INSIDE OUT
MONDAY, 10:35 A.M.
AUGUST 5, 1997
DETECTIVE MITCHELL OATES, a burly African American, was standing a few feet from an open doorway to one of those Architectural Digest-style bedrooms in a posh town house in Boston’s historic Beacon Hill. He stepped aside to give his partner, Leo Coscarelli, a better view of the body. The two detectives had been teamed up for close to three years now. Oates, at thirty-one, was the younger by two years, but you wouldn’t know it to look at them. Coscarelli had the guileless face and lean, wiry body of a postadolescent. Coscarelli’s boyish looks, surprisingly, had turned out to be his biggest asset as a homicide detective. Many suspects over the past seven years had made the mistake of thinking the lieutenant was wet behind the ears, and therefore a pushover. What often happened was, they’d let their guard down, get sloppy, and find out the hard way that it was never smart to judge a book by its cover.
Oates had been at the crime scene for about fifteen minutes. Coscarelli had just arrived. Like his partner, Coscarelli was supposed to be off-duty that day, but given the high-profile victim, he'and Oates had been handpicked by the Homicide chief to take charge of the case.
When the call came in at 10:05 a.m. to hightail it over to the Slater home, Coscarelli was still in bed. But he wasn’t sleeping. And he wasn’t alone. He was having sex with Suzanne Holden, an ex-druggie and -prostitute he was endeavoring to “rehabilitate. ” In hindsight, he wished the call had come in a few minutes earlier. Then it could have been one of those “saved by the bell” situations—the situation being one he definitely should not have been in in the first place. But “saving bells” rarely went off in real life.
Coscarelli peered down at the bare-chested body of the criminal defense attorney—revered or reviled, depending on whether you were the defendant or the plaintiff.
“You knew him, right?” Oates muttered.
“Who in Homicide doesn’t know Matthew Slater?” Coscarelli answered, noting, with a modicum of envy, that for a guy in his late forties, Slater was enviably buff. Not that all those workouts at the gym were going to do the poor bastard much good now— unless you counted looking pumped in your casket.
Coscarelli looked over his shoulder at Oates. “So, what’s the story?”
“Call came in at nine-oh-five a.m. A local unit got here at nine-twenty a.m. with a couple of paramedics. Slater was pronounced dead by one of the EMT boys. Coroner and CSI team are on the way.”
“Media got here quick enough.”
Coscarelli squatted down, took in the dead attorney’s facial bruising, including what looked to be a badly broken nose. But he doubted it was the punch, or more likely, punches, that killed Matthew Slater. “Gotta wait for the ME, but my money’s on manual strangulation.” Not touching the corpse, he pointed to the darker bruise marks around the lawyer’s neck. “Who found him?”
“Joyce Halber . . . Slater’s secretary. She got worried because the boss didn’t show up at the office for an important breakfast meeting scheduled for eight a.m. and she couldn’t reach him on his cell phone. So she drove over. Got here at approximately eight forty-five a.m. When he didn’t answer her rings or knocks, she let herself in. Oh—she had a key to the house. Said Slater had given it to her when she first started working for him three years ago. Anyway, like I said . . . she came over here, unlocked the door—”
“She said it was locked?” Coscarelli interrupted.
Oates flipped open a notebook and retrieved a handwritten report from the cop who’d arrived on the scene first. “Yep.”
Oates continued, referring to the report. “She looked downstairs first, then figured he must have overslept—she said that he took sleeping pills on occasion. So she went upstairs and found him right where he is now. She swears she didn’t touch him or anything else in the room.”
Coscarelli nodded. “I’d say by the looks of our corpse and the smell, our killer struck a good two, three days ago. Nobody missed Slater before this morning?”
Oates shrugged. “It was the weekend. According to what the secretary told the uniform, the Slaters have a place out on Martha’s Vineyard. The wife spends the summer there, and Slater flies out most weekends. Halber assumed he was there. Just before I talked to the secretary on the phone, I heard from the sheriff on the Vineyard. He’d just come back from informing the wife.”
“How’d he get word so quickly?”
''“Halber.”
“Efficient secretary.” Coscarelli paused briefly. “So, how’d the wife take it?”
“Sheriff said she didn’t break down or nothing. His interpretation, she was probably in shock.” Oates cocked a thick eyebrow. “Could be shock, I guess. Anyway, she told the sheriff her husband phoned her Friday afternoon saying he was staying in the city to work on a brief. She didn’t try reaching him and wasn’t surprised that he never contacted her over the weekend. It’s supposedly the way he is when he’s deep into a case.”
Coscarelli rose to his feet. “Secretary tell you what case he was working on?”
Oates gave his partner a crafty smile. “According to Halber, our boy was in between cases at the moment.”
THURSDAY, 8:33 P.M.
NOVEMBER 24
“You ready for her, Lieutenant?”
Coscarelli lifted his eyes from the typed statement to the darkskinned, heavyset cop standing at the door. He caught the uniform’s slight inflection on the “her,” but he let it pass. He might as well get used to it. Chances were high this was going to be the hottest copy since O.J., a shoo-in for Court TV if it went to trial. Exploitation in the name of edification. A surefire spectator sport. And a profitable one. For everyone but the defendant.
“We got her fingerprinted and booked. Her one call was to her lawyer.” The cop smiled slyly. “You’d never guess, to look at her. Just thought I’d let you know.”
Coscarelli glared at the uniform, who motioned behind him with his hand, then stepped aside.
Lynn Ingram appeared in his doorway as Coscarelli was slipping her statement into the murder book. He gave an involuntary start when he saw her. Hector Rodriquez was right. No way he’d have guessed. And it wasn’t even that she was all dolled up in some ultrafeminine dress, or sported high-heeled shoes, big hair, or went over the top on the makeup. Anything but. To the naked eye, Coscarelli could discern no cosmetics save for a touch of gloss that accentuated full, sensual lips and a whisper of blush accentuating the high cheekbones of a fashion model. If she’d undergone rhinoplasty, her plastic surgeon had to have been top-caliber because her straight, slightly elongated nose perfectly suited her face. That face was both striking, and unnervingly delicate, framed by ash-blonde hair that fell softly to her shoulders, straight, silky, tastefully styled. Even her outfit was decidedly understated, expensively tailored. Slim black suede jeans and an off-white cashmere blazer worn open over a teal-blue, fitted T-shirt that was a pretty good match to her eyes.
There was no getting around it. The tall, slender but nicely endowed twenty-eight-year-old certainly did look the epitome of femininity. With the exception of her hands. Even with the expertly manicured nails and the slender, shapely fingers, there was no question that Lynn Ingram’s hands were large. Still, plenty of tall women had large hands. And Coscarelli judged Ingram’s height to be close to six feet.
Coscarelli couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like if he’d met Lynn Ingram under normal circumstances. Would he ever have surmised the truth? No, he was sure he wouldn’t have—as sure as he was that he would have most definitely found himself attracted to her. But then, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been attracted to an “inappropriate” woman. Ingram’s presr ence.reminded him of the morning he’d been called to the Slater murder scene. A morning when he’d let his attraction to another inappropriate woman—namely a young and beautiful ex-drug addict/prostitute—get seriously out of hand. Since then he’d been working hard to get his errant libido back in check. Lynn Ingram wasn’t helping his progress. ,
He caught a faint smile on Ingram’s face, like she had a good idea of his reaction to her. That shook him a little. She shook him. More than a little.
Fighting the urge to clear his throat, he said, “You don’t have to say anything, or even be in here, until your lawyer arrives.” “You mean I can wait in a cell. No thanks.” There was a hint of huskiness in her tone, but it was more sexy than it was masculine. He was impressed that she seemed not to be making an attempt to artificially raise the pitch of her voice.
“I’m going to turn on a tape recorder.”
She nodded.
He hit the record button on the compact machine on his desk, his eyes fixed on her face as he stated for the record, “This is Lieutenant Leo Coscarelli with Lynn Ingram. The date is Thursday, November twenty-fourth. The time is—” He took a quick glance at his watch. “Eight thirty-eight p.m.”
“Do I sit down?” she asked.
He gestured to a straight-backed wooden chair on the other side of his desk.
She gave his nondescript cubicle of an office a quick glance, then considered him for a few moments before crossing to the chair. Was she checking him out as a cop, thinking that he looked way too young for Homicide? Or was she merely checking him out as a man? Or both? No way to read this one. But he couldn’t pull his eyes off her.
She crossed the small space, moving with a dancer’s grace, lowering her long, slender body into the proffered chair.
“I imagine you thought I’d look more like a drag queen.” Coscarelli wasn’t walking into that one. “Look, Ms. Ingram, I’m sure your lawyer advised you not to say anything until—” “Dr. Ingram.”
Coscarelli’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t picked up that tidbit in her statement. “Medical doctor?”
“We don’t all earn our keep as drag queens, Detective. I’m a clinical psychologist with a specialty in pain management. I work with Dr. Harrison Bell, an anesthesiologist, at the Boston Harbor Community Pain Clinic. I’ve been there since I got my Ph.D. from Boston University two years ago. ” She crossed one long leg over the other, looking surprisingly contained for someone who’d just walked in off the street and voluntarily confessed to a murder she’d committed over three months ago. Maybe she was putting it on. Passing, not only as a woman, but as one who was remarkably self-possessed given the situation. Coscarelli had to admit that Ingram’s talent for “passing” was highly successful, if he was any judge. Then again, if what she said in her statement
was true, Lynn Ingram had gone a major step past merely passing.
“That’s how I met Matt,” she went on evenly. Coscarelli was certain that Ingram was going against the direct advice of her attorney. Still, that was her choice, the proof that he had in no way coerced her recorded on tape. “He had chronic joint pain in his right knee due to an old college soccer injury. He started coming in for treatment in May after being referred to the clinic by one of his law partners—”
“And that partner would be?”
“Aaron Hirsh.”
“He’s the attorney you indicated in your statement would be representing you.”
“That’s right, Detective. I phoned him a short while ago. Needless to say, he was most unhappy that I’d already given a statement.” She shrugged. Even this gesture had a distinctly natural feminine quality. “Aaron’s flying in from La Guardia Airport. He keeps an apartment in Manhattan because his firm also has offices there. Actually, he and Matt shared the apartment. They were friends as well as law partners.”
“And yet you chose Hirsh?”
“He’s the best. And he’s my friend as well.”
Coscarelli gave her a closer look.
She smiled, revealing even, pearl-white teeth. “Just a friend, Detective.”
“Why did you make a statement before Hirsh got here?” Coscarelli asked.
“To be honest, I didn’t know I was going to do it. I was having dinner with a friend just down the street. Putting it lightly, I haven’t had much of an appetite for the past three months, and my friend expressed concern. I told him it was nothing. But, quite obviously, that was a lie. I’ve been in a state of torment since that awful night. I selected the restaurant, by the way. I’m sure Freud would make something of the fact that it’s one block away from police headquarters. And the wise doctor would be right. I even parked my car directly across the street from this building. I left the restaurant, started for my car and . . . found myself walking in here instead. I shouldn’t have acted so precipitously. Meaning I should have waited and come in with Aaron. But the damage is already done. I made a statement. I stand by that statement. When Aaron gets here, that will still be my statement.” “Why turn yourself in now?”
Her gaze fixed on his. “Conscience.” He saw a sadness brim up in her deep-blue eyes, but he didn’t trust it.
Ingram drew her eyes away, focusing on the poor excuse for a Christmas cactus sitting on top of his file cabinet. The plant hadn’t bloomed this past Christmas, or the two before that. Coscarelli wasn’t sure why he kept it around. Maybe he was waiting for a miracle.
“On the Monday after ... it happened, I was scheduled for surgery. I flew up to Montreal Sunday night, and I was at the hospital for ten days. Then I stayed at a nearby hotel a couple more weeks for outpatient checkups and to . . . get physically and psychologically settled. ”
“Slater’s death must have complicated that.”
She winced. “I didn’t know Matt was dead. My actions that evening were a matter of self-defense, pure and simple.”
Coscarelli found it interesting that Ingram referred to her lethal assault on Slater as “actions.” As for the “pure and simple”—he was pretty sure the psychologist was smart enough to know that when it came to the murder of a Brahmin lawyer, there wasn’t one single aspect of this crime that was either pure or simple.
“Matt was still alive when I ran out of the house. At least, I thought he was.”
“You’re a doctor. You didn’t check?”
“I’m not a medical doctor. And I was frightened. I ran. I’m not proud of myself. But as I said, I didn’t know Matt had . . . died. There was nothing in the news that whole weekend before I flew to Montreal, and if it made news up in Canada at some point later on, I never saw or heard about it while I was in the hospital or afterward—while I was recuperating up there. I assumed Matt was okay. I knew he wasn’t about to press charges for my attack on him. If anything, I was sure he was afraid I would be the one pressing charges against him. He beat me up quite severely. You can confirm that with Dr. Claude Brunaud.”
“And Brunaud would be—?”
“The Canadian plastic surgeon who did my vaginoplasty.” Her eyes held his.
Coscarelli had all he could do to keep himself from physically squirming, but he sure as hell was squirming on the inside. Ingram smiled, and he was certain it was at his expense.
But the smile wilted quickly. “That recuperative period—it should have been the happiest time of my life. I was finally whole. Right. Truly me. You can’t know how long I’d dreamed, prayed—”
The smile died altogether. “But I was never more depressed. Oh, my shrink at the hospital said depression wasn’t uncommon in my situation. He likened it to a new mother’s postpartum blues. But that wasn’t it. You see, I’d envisioned a life with Matt. A normal, happy, loving, lasting relationship. I thought he’d be there for me.”
“Yeah, hard to envision living happily ever after with a dead man.”
If he expected to shake her up, rile her, he wasn’t having any luck. Ingram’s expression was, if anything, sadder. “I didn’t murder Matt. He attacked me. We struggled. I had no choice but to protect myself. Save myself. It was self-defense.”
Coscarelli made no response, noting that as the silence lasted, Ingram shifted slightly in her seat. And, as he’d anticipated—or at least hoped—started talking again, a bit faster this time. A hint of agitation. So, she wasn’t as cool and composed as she’d tried to make him believe.
“The truth was too much for Matt. He told me very bluntly that he’d rather see me dead than risk its coming out. He said he would not be a national laughingstock. Interesting, don’t you think, Lieutenant Coscarelli, that he wasn’t particularly concerned about being seen as a man cheating on his wife?—just about being seen as a deviant. I truly believed Matt would have killed me if I hadn’t. . . stopped him. He . . . attacked me. Viciously. As if ... I would ever tell anyone.” She shook her head. “Matt couldn’t understand that I was devastated.”
“How’s that?”
“I loved him.” Her lips quivered slightly, and, for a moment or two, Coscarelli thought her well-constructed facade was going to crack. But then she pulled herself together with a resolute sigh. “It’s all in my statement, Detective. I don’t know why I’m rehashing it. I’ll only have to do it all again when Aaron gets here. ” Coscarelli tipped his chair back. “What should we talk about while we’re waiting?”
She waited several beats. “Don’t tell me you aren’t curious.” Her eyes locked with his. “Or do you know other postoperative M-to-Fs?”
“M-to-Fs?” But then he got it. “Male-to-female.”
“We don’t all look like this. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Growing up, I was often taken for a girl. Especially before I shot up to nearly six feet when I was about sixteen. I was blessed— or cursed, if you were to ask my father—with a pretty face. I’ve needed only the most minor facial reconstructive surgery and, naturally, some electrolysis. Even there, it wasn’t a long or elaborate process, as I’m very fair. I couldn’t have grown more than the most scraggly of beards even if I’d wanted to. And that was before I began hormone treatment. I’m the envy of most of my transsexual friends.”
“And Slater didn’t know or guess before that night?”
“Would you have guessed, Detective?” Ingram eyed him defiantly. “Did you ever see the film The Crying Game? Well, that Friday night was The Crying Game Redux.” There was a false ring of flippancy in her voice. “In the movie, the hero falls in lust with this exquisite woman at a bar, she takes him back to her apartment for a night of sexual bliss, and he freaks when he discovers she’s got one little added appendage he hadn’t counted on. Even so, he ultimately ends up falling in love with her.”
“In your case life didn’t imitate art, I assume.”
“Matt was horrified. Then he got angry. Very angry.”
“You might have warned him beforehand.”
She gave him a pained look. “You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve cursed myself for being so . . . blind. So . . . trusting. So damn stupid.”
Coscarelli tried to imagine himself in Slater’s place. How would he have reacted? He’d have been good and shaken, certainly. But would he have struck out at her? At him? Easy to say he’d have kept his cool.
Ingram leaned forward in her seat. “I don’t expect you to understand this, Lieutenant, but in my heart and soul, in the very fiber of my being, I was a woman before the operation. I’ve always been a woman locked in the wrong body. I fell in love with Matt almost from our first encounter, but I took it very slow. It wasn’t until I truly believed he was feeling something deeper than just lust for me, that I risked it. I deluded myself into believing he would understand. Not that he wouldn’t be taken aback at first, but that he could get beyond it.”
“You could have waited until after the surgery. Aren’t I right in thinking he wouldn’t have even known?”
A faint flush colored Lynn Ingram’s cheeks. “Thanks to Dr. Brunaud, when I am fully healed, I will have perfect female genitalia. Indistinguishable from that of a genetic female. The good doctor even assures me that I should, in time, be able to achieve orgasm.” Her tone was purely clinical.
“You still didn’t answer my question.” Coscarelli didn’t get easily distracted.
“I wanted Matt to know,” she said, a touch of fire in her voice now. “I’d spent too much of my life living—no, suffering— a lie. I thought I owed it to Matt for him to know the truth. To see the truth. I realized, too late, it was crazy, but at the time I thought it would help him be more accepting in the end. I thought he might even . . . come up to Canada with me. Hold my hand, so to speak. I knew Matt was married, but he told me he was going to leave his wife. He swore his marriage had gone sour long before we met. That I wasn’t responsible for breaking them up. He told me ... he loved me. He told me he believed we had a future. I believed him.” Her lips quivered in earnest now, tears finally arriving. “I was a fool.”
I was the victim, not Matt. He attacked me. I was only defending myself.
Lynn Ingram (excerpt from trial transcript)
HORIZON HOUSE PRERELEASE CENTER—INTAKE MEETING BOSTON
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2001
"I DON'T LIKE it. Ingram was trouble behind the wall and she’s gonna be even more trouble here.” Gordon Hutchins, the head CO, a stocky man fighting an ever-growing paunch, gray hair shorn military-short, caught the superintendent’s disapproving expression. She watched him pull back, not because he was afraid of her, but because he knew that open combat just made her more obstinate. At thirty-two, Natalie Price might be twenty-seven years younger than Hutch, and he might have a good thirty years on her in the system, but Price was from the new school— which included all the right credentials, even a Ph.D. in criminal justice—and as superintendent at Horizon House, she was the one who got to make the final decision.
“Ingram didn’t cause the trouble, Hutch,” Price said succinctly, to bring the message home. “And she meets all of the center’s qualifications. So, let’s just move on.”
Jack Dwyer, Price’s dark-haired, dark-eyed deputy superintendent, who most closely resembled a slightly over-the-hill street tough* wasn’t ready to “just move on.” Like Hutch, he was both older than Price—nearing forty and not enjoying it—and also had been in the system longer than she had. Unlike Hutch, he happened to enjoy butting heads with her. He’d have enjoyed doing more than that with her, but their relationship outside of work, convoluted from the get-go, had gotten especially twisted over the past year. He’d been making a concerted effort to unsnarl the tangles, but somehow, the more he tried, the more knotted they got. Jack Dwyer was not typically a patient man. On the other hand, he was used to getting his way. But then, so was Natalie Price. They just wanted different things.
“Whether she caused the trouble or not,” Jack said, zeroing in on Nat, “Ingram did need to be placed under protective custody after several assaults and at least one rape. And even though she refused to identify any of her assailants, it didn’t win her any fans among the other female inmates or the male and female staff.”
“Maybe she kept mum because they weren’t really rapes” Hutch muttered. “Maybe she was looking for some action.” “Maybe she was scared of getting whacked for ratting any of them out,” Sharon Johnson said heatedly. Although you
wouldn’t guess it to look at this elegant, full-bodied, cocoaskinned woman in her crisp russet Donna Karan suit, the thirty-eight-year-old job-placement counselor knew what she was talking about, having done three tough years at CCI Grafton.
Sharon was one of two ex-con staff members employed at Horizon House. The other, Akeem Ahmal, was the center’s cook, or “chef” as he preferred to be called. Nat had had to fight tooth and nail to secure those appointments, these two people being the only ex-cons employed by the Corrections Department within the confines of a prison facility.
And make no mistake, Horizon House, a tidy, renovated Victorian building that in its first incarnation at the turn of the last century served as a proper hotel for young women, might lack concrete perimeter walls and armed guard towers, and it might be located smack-dab in the middle of downtown Boston so the inmates who qualified for a placement there might get a taste of the “real world,” but there was absolutely no question that this six-story brick edifice was a prison, albeit the only corrections facility that housed male and female inmates in the same building. While the men and women had secured quarters on separate floors, and unsupervised fraternization was strictly forbidden, all of the rehab programs—alcohol or drug treatment, anger management, parenting skills, whatever—were now intentionally coed. It had taken all of Nat Price’s considerable persuasive powers to convince the commissioner and the governor that the potential benefits of this reality-based approach far exceeded the potential pitfalls, never anticipating the whopping pitfall on the table today.
“Who’s Ingram into, anyway? Men? Women? Both?” Hutch addressed the question to the group.
Sharon glared at him. “What difference does her sexual preference make?”
Hutch raised both palms in her direction. His style of apology. Although Nat had known for some time, Sharon had just recently come out of the closet to the rest of her colleagues. A couple of weeks ago, she even brought Raylene Ford, her partner of several years, to a staff picnic. The two women met up when they were incarcerated at CCI Grafton over eight years ago. They were friends inside and became lovers after they were both released. Nat first met Ray during a crisis last year at Horizon House. It was during that chaotic time that Nat also got to know her employment counselor a lot better.
“Look, Sharon, I don’t mean any disrespect,” Hutch verbalized his apology. “But I think we have a right to know who Ingram might target. Let’s face it, we can keep our boys and girls segregated except for supervised programs, but we all know, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way—”’
“Let’s stick to the point here, folks,” Nat interrupted, wanting to guard against turning this intake meeting into a gossip session about which inmate had tried to hit on or somehow succeeded in scoring with which other inmate. Sure, it happened, but not that often; the risks—a one-way ticket back to the joint—far outweighed the benefits for most of the cons. This facility was a bridge for inmates between a walled prison and the street, placement running from six to nine months, max. Some of the inmates engaged in catch-as-catch-can flirting, but since they were doing “short time”—meaning they’d be hitting the street soon enough-— for the most part they kept their ardor in check.
“The point, as I see it,” Jack said, “is that Ingram had to serve all but four months of her three years isolated from the general population. Even given that it was no fault of her own, she needed protection. No way are we equipped to provide that kind of security here and we all know it. For her own best interests, as well as ours, I think she should finish up her six months right where she is now.”
Dr. Ross Varda cleared his throat, glancing across the brown Formica conference table at Nat Price. She gave the slightly overbearing, tall, young Freud look-alike a nod, relieved to let the visiting psychiatrist have the floor. Adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, then smoothing down his neatly trimmed beard, the thirty-four-year-old shrink took in each of them in a clockwise turn—;Nat, then Dwyer, Hutch, and Sharon Johnson, then back to Nat again—as he spoke in flat, measured tones. “I have been meeting with Lynn twice a month throughout the duration of her incarceration at CCI Grafton. I believe this move is in Lynn’s best interest. With Superintendent Price’s approval, I will be continuing psychiatric sessions with my patient here at Horizon House, as well as overseeing her medications.”
“Meds. So she is nuts,” Hutch said. “I mean, no big surprise there. Any guy who’d go and have his—”
“Lynn Ingram is legally and physiologically a female,” Dr. Varda cut in sharply, his voice no longer flat nor his words measured. “And she is not ‘nuts’. I did put her on an antidepressant shortly after she was placed in isolation at Grafton—who wouldn’t suffer depression being stuck in that kind of a setting never mind the horrific assaults that required her placement in protective custody in the first place. However, with the prospect of being transferred to a prerelease facility, Lynn’s depression lifted substantially, and I approved her discontinuing the Zoloft. She is now only on a maintenance dosage of hormone replacement therapy.”
Jack gave the psychiatrist a curious look. “How’d she get the okay on the hormones?” A good question. Certainly inmates suffering diabetes received insulin; those suffering HIV or AIDS got whatever drug therapy was required. In short, the Department of Corrections had to, by law, provide life-supportive medical treatment to all men and women under its charge. It could easily be argued that hormonal treatment for a transsexual was not a medical health imperative. But Nat imagined that without the hormones, the threat to her mental health would be another matter altogether.
“She was forbidden her hormones at first,” Varda said, an edge of irritation in his voice. “However, with my help, her lawyer appealed and got the decision reversed by an appellate judge.”
Hutch snickered. “Otherwise what? Cinderella would have turned back into Cinder/e//^? Only without a dick?”
“That’s enough, Hutch,” Nat snapped. Although she was plenty angry at her CO for these crude, not to mention biased, remarks, she was pretty sure none of them, except perhaps Dr. Varda, was immune to disquieting feelings about a person who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery. It was just a matter of how they each processed those feelings. Nat had encountered a fair number of both male and female cross-dressing inmates in her eight years with Corrections, but none of those she’d encountered had undergone an actual sex-change operation. Still, what experience had taught her was, in general, when all you saw was a stereotype, you saw nothing. And you missed everything.
The psychiatrist was frowning at Hutch. “It’s precisely that kind of ignorant thinking that will provoke problems for Lynn here at Horizon House. I’m very sad to learn I was misled into thinking that this facility was both progressive and inclusive.”
Admittedly, the psychiatrist was not getting the best picture of her progressive staff, but whenever any of Nat’s people were attacked by outsiders she got very testy.
“You don’t have to concern yourself about Gordon Hutchins causing any problems if Ingram’s transferred,” she told Varda crisply. “He’s the best chief corrections officer I’ve ever had the good fortune to come across. I’m exceedingly lucky to have him.” Varda parted his thin lips, mostly hidden by the sandy-colored full beard-and-mustache combo (a compensation for his prematurely thinning reddish hair?), but then pressed his lips together, clearly—and wisely—thinking better of arguing with her.
Hutch, never one to appreciate a woman fighting his battles— even a woman he liked and begrudgingly admired—nailed the shrink with a smirk. “You call all your patients by their first names? Or just the pretty ones?” Hutch needled, then caught Nat’s cool it gaze in his direction. He heaved a sigh. “Sorry, Doc.” He didn’t say it like he meant it. He didn’t even try.
Red blotches decorated Varda’s cheeks, or what could be seen of them above the beard. Nat wasn’t sure if the psychiatrist was angry or embarrassed. He wouldn’t be the first shrink to get overly and inappropriately involved with an attractive patient. From what Nat had seen of Lynn Ingram on Court TV and in the tabloids four years back, the transsexual was more than attractive. She was stunning.
“Can I raise a point here?” Jack wasn’t really asking permission. “We can all vouch for Hutch, no question about it,” he added, eyeballing Varda, “and for the rest of our staff. The inmates, though, that’s another question. Some of them could be a problem. And we don’t need problems.” He leaned back in his chair. “Which is precisely why I say we pass.”
“And I say that if we start eliminating inmates who qualify for the program based on our inability to provide a safe environment for them, we might as well close up shop and go home.” Nat’s tone was emphatic.
Jack shifted focus to the psychiatrist. “I’m curious about something, Doc. Has Ingram ever accepted the manslaughter charge the jury handed down?” Jack posed the question with a deadpan delivery that only made Varda shift some more in his chair.
“Lynn—Dr. Ingram”—Varda spoke through pinched lips, more red blotches on his cheeks (a wry smile on Hutch’s lips)— “has -been consistent in holding to her original statement of selfdefense. Nonetheless, there is no question she feels deep remorse for having been the cause, unintended though it was, of Matthew Slater’s death.”
Sharon Johnson, her expression openly showing her growing irritation and frustration with the way the proceedings were going, noisily removed a sheet of paper from the thick file in front of her. “I have a letter here from Dr. Harrison Bell at the Boston Harbor Community Pain Clinic, where Dr. Ingram previously worked, requesting that she be allowed to do her work-release program at his facility.”
“She can’t treat patients anymore.” Hutch was quick to correct the employment counselor. “She lost her license to practice psychology when she was convicted of second-degree manslaughter.”
“Dr. Bell understands that Ingram is no longer licensed as a clinical psychologist,” Sharon said impatiently, then glanced down at the letter. “He indicates, however, that she can still work in a lay capacity as his assistant. I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be an ideal placement—”
Hutch eyed Nat. “Look, I hear what you’ve been saying, Nat, and . . . okay—in general I’m with you one hundred percent. ” A snicker from Sharon produced an honest smile on the CO’s face. “Okay, maybe seventy-five percent. I don’t wanna be the bad guy here, but I also remember that not too long ago, we came damn close to being forced to close up shop thanks to another inmate fiasco. Are we really ready to dive back into that fray again?” Although the question was addressed to the group, Nat knew that Hutch’s words were meant expressly for her.
No one spoke, but Nat had no doubt everyone around the table was vividly recalling that all-too-recent debacle. Less than a year had gone by since Dean Thomas Walsh, an inmate at the center who was finishing up a sentence for rape, escaped after being accused of murdering a beautiful young English professor who’d become his writing mentor. The professor, Maggie Austin, also happened to be Natalie Price’s closest friend. And Jack Dwyer’s lover.
Hutch was right. It was truly a miracle that their then-one-year-old prerelease facility had withstood the maelstrom of public outrage resulting from the Walsh debacle. Nat was still suffering the effects of that catastrophe. She’d lost her best friend, and her job had been put in jeopardy, not to mention her life. She’d also come dangerously close to getting romantically involved with her deputy, and—maybe worse—fallen for the detective in charge of the Walsh case. Leo Coscarelli. The same guy who’d been the lead detective in the Matthew Slater murder investigation.
Dr. Varda broke the long silence: “I should mention that one of the current residents at Horizon House shared a cell with Ms. Ingram before she was placed in protective custody. They became friends. Lynn feels she’ll be a good ally here. Her name’s Suzanne Holden.”
As if there weren’t enough complications. Suzanne Holden also happened to be the mother of Leo Coscarelli’s child.
IS SHE OR IS SHE NOT .. . A SHE? And a Murderess to Bootf Jury’s Still Out.
(tabloid headline during Ingram murder trial)
THE INTAKE CONFERENCE was over a few minutes before noon with Lynn Ingram’s transfer to Horizon House still up in the air. Nat announced to the team that she’d decided to go to CCI Grafton that afternoon and have a one-on-one meeting with Ingram before making her final decision.
Everyone cleared out of Nat’s office except her deputy. Jack remained seated at the round conference table as Nat purposefully walked diagonally across the large oak-paneled room over to her desk near the bay window that looked out on Providence Street. She was acutely conscious of the pulse of stop-and-go traffic outside.
“If you’re hanging around to continue your argument with me about Ingram, forget it, Jack,” she said, studiously avoiding eye contact. “I’ve got a budget meeting first thing tomorrow that I’ve got to get ready for, not to mention a half-dozen exit reports to go over, a review-board hearing—”
Jack rose from the table and crossed over to her desk, perching himself on one corner of it while she busily riffled through a sheaf of papers that made up the semiannual budget report. The lists of numbers were a blur.
“You’re wearing that no trespassing sign around your neck again.”*
“Don’t start with me, Jack.”
“I started with you way before now.”
She glanced up at him. He was smiling. Not one of his seemingly chiseled “sneering” smiles that were usually laced either with sarcasm or derision, and which Nat had learned to, handle with aplomb over time. This was one of his rarer smiles, one that had a touch of tenderness in it. Jack always threw her off when he came across as endearing. Until she rushed back in and reminded herself of his two disastrous marriages, his secret love affair with her best friend, and his on-again, off-again bouts with the bottle.
Nat focused on the budget report, pretending intense concentration.
Jack cupped a hand under her chin, forcing her head up. “Let’s go get some lunch.”
She brusquely shoved his hand away. “No,” she said firmly. What gave her the edge in her battle not to fall prey to her juvenile sexual attraction to Jack was her not-so-secret weapon: Leo Coscarelli. Now, Leo didn’t have the obvious charisma of Jack Dwyer, but what he lacked in overt allure he made up for one-hundredfold in genuineness. In his own inimitable way Leo was as sexy, tough, and tender as Jack. And Leo had it all without the drinking problem, and without any previous marriages, disastrous or otherwise. Which wasn’t to say Leo had no baggage of his own. He did—the heaviest “carry-on bag” being inmate number 479984, Suzanne Holden . . . and their four-year-old son,Jacob.
Nat didn’t want to get hurt—again. The ink on her divorce papers was still wet. No matter how hard she tried to analyze the disintegration of her marriage to Ethan Price, the word failure glared like a 300-watt bulb in front of her eyes. Nat did not take well to failing. Or to having rugs pulled out from under her. You would think that with all the radically shifting rugs of her dysfunctional childhood, she would have learned by experience, if nothing else, how to handle failure better in adulthood. You’d be wrong.
“Come on, Nat. Even a busy super’s gotta eat,” Jack coaxed, his voice piercing her meandering thoughts. She glanced up, catching his smug look. Smug was better. Safer. Smug reminded her of Ethan. Ethan reminded her of why she had gone through with the divorce even when her errant husband was having second thoughts . . .
“We owe it to ourselves to try again, Nat. We had eight good years—”
“Good for you, maybe. ”
“I made a mistake. A big mistake. ”
“So did I, Ethan.”
“I brought a sandwich,” Nat told Jack brusquely, turning her attention back to the budget report, not adding that she’d brought an extra sandwich in case a certain little boy who was presently out in the visiting room decided to pop into her office.
Complicated as her relationship was with Leo Coscarelli, there was nothing complicated about Nat’s feelings for his four-year-old son, Jakey, She adored the child.
“You look pale, Nat. And too thin. I really think you should let me take you out for a nice, hearty lunch,” he pressed.
Nat was not about to argue with him about her appearance. At five foot seven she should probably have weighed a good twenty more pounds than the hundred and eighteen her scale had been reading for months now. She’d tried to put on some weight, to no avail. Even went to her doctor for a checkup a few weeks ago. Ltesaid it was stress. Nat had said, “So what else is newV’
Jack snatched at an errant corkscrew strand of her impossibly unruly auburn hair that had escaped its French knot. Nat shoved the strand back into the knot. Jack cocked his head, checking her out.
“You’re still beautiful.” _
She gave him a wry look. “I can’t still be something I never was, Jack.” Nat wasn’t being coy or digging for more compliments. She’d always been realistic about her looks. In her selfanalysis, she came off as merely attractive. She had olive skin that rarely broke out, hazel eyes, slender nose, lips that were neither too thin nor full enough for the current vogue. Her curly auburn hair was her most striking feature, and her most irritating. It kept fighting her. The “her” that wanted to present a crisp, professional, no-nonsense image. The kind of image appropriate to her position. That was why she always wore her hair pulled back into a French knot when she was at work. That was also why she wore almost no makeup, low-heeled pumps, and tailored suits—gray, black, blue—the skirts always hitting below her kneecap.
Jack was not swayed from his determinedly seductive mode.
“You’re always so hard on yourself, Nat. You need to lighten up a little. Smile more. You’ve got a knockout smile. It makes the corners of your eyes crinkle—”
“Those crinkles are age lines. I’m edging onto thirty-three, and on days like today, I feel and probably look about one hundred. So cut the bullshit, Jack. I’m not in the mood—”
“For trouble?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“So then tell me why you’re asking for it, Nat.”
She looked up at him. The charm was gone. So was the smugness. Back to business. Nat should have known he was simply looking for an “in” to continue the argument he’d left off during the Ingram intake meeting.
“I’m doing my job, Jack.” She reached into her tote bag for her sandwich, slowly unwrapping the turkey and cheddar on rye. There was a gnawing sensation in her stomach. But it wasn’t the result of hunger. It was good old stress.
“Did Suzanne Holden ever mention Lynn Ingram to you?” he asked, watching her careful ministrations.
“No. But I’ll talk to her. And to Ingram.”
“Coscarelli handled Ingram’s case, you know.”
“I know.” She crumpled the plastic wrap into a ball, and with a flick of her wrist, tossed it in the direction of her trash can. It missed. They both ignored it.
“You gonna talk to him?”
“Leo and I talk all the time.”
“He’s out in the visiting room right now. Along with his mother and his kid. Suzanne told me he’s been visiting more frequently. On Sunday, he and the kid showed up without Grandma. First time she didn’t come along as chaperone. And he stayed for the full two hours. Suzanne told me on Monday, he’s been pushing even harder for her to tell the boy she’s his mommy. ”
Nat pushed her sandwich aside, her appetite fully gone. “Is there a point to this, Jack?”
“The point is, I don’t want you to get hurt again,” he said softly.
“Let’s not do this, Jack.”
He leaned closer. Close enough for Nat to smell his coffee breath. Better than those days when he reeked of whiskey and mouth freshener. He’d been on the wagon for close to a year. A big plus in Nat’s book. Especially since her dad had been an alcoholic who’d served time—once for driving to endanger while under the influence, and a second time for parole violations. Following his second release, after grappling with the pressure to stay sober, work a menial job, make up for lost time with his daughters, and cope with his manic-depressive wife, he blew it. One day, he disappeared, drank himself into a five-day-l6ng stupor, then sobered up enough to hang himself. Nat was seventeen.
“Give me a chance here, Nat. Just crack the door open this much.” He measured an inch with his thumb and index finger.
Nat saw the loneliness reflected in Jack’s eyes. For the past year, there hadn’t been any woman in his life for more than a night or two. After her friend Maggie’s death, intense feelings of grief and betrayal had brought Nat and Jack into each other’s arms for a very brief time. Nat had come to her senses before it had gotten out of hand, but Jack wouldn’t let it go. She saw his persistence as one part bruised ego, and, more significantly, her deputy’s way of fending off the pain of losing Maggie.
When Jack got no response from Nat, he reluctantly got to his feet and headed over to the door. “I still think you’re making a mistake about Ingram.”
As always, a last-word kind of guy.
The sentence is an outrage. I don’t care what sex that pervert thinks he is, or what he says, he killed my husband in cold blood. And he should have been put away for life.
Jennifer Slater (post-trial statement to the press)
NAT WAS STANDING by her window watching Anna Coscarelli and her grandson, Jakey, his little hand clasped in hers, exit the center.
“Got a sec?” a voice asked behind her.
Instead of turning to her visitor, Nat watched the pair as they stepped into a waiting taxi. It was a warm, breezy summer day, the first in nearly a week of almost constant rain and grayness. The kind of day meant to be spent out of doors. Out of offices.
“I hear you and Jakey visited Suzanne on your own this weekend.” Nat could feel a scratchiness in her throat as she spoke.
“My mother had a stomach bug,” Leo Coscarelli said, walking over to her.
“How is she now?”
He was at her side. “What’s wrong, Natalie?” Everyone but Leo called her “Nat.” She usually liked that he used her full given name. Right now it irritated her. But then, she’d been feeling irritated before Leo’s arrival.
“Do you remember Lynn Ingram?”
“She’s not someone you’d forget,” he said without guile. “No, I suppose not,” Nat said.
“She coming up for work-release transfer?”
Nat nodded. “What do you think?”
Leo leaned against the wall beside the window, hands jammed into the pockets of his blue sports jacket. Nat noticed that he looked thinner, his face drawn. Stress? Brought on by the job— by her—by Suzanne—any combination thereof ? Welcome to the club.
“What do I think?” he echoed. “I think it could be dicey.” “Did you agree with the guilty verdict?”
“She confessed.”
“To self-defense.”
He shrugged. “The jury thought otherwise.”
“I followed some of the trial.”
“Who didn’t?”
“Her doctor confirmed that she had suffered a great deal of bruising, which supported her story that Matthew Slater viciously attacked her.”
“And the jury believed that she acquired those bruises as a consequence of Slater trying to defend himself against her attack on him.”
“What did you believe, Leo?”
“I don’t see the point of the question. She was tried by a jury of her peers—”
“ ‘Peers’? How many transsexuals were on her jury?”
Leo exhaled slowly. A few seconds passed. “I liked her. She was nothing like the stereotype. No affectations. No sign of vanity. No hint of any confusion on her part about who she was— not just in terms of gender, but who she was as a person. Do you want to know what I came away from the whole ugly business feeling the most? Sad. Was she guilty of murder? I honestly don’t know.”
“Did you know Ingram and Suzanne were cellmates at Grafton?”
JsTat saw by his expression that this was news to him. And the news wasn’t sitting well.
“Apparently they were friends,” Nat added. “I’m going out to Grafton to talk to Lynn Ingram. Before I do, I think I should have a few words with Suzanne about her.”
Leo, usually so good at maintaining his poker face, was having a rough time of it today. “It’s been—what?—three years?”
“You think Ingram’s any less memorable to Suzanne than she is to you?” Nat countered.
“She’s having a rough time of it, Natalie.”
“I assume you mean Suzanne.”
“I doubt she needs any more headaches.”
“And by ‘headaches,’ I assume you mean Lynn Ingram.” “Suzanne’s only got a few more months to go before she’s out of here.” .
Nat could feel the tension radiating through her body. Then what? Suzanne Holden’s exit interviews wouldn’t begin until four weeks before her release date. Nat did know from Sharon Johnson that the owner of the boutique where Suzanne had been placed for work-release had offered her a full-time position once she was free. But Suzanne had not, as yet, accepted the offer. Nat felt guilty for hoping Suzanne wouldn’t take the job. That she wouldn’t stay around the Boston area. Around Leo. She was from the central part of the state. There were plenty of job opportunities there—
“Has Suzanne told you what her plans are once she’s out?” Nat tried for a professional tone that fell dismally flat.
Leo let what they both knew was a loaded question hover in the air, which only served to accelerate the rate and flow of Nat’s anxiety. Leo had told her long ago the drama of errors that led up to his getting Suzanne pregnant, which in turn led up to his son’s birth. Suzanne, who’d served time for prostitution and drug possession, had met Leo shortly after a mandatory stint in a drug treatment center. Actually, Leo’s mother, a volunteer at the treatment center, had brought them together. Anna Coscarelli, who’d lost her only daughter to a drug overdose, had taken to mothering Suzanne. She even cajoled her into enrolling in soriie college classes when she got out of rehab. Which was where Leo came into the picture. Anna talked her son into tutoring Suzanne. He was attracted to her. He admitted that openly. But he never intended for anything to happen.
His libido ultimately won out over his intentions. Only one time, according to Leo, after which he felt guilty as hell. Then he found out Suzanne was pregnant. And that she was planning to abort the pregnancy. Leo talked her out of an abortion only by agreeing to raise the child on his own. Suzanne was adamant about wanting nothing to do with Jacob Coscarelli. Right after she was released from the maternity ward, she handed the newborn over to Leo and disappeared, determined never to see the child again.
Who knew if Suzanne might have relented over time? Who knew if she and Leo might have worked out their relationship if she’d stayed off drugs, as she’d assiduously and faithfully done throughout her whole pregnancy? She didn’t stay off drugs once she ran off. And while under the influence of crack, she got into a row with her dealer/lover who wanted her to go back to working the streets to pay off her mounting drug debts. She claimed he pulled a knife on her. They struggled. And the knife ended up in the guy’s gut. No one on the jury mourned the death of the drug dealer, nor did they feel much pity for a longtime drug user and hooker. Any more than Ingram’s jury had felt much pity for a transsexual.
While serving time for first-degree manslaughter at CCI Grafton, Suzanne consented to visits from her son and his grandmother, on the condition that Jakey not know she was his mother. He was simply told that Suzanne was “a special friend of the family.” Early on, Leo had visited as well, but Suzanne had asked him to stop coming, because having a cop as a visitor wasn’t winning her any favors among her peers or “the screws.” Since she’d been at Horizon House, the pressure had lifted and Leo reentered her life. What it meant to him or to Suzanne was not something Nat had been able to figure out. Maybe neither of them had, either. Still, no question that, as Jakey’s parents, there was a bond between Suzanne and Leo, whether they liked it or not—whether Nat liked it or not.
“Is Suzanne any closer to telling Jakey the truth?” Nat asked, not even bothering to keep the strain out of her voice.
Leo shook his head, clearly not happy about it. “Since he started nursery school, Jakey’s been asking a lot of ‘Mommy’ questions. The other morning at breakfast, he asked his grandmother if he could call her Mommy instead of Grandma. Then he could have a daddy and a mommy.”
There was such a note of sorrow in Leo’s voice that Nat felt ashamed of her own selfish concerns. She placed a hand on his sleeve. “Would it help if I talked to Suzanne?”
Leo’s eyes locked with hers. “She knows about the two of us.”
Nat pulled her hand away as if it had been burned, “What? You told her? You told Suzanne we were ...” For a moment she was so frazzled, she was at a loss what to call them.
“I didn’t go into detail. But I felt she had a right to know we’re involved.”
“My private life is not the business of any inmate in this institution,” Nat said hotly.
“My private life is the business of my child’s mother. I’m sorry that impinges on your need for privacy, Natalie.” Leo paused, his expression softening. “Anyway, I think Suzanne would have figured it out whether I said something or not. Jakey told her a while back that you’re his secret mommy.” "
Nat stared at Leo, dazed. Speechless. Her anger punctured, seeping out of her.
“You wanted to see me, Superintendent?”
There was a marked edge of nervousness in Suzanne Holden’s voice, much like that of a child being called to the principal’s office and not knowing what she’d done wrong.
“Sit down, Suzanne.” Nat gestured toward one of the tweed-upholstered armchairs across from her desk.
Suzanne hesitated, looking around the office as if it held some clue as to why the superintendent had ordered her there. In those same moments, Nat took the opportunity to observe the inmate more closely. The stylish, soft-rose-colored dress she was wearing most likely had been purchased with an employee discount at the boutique. The jersey material followed the svelte lines of her petite body while managing not to cling provocatively. Which, ironically, made her look even sexier.
“Please.” Nat’s hand was still gesturing toward the chair.
Despite her attempt to sound unthreatening, Nat knew Suzanne heard it as an order. And hearing it as such, she obeyed. It was the same with most inmates, and Nat usually made a concerted effort to say something to ease the tension they were feeling. But she couldn’t find the words now. Probably because she was at least as tense as Suzanne. The fact that Leo hadn’t told
v
Suzanne any of the details of his personal relationship with Nat in no way assuaged Nat’s upset or discomfort. Sometimes, saying a little was worse than saying a lot. It left so much open to the imagination. Did Suzanne imagine Leo and Nat were more deeply involved than they were in reality? Did she assume they were living together—perhaps contemplating marriage? And if she'owned any of these thoughts, was she jealous—angry—resentful? Could Suzanne possibly feel as awkward as Nat was feeling?
“Have I busted some rule I don’t know about?” Suzanne avoided meeting Nat’s gaze—or was Nat the one avoiding meeting the inmate’s?
Agitation more than anything else made Nat leap abruptly to the point: “Do you remember a former cellmate of yours at Grafton—Lynn Ingram?”
Suzanne’s first reaction was confusion. Clearly, this was not the direction she thought this meeting would take. Her relief was palpable. She almost smiled.
“Lynn? Yeah, sure. Sure, I remember her,” Suzanne said. “She was great.” She stopped.
Nat watched the inmate’s features slowly darken. “It was horrible, what they did to her.” She muttered this under her breath, but Nat caught her words.
Nat presumed Suzanne was referring to the attacks and not to her cellmate’s having been put into protective custody. “Was it other inmates—officers—both?”
She spied a flicker of alarm on Suzanne’s face and then, in the proverbial wink of an eye, blankness. “Huh?”
Nat had seen that look on many inmates’ faces. It was invariably contrived, a deliberate battening down of the hatches. The message was clear: Don’t go there.
“Lynn Ingram may be transferring to Horizon House. I haven’t made my decision yet. Is there some information you have that could affect the decision I make?”
Suzanne’s reply came after a lengthy pause. “No.”
“Would she be in any physical or psychological danger that you know of?” Nat persisted. Both her body language and her brittle responses suggested to Nat that Suzanne knew more than she was saying; they also suggested her fear. Ratting out another inmate, male or female, put any inmate in serious jeopardy. Ratting out an officer could put an inmate in hell.
“Nothing you tell me will leave this room, Suzanne. I promise you—”
“I have nothing to tell you.” For a moment the look on the inmate’s face was imploring. Then she just shut down again, her expression blank.
Nat had witnessed this kind of closing-off from many inmates. Sometimes she could break through the barriers they erected. But it took time. It took figuring out a strategy that would work. Even when Nat succeeded, it never came easy. And because of all the complications implicit in Nat’s dealings with Suzanne, finding a way through this inmate’s defenses was going to be especially tough.
Suzanne was on her feet. “Can I be excused?”
Nat nodded wearily. But when the inmate got to the door, Nat said, “This isn’t going away, Suzanne.” Although her statement was intentionally vague, she could see from the inmate’s parting look that the message, with all its ambiguities, had hit home.