The Murder List Page 7

  Before I can parse what she meant by “or not,” the courtroom door opens again, this time with a murmur of voices. A scrabble-haired twenty-something with a pen behind his ear enters, followed by a young woman with a chunky metal tripod over one shoulder and lugging a video camera, then an elegantly suited woman carrying a bulging tote bag. I recognize Clea Rourke, the reporter who’d mimed You owe me to Gardiner at the Tassie Lyle crime scene Wednesday. The tripod thuds onto the carpeted floor, then the photographer clicks her camera into place.

  Gardiner gives them a quick appraising look, then shoots me a covert thumbs-up. “Coverage,” she whispers. “One camera, but Clea’s pool reporter. So every station will get this.” She opens the file and pages through the records, tracing down each document with a forefinger.

  I know what Jack would say about “coverage.” Jack would say Screw ’em. Every damn reporter buys the DA party line. Plus, the “evidence” Gardiner will present in court is public, and the most damning parts we have, so far, will be described to the judge in the most lurid detail possible. And then reported, by people like Clea, as gospel. The defense attorney, whoever that’ll be, will say only “not guilty.” The Cleas will dutifully report that, too. As if anyone believes “not guilty” could possibly be true.

  It’s five till ten. Court stars at ten. The courtroom is almost full now. A low whisper from the audience—press and spectators and lawyers and, probably, family members of defendants to come—accentuates the solemnity and the stakes of this morning’s proceedings.

  Because of the way our discussion devolved last night, I didn’t mention this morning’s assignment to Jack. I’ll tell him when I get home. Morris, now stationed at a narrow desk by the defendant’s dock, is looking at his chunky watch. A red light flashes on his desk landline. He picks up the receiver.

  “Here we go,” Gardiner says.

  Morris hangs up the phone. The light changes in the glassed-in basement stairway. The audience chatter silences. The court clerk, a messy-haired woman in a bagging dark blue suit, steps behind the desk that’s positioned beneath the judge’s bench and places a stack of overstuffed accordion files in front of her. I hear the click and swish of the courtroom door opening behind us again. The almost-late arrival coughs. The cough sounds familiar.

  I turn to look.

  Jack.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jack, in full business suit and the yellow paisley tie I gave him for his birthday, slides into the courtroom’s front pew but doesn’t sit down. He holds my eye for only a fraction of a second. Too briefly for me to gauge his demeanor, long enough for my jaw to hit the floor. Before I can telegraph my surprise, or maybe annoyance or even anger, the courtroom door creaks open once again and he turns away. Now we’re both looking at the newcomer. The context is so alien it takes my brain a beat to catch up.

  The woman—I struggle to retrieve her name, Linda, Lisa, something like that but weirder—glances at Jack, maybe because he’s the only one standing. As he sits, Lizann, that’s it, Lizann Wallace, opens the gate of the not-quite-waist-high mahogany bar between the audience and the counsel tables. She walks to the defense table, sleekly slim with severely close-cropped hair, elegant in a dark suit and silver hoop earrings. She and Gardiner almost acknowledge each other.

  Wallace is about to put her black canvas briefcase on the table when she stops. I see her back straighten, and she twists her head around to look not at Gardiner, but at me. “Aren’t you—?”

  “Co-urt!” the clerk calls out. She stands behind her file-crowded desk, glasses hanging on a silver chain around her neck. “All rise for the Honorable Judge Daneet Harabhati. Court is now in session.”

  “Yeah,” I answer Lizann Wallace, soundlessly. The judge, a black-robed prima ballerina with slicked-back hair, scarlet lipstick, and a puff of white scarf tucked around her neck, is mounting the steps to her bench. Lizann Wallace and I will have to catch up later. Like maybe never. I’m not quite sure what I’d say to her.

  “Good morning.” The judge acknowledges Wallace, then Gardiner, then me. Then she smiles toward the audience, polite, but aloof.

  As Wallace quickly sits, zipping open her briefcase, I risk a glance at Gardiner to see how she’s reacting to the woman who’s clearly going to represent Jeff Baltrim. Lizann Wallace used to be an associate in Martha Gardiner’s office. She was once a hard-nosed prosecutor. Now, apparently, she’s a defense attorney. And, since she’s sitting at the defense counsel table, she must be on the murder list.

  I turn, almost without thinking, to confirm with Jack. Isn’t that…?

  Jack, sitting now between two lawyer-looking women, is looking right at me. Like he was waiting to see if I’d make the connection. He nods and almost looks amused. Then, with one directorial swirl of a forefinger, my husband signals me to turn around and face the front.

  The court clerk is standing, a file folder now open in her hands. “In the matter of Commonwealth v. Jeffrey Paul Baltrim,” she reads. “Now on for arraignment and bail consideration.…”

  Lizann Wallace knows her previous employer’s mind-set. She knows her history. Her tactics. Her weaknesses. Her secrets.

  Gardiner also knows Wallace’s. This is about to be quite the chess game.

  It—justice, I suppose, or at least the courtroom proceeding—moves quickly as the clerk recites her boilerplate. Jeffrey Baltrim, still in his Oregano Brothers T-shirt, his face drawn and dark hair disheveled, takes the final steps up the glassed-in staircase. As he enters the courtroom, flanked by two uniformed tanks, I see his hands are cuffed and his running shoes have no laces. Each of Baltrim’s hulking escorts has a paw clamped on their prisoner’s biceps, and their charge seems diminished, a shadow without substance, half the size I remember. As they release him, Lizann Wallace scowls at the officers. She places a supportive hand on Baltrim’s shoulder and guides her client to the chair beside her. He hesitates, then turns to look behind him, as if he’s searching the courtroom.

  Baltrim finally sits. His body, off balance, lands in the unpadded wood chair with an audible thud. Lizann Wallace leans closer to him, maybe whispering, her back to me and Gardiner. Baltrim peers over his lawyer’s stylish shoulder, catches me looking at him.

  I’m so embarrassed—or some emotion like that—that I have to look away. I feel terrible. Guilty. Baltrim’s obviously frightened and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. What if I were in that position?

  “Defendant will rise,” the clerk intones. Baltrim does, head hanging. His lawyer gets up at the exact moment he does, standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder, as if an invisible bond connects them. I guess it does.

  The clerk reads the complaint out loud, a chillingly brief legal pronouncement that tells the world the Commonwealth of Massachusetts thinks it has enough evidence to prove Jeffrey Paul Baltrim, with malice aforethought, did murder Tassandra Lyle in Middlesex County in violation of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 265, Section 1.

  I can’t see Baltrim’s face, because at this moment he’s using both hands to cover it. Wallace, with a brief touch, signals him to lower them. Gardiner, sitting beside me, is sketching stair steps on her legal pad.

  “How do you plead?” the clerk asks.

  Baltrim’s shoulders rise and fall. That pizza T-shirt is such an indictment.

  “Not guilty,” he says.

  “Be seated,” the clerk says.

  Behind her, the judge is turning pages in a black binder. “Counsel?” The judge doesn’t look up from reading as she speaks into the microphone on her desk.

  Gardiner stands. Fingertips on the table, chin high. “Your Honor,” she says, “I’ll be brief. Tassandra Lyle was a second-shift nurse at Boston Medical Center. She’d arrived home late at night, where she lived by herself, and ordered a pizza. Mr. Baltrim was the last person to see her alive, because he delivered that pizza to her home. Upon further investigation, we found Mr. Baltrim was previously a patient of Ms. Lyle’s at Boston Med and had later entered into a
personal relationship with her. We will show that Mr. Baltrim coerced Ms. Lyle into procuring painkillers, opiates, from the hospital—she’d apparently thought they were for him, and against her better judgment and blinded by her affection, she agreed.”

  I hear Baltrim react, a strangled gasp. The judge glares at him. Wallace clamps a hand on her client’s forearm.

  Gardiner ignores the drama. “But eventually Ms. Lyle learned the drugs were merchandise for Mr. Baltrim’s real job. He not only delivers pizza. He delivers death. Death by means of illegal drugs. When Ms. Lyle refused to participate any further, he delivered death to her as well. She was a woman deeply in love. But a woman who refused to be led further down a path of—”

  “Your Honor?” Lizann Wallace stands. “There is no jury here.”

  Gardiner holds up a palm. She turns to Wallace and for a fraction of a second smiles at her. The defense attorney does not smile back.

  “Quite so,” Gardiner says. “But there soon will be. Your Honor, you have the complaint and the police reports. We ask that this defendant be held without bail.”

  She sits. Slashes three quick lines to create one more step. Her stairs are going up.

  Lizann Wallace rises. She takes a moment, holding the room. Then, voice confident, she cites Baltrim’s spotless job performance, the lease on his rented house, his nonexistent criminal record.

  “He is not a danger, Your Honor,” Wallace argues. “This recitation of fantasy is solely to inflame potential jurors. Ms. Gardiner has charged ahead, with her unbridled zeal and infinite power, and arrested a person who is demonstrably innocent.”

  “Your Honor,” Gardiner begins.

  “Move for bail, Your Honor.” Wallace fails to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “It only seems prudent that we discuss—”

  “Denied,” the judge says.

  The courtroom behind us rustles and murmurs, sixty or so people shifting in their uncomfortable seats at the same time, whispering their assessments. Are they relieved? Or disappointed? Or enraged?

  As the guards take Baltrim away, I can’t resist watching Gardiner. Analyzing what she might be thinking. How quickly a life is changed. How quickly freedom is lost. No matter what Lizann Wallace argued, Gardiner had only to say a few sentences, and now Jeffrey Baltrim’s face will be all over the news as an accused murderer, and his days will be spent in jail. Even if he’s eventually acquitted, people will wonder What actually happened? Friends will vanish, jobs disappear, hopes evaporate.

  By the time of the actual trial, if there is one, I’ll be back in law school and probably never see Jeff Baltrim again. His life intersected mine only by the randomness of the universe. If he killed his hospital girlfriend, if they were selling drugs together and she balked and he killed her—that was his decision. Martha Gardiner will accumulate the evidence to prove his guilt and send him away for good. Issue, rules, analysis, conclusion. I’ll watch exactly how she does it.

  “Co-urt!” the clerk says again.

  The judge rises, so do we all. With one last look in our direction, her black robe disappears behind a closing door. Another triumph for justice, she must be thinking. No more dangerous murderers will have been set free to further prey on society. It must be easier for her, in a way, to keep people locked up. If she’s wrong, only the defendant is harmed. “Only” the defendant.

  I sneak a look toward Jack. His seat is empty. He’s gone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “We need to discuss this case,” Martha Gardiner says as we walk side by side down the front steps of the courthouse. “How about over lunch? I saw your husband in court, by the way. What’s his problem? Worried you’ll screw up?”

  The just-past-noontime sun blasts, the traffic on Washington Street relentlessly chaotic and impatient. Martha’s aiming a key fob at her shiny gray Avalon. It’s parked in a commercial-vehicles-only space, immune from ticketing by the pink DA’s office placard on the dashboard. I hear the beep and click as the car doors unlock.

  She’s not looking at me, so she doesn’t see my expression when she mentions my husband. Or lunch. As if those were things a boss typically says to an employee.

  “Lunch?” I repeat. Easier than facing the Jack thing. Was he checking up on me? It’s not even one in the afternoon. But I’m starving. And maybe Martha wants to get to know me. Whatever the purpose, lunch is a good idea.

  “Martha!” A voice from behind us. “Can you wait a second?” Clea Rourke, logo microphone in hand and now wearing flat shoes, is trotting down the courtroom steps, her photographer hustling to catch up. The photographer, camera balanced on her shoulder, plants herself in front of Gardiner and aims her lens. Rourke keeps the mic down at her side. “Got time for a few questions?

  “Ms. Rourke?” Gardiner clicks the car key again. “You received the news release. You heard what I said in court. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  I step to one side, trying to find a place on the sidewalk that’s out of the camera shot and out of the cross fire. Two forty-something men, paunchy in short-sleeved shirts and wraparound sunglasses, plod down the courthouse steps, pointing to the camera. One yells, “Hey, Clea! Let’s do lunch!”

  I see her roll her eyes, though the men can’t. She turns, with a high-wattage on-the-air-smile, and grants her fans a finger-fluttering wave. “Next time!” she says.

  “Sorry about that.” Rourke adjusts her fitted jacket, then speaks into her mic, her demeanor professional again.

  “Got your man, apparently, Ms. Gardiner,” she begins. “But here’s my question. How do you know your suspect is a drug dealer?”

  “That’s under investigation, Ms. Rourke.”

  Gardiner starts to turn away, but Rourke persists, the silver Channel 3 mic logo flashing in the sunlight. “What was the cause of death?”

  “Under investigation,” Gardiner says.

  As I listen, I’m analyzing how each of them is playing this, the tactics they use to get what they want. I also wish I knew the answers to Clea’s questions.

  “Come on, Martha. Give me something.” Rourke has lowered her mic, and her voice has a cajoling edge. “How do you know why he killed her?”

  Again, things I wish I knew. Baltrim certainly had the opportunity to kill her. I’ve learned in class that Gardiner doesn’t have to prove why.

  Problem is, and it’s one of the things that drives Jack nuts, sometimes jurors will concoct a story, a fiction to match the prosecution’s facts. And then, based on their fabrication, they’ll vote to convict. When Jack first complained to me about that, I’d pretended to be outraged.

  The afternoon sun is relentless. My feet are clammy in my black heels. I see a trickle of sweat roll down the photographer’s cheek. Rourke and Gardiner, however, must possess their own personal air-conditioning.

  “Attorney Lizann Wallace is representing Mr. Baltrim,” Rourke goes on. “How do you feel about your now-adversarial situation? She once worked for you, right?”

  “I have nothing more for you, Clea.” Gardiner’s sleek hair is perfectly in place, the square shoulders of her suit jacket unwrinkled. “Understood?”

  “I understand that I’m gonna keep calling you about it, Martha. That’s how we roll, right?” The reporter smiles at her, pretend-threatening, then waves the mic in my direction. “This your new intern?” She holds out her other hand toward me. “I’m Clea Rourke. Channel 3. Call me Clea. In fact, call me. Especially if there’s ever anything—”

  Gardiner interrupts. “Clea? This is Rachel North.”

  “Nice to mee—” She begins. Then she stops.

  Watching her face change, I deeply wish I could read her mind. I know I’m paranoid, suspicious, gun-shy, all of the above.

  I shake her hand. “Nice to see you, too, Clea.” And that might even be true.

  “Yeah.” She draws out the word. Tucks the mic under her arm. Searches the cloudless spring sky for a brief moment as if she were trying to read what’s written there, then looks back a
t me. “It seems like—never mind.”

  Exactly what is she trying to remember? I turn to Gardiner, hoping she’ll extricate me. Instead, she’s standing, arms crossed over her chest, as if she’s waiting for an amusing punch line.

  A silent message seems to travel between her and Clea. And then it’s gone.

  “Hey, yo. Clea? We done?” The photographer, her blue work shirt now damp and clinging, hauls the camera from her shoulder and drops it to her side like an electronic handbag.

  “For now,” Clea says.

  Before I can worry about what that means, Martha has pivoted and headed for the car. I have to follow.

  “How about Salamanca?” She opens the driver’s side of the car, tosses her briefcase into the pristine backseat. “You know that restaurant? By the river. A pal owns it, and I always bring all my interns there after a win.”

  “You always…?” Is all I can think of to say. She’s apparently not worried about Clea’s veiled threat. For now. Should I be?

  Gardiner’s already buckling herself in. “We’ll get more done in an hour by ourselves than we’d ever manage at the office with those incessant interruptions.”

  Now she’s on the phone, texting, interrupting herself. Ignoring me. Fine. I only work here. I open the back door, toss my briefcase into the backseat. It slips on the sleek upholstery and plops onto the floor. Lunch it is.

  But I keep fretting about Clea Rourke’s reaction outside the courthouse. Something in that woman’s brain had obviously clicked about me. What, though? As I open the passenger-side door, I’m thinking about the lives I’ve touched. The harm I’ve done.

  Like poor Jonah. His little world, backpacks and butterflies and an unfortunate “uncle,” is probably ruined. By us. By me. I’m profoundly distracted by this, how the actions of one person entwine with another’s, by choice or by chance, and each is forced to deal with the results. “That’s life,” my father would declare. “Each event is part of a bigger story, but we don’t always know what it is.” I never understood that, not until now.