So much for no breaking news.
So much for sharing everything.
Jake had headed out at the crack of dawn, promising to see what he could find out and decide how much he could tell her. Problem was, if he eventually spilled the inside beans about the Reserve death, every cell in her reporter brain would be tempted to tell the news desk. That was exactly what Jane had promised she wouldn’t do. And once she changed her mind, the news director would expect her to do it again. Jane pumped the metal walk-light button at the intersection of Cambridge Street and New Chardon again, hurrying it up so she could cross to the Dunkin’ Donuts.
So, this wasn’t going to work. Day two, eight A.M. Jane was already back in reporter mode. Maybe you couldn’t simply “decide” your passion away. Her diamond winked at her in the morning sunshine, as if it were agreeing. She’d forgotten to take off her ring. She moved it to her right hand and turned it in a one-eighty, hiding the stone. She was being silly, she recognized that. The ring was still there, no matter how it appeared to the outside world. Reality was still reality.
She pursed her lips, concentrating, as she tried to dial her cell phone and watch for the walk sign simultaneously. Now she’d see whether her agreement to help the district attorney’s office meant they’d scratch her back, too.
She’d talk to McCusker about last night’s car crash. Then get back to Channel 2. See if Tosca contacted her. And then, because she had no choice, show up in court at two. She’d be fine with no lawyer. She guessed. She needed coffee, maybe iced, on this wiltingly hot day.
Green light. Jane still looked both ways, trotting across the zebra stripes as she listened to the phone ring at the DA’s office. Another car accident? With the same delivery company? She needed the police report of the second accident. The first one, too. McCusker’d better give it to her. After all, she was involved.
“Hey, Frank.” She finally reached him after being tele-navigated through a maze of secretaries and gatekeepers. She opened the coffee shop door as she talked. “You got the report on the Storrow Drive accident yet?”
She covered the speaker of her phone as McCusker answered, quietly ordering her large iced with skim milk, no sugar, hoping McCusker couldn’t hear. She could hear him fine. He was telling her no. Absolutely no.
“And what’s more, Jane,” he went on, his voice escalatingly dismissive, “you know better. It’s under investigation. I wouldn’t even be speaking with you if we weren’t seeing each other later today. Two P.M. in Boston Municipal.”
As if she could have forgotten. “But I’m also calling about—”
Her coffee arrived, and she acknowledged it with a smile. The barista raised a critical eyebrow at the phone clamped to her face. Jane tried to look apologetic. She hated to talk on her cell in stores, seemed so rude, but this was an exception. Two hit-and-runs?
“Jane?” McCusker took advantage of her brief silence. “Whatever it is, the answer is no. I’m clearly not supposed to be talking to you, but I was worried you were calling to cancel. Since you’re not, we’re done. ’Kay?”
“But there was another—”
“Not talking to you,” he said. “See you later.”
He hung up.
Jane stabbed off the phone, stashed it in the black hole of her tote bag, tamped down her orange straw against the plastic counter to break off the paper.
“So much for that.” She jammed her straw into the clear plastic lid of her icy cup. The barista looked up, questioning. “Nothing,” Jane said.
And so much for the mutual back-scratching Marsh Tyson had predicted. She’d told the news director this was a bad idea. That the DA’s office only took information, they didn’t give it.
But by the time she got to her office, Jane had a new plan. Fiola—Fee—wasn’t at her desk yet. Jane swiveled into her own chair, carefully placing her mammoth iced coffee where she wouldn’t knock it over with the phone cord. Dialed. Two rings.
“Hey, Karen,” she said. “Jane Ryland at Channel 2.” She slurped a sip, quietly, as the Boston PD public affairs officer protested. “Yeah, I know, Fiola called you last night, we’re working on this together.” Which was kind of true. “I’m just following up. Great that you’re in so early, very impressive.”
No response. So much for friendly.
“So, anyway. Do you have the police report from last night’s accident? I know it should be public record.” Which was also kind of true. “Only the accident report, I mean. Not the investigation part. And what’s the victim’s condition? Taken to Mass General or Boston City?”
Jane put the phone on speaker so she could flip through her snail mail and boot up her computer while Karen talked. Or more accurately, sneered. The veteran PIO was notorious for her instant denials. Why they called them public information officers Jane would never understand. They were rarely interested in making anything public.
“Jane, you know as well as I do,” Karen Warseck said, “we’ve got nothing for you. I’m sure your colleague explained that it’s under investigation. Certainly nothing happened between last night at midnight and now. And if it did? It’s still under investigation.”
Karen paused. “Unless there’s something you’d like to tell us?”
Not a chance, Jane thought. Then she frowned, realizing where that question might have come from. Was that Karen’s not-so-sly way of letting Jane know she knew about her “talk” with the DA’s office? On the other hand, the cop shop and the DA’s office were notoriously contentious. Protective. Territorial. Which meant it was certainly possible that the cops didn’t know Jane was giving information—under duress as it was—to the DA. Jane certainly wasn’t about to offer that tidbit. She’d done enough of that for one lifetime.
Ignoring the PIO’s question, Jane persisted. “Any ID on the victim?” If “nothing had changed” it meant the victim was still alive.
“What part of ‘nothing for you’ did you not understand?”
“Funny,” Jane said. “So we’ll follow up later?”
“No doubt,” Karen said.
Jane heard the click of Karen’s hang-up over the tinny speaker, then the drone of the dial tone. She poked the speaker off and sat back, shoulders sagging, trying to think. She stabbed her straw up and down in her iced coffee, now mostly ice. Heard the squeaking noise of plastic straw against plastic lid, couldn’t resist doing it again.
“Having fun?” Fiola said. She waved a hand at Jane and the straw as she swept into the office.
“Hey, Fee,” Jane said. She squeaked her straw one more time, just because. Fee wore all black today: skirt, silk shirt, linen jacket. It looked as if she and Jane had coordinated their news-predictable wardrobes. Jane was wearing her go-to-court pearls, though, and touching them reminded her. Today she’d be on the participant side, not the observer side. Which still ticked her off. “What’s new?”
“I’m calling the cops about the Gormay thing.” Fee parked her black handbag on the floor, kicked off her flip-flops, and slipped on black heels.
“I already did that,” Jane said. “Nada.”
“Jerks. You still going to court? Did Tosca call? Or anyone else?”
“Yes, no.” Jane tossed her junk mail, slit open the one envelope that didn’t look like it was addressed by a crazy person. Took out the white piece of paper inside. “And no calls.”
“Anything on the news about last night’s hit-and-run? Why didn’t you turn this on?” Fee popped on their TV, kept the sound muted.
“Huh,” Jane said. She looked at the white piece of paper. Looked at the envelope again. Her name, and Channel 2, and a postmarked-Boston stamp. “Lovely,” she said. She held up the letter, showing Fiola its three-word block-lettered message. “Look.”
“‘Say no more’.” Fiola read the note out loud. Frowned. “All in capital letters. Is there anything on the env—”
“No,” Jane said.
The two sat in silence for a beat.
“Take it to Marsh Tyson,” Fiola said. “Just so he knows.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Jane replaced it in the envelope. “Either it’s about the hit-and-run, or it isn’t. Or it’s about campus crime, you know? Or it isn’t. Or it’s one of the ten billion nutcase things people send to reporters every darn day.”
“I know,” Fiola said. “But you should take it to McCusker, too.”
Jane put the envelope on her desk. Stared at it.
“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s got nothing identifiable. At all. Not even a zip on the postmark. So what could McCusker, or anyone, do about it?”
JAKE BROGAN
“What good does that do?” Jake probably shouldn’t have said that out loud, but Austin the alarm kid was driving him crazy. SafeHouse Security, this business was called. Which, as far as Jake could figure, was deceptive advertising. The SafeHouse alarm system installed at the Morgan House certainly had not kept Avery Morgan safe. It hadn’t taped any arrivals. Or departures. Hadn’t warned the police of a break-in.
Earlier this morning, he and DeLuca had waited in the struggling air-conditioning of Judge Gallagher’s chambers for two hours—DeLuca partially turned away from him on the waiting room’s sleek gray corduroy couch, texting as if his life depended on it. Jake spent the downtime researching Adams Bay and making a list of to-dos in his notebook. Connect with the school’s dean of students, some guy named Tarrant. Contact Avery Morgan’s fellow drama adjunct, Sasha Vogelby. He googled Willow Galt, too, and ran her through Facebook, but as sometimes happened, so far nothing. She was hiding something, Jake was sure. But then, so was everyone. Didn’t mean it mattered.
Half an hour ago they’d handed their search warrant to SafeHouse’s twenty-something receptionist, a grunge wannabe with cobalt-blue hair, who’d left them in the alarm company’s chrome and glass lobby. Now she was back, and telling them the “vice president” had instructed her to “allow” them to see the video they requested. As if the warrant gave anyone a choice.
“Thanks so much.” DeLuca saluted her with his Dunkin’s large.
“And leave all liquids in the lobby,” the young woman said, missing—or ignoring—his sarcasm.
“Are you ki—” DeLuca began.
“D,” Jake said. D was no good until his third cup. This, sadly, had only been number two.
She buzzed them through the clicking locks of an electronically secured metal gate and led them down a corridor of closed doors to a closet-sized office with “Security” stenciled in black on the door. Windowless and hyper-chilled, the room’s low-ceilinged walls were lined with darkened TV monitors held up by metal brackets, a carbon copy of every surveillance system Jake had ever seen.
“This is Austin,” the receptionist said. “They’re okay, Aus. Whatevs.” And closed the door behind her.
A double-screen console took up the center of the room. Austin, a clearly beleaguered underling in wrinkled plaid shirt and random blue jeans occupying the room’s only chair, guided them through the computerized records of the Morgan House security system. Which, as they watched screen after screen, showed basically nothing but black.
Now, after fifteen minutes of nothing, Jake couldn’t stand it. “What good does it do to have a taping system if you have to turn it on?”
“It’s just how it works,” the kid said. “You wouldn’t want the tape running all the time. Right?”
“Whatevs,” DeLuca muttered.
“So it only tapes if the motion detector is set to run?”
“Or if we get a message to start the tape,” the alarm guy said. “Remotely.”
“So wait. The serial killer comes in, but there’s no tape of that. Then you’re supposed to say, hang on, let me start the video?” DeLuca stood, putting one hand on his lower back as if the effort of leaning over the screen was impossibly uncomfortable. “How much does this ‘service’ cost?”
“How would anyone know when to ask for surveillance video?” Jake interrupted. “Until it’s too late?”
“There’s a panic button,” the kid said.
“It get pushed?” Jake asked. “In the last five months or so?”
Austin clicked his silver mouse, tapped on his silver keyboard, so work-worn the letters had disappeared from the keys.
If Avery Morgan had used the panic button, that’d certainly be in the records. Police—or someone—would have arrived, and there’d be an explanation. Which would be a lead. Which would point to a solution. A possible solution.
“Yes,” Austin said. “I see a—”
Jake took out his spiral notebook. “What?”
“Oh. Heck.” The kid stopped. Leaned closer to the screen. “Sorry.”
“That’s not good,” D said.
Austin tapped the keyboard again.
“Austin? What exactly did you mean by ‘heck’?” Jake asked.
“I mean, um, that was the wrong file.” The kid kept typing. “Someone else’s records. Let me try that again.”
“Security,” D said. “Awesome.”
Austin shrugged, shoulders hunched, the black-and-white screens flashing and changing, code scrolling.
“All you usually need is the yard sign,” he said. “Or a decal on the window. The bad guys see it’s SafeHoused, they stay away. It’s an Adams Bay house, anyway. They’re the owner. The college, I mean. Ask them how they like it.”
Jake lowered his notebook. He’d assumed Avery Morgan owned the house. “Say again?”
“Nope, no panics.” Austin tapped more keys. “In fact, far as I can see…” More tapping. “She never turned on the video. She’d have to put in her password, but she never did.”
“What was it?” DeLuca asked. “Her password?”
“It’s secret.”
“She’s dead.”
“Still secret.”
“Listen,” DeLuca began.
“Do you know what this warrant means, Austin?” Jake, interrupting the fencing match, pulled his copy from his jacket pocket. His phone was buzzing, and a text pinged in, but he had to ignore it for now. “It means, according to a Suffolk County Superior Court judge—wanna see it?—it means nothing is secret.”
“Dead, not dead. The warrant don’t care,” DeLuca said.
“Popcorn,” Austin said.