Truth Be Told

52

Holy shit. Jane almost said it out loud, stopped herself just in time. The judge was letting Sandoval out?

The court emptied again as the judge disappeared behind the quickly closing door panel. Sandoval hugged Peter, rumpling his jacket in the enthusiasm of his embrace, as MaryLou rushed to the bar, one hand on her stomach, sobbing full bore.

The district attorney’s table packed up its briefcases and scuttled out the side door before Jane could even try to get a statement. Jake, too, and the cop, gone in an instant. All probably huddled somewhere, speculating about why the rug had been pulled out from under their prosecution. The Daily reporter was texting madly, Jane saw. No more Facebook. This was news.

Jane hustled toward the defense table, notebook out, needing to call this in to the desk, wishing just this once she was back on TV, or at least had TJ with her. What a moment this was, Sandoval and his wife embracing, both crying, Peter looking happy. And baffled. Small comfort that the TV stations had missed all this, though they’d certainly try to interview the newly released-Jane couldn’t believe it-Sandoval at his home.

And of course, as she had to keep reminding herself, it didn’t mean Sandoval was innocent. But he was out of jail, a big step. That had to mean the evidence was flimsy, charges teetering on dismissal.

“Peter?” Jane waved at him to get his attention as the court officer led Sandoval away. She approached the low mahogany bar, the thigh-high wooden barrier that kept spectators on one side, lawyers on the other. “What do you think? Were you surprised? Why do you think the judge released him?

“MaryLou?” Jane turned to the young woman. MaryLou was still in full sob, wiping away tears with both palms. “Were you surprised?”

“Jane? Hang on a sec, okay?” Peter interrupted, tucking a manila file under one arm and opening the bar’s low swinging door. “MaryLou, Elliot will be out in an hour or so. I’m sorry, the processing will take a while. Want to meet me in the coffee shop? I need to talk to Jane, then I’ll be right there. You all right?”

“I’m okay, yes,” MaryLou said. “I don’t know how to…”

“We’ll talk,” Peter told her. “See you in a few.”

They watched MaryLou walk away, touching her hand to each of the pews as she waddled back to the heavy courtroom door. The court officer smiled as he held it open for her.

“She must so relieved,” Jane finally said. “What an amazing job you did, Peter. I can’t believe the judge-”

“It wasn’t me,” Peter said.

Jane was surprised to see him frowning.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked. “I’d have thought you’d be-”

“Oh, I’m happy,” Peter interrupted. “But something is up. Big time.”

“Like what?” Jane tried to understand where he was going.

“She didn’t even hear my arguments, you know? Wasn’t listening. And the DA not even presenting? Shit. Sorry. I mean-hell. She’d made her decision before we even came into session. I have no idea why.”

“Your Kenilworth Street argument, don’t you think?” Jane had been wondering about the same thing, even before Peter brought it up in court. “Reasonable doubt?”

Peter didn’t answer. He loaded his paperwork, a file at a time, into the accordion folder, carefully tucking pencils into individual leather loops on the inner walls of his briefcase.

“Maybe they have someone, a suspect, for that?” Jane persisted. Maybe that’s why Jake had been so protective. So annoyingly silent. Maybe they’d solved the Liz McDivitt murder, and Shandra Newbury’s, and even Treesa Caramona’s. Maybe they were all connected by some bad guy still out there. “Because they were all in empty houses. But Elliot was in custody, couldn’t be involved. Exactly as you argued.”

Peter clamped his briefcase closed. Turned to her. His tie twisted to one side, probably the result of Elliot’s awkward bear hugs. He raked a hand through his hair.

“Wish I knew. If I did? Maybe I could get this whole thing dismissed.” Peter shrugged. “Anyway, Jane. I’m so sorry about what happened. I still owe you that dinner. How about tonight, now that my client is out? Unless that new victim is actually connected to him somehow. Then we’re in trouble.”

Jane stared at him, looking past him, seeing into the past and the future and into the possibilities of how these puzzle pieces might all fit together. She had an hour before her meeting with Liz McDivitt’s clients. Liz. Sandoval. Newbury. Caramona.

Was poor Liz’s death the reason Elliot Sandoval was freed? Because as Peter told the judge, whoever killed Shandra Newbury might also have killed the victim on Kenilworth Street. But because the name hadn’t been made public yet, Peter didn’t know it was Liz McDivitt, bank president’s daughter, a person who handled those high-risk mortgages and imminent foreclosures.

Should she tell Peter what she knew was the truth?

As a reporter she couldn’t reveal Liz’s identity to the public, but telling a lawyer, that wasn’t exactly public. And if Peter promised not to tell, she knew he was reliable. Lawyer-client privilege, after all. Though she wasn’t his client, they were working on the Sandoval case together. Kind of together. Plus, the cops would release her name any minute now. Had to.

“Jane?” Peter had touched her arm, and she jumped back, startled. “You still with us here?”

“Peter?” she said. “Can you keep a secret?”

Aaron Gianelli stood on the sidewalk, corner of Batterymarch and Liberty. Freaking out. Watching each vehicle in the lunchtime traffic, scouting for undercover cars or blue-lighted cruisers. Expecting a cop to nab him, handcuffs and sirens, any second. A bafflingly ugly statue of refugees from some faraway place centered the traffic circle, all marble and pigeon poop. Girls in sleeveless dresses sat on the statue’s pedestal, drinking Diet Cokes and unwrapping gyros from the Greek place on the corner. Pigeons battled for the crumbs, some fluttering on the refugees’ arms and dive-bombing for leftovers as the sandal-and-sunglasses crowd tossed their waxed paper in the mesh trash bins and headed back to their offices. Like normal people. Not like him. Not anymore.

Aaron checked his phone. Quarter after. Twenty after. Ackerman was late. He’d wanted to meet in the office, where there was at least air conditioning and privacy, but Ackerman wasn’t happy with the prospect of being seen together. So here he was, sweating it in the absurd heat. Truthfully, he’d be sweating it wherever he was. Lizzie McDivitt was dead. The “body found on Kenilworth Street” was all over TV last night, the noon news on the radio finally revealing her identity twenty minutes ago. No doubt in hell he was about to be questioned by the cops.

He and Ack had to get their stories straight. And fast.

All Jake could do now was wait. When it came to Sandoval at least. The guy had to check in twice a day with a parole officer, or they could yank him back into custody in a flash. Jake predicted that’s exactly what would happen. Guy was guilty as hell. This whole bail thing was about as big a risk as he’d ever seen in law enforcement. But that’s why the Supe got the big bucks. Jake had put in his two cents, though when the Supe spoke, Jake’s two cents weren’t worth-well, two cents. Now it was all about keeping the lid on.

At least he could focus on Gordon Thorley. The tick-tick-tick to Lilac Sunday haunted him, though it was a deadline of Jake’s own making. He felt so close to a solution. If only he could make his case.

He parked in a loading zone, slammed his cruiser door, and headed for the glass and chrome front door of Atlantic & Anchor Bank. On TV, detectives like him were always in shootouts, car chases, saving the damsels in distress at the last minute from the marauding bad guy. Jake was about to look at pieces of paper. But justice for a long-dead teenager’s family might depend on those pieces of paper.

Officer Vierra in Records had discovered that a home deeded to a Gordon Thorley, someplace down the Cape, had been in the final stages of foreclosure. But, she told him, it seemed like now the foreclosure had been halted. Someone here at the bank would know why, and Jake now had the warrant requiring A &A to tell him all about it.

He whooshed through the revolving door, out of the heat and into the marble chill of the bank’s lobby. Up the elevator to five, where he’d requested the bank’s public relations guy, a Colin Ackerman, help him get the documents he needed. Bank president Hardin McDivitt, Jake had been informed by the Supe, was unavailable. He wasn’t needed at this point, anyway.

It was risky to come here, but Jake was in plain clothes. And if buzz started that the cops were around, maybe not such a bad thing. Liz McDivitt’s identity had just been made public, the Supe’s call on the timing. It’d be interesting if anyone here brought up her name. Jake sure wasn’t going to.

“I’m afraid you came all this way for nothing, Detective.” Colin Ackerman, right out of Banker’s Monthly Magazine, if there was such a thing, greeted him at the elevator, no doubt alerted by the hyper-vigilant security guard at the lobby desk.

Inside his office, Ackerman handed Jake a manila envelope. “Here’s all we have.” He shook his head. “The mortgage was brought up to date, as you saw from the public documents, but with these money orders, bought at the post office. Someone paid cash, as you can see from the copies, and there’s no way, as you are well aware, to trace those.”

Jake took the envelope by one corner, wondering if that were true. Slid it into his briefcase. There could be surveillance video at a post office. Another item for the to-do list.

“Which post office?” Jake asked.

Ackerman looked at the ceiling. Then back at Jake. “I’m afraid I have no idea. If there’s anything else?”

“There is,” Jake said. “When did the payments start?”

Liz McDivitt’s clients-three of them!-were telling Jane the identical story.

And Jane had no idea what that story meant.

Sitting on a plaid sofa in Cole Gantry’s living room, interview number three of the afternoon, Jane pushed a snuffling cocker spaniel away from her knee, seeing with dismay a trail of drool he’d deposited on her black pants. The Gantry house, sparse and prefab, seemed held together with plastic tape and rubber bands, duct tape repairing the upholstery of a wing chair. Even the TV remote control had a rubber band holding it together.

The cops had released Liz McDivitt’s name for the noon newscasts, leaving the Register, newsasaurus, to catch up with its online edition. She’d arrived at the Gantrys’, same as the Rutherford and the Detwyler houses, to elicit a simple sympathetic reaction, figured it would be more respectful if she came in person instead of broaching such a sensitive topic over the phone. Apparently Liz hadn’t contacted them prior to Jane’s call-but with Liz gone, Jane felt better about approaching them. The couples hadn’t even questioned how Jane knew about them, whew, and gave her the “we’re so sorry” quotes she requested for an obituary-type story.

But seemed as if grief had made them talkative. And as they reminisced, they revealed more about their discussions with Liz McDivitt. Now Cole Gantry-fading jeans and a Patriots T-shirt-was relating, pretty much word for word, the same experience as the Rutherfords. And the Detwylers.

First, that they’d been on the verge of losing their home to foreclosure.

Liz McDivitt had called them to A &A Bank. They’d expected bad news.

Then Liz revealed the bank had made some kind of error. An error that meant they’d paid too much on their mortgage in the past, and as a result, were up to date. They would not lose their homes.

“That’s it,” Gantry said. “I don’t really get it, but I don’t care. It was good news.”

“So no more foreclosure?” Jane tried to understand. The bank had made a mistake? It was interesting when she’d heard it from the Rutherfords. Intriguing when she’d heard the same thing from the Detwylers. Now, in the Gantrys’ living room, it was downright bizarre. Of course, the families didn’t know she’d heard the same story from anyone else. “A bank mistake?”

“I know, right? Ms. McDivitt wasn’t really clear how the mistake happened but hell, we dodged that bullet.” Cole Gantry took a sip of water from a red Solo cup, replaced it on the coffee table. Then he picked it up, wiped the wet ring with one finger, and set it on a do-it-yourself magazine. “’Bout time we had some luck.”

Jane waited, not wanting push him, hoping he’d reveal more without her asking. If this was true? A huge scandal. The bank making mistakes on mortgage payments? One, maybe. Two, even. But all three customers Jane picked-at random-from Lizzie’s client list?

She thought of another possibility. Was Liz working on a massive cover-up? Had she been assigned to handle the bank’s mistakes? By her father the bank president? Maybe? And been told to make it work?

Was she killed because of that?

Cole Gantry got to his feet, took a step or two toward the door. “Anything else, Miss-?”

“Ryland.” Jane stood, brain in overdrive, pulled a business card from her wallet. Liz’s death-murder-had taken a complicated turn. Could Liz’s own father be involved? Had Liz gotten in over her head? Had she even known what was going on? Whatever it was. Empty foreclosed houses. Mistakes on mortgages. Liz McDivitt’s murder, and Shandra Newbury’s, too, were all about the bank, Jane was sure. But what about homeless Treesa Caramona?

She needed evidence. But bank records, people’s personal finances, were beyond confidential. “Did she give you any paperwork about the mistake?”

“Uh, no, actually. The bills simply stopped coming.” The floppy cocker spaniel followed Gantry to the front door. “But Ms. Ryland, now the wife and I are worried. You know? Can you find out for us? With Miss McDivitt gone, will we lose our home?”