Truth Be Told

47

What the hell was Jane’s phone number? Peter could instantly recite the number from his childhood home in Ithaca, which his mom insisted on calling Melrose 6-5175, and the number from his first apartment at Stanford, (312) 551-0104. Dianna’s, he’d never forget. Sometimes he still thought about calling her. But cell phones made it unnecessary to remember current numbers. There was no reason to remember, because they all were stored in the handy dandy phone. He hardly remembered his own.

As the green highway signs flashed by, VISIT HISTORIC PLYMOUTH, then NEXT EXIT PEMBROKE, he could picture his cell phone, right now, on Doreen Rinker’s scarred kitchen table. Where he-idiot-had left it more than an hour ago. He hadn’t even thought about the damn phone, had decided to zone out to NPR and give his brain a break on the way back to Boston. Eventually, mired in the as-promised hellish traffic, he realized he’d be amazingly late. Even later than he’d already warned Jane when he talked to her from Rinker’s house. He reached for his phone, in full denial as he patted every one of his pockets, anger growing as he kept the Jeep in the center lane by steering with one elbow, then, finally, accepting his loss. Jane’d be fuming. Or worried. Or both. There was no way to contact her.

Okay, not quite true. He could stop at a Burger King, or whatever joint was off the closest exit, and use the pay phone-did they still have those? He’d call 411-did they still have that?-get the number for the Register, and call her there. But that would make the whole ordeal take even longer, half an hour, no matter how efficiently it all happened. Maybe he should just try to get to Boston faster. He hit the accelerator and froggered into the fast lane, inciting a symphony of angry honking.

“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, apologizing to the universe in general. Thing was, he needed the damn phone. Not only was Jane’s number stored in it, but Thorley’s, and the police lockup, and Sandoval’s, and Jake Brogan’s. Technology. He reconsidered. The technology worked okay, he had to admit. It was his brain that was failing.

The traffic parted, because the universe runs on irony, and the concrete barriers strobed by, highway signs taunting him with the geographical reality. Boston, thirty miles. That meant now it would take about as long to get to Boston as it would to get back to the Cape. Point of no return.

He could turn around, go back, get the phone, and then call Jane. Maybe cancel the whole thing, since it’d be far too late for dinner-or anything-by the time he went back across the bridge to Sagamore and retrieved the phone-if Doreen Rinker was even home!-and drove back to Boston.

He was an idiot. Jane would never forgive him. Well, she would, of course, to her it was only dinner. The real source of his frustration, he admitted, he’d hoped this dinner might lead to more than business. So much for that idea. He needed the damn phone.

Decided, then. Peter swerved off the highway, veered right onto the off-ramp, made the loop past the deserted BK, where a forlorn sign promised Two-fer Tuesdays, decided against the seedy gas station Dunkins’, and headed back toward Sagamore. He needed his phone. No faster way to get it than to retrieve it himself.

The glowing numerals on the dashboard clock clicked forward, underscoring his defeat. Gordon Thorley was in custody. Elliot Sandoval was in custody. The only good thing that had happened to Peter in years was about to be disappointed in him.

What else could go wrong?

“I’ve got nothing more for you.” Jake needed to go back inside the Kenilworth house, get his own eyes on the situation. What Canfield had described was the definition of a frigging can of worms, but he was trapped on the porch. Like some kind of news target, with him the center mass.

Jane had commandeered the top step of the porch, manning the front lines, stationed against the spindly wrought-iron railing. TJ, whose shouldered camera might as well be his weapon, hovered behind her on the closest flagstone, and that new reporter from Channel 3, Kimberly something, led the charge of the new arrivals. The picture of high-heeled determination, microphone in hand, camera guy keeping up, hot to score whatever news tidbit Jake could be convinced to offer. If it’d been just Jane on the story, he might be able to slip her something-how could he not? But two reporters, that changed the equation. What he told one, he’d have to tell the other. And the answer to that, now, was absolute zero.

“Nothing,” he repeated. Jane would never accept this, but protocol was protocol. Especially since they were not alone. “You’ll have to call headquarters.”

“Jake, are you kidding me? Nothing?” Jane clamped her hands to her hips, giving him that look. She paused, and for a moment, her voice softened. “Did I-are we-is there something-?”

“For either of you,” Jake cut her off, pointing to the other reporter. She had to understand this wasn’t personal, even though she apparently-wisely-suspected he was annoyed over Peter. But this was only business. “See what I mean? Looks like you’ve got some competition. Two reporters makes a news conference. News conferences are handled by HQ.”

“Listen. Jake.” Jane’s voice was low, and she took one step toward him, grabbed his arm, just for an instant. The TV crew was almost upon them. “Listen. I get what you’re doing, and okay. It’s business. But you know this must be connected to Waverly Road, right? Two empty houses? Doesn’t it have to be? You know?”

“That’s one conclusion.” Jake shook his head. What Officer Canfield had told him about Elizabeth McDivitt’s death was a disaster in the making, if you asked him, and no way he could tell Jane about it. Besides the other reporter would potentially hear everything he said. “I’m not sure I’d draw the same one, but I’m sure you know best.”

He paused, making sure both reporters were paying attention. Two camera lenses aimed at him, but he could see the red tally lights were off. For now, they were all playing by the rules.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re done here,” Jake announced. “You know the phone number for downtown.”

Jake put his hand on the wooden doorknob. The questioning beams of Crime Scene’s flashlights crisscrossed the empty room inside, scanning for whatever secrets might be left behind. Maybe Liz McDivitt could give him some answers.

If Jake was going to be such a pill, Jane thought, she’d have to handle this another way. She understood he was constrained by the rules, especially since yet another TV crew had pulled in, onlookers shifting and elbowing and whispering, the local-celebrity news crews just as fascinating as the story they’d arrived to cover.

Spindly masts of the two microwave vans extended skyward, section by section, poking up through the sidewalk trees, snowing crabapple blossoms to the pavement. Both stations would be broadcasting live at eleven, and at that journalism Rubicon, so much for the Register’s exclusive. After eleven, anything Jane wrote for the paper was instantly outdated and stale. All she had in her arsenal, the only thing that could make headlines, was to dig up something exclusive. Something the electronic media didn’t know. Something like that list of names. And the knowledge that Liz had a boyfriend. It was a start.

Her phone buzzed again, reminding her she’d ignored the last call. But that was from the desk, so there was no message. It had to be Peter, who, of course, was not dead but simply late. When she had a brain cell available, she’d have to examine that episode. She’d escalated her panic about Peter to the point she truly envisioned him dead, murdered, in this house on Kenilworth Street. When, truth be told, nothing was more unlikely. Where had all that anxiety come from? And why?

The caller ID said private. She hit ANSWER, smiling. Ready to hear what Peter-not dead-had to say for himself.

“Jane Ryland.”

“Jane. Nick at the desk.”

Calls from the Register were ID blocked, in case reporters wanted to surprise whoever was on the other end. Which served, sometimes, to surprise the reporters as well.

“Hey, Nick at the desk,” Jane said. Okay, not Peter. Where the heck was he? “Listen, I got nothing more, so far. The cops are-”

“Jane? You listen. You said the vic’s name is Elizabeth McDivitt? And you said she was with A &A Bank?”

“Yeah. Like I said we can’t use that yet, because-”

“You know who she is? Was?” Nick interrupted.

Jane frowned, confused. “I told you who she was,” Jane said. “What d’you mean, ‘who’?”

“We think she’s the bank president’s daughter,” Nick said. “We were looking for her photo and title on the bank website, and did a search, you know? She’s not on it, for some reason. But Hardin McDivitt? Is the bank president. Didn’t you interview her? Marcotte just told me you interviewed her. How come you didn’t know that?”

Marcotte was in the newsroom. Overseeing. Lovely.

“I would have found out at some point,” Jane began. “I mean, no, she didn’t tell me who her father was. I didn’t know she was going to be-” Jane stopped, lowering her voice, her shoulders dropping. “Killed.”

“So here’s the scoop,” Nick said, stepping on her words. “We’ll put together whatever story we can from here. Marcotte says you should head to Hardin McDivitt’s house. It’s in Newton, by the reservoir. I’ll send you the deets. Stake it out, see if you can get a statement.”

Fifty thousand reasons why this was a terrible idea battled to the forefront. “It’s after ten at night.” Jane began with the most obvious and least whiny, but the other reasons insisted on being included. “They have no idea their daughter has just been-it’s such an invasion of-they’ll never agree to an interview, and we’ll look like-I mean, can’t we just call and ask for a statement? What’s the point of sending me and TJ to show up at the house of a-”

Nick cleared his throat, waiting as Jane’s rant wound down. Vulture patrol was part of the reporter deal. She might as well not even argue.

“We’re on it,” she said. A job was a job. Victoria Marcotte was there, in charge. No doubt monitoring Jane’s every move. Mortgage, health insurance, food.

She waved at TJ, gesturing him to follow her, gave him the quick explanation. She’d ride with him, they’d pick up her car after.

“Vulture patrol,” he said. “Sucks.”

“Yeah,” Jane said. “It’s why people hate reporters.”

“But they still read the paper, right? Watch TV?” TJ opened the hatchback of his van, stashed his camera in its molded plastic holder. “If they hate it, why do they watch it?”

“To reassure themselves it’s not them, I guess,” Jane said, making sure her car was locked. When she was focused on chasing a story, sometimes she forgot. “That bad things happen to someone else.”

She tried to look at the bright side. If she were still on TV, they’d have wanted a live shot during the eleven. With her standing in front of the McDivitt home. Morbid. Invasive. Not to mention meaningless. As a newspaper reporter, she’d probably still get a door slammed in her face tonight, but at least it wouldn’t be on TV. And she wouldn’t be raking through someone’s private grief with klieg lights and a microwave mast.

It never got any easier. Jane hoped it never would. She was rattled, she had to admit, because Liz McDivitt was someone she knew. But every victim was someone’s acquaintance or friend, or lover, or loved one. Jane’s job, any reporter’s job, was to tell the story of what happened, as clearly and purely and objectively as possible. To care, because a storyteller has to care. To tell it, whether the public cared to hear it or not. Every news story becomes the fabric of history, the record of motives and failures and outcomes and successes. Jane would be careful with her contribution.

TJ cranked the ignition, pressed the clutch, and shifted into reverse. Jane tried to change the direction of her own weary-brained over-analysis. This was only a news story, she decided. In the paper one day-and what did her father always say? Fish wrap the next.

Another car turned the corner onto the side street, probably a resident, strafing Jane with blue-bright headlights. In the glare, Jane punched McDivitt’s address into TJ’s GPS, and they pulled out into the night, toward the front door of a grieving family. If she was writing history, she had a million questions.

Why was Jake keeping secrets? Where was Peter Hardesty? And why was the bank president’s daughter-Lizzie McDivitt-in a stranger’s vacant house?

The traffic lights turned green as they headed east, for the first time in her memory every one of them blinking “go” when they arrived at an intersection, as if the universe wanted her to get to the McDivitts’ home as quickly as possible. Exactly what she didn’t want. One eye on the GPS, they wound their way through the impossibly random streets of Jamaica Plain, around the treacherous Pond Street rotary, and onto the Jamaicaway, the winding too-narrow boulevard that lined the deserted and no-longer-safe jogging paths of Jamaica Pond, dark shapelets of stubby mallards and long-necked geese drifting in the tentative moonlight.