The Murder List Read online

  She ignores them.

  “Rachel North.”

  She’s turned to me, lingering a fraction of a second longer than she did with the other three. Or I could be wrong about that. Does she remember me? Or is it even about remembering? Maybe, as Jack predicted, she’s chosen me on purpose.

  “Come with us, Ms. North,” she says.

  I know I am not imagining a tone in her voice, a tone no one else would notice, a tone she could deny. But I know it’s there. Or it could simply be that Jack’s suspicions are coloring my perception.

  “Should I bring my—” I begin. What does ‘Come with us’ mean? With who? Why? Where?

  But the doorframe is empty.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The white front door of the triple-decker was closed when we arrived. Plastic ribbons of yellow crime-scene tape, crisscrossed over the front porch, formed a first line of defense, reinforced by the bulk of one uniformed police officer. Her dark hair was covered with a regulation billed cap, and she stood, hands behind her back and motionless as a palace guard, beside a terracotta pot of wilting white pansies.

  I’d traveled in the prisoner seat of a blue-and-gray cruiser, chauffeured by Gardiner’s pair of state police minders, a taciturn duo who apparently did not understand the concept of conversation. “Ms. Gardiner will meet you there,” one of them told me. “Wear your seat belt, miss,” the other said.

  After my attempts at en route camaraderie, then teamwork, and finally mere civility were met with monosyllabic silence, I checked my phone for an atta-girl text from Jack—none—and wondered what the hell was going on. The staties had turned on the siren, possibly to shut me up, then careened onto the exit for the Mass Pike. Possibly to slam me into the door. Didn’t take a detective to deduce we were headed to Auburndale, what they call a “village” in the bigger city of Newton.

  I knew what awaited me there. The nurse. The victim Eli Lansberry talked about. The dead body Andrew DiPrado wanted to see. This was my first day on the job. But not my first death.

  The siren stops as we brake at the curb, front wheels bumping the sidewalk. One cop hops out and opens the back door for me. Slams it closed as I climb out. The car’s idling.

  “Over there,” he says, in one motion waving me toward the house and getting back in the car. “We’re outta here. Good luck.”

  A scraggle of onlookers, each with a cell phone clamped to their ear or texting or taking photos, lines the opposite side of Gorham Street. They all turn to look at the departing police car, then they scrutinize me, pointing and whispering, probably wondering if I’m a big shot or a witness or a suspect. Houses stand shoulder-to-shoulder too, mostly copycat mirror-image duplexes with doors closed, windows shuttered, driveways empty. The medical examiner’s black van—black windows, black tires, black everything—is parked at the curb. PHILLIP ONG, MD, the lettering says. If he’s still here, the victim’s still here. I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin, trying to look like I belong.

  I’m up to speed now, and know from checking the news updates on my phone in the cop car that a nurse, as yet publicly unnamed, was murdered here sometime overnight. No suspects yet, so say the news articles. Martha Leggett Gardiner, silk blouse impeccable, stands, arms crossed, at the beginning of a fissured bluestone front walk. Her back is to the white clapboard house at the end of it. As if she’s more interested in me than what’s obviously the crime scene.

  As I walk toward her, trying to look comfortable in my suddenly too-heavy suit jacket, I try to decide what I need to care about. What I’ll need to remember. Jack’s warned me Gardiner’s “notoriously hands-on” in homicide investigations and that some detectives resent her for it. Some fear her. I know Gardiner made headlines at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office for a chunk of years, then six years ago moved to what she spun to the newspapers as a more prestigious job in Middlesex County.

  She’s a Leggett, Jack had imitated her snipped Brahmin sneer. Old New England family. Old New England money. She doesn’t need the big bucks, he’d explained. She’s a zealot. In it for the glory. For the power. For the win. Plus, she’s got her eye on the attorney general’s office.

  “Female, approximately twenty-seven years of age,” Gardiner says when I get close enough to hear. “No sign of a break-in.”

  “Did she live here?” I want to ask—Why are murder victims always women? They aren’t, I mentally argue with myself. “Do we know who she is?”

  “Was,” Gardiner corrects me. “So, Ms. North. Do you know why we’re here?”

  I’d thought about this on the way here, trying to anticipate my role as apprentice. Fine, a pop quiz. Bring it on.

  “The district attorney’s office represents Massachusetts in the prosecution of criminal offenses and is the state’s chief law-enforcement officer and top prosecutor.” My response might have come from a fifth grader’s civics book, and I try to indicate by inflection that I know I’m doing that. Unstoppably halfway through, I realized humor was not the best choice. Gardiner is not amused. I alter my expression and tone, all business. “We’re also here in case the detectives need a search warrant.”

  “Correct.” Her cell phone pings, one brief tone. “Wait here,” she tells me. She turns her back, just enough to let me know I’m dismissed, and speaks into the phone. “Yes?”

  What Gardiner thinks of me, how she assesses my skills, my instincts, and my actions—it could be life altering. It’s a tightrope that I agreed to walk. Must walk. If all goes as I hope, if I learn everything I need, my future will be safely with Jack. As a partner in a successful law firm. As a partner in making sure people get a fair defense. He’ll rely on me, and I on him. My life depends on it.

  I stare past her back, past the crime-scene tape, into the home where late last night something terrible happened. A tragedy that’s Gardiner’s job, and now mine, to investigate. And I’ll learn exactly how she does it.

  Jack, though, would be thinking how he could defend the accused murderer. He’d be hoping the cops make a mistake. Hoping a detective breaks some rule. Hoping Gardiner blows it. Hoping he could argue the case, get an acquittal, and, as a result, set the man—or woman—free.

  Two sides. And me in the middle.

  But why did Gardiner bring me here? Why me, in particular, from her new crop of interns? The cop on the porch stares into the street, stolidly guarding the bright line between life and death. I imagine who’s inside this house. Crime-scene techs, the ME, detectives. Hoping they can reconstruct the circumstances of this murder. I know that doesn’t always happen. I know the police are not always right.

  A row of TV vans, satellite dishes pointed skyward, idles a few doors away. One uniformed cop stands sentry between the vans—with the reporters who must be lurking inside—and the crime scene.

  “Ms. North? Hello? You with us?” Gardiner shades her eyes with one hand.

  I almost flinch as she speaks, her tone verging on derisive. But I’d simply been waiting, exactly as instructed. She’d been the one on the phone.

  “So tell me.” She stashes her cell, gestures toward the house. “Since you’re correct that we’re here in case the detectives need a warrant—why might that be?”

  Fine, another quiz.

  “If the resident refuses to give permission to search the premises,” I say. “Or isn’t home.”

  “What if someone is home, and not a suspect but a spouse?”

  Gardiner’s enjoying this sparring match, I can tell. I am, too. Law school is all about what-if. Just like my life.

  “A spouse can give permission.”

  “Very good, Ms. North.” Gardiner may have smiled, then allows half a nod. “Either you’ve been paying attention in class or watching too much Law & Order. Or, perhaps, getting tutored at home?”

  She has a tone, an inflection, one that twists her words, tilts them sideways. As if she’s amused by her power. She obviously knows who my husband is.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking the high road
. Yes, because I get tutored at home, I also know Gardiner always oversees her own crime scenes. It’s another thumb on the scales of justice that the prosecution gets there first.

  By the time a suspect is arrested, the crime scene is cold. The longer the cops investigate, the colder it gets. And those who might be on the run are long gone. Or have cemented their alibis.

  “The whole damn crime scene becomes hearsay,” Jack complained to me as he investigated the grisly Marcus Dorn murders, poring through files of photos and spiral-bound transcripts stacked on our dining room table. “It’s unfair from moment one. What if the cops miss something? Or ignore something? Or get it wrong? Or destroy something? It changes the truth of the case. Changes the reality. And the good guys will never know.”

  The good guys. Except the prosecutors think they’re the good guys.

  Where does that leave me?

  Half a block away, the door to one of the TV vans opens. Two black pumps emerge, followed by two tanned legs and then the short-skirted body and celebrated auburn hair of Clea Rourke, the “face” of Channel 3. The reporter pokes her head back into the van, comes out with a notebook and cell phone. Sets her sights on Gardiner. Strides toward us.

  “Hell no,” Gardiner mutters. She stabs out a number on her cell. Obviously gets an instant response. “Get her away from here,” she orders.

  Outside the van, the sentry cop in the street is on his phone, too. They’re too far away to hear, but I watch, like seeing a silent movie, the pantomime between cop and reporter. Cop stashes his cell, steps toward reporter, shaking his head. Rourke stops and holds out both hands, entreating. The cop shakes his head. The reporter brandishes her cell phone. The cop slams his hands on his hips, blocking her way. The reporter points her phone at Gardiner, then demonstrates Call me. Then she points to her, makes a circle of her thumb and fingers, then points to her own chest. I eavesdrop on their silent exchange, trying to translate. Maybe she’s saying You owe me? Gardiner ends the silent conversation with a shrug, shaking her head, miming “What can I do?”

  The scene closes as the reporter whirls, clambers into the van, slams the door.

  “Lesson one,” Gardiner says. “Never. Ever. Talk to a reporter.”

  I keep silent. I know that.

  “Who we have here is the former Tassie Lyle,” Gardiner goes on, as if we hadn’t been interrupted. “A second-shift nurse at Boston Medical who apparently made the mistake of ordering takeout from the wrong pizza place. We found the receipt, the open pizza box, and the large pepperoni with extra cheese. And, as a result of her demise, extra—well, we needn’t go into that. Suffice it to say the detectives who found her will not be wanting pizza anytime in the foreseeable future.”

  I wince, imagining what might have spattered onto the pizza. “Is that DA humor?”

  “It’s reality,” Gardiner says.

  She pauses, looks at me with a trace of—whatever it is that I can’t describe.

  “It’s a pity your husband won’t get assigned to defend this case,” she adds. “Seeing as how you’ll now be privy to confidential information.”

  I can’t read the look on her face, and I wonder if she can read mine. Surprise, she’d see. Or dismay. I hadn’t thought about that. Every case I touch is irrevocably off-limits to Jack. Oh. I feel my eyes widen as another possibility emerges. Is that why she chose me? To blackball Jack from getting murder-list cases? I bite my lower lip, worrying. Jack would be so angry.

  “Ms. Gardiner?” The front door of the crime scene has opened. A uniformed body is silhouetted in the frame. “Ready for you.”

  We step across the threshold and stand on the hardwood floor of a wallpapered entryway. I’m trying to be something I’m not, not yet, and it’s difficult to keep track of who that is and how I’m supposed to think. Especially now that Gardiner mentioned Jack. Brought him up, specifically. Unnecessarily. And with that tone again. I suppose it’s not surprising that dealing with the devil has its pitfalls.

  As Gardiner instructs, I slide the pale-blue paper booties over my black shoes, the top elastics tight against my bare ankles. We both snap on skin-tight lavender plastic gloves—nitriles, Gardiner calls them. The law-and-order accouterments, protection from errant footprints and fingerprints at this still-active murder scene, are not helping my first-day-with-Gardiner nerves.

  The dark-paneled door to what must be the crime scene is open, but I can’t see anything inside except the back of a tweed couch, the back of a blue police uniform, and a suggestion of rooms beyond. No crime-scene tape cordons it off. Low voices murmur, or maybe it’s a neighbor’s TV. The brass lantern light fixture above us is off, so there are no shadows, the dim light gray and even. Stairs in front of us go up, but none go down. A stack of unopened mail waits by a healthy-looking scarlet begonia on a slim marble-topped table. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above it. I see Gardiner’s reflection, too, behind me. Watching me. When I try to read her face, she looks away.

  I know I’m too suspicious. Too edgy. But I’ve had the rug pulled out too many times to feel on solid ground. These days I’m a wife. Student. Intern. Apprentice. And now trying to be someone else. But the law is all about analysis. About knowing the rules and, more important, how to use them.

  “Rachel?” Gardiner is infinitely polite.

  I still get to make choices. I’ll be better at it now. I have to be.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I may never eat pizza again. Tassie Lyle’s kitchen reeks of it, the tangy acidic tomato sauce and sickly sweet yeast and that sharp stab of oregano. A large-ish pepperoni-and-cheese in an open flat box, two slices missing, sits on top of a square kitchen table. Hadn’t Gardiner indicated—DA humor—that there was something disgusting spattered on the pizza? I don’t see anything like that, but I can’t possibly look more closely, or even imagine. I try not to breathe, but too late. Pizza will forever smell like death.

  All of our eyes now focus on the same place.

  Underneath the table.

  It feels wrong to stare at the dark curls on the white linoleum. The flowered tunic. Legs bent in white-trousered disarray. Her eyes are open and dark brown. It feels wrong, but I stare. This is who I am now. This is who I have to be. Like in my old job in the statehouse, once again my job is to make things work. Unlike my statehouse experience, this time I’ll succeed. Why would someone kill this woman? I could imagine a million reasons.

  A bespectacled man, wearing a too-big white lab coat and a draped stethoscope, crouches beside the motionless body.

  Keeping to the background, I tuck myself behind Gardiner and in front of a spotless white enamel stove. A silver teapot with a tiny red ceramic bird perched on the spout sits on one gas burner. The oven door is hot against my leg. I understand my role. Watch, listen, think. And, as they instruct us every day in school, think like a lawyer: issue, rule, analysis, conclusion.

  The issue here is murder. The rule is—that’s illegal. The analysis is what’s beginning right now.

  “Anything, Dr. Ong?”

  “No bullets, no stab wounds, no blunt trauma.” Ong shrugs, unfolds to his feet. “We’ll check for DNA, under fingernails, wherever.”

  Gardiner uses a pencil to close the cardboard top of the white pizza box.

  “Oregano Brothers Pizza,” she reads. She lets the top flop back onto the table. “O.B. have an order for this? Who delivered it? That’s our man, seems to me. Where’s the nearest one? And where’s her phone? If she ordered this, how’d she do it? Too bad Ms. Lyle didn’t cook her own dinner.”

  “Your staties can figure that out,” Ong says. “They’re bringing crime scene, I’m told. They’re all en route, supposedly including CJ Malinoff. So they say.”

  Gardiner looks at her watch. “Let’s hope so. And hope they bring CJ. He’ll expedite the DNA.”

  Though the local police are first on the scene, in a town this size state police detectives attached to the DA’s office will handle the murder investigation. That’s the broth
erhood—mostly men, still—of the prosecution. The state police and the DA’s office work together, along with the state police crime-scene team. I know from Jack that what they discover and what they tell the defense are often two completely separate things.

  “Meanwhile, Phil. Suffocation?” Gardiner asks. “Drugs?”

  “We shall see.” Dr. Ong stoops again, rolls his neck, not taking his eyes off the woman on the floor.

  “Time of death?”

  The medical examiner pushes his wire-rimmed glasses onto his forehead. I’m wondering exactly how they can tell. The kitchen is warmer than the entryway because she had the oven on. I wonder if that matters.

  “I love how you always ask me about TOD, Martha,” the ME says. “As if someday I’ll reply, ‘Oh, it’s amazing, this time I know for absolutely sure.’”

  “Estimate, Phil.” Gardiner’s voice seems to balance sarcasm and affection.

  “My pleasure. I’m told Nurse Lyle apparently left Boston Med well after shift change. Say, four? A.M. Estimating, of course.”

  “Can you never tell exactly how long someone’s been dead?” I’m hoping to ask a few more questions, too, but I stop after Gardiner’s raised know-your-place eyebrow.

  “Dr. Phillip Ong, meet Rachel North.” Gardiner surprises me with this moment of courtesy. “Our newest intern. Harvard. Et cetera.”

  “Lucky you.” Ong has pulled a tablet from his medical bag and taps on the glowing screen, maybe entering data. He looks up, a barely assessing glance, goes back to his screen.

  I can’t quite read him. Is there polite chitchat at a murder scene? Issue, rule, analysis, conclusion. I don’t know the rules. Yet.

  “Thanks,” I begin, deciding, like in class, you might get points for participation. “And you know, I can feel the oven is hot. So when it comes to time of death, would that matter?”

  “Yes.” He nodded, twisting his stethoscope. “The in situ temperature of the—”

  “Phil?” Gardiner interrupts. “Know who Rachel’s husband is?”