The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland) Read online

  “Hey Alex, what’s up?” She clamped the phone between her shoulder and cheek as she opened the fridge. Pretty bleak territory: weary celery, string cheese, a couple of Diet Cokes, and lemon yogurt. Last night’s pizza. She pulled out the last of the Pinot Grigio and hip-checked the door closed.

  “Sorry to call you on a Sunday. I’m swamped with snow coverage. Boston’s fine, but half of Newton still has no power, National Grid is freaking, the governor’s having another news conference, the Star Markets are outta milk. I mean—it’s snowing, right? In New England? In February? You’d think—”

  Damn. Snow? She’d just lost at news roulette. Snow? Freezing, boring, and bleak. How many weather clichés would she be forced to use? White stuff, winter wonderland, no business like snow business? But there was this pesky job thing. As in, she needed hers.

  Jane eyed the wine bottle. Lucky she’d stuck with Diet Coke. She was a team player. She’d yank on her storm gear and take the T into town.

  “There’s a body in Roslindale,” Alex was saying. “Cops telling us they suspect homicide. Got a pencil? I’ll give you the deets. I know it’s a mess out there—so I’ll have the fotog pick you up in the newsroom Explorer. He lives close to you, it’ll be no problem.”

  A murder? In Roslindale? Okay, better than the snow assignment. She winced at her cynical assessment. That’s what being a reporter does to you, turns human suffering into a calculation of potential column inches.

  “Yeah, I know. Better than snow.” Alex was reading her mind, as usual. He’d been a reporter, too, her competition, until his promotion last summer. As a result, another promising romance prospect—Hot Alex, as her best friend, Amy, had dubbed him—bit the dust.

  “This one’s different,” Alex continued. “Two little kids left alone, Family Services has them. ‘Tragic,’ our stringer says. There’s no one else to send. I’ll hand it off to another reporter tomorrow, so only this one story. I’ll need your piece for the earlies, so chop chop. And Jane?”

  “Yeah?” She’d better take food. Jane stretched the spiral phone cord so she could reach to open a cabinet. She pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, twisted open a half-full jar of salted almonds, and dumped in the entire contents. Opening the fridge, she added the string cheese to the bag. In the car it’d stay cold.

  “Detective Jake Brogan’s the primary,” Alex said. “Think you can get us some exclusive stuff?”

  “I—you—why would—” Jane’s stomach clenched and the taut phone cord knocked the empty almond jar from the counter. It hit the floor, cracking into three pieces on the tiles. Coda, eyes wide, appeared in the doorway. Jane shooed her away, fearful of the glass. Jake? Alex knew they were friends, but what if he now suspected—? Or was he—

  “Kidding,” Alex said. “Keep me posted, Jane. Fotog’s on the way. Like I said, he lives near you, so, all the better. We go to press in three hours.”

  8

  “Friggin’ media. Looks like a headlight circus down there. TV live trucks, the whole nine yards.” DeLuca plastered himself against the living room wall, using one hand to pull back the lace curtains covering the windows, craning his neck to peer outside without being seen. “How the hell do they find out so fast? They’re here before the friggin’ ME. You seen the ME yet? Squad says she’s hot.”

  Jake ignored him. Though he’d heard the same thing about the new medical examiner, now was hardly the time.

  “Where the hell is Family Services?” Jake said. “Radio down to Kurtz, D. Tell her to get out of here, no sirens, take the kids to headquarters, someplace safe.”

  This was turning into a shit show. Jake eyed the open front door of apartment C. “All we need is a bunch of cameras blasting in those kids’ faces. Whoever they are. And whoever their mother is.”

  “Was.” DeLuca let the curtains go.

  “Was.” Jake looked toward the kitchen, where the woman’s splayed body seemed to soak up all the light in the room. They could do nothing until the medical examiner arrived to clear the scene. Then they could focus on finding whatever would close the case. Jake predicted two hours, max, they’d have a suspect. Boyfriend, ex-husband, jealous lover. Certainly a man. Probably.

  A squawk from DeLuca’s radio interrupted his thoughts.

  “Kurtz is outta here, she says. The kids’ll be at HQ. My take?” D cocked his head toward the body. “This one’s textbook. Domestic. I give it a couple hours. We’ll be booking some sleazeball ex-husband.”

  Hearing from DeLuca exactly what he’d been thinking made Jake wince. Cops’ number one mistake, jumping to conclusions. Meant trying to mold the clues to fit the story they’d created instead of waiting for the real story to reveal itself.

  “Could be,” Jake said. He yanked the zipper on his jacket, then caught himself in the silly habit. Jane always gave him grief about it. “Or not. Where the hell is the damn ME? We’re screwed until she—”

  “Until she what?”

  Katharine Bradley McMahan, MD. Jake had only seen photos, but this was definitely her. The puffy black parka, glistening with snow and with MCMAHAN embroidered in red on the chest, looked two sizes too big for her. She lugged a battered square black leather bag, white-stenciled MEDICAL EXAMINER.

  Jake had skipped the governor’s welcome reception for the second female ME in Massachusetts, figuring he’d meet her soon enough on the job. The papers had called her predecessor FrankenDoc, and he was now awaiting trial for trafficking in human organs. Scuttlebutt was Dr. McMahan, with her Ivy League degree and hotshot pedigree, had been shipped in from L.A. to erase that grisly image.

  “I’m looking for Detective Brogan?” The woman glanced at Jake, then DeLuca, then decided on Jake. Her dark hair was coated with snow, her ears pink with the cold. The dripping leather laces of her snow-stained boots dangled to the floor, untied, tongues flapping open, revealing blue scrub pants tucked into thick wool socks. She stayed on the hallway side of the threshold.

  “I’d shake your hand, Detective, but my mittens are soggy. Before I come inside, I’ve got to—you’re Detective DeLuca, right? I’m Doctor McMahan. Call me Kat, okay? Whatcha got?”

  “I’m Paul—,” DeLuca began.

  “White, female, thirty-something,” Jake said at the same time. How old was McMahan, anyway? Twenty? She barely came up to his shoulder. About to drip all over his crime scene. “Appears to be blunt trauma. No murder weapon yet. You ready to take a look?”

  “Let me get this stuff off, my boots at least. We don’t have snow in L.A. How do you guys manage? I’m a disaster.” She put her medical bag on the hallway floor, clicked it open, pulled out a clear plastic ziplock bag, stuffed her mittens inside, and put the plastic bag on the hallway floor. She kicked off her boots, toe to heel, then stood in the doorway, dangling one dripping boot in each hand. “Ah. Situation.”

  Jake watched in disbelief as D reached out as if to—take her boots?

  “Paul DeLuca,” he said. “Maybe I can—”

  “Oh, I’m fine, thank you so much, Detective.” The ME gave him a quick smile, then tucked both boots under one arm, drew out another plastic bag, bigger, and stuffed them inside. She placed the boot bag on the hallway floor next to her mitten bag, pushing it with one toe when it tipped over.

  This has to be a joke. DeLuca was shifting his feet, fidgeting as if he’d just met the prom queen. And this bag-toting California Girl was about to pronounce the cause of death? Jane will not believe it.

  Jake pointed toward the kitchen. “Dr. McMahan?”

  “Kat, remember?” She hung her parka over the newel post and picked up her medical bag. “Bring it on.”

  *

  “Bring it on.” Jane pulled down her fleece cap, tucked in her plaid muffler, clicked off her seat belt. So what if the TV stations were here already? Not her problem anymore. She didn’t miss TV. Not at all. “Got my snow boots, got my trusty notebook, got a pencil.”

  Alex had sent fotog Hector Underhill, who’d arrived at her apartment almost before
she could throw on her thick-soled snow boots and down-filled parka. He’d started complaining before they’d driven half a block. Newer at the paper than she was, “call me Hec” was one of the Register’s new crop of “budget-saving freelancers.” With thirty-two days and counting, he griped, left in his freelance gig.

  Jane had not been eager to hear yet another life story from a bitter journalist she barely knew. But she was a team player. “Any big plans for what’s next?”

  “Nope. I’ve got some other stuff going, though. Here and down south. With my nephew. I’ll concentrate on that, I guess.” They turned off the main drag, headlights battling the gray afternoon, windshield wipers clacking away the snow. “Sucks to be a freelancer at fifty-five. Sucks to be old.”

  They’d hit the jackpot on parking, even found a semilegal spot. Smoky exhaust plumed from three TV live trucks double-parked along Callaberry Street, their rear doors open, news crews huddling inside. Jane remembered those cramped quarters, never enough room, the flickering monitors and squawking radios and snaking cables, empty coffee cups and discarded potato chip bags, the editing panic to crash a story on the air before deadline. She’d always made it. Always.

  “You miss video?” Hec slung a battered leather camera case across one shoulder and opened the car door, then turned back to her, brows furrowing under his green Celtics cap. “Hope that’s not stepping on toes.”

  “All good,” Jane said. Everyone knew she’d been fired from Channel 11 last year for protecting a source. Truth be told, she wasn’t completely over it. Jerks. But no reason to dwell. She knew how Tuck felt, though, with the rug being pulled out from under her. She hoped Tuck was okay.

  She sure didn’t seem okay.

  Jane had promised to call her tomorrow. No time to think about that. “It’s all in my rearview. I’m all about the Register. Now I don’t have to worry about my hair, right?”

  “I hear ya.” Hec slapped a laminated press placard onto the dashboard and pointed to a gray triple-decker across the street. “I’m betting it’s that house.”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks.” Jane dug out her notebook and cell phone, stashed them in her parka pockets. “Leaving my purse in here, okay?”

  She checked the digital clock on the dashboard, then joined the media crush on Callaberry Street. Two and a half hours till deadline. Piece of cake.

  9

  Jane’s voice. Downstairs. Though Jake couldn’t make out the words, he recognized it. Arguing with Hennessey—that much he could make out through the open apartment door, probably trying to convince him to let her upstairs to the crime scene. Which she knew, and Hennessey knew she knew, wouldn’t happen. Though that would never stop Jane from giving it her best shot.

  Jake smiled, imagining that tilt of her hips in those ratty jeans she loved, the way she planted her fists on her waist when she was trying to make a point, how she was just the right amount shorter than he was. How terrific she smelled. What was she doing here? He yanked on his jacket zipper, then tried to focus on what Kat McMahan was saying.

  “In summary, preliminary findings pending autopsy indicate subdural hematoma, suggesting intracranial bleeding, severe concentric damage to the right occipital cranium originating in a stellate fracture.” McMahan held a tiny silver recorder to her lips. She’d unbuttoned her white lab coat, revealing a black I HEART L.A. T-shirt underneath. “Suspected massive blunt trauma. Severe lacerations to the upper right forehead, evidence of protracted external bleeding. Why? No obvious defensive wounds, fingers are…”

  McMahan stopped, crouched, then encircled one of the woman’s wrists with a gloved thumb and forefinger, leaving the victim’s pale hand dangling. “… undamaged. No bleeding of the cuticles, no broken fingernails. Place of death, kitchen, is heated and all windows are closed.”

  She looked up at DeLuca, narrowing her eyes. “Hey. You guys didn’t close the…”

  “No, sir. Ma’am. Doctor,” DeLuca said.

  “Kat,” she said.

  “We didn’t touch a thing,” DeLuca continued. “It’s exactly like it was when we arrived. Kat.”

  Jake couldn’t believe it. Jane downstairs. DeLuca up here. Never a dull moment. He should have gone into finance with his dad, or law school, like his mother always pressured him to. Did Jane know he was here? Jake half-listened for her footsteps on the stairs.

  “Time of death approximately one P.M.” McMahan sniffed, nostrils flaring. “Odor of—unknown. No signs of other injury, no broken bones, no external sign of drug use, no…” She hesitated, tilting her head, staring. She seemed to forget anyone was in the room except for her and the dead woman.

  DeLuca, on the other hand, seemed to forget about the dead woman, his eyes only on the ME.

  “You two see anything? Find anything?” McMahan stood, holding her latex-gloved thumb over a red button on the recorder, pausing it and her examination. “Murder weapon, I mean? Like a…” Using the recorder like a pointer, she traced the shape of the wound, as if reminding herself. “Maybe a…”

  DeLuca cleared his throat. “Oh, no, ma’am. Not SOP. We were waiting for you before we—”

  “Like maybe a what?” Jake interrupted. Jeez. A dead woman on the floor and DeLuca was sucking up.

  McMahan shrugged and buttoned the recorder into a side pocket of her lab coat. “I want to say … frying pan, but that’s too cliché. No one has a rolling pin anymore, right? I mean, for what?”

  “Detectives?” A voice from the hallway. Not Hennessey. Not Jane.

  “Headquarters to Brogan, do you copy?” Jake’s beeping radio interrupted whoever spoke from the hall. He gestured DeLuca to the door, check it out, then thumbed the talk button. “Dispatch? This is Brogan, I copy.”

  “Supe requesting a call, please, Detective,” the dispatcher said.

  Kat McMahan crouched again, examining the woman’s bare feet.

  “Jake?” DeLuca was already back. “Afterwards is here.”

  McMahan looked up from the feet. “Afterwards?”

  “Crime scene cleanup company,” Jake explained.

  “Detective Brogan, do you copy?” The dispatcher’s voice crackled through the room. “Superintendent Rivera is standing by for your call.”

  “That’s efficient,” McMahan said. “Too efficient. They always show up like this? Kinda soon. Kinda crowded in here about now.”

  “Copy,” Jake said into his radio. “Will do. And—”

  “They’re telling me the landlord called, Jake,” DeLuca said. “Says he told ’em to start with—”

  “Negative. Big time,” McMahan interrupted, talking over him. “My crime scene guys aren’t even here yet.”

  Jake held up a hand. “Tell Afterwards to go the frick away. Someone will alert them when they’re needed. And tell them—wait a sec. They say the landlord gave them the go-ahead? Great. Ask the Afterwards people who the hell the landlord is. Get his number, then call and find out who this tenant is. Mystery solved, right?”

  *

  That had been a pitiful waste of time. The cop, Hennessey, hadn’t given Jane the time of day, no matter what she tried. Worse, she already knew the time of day, which grew later and later as she learned less and less about whatever happened upstairs.

  She trudged toward the Explorer, feet freezing, fingers freezing, regrouping. Jake was upstairs. With numbing fingers, she found the cell phone in the pocket of her black parka, flipping it over and over in the silky lining. She was a reporter, he was a cop. Should she text him?

  If they weren’t trying to keep up appearances she’d have called him, probably a couple of times by now, as she would any other source. But now, she couldn’t. The wages of deception.

  Now, she had nothing. Usually there were neighbors, onlookers, sniffing around, some spotlight-seekers hoping to be interviewed. At this point, she’d be happy with a victim’s name and a couple of those generic “seemed like a quiet family” or “they loved their kids” pseudo-comments. Today all the easy pickings were
probably peering out their front windows, curious, but staying warm. Inside.

  Jane sighed. Time to knock on some doors. Never the best idea, especially not after dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Sure, knocking on the right door could get her some info. Knocking on the wrong door could get her in trouble. But a deadline was a deadline, and hers was a quickly evaporating one hour away.

  “Whatcha got?” Hec leaned against the car, waiting for her, arms crossed over his array of cameras. “I shot a couple exteriors, nothing exciting. That cop at the door, wide, medium. Nothing that’ll win us a Pulitzer. Or get us a front page. Any ideas?”

  The ME’s white van was parked in front of a fire hydrant a few yards away. That at least confirmed there was a victim, one who was probably dead. Someone had cleared the snow from the hydrant, but whoever got out of the van on the passenger side had stepped right into a knee-high pile of slush.

  “Let’s look for a person with wet shoes,” Jane said. “Hey. Check out the vans.”

  One after the other, the side doors of the multicolored news vans clanged open, the vans looking like circus clown cars as they disgorged neon-jacketed reporters, photographers lugging cameras with unwieldy tripods, and engineers with clackety metal light stands tucked under their arms and rolls of cable coiled over their shoulders.

  “Grab your stuff, Hec.” Jane pointed to the vans, all doors now flapping open, their glaring spotlights aimed at 56 Callaberry. “They’re raising their microwave antennas. Reporters are actually coming outside. Damn. Something’s up. Why didn’t we know whatever this is?”

  Her cell phone trilled. Was it Jake? Maybe that Hennessey cop had ratted her out, not knowing he’d actually be telling Jake she was here. She dug for the phone. Not Jake. Alex. He’d better be giving her info, not asking what was going on. Because she had no idea. This would have been a good day to stay home.