Jane coughed, blinking, trying to get her bearings in the half-light of her bedroom. The air conditioner hummed, chilling with a white noise that made sleeping under the downy white comforter a delicious luxury. Her cell phone was rumbling across her glass-topped nightstand. She squinted at her alarm clock. Middle of the night. Uh-oh. Coda muttered a protest meow, her sleep also disturbed by the ringing phone.
“She’s fine, Sis,” Melissa’s whisper hissed in her ear.
“She’s fine? Gracie? Great.” Jane was glad to be awakened, this was good news. “Lewis, too? Melissa, why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “But see, if Gracie were my daughter, I’d have gone right out to pick her up. I mean, she’s nine! And I’m calling you because—Janey, how am I supposed to know what to do? I can’t make a big deal out of nothing, but it doesn’t feel like nothing. Daniel is relying on me. I can’t lose his daughter, for God’s sake. We’re about to get married, and—”
“But they’re not lost, right? They’re fine.” Jane wiped the sleep out of one eye. “So where are they?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” Melissa paused, either sighed or yawned. “Robyn went to sleep, but I’d been sitting in the living room, watching out the front window. But no one came home.”
“So Lewis called, or what?” Jane sat up, plumping the pillows behind her so she wouldn’t doze off. Coda, a dark silhouette, jumped onto the comforter, turned a circle, did it again, then nestled in the curve of Jane’s knee. The night Gracie wasn’t missing, Jane had called it. Seemed like she was right. Hurray.
The long and complicated day seemed distant now. Marsh Tyson. Gracie. The murder at Curley Park. The altercation in the alley. Two ambulances. Two victims? Unfinished stories.
Where was Jake? Did he already know how the stories ended?
“Jane?”
Jane started at the voice in her ear. She must have been half asleep. Missed something. “I’m here. What again?”
“Like I said, they’re at a motel,” Melissa whispered. “Robyn came to the kitchen, got a drink of water or something. She saw me in the living room and got all flustered. She said they’d called, and she was sorry she didn’t tell me, but she ‘thought I was asleep’—what an idiot—and they told her they were ‘zonked’ and would be home in the morning. Lewis told Gracie they were having ‘an adventure,’ and she was thrilled with the little motel soaps and all the pillows, and they’d be fine.”
“A motel?” Jane tried to decide if that was reasonable. Nothing was reasonable in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, they’ll be home in the morning. Turned out it’s better that I’m here.” Melissa’s voice was so low Jane could barely hear it. “Oh, Janey, I’m so sorry to bother you. I just needed someone to—maybe I’m silly to worry. But the woman is so unreliable. Seems like her husband is, too.”
“No, I hear you, I’m glad you called. I agree it’s—unusual,” Jane said. “And you’ll be a good stepmom, Lissie. Daniel knows that.”
Silence. Jane could hear Melissa yawn again, or sigh. “Thanks, Sis,” she said. “I hope so.”
* * *
At the employee garage, Catherine Siskel punched in her code—L-A-T-E—on the flat black pad. LA-TE stood for Lanna and Tenley. Now it was also about the time of night. Or, morning. Almost two thirty. She waved at the blinking security camera above her, the all-seeing eye that recorded everyone who entered. The yellow-and-black-striped barrier arm lifted, allowing her into the basement shadows, the murk of the parking area pin-spotted with dim orange lights. An array of empty spaces stretched in front of her, white stripes with stenciled names spray-painted at the edge of each one.
SISKEL COS, hers read. The chief of staff got the slot right next to Mayor Elihu Holbrooke, who, in all likelihood, was home with his wife and beagle, asleep in their overdecorated Beacon Hill brownstone. If she had to wake him up, it wouldn’t be pretty.
It was her job to make sure the mayor was not called, unless there was a dire emergency or an arriving celebrity. Or contributor. Tonight was none of the above, which made it Catherine territory. She shifted into Park, took a swig of tepid water from her plastic bottle, checked her face in the car’s pull-down mirror. She’d slapped on a little makeup every time she’d stopped at a red light. It would have to do.
Ward Dahlstrom would be there already, probably still seething that Catherine had kept the job—and parking spot—he wanted. So would Kelli White Riordan, the veteran city attorney who insisted on her middle name to amplify her old-Boston political genealogy. As if anyone cared.
Catherine tapped her fingers on the chrome railing as the elevator lifted her to the executive level. They’d read the subpoena, then see if there actually was any surveillance video for this afternoon. The traffic cams, where Tenley worked, recorded only if someone hit the cache button. If they had video, they’d hand it over.
It was all part of her job—the bad news as well as the glory. The e-mails had flown all afternoon, and she’d expected the subpoena, just not in the middle of the night. Still, a man had died in a city park, right across from City Hall. They had a victim in the morgue and a John Doe under police watch in the hospital. When crimes were solved quickly, the cops looked good and the mayor looked good. Which made Catherine look good. And she knew that when they identified the victim, someone’s family would be in mourning. So if Catherine was a little tired, hey, she’d get over it. She knew what mourning felt like.
The Fourth of July was imminent. Boston’s biggest tourist attraction. The pressure was on to close the case before the Esplanade fireworks. If it wasn’t, there’d be fireworks of another kind.
Who would kill in broad daylight? she wondered as the elevator doors opened. A killer on the loose was bad enough. One operating in the middle of a million holiday picnickers would be like a bad thriller movie. And a murder right outside City Hall? Probably the first time in history. She might have seen it herself if she’d been looking out the window at the right time.
Be disturbing if Tenley had seen anything. Her daughter hadn’t mentioned it, but then Tenley never mentioned anything about anything.
Catherine pushed open the glass doors into the reception area. A wide-windowed foyer designed to accommodate favor seekers and job hunters, it had been outfitted with lumpy low-slung couches and old magazines to discourage supplicants from hanging around. The receptionist, a dire wolf in cardigans who’d been around since the Flynn years, ruled the place with stabbing fingernails and a practiced glare.
Her reception desk was vacant at this hour. The corridors had been darkened by the city’s vaunted automatic energy-saving program, the air conditioners barely humming. For an off-hours meeting like this, that made the atmosphere close and gloomy and stuffy. Like being inside a submarine. Or a sinking ship.
Dahlstrom stood in the middle of the room, holding a flat plastic CD holder, waving it at her as she entered. “It’s all here,” he said.
“What’s all here?” Catherine nodded at Kelli Riordan. Even in her trademark pencil skirt and starched white blouse—at this hour!—the woman looked disheveled and sleep deprived.
“You mean the CD?” Catherine asked.
“The murder,” Dahlstrom said.