5

Would anyone answer this time? Detective Jake Brogan stepped back from the front door, angling himself sideways on the concrete front steps in case the response to his second round of knocking was a bullet. He’d almost lost a partner that way, back when he and DeLuca were rookies.

Tonight DeLuca was on call, and Jake was scouting solo. Fine. Couldn’t solve a murder, two murders, from the couch of his condo. He didn’t have to touch the Glock under his shoulder to know it was there.

He strained to hear what might be going on inside the Charlestown three-decker, its white-vinyl façade a copy of the one next door and the one next door to that. Black shutters, random shrubs. Streetlights mostly working. Down the block, newer brownstones, carefully gardened, pumpkins on stoops, gentrified the neighborhood into class battle lines, townies versus yuppies, all in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. The granite obelisk in the middle of Charlestown marked the slaughter that began the Revolutionary War. People around here were still fighting authority.

Code-a-silence, they called it. The townies never saw anything. Not much chance whoever was behind this door, or watching from the windows above, would admit to knowing what happened by the bridge last Sunday. Or would identify the victim, even if they knew her. Still, that’s what cops mostly did. Ask questions. Behind every closed door was a possible answer. This time on a Wednesday night, people should be home.

Still no response. Holding his BlackBerry under the feeble glow of the dusty porch light, he checked the canvass notes he’d tapped in. No grimy spiral notebooks for him, though the other guys sneered. “Harvard,” they called him. But he could type in the info, zap it to himself via e-mail. Instant filing, paperwork done.

“Boston PD,” he said, knocking again. “Anyone there?”

This time he heard something. A scraping, a creak. Maybe someone on a stairway.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he called out. Which wasn’t exactly true. “Just want to show you a few photos.”

A shadow behind the glass peephole, middle of the door. Sound of a dead bolt. The door creaked open, two inches, maybe three. The length of the chain. Then a slash of blue eye shadow, a heavy-penciled eyebrow. A fuzz of carroty hair.

“Ma’am?” Jake guessed. “Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”

“So?”

“Do you recognize this person?” Jake pulled postcard-sized sketches from his inside jacket pocket, held one up. The first was colored pencil, a redraw from the crime scene photos of Sunday’s Charlestown Bridge victim, the girl found three blocks from here. The real thing—bloated, bruised, basically grotesque—was too gruesome to show on the street. The sketch, brown hair, brown eyes, trace of a smile, softened the girl into someone’s college roommate. Anyone who knew her would recognize her.

“She had this on her leg.” Jake held up another drawing, this one depicting the green Celtic vine tattoo on one thin ankle. Minus, of course, the weedy vines the river waters had deposited around her leg. The tattoo was standard issue, another dead end, but he had a cadet hitting tattoo parlors and piercing places. Jake decided not to tell the reluctant townie exactly why he was asking.

In the drawing she didn’t look dead. “She from around here at all?” Jake asked.

“Zat the Bridge Killer girl?” The eye came closer to the chain.

So much for strategy. “You recognize her, ma’am? We could use your help here. Someone’s missing a daughter, maybe.”

“You people should catch that guy,” the voice said. “Before he kills someone else.”

And the door closed in his face.

*   *   *

Another campaign event canceled? Jane clicked through the swirling graphics of the Lassiter campaign’s online newsletter, elbows on her desk and chin in her hands, weary, trying to focus. Trying not to listen as coworkers she didn’t know said good night to one another and headed for bars or gyms or someone special at home. The sounds of the newsroom, tapping keyboards, cell phone rings, beepers, and the occasional peal of laughter, were familiar, and yet—not.

It had been a while since she’d been the new kid. Some people were trying to be nice, but breezy hellos and good-byes aside, she was the outsider. Maybe they couldn’t believe Alex had hired her. Everyone hates TV reporters. Amy had reminded her of that reality. Nobody hates them more devotedly than newspaper reporters. Especially a television reporter who gets it wrong. And they all thought she got it wrong.

The Lassiter newsletter blurred with a twinge of tears. There was nothing she could say that people would believe. They thought she was defensive, or lying, or a has-been, someone to be pitied, or dismissed. She missed her old life. Missed the after-news postmortems at Clancy’s. Missed the sneaked lunchtime manicures with Margery. Except for Margery and Steve, stalwart pals who’d persisted with dinner and movie invitations, none of her “friends” from Channel 11 had even called. As if being fired were a communicable disease.

Get a grip, she told herself. Shit happens. You’ll make friends here.

If only the lawyers could win the appeal. If only Sellica would contact her. Decide to come forward and tell the truth. Then everyone would know Jane wasn’t wrong. A moment of hope lifted her heart. Then disappeared.

“’Night, Jane.” Two women’s voices, almost in unison, called out as they passed her cubicle. Jane glimpsed the tops of two heads, blond and blonder, as whoever they were hurried by. She heard them laughing as they headed to the elevator.

Unable to stop herself, she clicked off the Lassiter newsletter and into the Register’s Internet search. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt this time. Maybe something had happened. She keyed in her own name. Then, quickly, “Arthur Vick.”

The headlines scrolled. Her name and his. Over and over. He was still the winner. She was still “Wrong-Guy Ryland.”

Nothing had changed.

*   *   *

Holly Neff squinted at the wood-framed bulletin board. She’d strung a thin wire behind it, one end to the other, attaching it to the frame with two little round things. She’d measured with a foldout yardstick, so the board would hang exactly between the scrolling vines of the green parts of the wallpaper. Like a frame in a frame. She’d been at Harborside, what, two weeks now? And the living room was on the way to perfect. When things worked, they just worked.

The bulletin board was smaller than she’d wanted, not covering the entire wall, but that had been a fantasy, she supposed. It would have been impossible to bring home such a huge—she tilted her head one way, then the other. Something was—

Ah. The corner of the third photo wasn’t lined up with the second one.

Holly frowned, adjusting the white-bordered eight by ten. It had to be perfect. She had to start all over.

One by one, she pulled the clear plastic pushpins from the corners of each photograph. There were an even dozen, which was perfect. One by one, she placed each picture, aligned in an even row, across the pristine white cloth on her dining room table.

Picture number one. Black-and-white. Owen Lassiter behind a bunting-draped podium, announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Crowds surrounding him. That woman beside him, all blond and smiling. Like she had something to do with it. Maybe that should be picture number two. Not first.

Holly moved the Lassiter announcement photo farther along the tablecloth and replaced it with the new photo number one. Color. Lassiter’s head shot, just him, gray hair, cheekbones. Charcoal suit, white shirt, red tie with little—what were they? She squinted at the photo. Flags. Massachusetts flags. Flags on his tie.

She paused, remembering. The love of her life. He’d be happier, so much happier, when he realized what she was doing. Yes, it was a sacrifice. But doing what was right often included sacrifice. That’s what made it powerful. That’s what love was about. Devotion. And persistence. And timing. Then, happy endings. You just had to be patient. And she was patient, patient, patient.

Her timer, a red plastic apple that you twisted to set your limits, buzzed a warning. Hurry. She had to hurry.

Photo number one: head shot. Maybe she should measure? No. I can do this. Photo number two. Announcement shot. Pushpins into each corner. Photo number three. One of her favorites. Cut from the newspaper with pinking shears, its zigzag edges setting it apart from the others. She was in this photo with him.

Holly stared at it, seeing herself, herself, caught on camera, wearing that perfect little outfit, her honey brown curls perfect, that perfect expression she’d practiced, in the same photograph as Owen Lassiter. That was just, just perfect.

And now she had to go to sleep. Tomorrow would be a very exciting day.