Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) (35 page)

According to the leather-bound volumes of yellowing newsprint Jake had examined, the
Register
had gone all out on Lilac Sunday coverage. And, jackpot, the reporter had interviewed witnesses, well, not witnesses, but people who’d come to the Arboretum soon after Carley Marie Schaefer’s body was found. Their names were not familiar, though, and not in his grandfather’s files or the police records. Why hadn’t the cops interviewed them? Some of them must still be around.

The reporter—Jake recognized the byline Chrystal Peralta, knew she still worked here at the
Register
—had even interviewed his grandfather. Those articles hadn’t been in Grandpa’s files, either. But maybe that was Grandpa being modest. Not keeping clips about himself, only about the crime itself. Jake had pulled the Thorley parole stories, too. Everything about Gordon Thorley.

The footsteps got closer. Sounded like a woman walking quickly, not clacking in high heels. He looked up.

Jane.

“Oh!” Jane stopped, two steps above him, one hand on the railing, the other holding a few dollar bills. She took a step backward, up and away from him, her eyes wide. “Ah. Jake.”

His face must have looked as surprised as hers. And she was probably trying to figure out what to say, too, same as he was.

“Can I help you with something?” She didn’t take the next step down toward him, held her ground.

“I’m fine.” Jake hesitated, knowing it was his turn to talk, but unable to come up with anything. What could he say about Hardesty? That didn’t sound—weak?

“Something I should know?” Jane tilted her head, looking at him, quizzing.

He loved her hair that way, tucked behind one ear, the other side falling over her face. No jeans today, he noticed, black pants and a black T-shirt, and even her “go to court” pearls, he knew she called them. Headed for the Sandoval arraignment. That would be cozy.

“Sorry about last night,” he began. “What happened was—”

“Oh, we’re past that, don’t you think?” Jane said. Her smile seemed off, maybe, and he didn’t blame her. Last they’d really been together was on her couch the other night, when he’d had to tell her their vacation was blown, and he was assigned for a few days to Washington. Since then, he hadn’t had a chance to explain what happened. Now she didn’t seem open to hear anything he had to say. But she’d been at another guy’s house, that made it
her
turn to explain.

“Jane, I—we—” Jake paused, considering. What was the most important thing? His responsibility to his job? Or to this woman, who he—
damn it.
This was not the time for a life discussion. One day soon, they’d have to face it all. Decide on their truth.

More footsteps on the stairs, a few floors up. Their private moment on the landing was about to end. Would their last conversation be in a gloomy back stairwell of a struggling newspaper?

“Listen,” he said. “Jane. We should talk.”

*   *   *

“Talk?” Jane put up a palm, trying to stop him. Her other hand clutched the banister, trying for equilibrium.

Here was the last person she expected to see, and the only one she wished for. And yet—what kind of relationship did they have, that he could be in town and not even tell her? When he could show up at the very building where she worked and she had no idea?

“We’re talking now, right?” She lowered her voice. “Although clearly you were trying to avoid it. Avoid
me.
I mean—here you are, a detective, the morning after a murder, coming from the basement of the—oh.”

Only one place Jake could have been. The
Register
’s archives. Happily, whatever he’d found, she could find, too. Archive Gus was an old pal, and would be all too eager to give Jane the scoop on whatever articles the cops requested. She’d have thought Jake would realize that. But then, he hadn’t expected she’d even know he’d been there.
So it goes, buddy,
she thought. Cops don’t have all the power, all the time.

Jake was silent. She should shut up, too, but she couldn’t resist.

“So. How’d you get along with Archive Gus?” The balance was usually so in his favor, and now, the tiniest of bits, it was in hers. She touched her pearls, wondering if she’d see him later at the Sandoval arraignment. That’d be cozy. “He give you what you came for?”

She could tell Jake was unhappy. His eyes were soft, and only he stood that way, that wide stance, she could almost feel his arms around her. She was frustrated with herself for acting so cranky. But he’d left
her,
right? Instead of going to Bermuda, he’d made up something about Washington, D.C. Then he showed up in Boston. And then brushed her off at the scene of a heart-breaking murder. Such things did not make for the most successful of relationships.

“Jane?” Jake was talking again, and Jane simply did not know how to unscramble her feelings. This was not the time to try.

“I’m late,” she said.

She heard the bitterness in her own voice, regretted it, couldn’t help it. Hurt was difficult, and life was complicated, and Liz McDivitt was dead and she still felt—yes, ridiculously—that somehow it was her fault. Jake knew what had happened to Liz, but he wasn’t telling. Fine. Jane could find out on her own, and make sure whoever killed her got what was coming to them.

“I’m late,” she said again. Looked at her watch, maybe with a little more drama than necessary. “I bet you have someplace to be, too. Perhaps Washington again?”

“I do,” Jake said. He moved aside as someone else trotted down the stairs, carrying a stack of newspapers, coffee sloshing out of an open paper cup. “Have someplace to be. And you know exactly where.”

His voice had quieted, softened, and Jane felt tears beginning to well. They had shared so much, and now—she was tired, that was it. Seeing Jake like this had caught her off guard. And now he was smiling at her, a look she knew from couches and cars and across rooms where no other person realized they were looking at each other.
Don’t do this,
her brain instructed.
Tell him. Just say—I love you, this is crazy, I’m sorry, I’m confused, I’m sad, I’m tired, you’re amazing, let’s just—

“So maybe see you in—,” Jake continued.

“Court?” Jane said. “Maybe.” She raced past him, down the stairs, not looking back,
not looking back,
down to the basement for sugar and caffeine, leaving him silent behind her.

51

“All rise, court will be in recess.” A bespectacled court clerk, one tattooed angel wing peeking out from under the short sleeve of her starched navy blue uniform, stood in front of the shiny new woodwork of Suffolk Superior Courtroom 6. Jane entered the nearly empty room, seeing the black folds of Judge Rockland’s silk robe disappear behind an opening tucked into the wall behind the bench. The door leveled into the woodwork as it closed. “Court will resume at ten fifteen.”

A potload of taxpayer dollars had gone to revamp the moldy insulation and the moth-eaten carpeting in the old courthouse. Jane had investigated the whole debacle when she worked at Channel 11. Now some courthouse workers complained the place smelled “too new,” pointing to the chemicals in the synthetic wall-to-wall that Jane discovered were provided by some state senator’s half-brother’s wholesale house. It was Massachusetts, after all, home of Whitey Bulger and James Michael Curley and the Boston Strangler. What was a little more graft and manipulation at the public trough? Pols wouldn’t know how to handle anything if it were by the book. In this state, political insiders hardly knew what “the book” was.

Would Elliot Sandoval be ordered back to jail? Jane spotted Peter Hardesty, alone, intently turning pages in a manila folder, a red accordion file open beside it. The Commonwealth’s table, where the assistant district attorneys would make their case, was still empty.

Jane slid into the polished wooden bench in the spectator area, knowing the first row behind the defendant’s side was always reserved for the press. A harried-looking stringer from the
Daily,
pencil stuck through the spiral of a battered reporter’s notebook, had wedged himself into a corner seat. He swung his running shoes back on the floor, standing for a moment as the judge left the room. He was on Facebook, Jane saw.

No other reporters. And no TV cameras set up in the empty jury box. Local TV stations could take turns being
pool
for sessions like this, a day in court that could turn into nothing, so they sometimes hedged their news bets with a shared pool cam, knowing the video would most often be erased at day’s end. On a slow day they’d show up on the off chance some crazed spectator would lunge at the defendant, or be led out by burly court officers, shrieking bleep-worthy expletives about unfairness and justice. Apparently today’s docket didn’t interest TV. According to Marcotte, the Sandoval arraignment would only be a news brief, unless something unexpectedly blockbuster happened.

Jane flipped through her notes from this morning’s phone calls to Liz’s customers. The Iantosca call had gone to voice mail, and Jane couldn’t quite figure out how to say what she needed in a message. But the Gantry and the Detwyler calls were productive, telling her they’d be happy to talk about their experiences at the bank. She’d arranged to meet each couple after lunch so she could cover the arraignment, call in the results to the city desk, then get the bank customers’ info.

A chair scraped. Jane looked up, following the sound.

Peter Hardesty had turned, scanning the audience, and eventually locked eyes with Jane.

She tilted her head, acknowledging, and he did the same. Suit and tie, khaki and stripes, looking very lawyerly with his stack of yellow pads and a line of sharpened pencils in front of him. The chair next to him was still empty. She pointed at the chair, raised an eyebrow, questioning.
Where’s Elliot?

Peter pointed to the closed door along one wall.

Ah. Still in holding.

She made a gesture like—
I got your call. You okay?

He shrugged, then waggled a palm,
more or less.
He pointed to his watch, grimaced, pantomiming being sorry.

Jane waved him off.
No worries.

The prosecution side, the mirror image of Peter’s wooden table and two chairs, reserved for the DA, was still empty. Strange. Jane’d never been to an arraignment where the prosecution wasn’t the first to arrive, files at the ready and gunning for the defendant. This whole thing was off, somehow.

Someone must have given the signal.

A door hidden in the wood paneling opened, and Elliot Sandoval appeared. A sound, someone arriving though the public door, made the defendant turn to the audience. Jane saw MaryLou Sandoval enter, eyes red, and hugely pregnant. She inched her way into a back row. Probably too awkward to get closer.

At the same time, a door opened on the other side of the courtroom. A parade of briefcases: Assistant DA Cardell Grainger, sixty-something, dapper in pinstripes and a red tie, glasses balanced on his forehead. A chignoned brunette, Jane didn’t recognize her, the requisite white shirt, pencil skirt, and extravagantly sleek patent heels.

Behind her, Jake, looking at the floor as he walked. Then that young uniformed cop Jane had seen at the Kenilworth Street house. The two police officers sat in the front row as the lawyers, in tandem, clicked open their blocky leather evidence cases on the table and unpacked them, pulling out yellow pads and brandishing pencils.

Jane willed Jake to look at her, turn around, notice her. He did. She looked away, pretending she hadn’t seen him. When she sneaked a look back, ashamed at her high school tactics, he was leaning forward, talking with the DA. Jane closed her eyes, regretting. This was silly. They had to talk.

“Commonwealth case 0014-657,
Commonwealth versus Sandoval,
” the court clerk intoned. “All rise for Judge Mavis Rockland.”

With a murmur, everyone stood in a clatter and rustle of adjusting papers and laptops, then sat as the judge waved them down. This would be fascinating. And instructive. The assistant DA would give probable cause for why Sandoval should be held—that was standard procedure—and as a result, Jane would hear the key parts of their evidence.

Peter would argue for bail, of course. But murder defendants never got bail. Not bail they could pay, at least.

Jane flipped open her notebook. Sandoval would not get to go home today, she predicted. And who knew, he might be guilty. Either way, if all went as she expected, she was about to hear exactly why the state thought Elliot Sandoval was a murderer.

*   *   *

“And how do you plead, sir?”

Peter had warned his client that today was about lowered expectations. Get through it, he’d instructed. Stand, look straight at the judge, say “not guilty,” sit down.

“Not guilty.” Sandoval’s voice, sand and gravel, was the only sound in the courtroom.

Until Peter heard someone gasp, poor MaryLou, probably, as Sandoval faced the judge, the back of his neck reddening, both fists clenched, luckily hidden behind their defense table. Peter had coached him: “Be calm, be low-key, don’t react no matter what the state says or how the DA tries to goad you.” Today’s focus was bail. Unlikely as that was.

“Good,” Peter whispered, touching the arm of his client’s bedraggled suit coat as they took their seats again. “You’re doing great.”

“I have both your recommendations here,” the judge said. “Mr. Hardesty is asking for no bail and a release on Mr., ah”—she checked her file—“Sandoval’s own recognizance. I’ll hear brief arguments now, if there’s anything you’d like to add.”

Judge Rockland wasn’t looking at him, a bad sign. Peter’d never argued before her. Newly seated, and no one in the defense bar had a read on how she’d rule. She’d been an assistant DA herself, out in western Mass. Peter believed those ex-DA types never thought anyone who’d been arrested was truly innocent. Must-have-done-something syndrome.

“Nothing to add, your honor.” Cardell Grainger stood, fingertips touching the table, his Harvard-crimson tie hitting the blocky leather evidence case in front of him. “You have our brief, as you said.”