Truth Be Told

35

“No, Jane. Absolutely not. Not one word.”

“But I think we should-” Jane was not happy with the direction of this morning’s meeting in Marcotte’s office. “I mean, I could write a terrific-”

“You certainly grasp the logic here, don’t you, Jane?” Marcotte, interrupting, ripped the top page from a yellow legal pad, crumpled it, tossed it into a leather-covered wastebasket. “If this”-she consulted another legal pad-“Gordon Thorley? Is indeed a suspect in the Moulten Road killing? Lucky you weren’t killed.”

“Well-” True, certainly. “But I wasn’t-”

“I pitched having you write a first-person about the whole incident, of course, it’s fabulous reporter involvement. Talk about buzzable,” Marcotte continued. “But legal says no. So it’s no. Understood?”

“But-” Jane wasn’t making any headway in this conversation. Peter had called her from police station Siberia about four in the morning, giving her the outline of what happened with Thorley, and telling her, “Detective Brogan says thank you so much, and he’ll be in contact if he needs you.”

So far, no call. Not a word from Jake. Did that mean he didn’t “need” her? She thought about that suitcase, still packed in her bedroom, like the last memory of a fading dream. Had Jake backed out of their trip for some reason he wasn’t saying? The assignment in Washington had suddenly appeared-then disappeared. What was that all about? Why didn’t he trust her with the truth?

Last night, she’d been too tired to think about it clearly.

She’d ripped open a can of evil-smelling lamb-and-rice for the complaining Coda, grabbed three hours of sleep after Peter’s call, hit the shower, slugged down two coffees, and dragged herself into Marcotte’s office, banishing all thoughts of Jake, fueled by the prospect of a big story. She was expecting a pat on the back, since she’d scored the big Thorley-as-Moulten-Road-Killer scoop, such a headliner she could bang it out no matter how tired she felt. She’d planned to leave out what took place in Hardesty’s living room. Since it was all a “misunderstanding,” according to Peter, there’d be no police report, no record of it, as if it never happened. She could still be objective.

Now Marcotte was saying no.

“But, Victoria? Legal’s got to understand the episode with Thorley wasn’t reported, formally, so it doesn’t count. Doesn’t affect my objectivity. In fact, you only know about it because I told you. If I hadn’t-”

“If you hadn’t what?” Marcotte, interrupting, seemed to look straight at Jane for the first time that morning. “If you hadn’t, we’d be having quite a different conversation, I expect. You don’t think I wouldn’t find out, do you?”

Backpedal time. “Well, of course, and I did tell you,” Jane said.

“And so it goes,” Marcotte said.

This conversation wasn’t the only thing derailed in Jane’s life. Maybe she should go home, get some sleep, and start the day again, not exhausted and not bummed out.

She could work on Sandoval, and also the foreclosure crisis story that started this whole thing. A memorial service for Emily-Sue Ordway, the girl who’d fallen from the window, the teenage victim who’d started Jane’s interest in foreclosure families, was in the works, and might be a good peg.

“However,” Marcotte was saying. “Even though legal’s yanked you off the Thorley story, all is not lost. I have a favor to ask, and I know you can handle the assignment. We need to front-burner it for the Sunday editions. Get it in-by Friday? Two days from now. Use TJ for video.”

A favor? An assignment? Okay, that was the challenge of reporting. You never knew what was around the next corner. Usually that was the exciting part, but right now, it was the confusing part. Still, she could do it, whatever. It was also a convenient way to get back into Marcotte’s good graces, if such a place existed.

“Sure,” Jane said. She’d hear what Marcotte had in mind, get more coffee, be a team player.

“Chrystal Peralta is out sick,” Marcotte said. “Flu. She’s been working on a consumer story about banks and their evolving customer service departments. How they used to give toasters and the like for opening a new account? Now they’re all about personal service.”

“A consumer story?” Jane didn’t really enjoy doing those puffy little pieces. Valuable info, she supposed, readable, and good for the paper. Just not her style. “Banks?”

“You’re already working on that foreclosure piece, so it’s right up your alley.” Marcotte opened her top desk drawer, pulled out a reporter’s spiral notebook and a manila file, offered it to Jane. “This is her notebook, it has all her contacts and info, and there’s even a printout of her first draft of the story. We only need twelve column inches, we’ll run it online and in print, and use a quick video sound bite as sidebar, maybe two, from whoever you interview, office, customers, your call. Have it in by Friday. Plenty of time.”

Jane accepted the notebook and file, feeling a looming cloud of cranky that she didn’t try very hard to dismiss. “I feel odd, taking another reporter’s story. And what if Elliot Sandoval is arrested? And are we just ignoring the Moulten Road body?”

“I’ve got a nightsider on that. It’ll be nothing, I predict.” Marcotte waved at her open office door. “So, better get on it, right? As for Sandoval, I don’t know how it works in television, but in newspapers, we can handle more than one assignment at a time. Any questions-shoot me an e-mail. The rest of it, you don’t need to worry about. We clear, Jane?”

Marcotte paused. Jane could have sworn she saw a hint of a smile.

“I tapped you for this because I know I can trust you,” Marcotte said. “We’re short-staffed, as you know, and trying to make do. You and TJ did a great job on Waverly, and I know you’ll get the rest of the story. I know you won’t let me down.”

Well. Imagine. A compliment.

Jane’s phone, clicked to mute for the meeting, buzzed in her tote bag. This wasn’t the time to put Marcotte on hold.

“No problem.” She raised Chrystal’s notebook, saluting authority and teamwork. And employment. “Happy to help.”

Felt strange to have Bing Sherrey beside him instead of DeLuca. They tramped up the front walkway to Elliot Sandoval’s place with a warrant for his arrest for the murder of Shandra Newbury. If all went as planned, Jake and Bing would soon be walking back to their cruiser, and putting a handcuffed murder suspect in the backseat.

D would be pissed to miss out, but he’d be in on the rest of it. Lilac Sunday was only days from now, and the confessed killer was in custody. Things were going Jake’s way. The way of “case closed.”

“You all set, Sherrey?” Jake raised a fist to knock on the metal jamb of the screen door, then decided to press the doorbell instead. Sandoval’s white pickup sat in the driveway, two-by-fours stacked in the flatbed. With the impound squad on the way, the truck wouldn’t be there much longer. Jake had called Peter Hardesty, professional courtesy, to warn him of the impending tow and the Sandoval takedown, but so far, no lawyer. Jake felt semi-guilty about proceeding without him, but Hardesty’d been warned. All still by the book.

“Ready or not, here we come,” Sherrey said. He opened the lid of the metal mailbox mounted on the vinyl siding, peered inside, closed it. Smoothed the rumpled tie he’d yanked over his head in the car, pulled at the now-open collar of his shirt. “Most people, if they’re ticked off at a real estate agent, they just fire ’em, you know? They don’t kill ’em.”

Jake heard the bing-bong of the doorbell echoing inside, squinted his eyes, listened hard for movement inside the house. Kids’ voices, laughing, floated in from some backyard, not this one. The street-sweeping truck whooshed by, kicking up dust and brushing away nothing. A window air conditioner hummed, drops of water splatting on some kind of lush green plants below. The rest of the foliage was in bad shape, heat baked and struggling. The month of May could be a killer in Boston. He pushed the white button again. Heard the bell, and the echo, then nothing.

Pregnant wife, Jake remembered. Living with relatives. Going to be tough for them. “Not that it helped her, you know? But Shandra Newbury was smart, she’d kept some angry letters Sandoval sent her. All in that real estate transaction file we finally got from Turiello. Instant motive.” He rang the doorbell again. “Not to mention the fingerprints. Pretty much got him dead to rights. Damn it. Where the hell are they? If Hardesty-”

A car door slammed behind them. Jake turned. Sherrey did, too.

“Gang’s all here,” Sherrey muttered. “And party’s over.”

Peter Hardesty strode up the flagstone walk, canvas briefcase slung over one shoulder, his Jeep’s engine ticking in the heat. He lifted a palm in greeting, then pointed to the doorbell.

“Don’t bother, gentlemen,” Hardesty said. “My client is here, and well aware you’re here. But I instructed them not to answer until I arrived, assuming you wouldn’t wait. Apparently I assumed correctly. The old constitutional rights thing must have slipped your minds.”

“Sor-,” Jake began. Then stopped. There was no damn time for sorry.