Jake hadn’t answered her text.
Jane could only hope he’d eventually get it and understand she would be even later than he was. She grabbed the brass handle on the heavy glass door to the DA’s office, yanked it open. Her stomach was rumbling in earnest now. She always kept food with her, almonds usually, since reporters could never know when they’d be starving, but she’d left them in her other tote bag. Fiola had the right idea about food stashes, at least. Though in a less healthful way.
The stuffy main hallway of One Pemberton Square was in half-light, doors closed. A row of framed drawings of stern-looking men, all high-collared and mustached, some with pipes, lined the wallpapered hall to room 412D. As she passed, the portraits changed to photos, men with shorter hair and Windsor-knotted ties, then, evoking Jane’s thumbs-up salute, to a woman in a floppy-bowed blouse, followed by a darker–skinned woman with an artfully arranged scarf. The last photo on the wall showed a pale woman with a pageboy, careful makeup, and a pin-striped suit. Krista Santora, the current DA.
The hallway gallery had plenty of room for more photos. If Santora screwed up, or fell out of favor, or lost the next election, another framed face would take her place. Balancing law and order with power was always in the forefront for DAs. Keeping the public happy often meant putting miscreants away. Even if sometimes they were not exactly guilty.
“Jane!”
The voice came from behind a just-opening door, a few steps farther down the hallway. A pin-spot light hit McCusker—in his signature bespoke suit, expensive for a taxpayer-salaried employee.
“Thank you so much for coming this late. I’m sure you had other plans.”
Anything but being here, Jane thought.
“No problem,” she said.
Room 412D, institutional neutral with predictable furniture. Red accordion files lined the wall to the left of McCusker’s desk, with cardboard boxes along the right. He pointed her to a ladder-back chair, its beige woven seat frayed and sagging.
“Apologize for the, uh, digs,” McCusker said. “We use what we’re given—taxpayer dollars and all.” His phone buzzed, and he shrugged, apologizing. “Gotta take this.”
“No problem,” Jane said again. Let’s get this over with, she thought.
Truth was, the hard line between journalism and law enforcement was a dilemma some couldn’t understand. Both professions sought justice, but they required separate—sometimes opposite—ways of achieving it. Once a journalist took sides in a battle, or abandoned objectivity, it was impossible to be neutral again. That’s what Jane thought, at least. Her boss clearly didn’t.
McCusker was still on the phone, scowling, talking in monosyllabic code: yes, no, fine. “That’s what I’m attempting to find out,” he said. He flickered a glance at her.
She pretended to be looking out the open window. Across Pemberton Square, a few lights illuminated a row of windows in the limestone façade of the newish Superior Court. The night had darkened, finally, and the end of August had that tender feel of a closing, a change in the works, even though the breeze that riffled into the room still held the unmistakable warmth of a New England summer night.
She felt like a bug on a pin, caught and spiked and without any choice. Sometimes you made a debatable decision, took one little step over the line, and it seemed fine. Then, the next line appeared, a little more dim, and the next one even more so, and the next moment you were somewhere you couldn’t believe you’d ever be.
She sighed. Maybe she just had low blood sugar.
The phone receiver rattled back into its port. McCusker cleared his throat, adjusted his yellow-striped tie, and looked at her across his desk, smiling. “Jane?”
“Right here.” She tried to put a fraction of an edge in her voice, beyond reproach, but enough to telegraph she wasn’t going to be a doormat.
“Good job on the fender-bender license number,” he said. “We grabbed video from a couple of surveillance cameras in the area, but it’s all black-and-white, and fuzzy as hell. So all we could get was that the car was light-colored and a sense that it was full-sized. Car was big. The delivery van’s worse off than it seemed. The driver’s okay, but the owner is pissed. Our focus is that it’s a hit-and-run. Santora’s hard-line about that, even though the property damage is not huge. Sets a precedent.”
“Uh-huh,” Jane said. So far, so good.
“What color was the car you saw?”
“Silver,” Jane said.
“Make?”
“Cadillac.” It was on the surveillance tape. They could figure that out, Jane knew, no matter how fuzzy it was.
“Yeah.” McCusker nodded. “That’s what we have, too. And a silver Caddy matches the license number you gave us. Which also gives us the driver. Well, the owner. That’s where we are now.”
“Great.” She felt herself sitting up taller, optimism straightening her spine. Maybe this encounter wouldn’t be so bad. “Another case successfully closed.”
And then, before she’d even mentally formed it, the question came out. “Who was it, anyway? The driver. Where’s he now? You charge him?”
“Well,” the ADA said. “Thing is. The owner insists he wasn’t driving. That he was out of town.”
“Really?” Oh, right, Jane thought. As convincing as I just had two beers, officer. I didn’t see the speed limit signs. I thought I was in the turn lane. That old story.
“That old story, right?” McCusker read her mind. “And that’s why we need you to testify.”
“Tes—?”
“—ti-fy,” McCusker finished the word, nodding. “In court. Tomorrow.”
“No!” She stood, fists on hips, and then sat down again. Put up both hands, conciliatory. She’d kind of yelped that no. “I mean…”
She paused, thinking about the instructions from Marsh Tyson. She’d help McCusker, because she’d agreed, reluctantly, to do that. But testifying was a different deal. Testifying was public. It would put her in a completely indefensible position. It would be precedent-setting for other journalists, too. She’d be held up as the Judas goat, the one who caved, even if it was her station’s idea. Yes, she was still gun-shy over being unfairly fired, even though that was four years ago, and yes, possibly she was overreacting.
But no, she wasn’t. Working reporters didn’t testify in court. She’d agreed to help Frank McCusker, but she’d never agreed to sit in a witness box and point the finger at someone. She yearned for the station’s lawyer, for anyone, to help argue her out of this. But she was on her own.
“Maybe we can avoid that,” she said, trying to be part of the solution. “Why don’t I tell you right now what the driver looked like? That’s what my news director told me to do. I don’t like it, not at all. But if I’m required to, I can describe him. To you. Not in court. He was—”
“No. Don’t tell me.” McCusker put up both palms, came out from behind his desk, shaking his head. “Really. Don’t. The judge has ordered what’s called a nonsuggestive identification hearing. That means you come to court, our suspect will be in the audience, or not, and you point him out. If you see him. Remember, he or she might not be there.”
Middle-aged, Caucasian, widow’s peak, gray hair, pointy cheekbones, thin lips, clean-shaven. She mentally recited the description, the face in her head as clear as it was the moment she’d seen the guy. She’d recognize him anywhere, no problem. But this seemed …
“Weird,” she said.
“Not really.” McCusker laced his fingers together, touched them to his chin, then pointed two forefingers at her. “It’s all about the gaps in eyewitness identification. Eyewitness mistakes are the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions. True fact. People really think they know what they’ve seen. But so many studies, and overturned verdicts, prove they get it wrong. And if we showed you photos, like a typical lineup? You’d think it must be one of them, and your memory would change. Irrevocably. We now understand that’s how people’s brains work, so we can’t have you subject to any kind of suggestion.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen those studies,” Jane said. The 60 Minutes experiments where the “crazy person” comes running into the classroom, and after he leaves, the descriptions of him are all over the map. And a couple years ago, a Boston reporter had revealed a case where cops used a phony suspect photo in a lineup to railroad an innocent person. But this was different. Completely different. “But I—I mean, I’m sure I’d recognize him.“
“I believe you. That’s why we need you. There’s a defense attorney who’s demanding the identification be unassailable. So—that’s how it’s done. Open court, face-to-face. Or, as I said, maybe not. Depending. It’ll take only a few minutes.”
“But why does it have to be in court?” She had to push harder. “Can’t you show me a photo array?”
McCusker shook his head. “Wish I could. But defense attorney wants the nonsuggestive, and the judge ruled in his favor.”
From somewhere down the hall came the Doppler hum of a vacuum cleaner. McCusker looked at her, his chest rising and falling, waiting for her response. Calculating his next move. Like a reporter trying to convince someone to talk, Jane realized. And now she was in the opposite role, the convincee.
“Let me just say…” McCusker’s voice had a quiet but persuasive tone Jane recognized. Again, she’d used it herself. He sat on the edge of his desk, planted his feet. The toes of his wingtips almost touched Jane’s black flats, and she pulled them away. “If you don’t testify? He’ll get away. There’ll be nothing we can do. The owner says it wasn’t him driving. We think it was. You’re the only one who can break the impasse.”
“But it’s only a—”
“There’s no ‘only a,’ Jane. There’s the law, and there’s ignoring it. My job is to make sure reckless and dangerous drivers don’t try to use the system to get away with doing damage and running away. You are all that stands between order and chaos. You saw him. You were honest and honorable enough to tell us that. Now you have to decide whether you are honorable enough to tell the court. To really make a difference.”
McCusker’s desk phone rang. Jane flinched, then looked at it with a flash of hope. Maybe it was a reprieve. Maybe something else had happened. Maybe she was off the hook.
McCusker ignored the phone.
“Jane?”
“What if I just said no?”
“Are you saying no?”
Could she even say no? People said no to her all the time, people like Tosca. And the Adams Bay guy this afternoon. What was Jane’s response? To ratchet up the pressure. She began to grasp why people always trotted out the reporter’s most hated excuse: “I don’t want to get involved.” Because talking made you involved.
But truth be told, she was involved. She couldn’t “un-know” something that she’d admitted—volunteered!—she knew.
“That means he saw you, too,” Fiola had reminded her. Now that was the least of it. If she pointed out this guy in open court, everyone on the planet, including the lawbreaking, scene-leaving, Cadillac-driving bad guy, would know who was identifying him. Jane Ryland, public figure, Channel 2 reporter. Jane Ryland, easy to find.
She sighed, wondering what she’d decide if she had the whole day to do over.
“Whatever,” Jane said, giving in. But what was she giving up? “Tell me when and where.”