RACHEL NORTH
Martha is already in the front seat as I open the back door to the cruiser. She’s on her cell, head down, one ear covered with the black phone, the other ear covered with her hand, as if to block out the extraneous noise.
Fine. She can talk, the statie can drive us back to the office, and I can finally eat the rest of my blueberry muffin. And think. Figure out what to do. About what Annabelle said, and a whole lot of other stuff.
I pull out my own phone. Martha’s mumbling into hers as the car backs up and swerves out of our parking space. With a little more speed than I might have expected, but then Martha always has an agenda. Which she eventually tells me.
No message from Tom. What could he have meant yesterday at the apartment, when he’d said “Not one word?” Doesn’t he need to explain that? Or am I supposed to make the next move? I’d already looked up the records on which “friend” of his owned that immaculately impersonal apartment. But it’s a real estate trust, so no public way to discover identities of the people involved. Unless I risk using some DA clout to pursue it.
No message from Jack, either. I need to fill him in on today’s interview, let him know what Martha’s up to. See if there’s anything manipulative or unethical about her current tactics. And why is she investigating Tom? Annabella picked up on that, too.
What if the whole Danielle investigation is a cover-up for something else? Maybe that’s why Tom asked Martha if he needed a lawyer.
That’d be legally questionable, Martha pretending to be asking about one thing when she’s really asking about another. I’ll see what Jack thinks. Maybe that gives us more ammunition.
I also need to see if Jack has contacted the Board of Bar Overseers or someone who can take Martha out. Jack was right from day one. She’s using me. It makes my skin crawl, how I almost fell for it. All that coddling and praise. She’s duplicitous. Predatory.
It’s comical. Here I was thinking I was the spy, when in reality, Martha’s spying on me. Because of Jack. She hates him, hates that she lost the Nina Rafferty case, and probably hates me, too. Lucky I figured it out. Now I can fight back.
And I wonder how the powers that be will react to her milking me for information. I’m supposed to be learning from her. I guess I am.
I’ve learned she’s a menace, and we have to stop her. It’s almost empowering that she’s making me part of her investigation of Danielle Zander’s murder, when in truth, I’m investigating Martha. Guilt is a complicated thing. Maybe Jack and I can make things right. Help the world see it’s Martha who’s the guilty one.
Half my muffin is left, so I peel back the wrapping and break off some cakey sections, making sure not to dribble crumbs on the statie’s black upholstery. Which makes me think of Roni. And Momo. They’re waiting, too, to hear what I find out. Were we all manipulated? Was justice manipulated? All because Martha Gardiner needed to win a case? If Deacon Davis didn’t kill that woman, that’s beyond horrifying.
And I keep thinking about my fellow interns, Eli and Nick and Andrew. What are they working on while I’m out here with Gardiner? Maybe the pizza-guy case? They were all in the conference room that Sunday when Nick made his whiteboard presentation about Danielle Zander. But they’ve not been involved since.
I’d seen all three of them around the office. “Whatcha working on?” I’d asked, honestly curious. “Document search,” Andrew had reported. “Busywork,” Eli had said.
“Danielle Zander?” I’d pushed, gently, asking each one separately. “Working on that at all?” Maybe they knew more about Martha’s theory of the case than I did. Which was almost nothing. But Nick had rolled his eyes and pretended to shoot himself in the head with a forefinger. “Bor-ing,” he’d said. “I live for five o’clock.”
Clearly Martha was doing something different with me. Why?
I look out the window. Today’s driver is taking side streets, to avoid the notorious traffic, I suppose. Martha’s still on the phone. I can’t see her face, and I can’t hear her. Plus, annoyingly, the statie is listening to NPR.
Crumbling the muffin-wrapper plastic into a tiny ball, I worry it between my fingers.
I wish I could remember that Sunday meeting in Martha’s conference room more clearly. What precisely was said about Danielle Zander? I was so flummoxed that my brain wasn’t running on all cylinders, and now that’s a problem. Some train has left the station, and I’m on it, but why?
Well, why is because of Jack. And my connection to him.
This morning, though, the train arrived at Annabella Rigalosa. That’s another dilemma.
Back in my statehouse days, I’d called her, talked to her several times. Including after that nasty phone call my first day on the job. When an anonymous caller says, “Screw you,” it was my responsibility to report it. I’d told her I was sure it was Logan.
What if she’s done it before, to someone else? That’s what I’d said. If something bad happened, I’d said, and I hadn’t put it on the record, no one would believe me. I’d contemplated a mental list of other caller possibilities, but no one bore me as much animosity back then than Logan Concannon. I’d taken her job.
But before that, before everything, I’d also mentioned to Annabella—just coffee room chitchat—that I’d thought I’d seen Tom and Logan, looking cozy, pulling out of the statehouse parking lot together a few times. Late night. It was completely true, I thought I had.
Annabella could investigate on her own, I’d assured her back then. I would step out of the picture.
I stare at the floor of the backseat, at a paper clip, a broken pencil, a few escaped muffin crumbs.
My theory was that Annabella had told Logan someone had reported their late-night “coziness”—I think that’s how I’d put it, I never said “affair”—with Tom. If Annabella had pursued it, interviewing other people, the controversy would’ve spread through the statehouse in a blue minute. No one could unhear it. Or unbelieve it. No one would care what was true. That’s how the statehouse worked. I imagine Logan offered to quit if Annabella would drop it. Logan, promised confidentiality for her own transgressions, had fallen on her sword to protect her boss.
Annabella had kept my secrets, too, as well she should. Still, it would not be pretty to see her go up against Gardiner in court. Could I let her go to jail for contempt to protect me? It was such a long time ago. We both thought, I venture to imagine, that part of our lives was over.
But why did Martha care? All that had nothing to do with Danielle Zander’s murder.
“Shawn? Now,” Martha says to the statie. I look up, startled out of my woolgathering. She’s pointing at the dashboard.
“Okay,” the statie says. I see Shawn lower one hand and flip a metal toggle switch attached under the dashboard clock. A siren sputters, then revs into a keening wail. I’m thrown back against the seat as he accelerates, screaming through a stop sign and then a red light, careening around a corner. I lean forward, straining my seat belt, one hand clutching the back of the front seat.
“Martha?” She can’t think I’ll simply sit back and wait to see what this is about. I raise my voice over the siren. “What’s going on?”
“Nina Rafferty,” she says.