WE HAD TO ORDER an autopsy on Suzanne Maretto’s body naturally. Routine procedure. You weren’t expecting anymore surprises at this point. Just trying to wrap things up. We had our perpetrator. She’d even obliged us by doing herself in, saving us the trouble.
I mean, so long as it was Suzanne Maretto we were going after, it wasn’t hard to get our detectives putting out a hundred and ten percent. You couldn’t wait to nail a cold bitch like that one.
But when the coroner’s report came back, you’d better believe that document had my detectives shook up. And not just because my captain comes from the North End—although it didn’t help that half our force is guys of Italian descent. That only helped us to reach our conclusion sooner. To keep the autopsy findings under wraps. Insert the coroner’s report into the paper shredder and forget we ever saw it.
It was just plain to all of us that the Maretto family had been hurt enough already. It had to end somewhere, and this seemed as good a place as any. Sometimes justice takes some strange forms that no judge or jury could bring about. This was one of those times.
Let me put it this way: If it had been my boy Suzanne Maretto screwed over like she screwed over the Marettos’, I could’ve done the same thing they did and never lost a night’s sleep over it. Try and find one member of the force that thinks differently. Which is why the first coroner’s report will never see the light of day.
As far as the press is concerned, Suzanne Maretto died of drowning, a suicide. That’s all they know and all they ever need to know.
Fact is, there wasn’t a drop of water in Suzanne Maretto’s lungs when they pulled her out of the bay. That woman was already dead when her body went off the bridge. You tell me: When was the last time you heard of someone that did themself in, with their resume in their coat pocket, and a bunch of eight-by-ten glossies and a couple videos of themself back on the front seat of their car?