and vigorously oppose Mr. Kirkland’s fairy-tale motion to drop the charges.”

  A man and a woman, coats and briefcases, now walked into the landscape below. The couple approached the statue, then disappeared, hidden by the wide stone plinth and the seated figure of martyr Mary Dyer.

  “Jack? Something going on outside? I got this for you, if you’re interested.”

  Rachel, a paper cup of coffee in each hand, held one out to him. “Black, if I remember? So—got your text. What can I do for you?”

  He stood, accepted the coffee. “Thanks. Yeah. Listen, have you ever been to that dumpster?” he asked. “Can you see it from anywhere inside the building?”

  “Why?” She pulled out the swivel chair behind her desk and pointed him to a foofy little couch as she took her seat. She propped her chin on one hand and stirred her coffee with the other, the red plastic stir-stick scraping on the bottom of her white paper cup.

  She looked tired, he thought. In all black. A weariness around her eyes, a sadness in her attempt to smile. Smart of her to question his motives, he had to admit. He was Nina’s lawyer, after all. Rachel couldn’t know if he was working on her case right now or not. If she’d known him longer, she’d know he was always working.

  “Why? Because I should go see it,” he said. “Can you take me there?”

  She blinked once, twice. Maybe she was squeamish about seeing a murder scene close up. Or maybe she was wary of being involved at all. Or maybe, for some reason, she didn’t want to be around him. She’d agreed to see him though, answered his text this morning within ten seconds.

  “The dumpster? Is that why you texted?” She puffed out a breath, then pointed at the folded Globe. “There’s a thing in the paper. A diagram and everything. Can’t you use that to find it, instead of me? I’ve gotta say, I don’t want to be anywhere near that—”

  “I get it,” he interrupted. It was pretty inconsiderate of him, come to think of it. He’d get so focused on an investigation, a case, an innocence, that he’d forget the feelings of everyone who wasn’t equally focused. His ex-wife, for instance, long gone, had not been willing to share him with his job. Caroline had called him a workaholic, as if that wasn’t a good thing. But he learned from the experience with her. “And I’m sorry, you know? Should never have asked. Stupid of me. But the reason I texted? I need to talk to you in person, to find out—”

  “Whether Tom Rafferty was sleeping with me?”

  Rachel’s interruption, her voice dusky with sarcasm, almost made him choke on his bitter coffee.

  “What?”

  “Did you know she—Gardiner—was going to say that? In open court?” Rachel stood so quickly that the sticky-noted newspaper slid to the floor. She didn’t pick it up. “I’m sure you assumed it was me she was talking about.”

  “Rachel, listen.” Jack put his coffee on a spindly side table. Stood. Tried to decide what to do. She probably hadn’t slept last night at all. He imagined her wide-eyed, tossing and turning, haunted by public humiliation. By the whispers, the discord, the implication, the suspicion. Rafferty’s office had been deserted when Jack arrived, desks empty and phones unanswered. Other staffers apparently had stayed away, shunning the very proximity, as if the senator’s troubles were contagious. And maybe, because of Gardiner’s insinuations, they were.

  Rachel’s face was crumbling now, her facade of bravado disintegrating almost into tears. It was all he could do to stop himself from reaching out to her, comforting her. He took a step closer to her, risking it. She was so vulnerable. Caught in the middle.

  “Listen. Rachel.” He was surprisingly concerned for her. This was not her fault. It was almost heartbreaking. As if this intelligent, successful, and—okay—gorgeous woman was yet another victim. Danielle and then Nina and now Rachel. And he could be her defender. He wanted to. He needed to. “No. I absolutely did not think she was talking about you. Martha Gardiner is an idiot. She makes shit up. Seriously. She’s a train wreck. I wouldn’t be surprised if—”

  “Really?” Rachel whispered. She didn’t move. “Then why would she say that? Make me look so terrible? And Jack? Did you think it was
me? Even for a moment? Tell me, honestly.”

  Despite himself, he was on the hunt for answers. Motives. If Rafferty was a predator, and Nina was jealous? Or maybe Rafferty himself…?

  Jack yanked himself back to the moment.

  “Of course I didn’t think so, don’t think so, Rachel.” That was semi-true. It had crossed his mind, but not for long. “Martha Gardiner is a slime,” he went on. “That’s a legal term.”

  He tried a smile, seeing if he could make Rachel smile, too. He needed her to smile. He needed her to smile at him. And often. But it was fantasy for him to think that. Inappropriate.

  “How do you know she makes stuff up?” she asked. And he’d succeeded, because she was sort of smiling. “She wins all the time, I know that. Does she cheat? Do you think she—” She stopped, raised one eyebrow. “Oh, I get it.”

  “Get what?” He didn’t know where to stand now. He felt awkward, all hands and arms, and he was too close to her, but too far from her at the same time. He headed for his coffee, used it as a prop, a refuge.

  “That’s why you wanted to talk to me about the Deacon Davis trial. You think Gardiner cheated.”

  Now it was his turn to puff out a breath. That wasn’t a yes-or-no question. That was a lifelong endless battle between defense and prosecution. What was cheating and what was zealous representation? What was simply more nimble use of the rules?

  “No,” he finally said. “But that jury’s another conversation. And that’s one of the reasons I texted. Our conversation about that was—interrupted.”

  “But what if…” Rachel seemed to be off in her own thoughts, and sat perched on the edge of the cluttered desk, her legs sticking out onto the oriental rug.

  She wore sleek black tights. Suede shoes. A black skirt. This was not the time to be thinking about her legs. Or her neck or her hair or the way he thought she might be looking at him. He was too old for her. But was he? He was an idiot.

  “What if there’s like, a list?” she asked. “Would you be getting that from Gardiner? Would that be in the files?”