Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) (46 page)

He hoped not. He was not here to be the aggressor. He was here only to find the truth.

Tonight the Jamaica Plain house was dark, the carefully trimmed hedges surrounding lush grass and meticulous landscaping. No lights in the windows.

That meant their confrontation, well, conversation, Peter should call it, would have to wait a while. Exactly like poor Gordon Thorley, waiting in a jail cell. Waiting for the truth. Sick and dying and trying to do one last good thing.

Peter would wait, too. Long as it took.

*   *   *

“Father?” Liz McDivitt saw his silhouette first, framed in the open door of the Superintendent’s office.

He exploded through the doorway, came right for her. “Honey—Lizzie—at first I thought you were—”

Liz felt her father’s arms around her, she couldn’t remember the last time that happened, and she couldn’t let go. She peered over her father’s tweedy shoulder, saw Rivera watching them.

“Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. McDivitt,” Rivera said. “There was no way we could bring you into this right away. Question was—”

“What if I were involved. I understand.” Her father had ended the hug, but kept one arm around her. Liz could feel the weight of it on her shoulder, feel the weight of the years and the arguments, the years of misunderstandings and distance. “And?”

“Let’s put it this way.” Rivera sank into a massive black vinyl chair, his muscular bulk filling the space, his head almost reaching the brass floor lamp beside him. “Your Mr. Gianelli and Mr. Ackerman are downstairs, right now, in separate rooms. My detectives are now waiting to see which one will tell the whole story first. I’m sure whole teams of lawyers will arrive soon. Then we’ll know. But at this point no one has mentioned your name.”

A tightness in her chest. She stepped away from her father. Had he been involved in Aaron’s scheme? She tried to calculate what that might mean. “Father, are you—?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Sorry about the protective custody,” Rivera was saying. “And positioning our plainclothes cadet at your house to hold off the press. But if your daughter was targeted, you might have been next on the list. Even when Liz was safe, we had to wonder—was it you who’d called them off? So far, nothing links you to any of it.”

“And it won’t,” her father said.

“But then, what really happened, Superintendent?” Liz asked. “Was someone really coming to kill me? Who?”

“That’s still under investigation,” Rivera said. “And exactly what I’m about to go check on. I’ll leave you two alone.”

Liz watched the door close behind him, leaving her alone with her father for the first time in forever.

“So. You’re okay?” He assessed her, up and down. “Are you sure? You’re very brave, honey. If those people had—”

“They didn’t.” Lizzie sat on the arm of a big chair, balancing, one toe touching the carpet. “It’s over. I didn’t know what to do, or who at the bank might be involved. So I went to the police. Told them everything I knew, or suspected. The drugs found in that chocolate thing proved I was right. So that night, officers were waiting there with me, hiding. When whoever it was didn’t show—they decided to go ahead as if he had. See what happened. I’m sorry you had to think I was—”

Her father stood, walked to the window. She’d never seen his shoulders sag before. She’d always thought of him as a bear, a big stocky lumbering bear in pinstripes. Now he seemed diminished.

He turned, outlined in the last dusky glow of Friday’s sunlight. “I’ll have to resign,” he said. “The idea that those two—and whoever else—could be stealing from us, right under my nose.” He shook his head. “Did I know about it? Of course not. But not knowing, that’s equally as damning.”

“We’ll see.” Funny, or not so, how he was thinking about himself. Not about how his only daughter had been targeted for murder. Still, Liz wanted to comfort him, because he was right. The scandal would change their lives.

And there was her own dilemma. Her father still didn’t know the whole story, not at all. Not what she’d done, too, right under his nose. This was the moment, she knew. The moment she should tell the truth.

“Father,” she began. She stood, touching the chair with the fingertips of one hand. Not trusting her knees quite yet.

“Your mother would be so proud of you,” her father interrupted. “She always was, you know. She was never very good at saying it. Neither of us was.”

Liz felt tears welling, all the pressure and the fear, and the deception. And now this, what she least expected, compassion. She’d made some terrible decisions, like with Aaron. Would she make the right one now?

What
was
the right one?

“Can we weather this one together?” Her father came toward her, smiling. Stretched out both arms to her. “I know I’ve ignored you, I know I’ve focused on the damn bank. But we could come through this, you know. We could.”

Could they? If Liz revealed what she had done, those families would lose their homes. Her father would face even more humiliation and disgrace—his own daughter, manipulating bank records. She could imagine the headlines: “Bank Prez Daughter Is Robin Hood.”

She held out her hands, as her father came closer. There’d only been, what, six families she’d “helped”? And though Aaron and Colin Ackerman had ripped off the bank to get money, she was in it only to do good. How could that be wrong?

She’d stop. She’d watch the numbers, and make sure no one ever discovered it. And if someone found out—well, she’d cross that bridge then.

“You’re my father,” she said. They linked fingers for a moment. Looked into each other’s eyes. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

She hoped that was true.

66

Choose?

Jake could feel his face go white. His fingers clenched around the handle of the Glock, and with all his heart he longed to blast this guy into the stone age. But if he did, he’d never know what happened to Jane. He couldn’t risk that.

Choose?

And this jerk Sandoval. Smirking. Enjoying it. The ridiculous clanking and hissing of that damn machine upstairs, he should have unplugged it, the steam now heating up the entire place. This was hell.

“Last chance,” Sandoval hissed out the words. “You want me to let your partner go? Or you want to know where Jane is? You get to choose one.”

The sound of the gun behind him.

Sandoval, with one crazed expression of bewilderment, seemed to rise, pause mid-air, then crash to the floor, his gun skittering away. Not another motion. Except for the rapidly growing pool of red on the hardwood floor.

Sherrey rolled, three times, hit the wall, struggled to his feet. Kicked the gun down the hall.

Jake whirled, saw the open doorway. Saw who stood there.

Jane.

And Paul DeLuca, holding his own Glock.

“Darn,” Jane said. “I wanted to hear who you’d choose.”

67

“I kept wondering, where was Peter?” Jane watched out the windshield of Jake’s cruiser, relieved to be a pretend-cop in the front seat, now that she was safe. And Jake was safe. “Sandoval had told me Peter would be there, but he wasn’t. I knew there was something off. And then—MaryLou. She’s the one who clinched it for me. Brian? Paying the legal bills? Why? She knew, huh? That her husband had killed Shandra?”

Jake stopped at the light, no emergency now, and she tried to read his expression. Relief? Surprise? Affection? Maybe all of those.

She reached over and took his hand. “Hope there’s no surveillance cam in your cruiser,” she said.

She felt him squeeze her hand, let go to adjust the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a guy out here now, at the sister’s,” Jake said. “But I suspect MaryLou knew something. About Emily-Sue Ordway, too. Apparently that wasn’t an accident. We’ll find out. Turiello must have been in on that cover-up, too. Makes it easy if you’re also the one hiring the cleanup guys.”

“She’s pregnant,” Jane said. She clutched her tote bag, none the worse for its adventure. Still, might be time to retire the thing. Those memories she could do without.

They made the turn onto Mass Ave., heading back to retrieve her car at the cop shop. She’d broken every speed limit on the planet to get there, ecstatic to see DeLuca back on the job. He’d let her explain on the way. Now he was back handling the mess at the Rawson house with the rest of the cops who’d swarmed in to help.

Jake shook his head. “We’ll do the best we can for her.”

“Yeah. Whatever that is. Peter will—”
Peter.
Sandoval was his client. He had no idea of this. They’d promised to work on this story together, though it hadn’t turned out the way either of them predicted. Still, justice had been done. Or was on the way to being done. She had to call him.

She dug into the tote bag, trying to ignore where it had just been. Found her phone, checked the messages.

“You called me?” she asked Jake.

“Yeah, to warn you to stay away from Sandoval. For what good that did.”

“He couldn’t have killed Liz McDivitt, though, you know?” Jane said, as she punched in numbers on the cell. “Because he was in custody when Liz was killed.”

What was that look on Jake’s face?

“What?”

“Jane?” Jake said. He paused. “You should know that—”

Jane put up a palm, listening to the phone ring. “Hang on.”

*   *   *

“What?” Peter clenched his phone, listening to Jane, kept his eyes on the front porch of the Walsh house. Nothing. Wondered if Walsh maybe wasn’t coming home. This was Friday night, after all. Wondered if that was the universe, telling him to go home, too. Leave this stuff to the police. He was the justice end of it, not the enforcer. He couldn’t believe what Jane just told him. “Sandoval?”

“I know. Shot in the shoulder, apparently. Looked worse than it was. They’re taking him to the hospital now.” Jane’s voice came over the speaker, sounded like she was in a car, too. “He’d told me you’d be there, too, and when you weren’t—well, I didn’t call you to check, and then later—I couldn’t. Since…”

“Yeah,” Peter imagined it, Sandoval, shot by the cops as he threatened Brogan and his partner. “But why did—huh?”

Jane told him to hang on, clearly talking to someone else, muffled, like she was covering the phone.

“Peter?” Her voice crackled over the speaker. “I’m with Jake Brogan. And he says to ask you—did your guy say anything more? Whatever that means? And he says, where are you?”

“Can he hear me?” Peter said.

*   *   *

Jake pulled his cruiser behind Peter’s jeep. The Walsh house was freshly landscaped, hedges trimmed judiciously so a burglar couldn’t hide. Probably had motion-detector lighting, meaning he’d be blasted with light the instant he approached. Front windows were dark, garage door closed. Impossible to tell if anyone was home.

He opened the car door, put a foot onto the curb. Turned to Jane. “I’ll be back,” he said.

“But I want to—,” Jane began.

Headlights.
A high-beam glow swept around the corner, hesitated as it hit the two cars, then a black Lincoln pulled into the driveway. The automatic lights popped on, spotting the front door, the garage, a stand of hedge to the right. The left side of the two-car garage slowly began to move, the Lincoln idling as the door lifted.

“Police business,” Jake said. “Stay here, Jane.”

“Be careful,” she said.

He closed the car door, leaving her inside.

Hardesty was getting out of his Jeep. Two steps, and he’d stopped him, too. “No,” Jake said. “My job.”

“You’re talking to him alone?”

“I’m a cop,” Jake said. He patted his chest, where he kept the Glock. “I’m never alone.” He paused, couldn’t believe he was about to say this to Hardesty. “Go get Jane, okay? Take care of her?”

Jake ignored the front walk, got to the driver’s side door as the Lincoln began to pull into the garage. He walked alongside the car, flapped open his badge wallet, held it to the closed car window.

“Edward Walsh?” Jake knew that doughy face, all chin and jowls, seen him at hearings, and on TV. Ex-sheriff, Jake remembered. As Parole Board chairman, he’d held prisoners’ lives in his hands. He’d let Gordon Thorley out—then, years later, strong-armed him to cover up his own crime. “I’m Detective Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”

The car stopped. The ignition went off. The garage door stayed open.

“May I speak to you for a moment?” Conjecture was not a standard-issue weapon in police work, but sometimes a good bluff was. This might be the time to try it.

Edward Walsh, brown plaid sport jacket, narrow brown tie, thinning hair, saluted Jake as he got out, stood in the pool of light on the driveway.

“Welcome,” he said. “Brogan, huh? Related to the commissioner, no doubt.”

“My grandfather,” Jake said.

“Knew him well,” Walsh said. “So, Detective, how can I help you? Surprised you didn’t call first. Must be important.”

“Can we go inside?” Jake scouted the neighborhood as they walked, houses two driveways apart from each other, most homes with exterior lights. Out here was no place to confront Walsh about his past.

Walsh seemed to consider. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Do you want a lawyer?” Jake kept his voice even.

“Come in,” Walsh said. “We’ll talk.”

*   *   *

“So Thorley’s
not
the Lilac Sunday killer?” Jane sat in the front seat of Peter’s Jeep, Jake’s suggestion apparently. So
that
chapter must be over. She’d thanked Peter for the flowers, finally, and he’d explained he’d brought them to thank her for being so “brave” with Thorley. What, did he think she would have freaked out? Cried? But it was a sweet gesture. He was a good guy. And would make someone very happy, someday. Someone. Not her.

She told Peter, again, the story of Sandoval, what she knew of it at least. Then Peter told
her
—off the record, naturally—about how he and Jake had joined forces to interrogate Thorley. Absurdly, Jane’s first reaction was relief. What if she’d broken her word to Jake, and pitched the “Thorley as Lilac Sunday” story to Marcotte?

Now there was a better story, if she ever got to tell it. For a reporter, she sure was finding out a lot of stuff that wasn’t getting in the paper. In the past five days all she’d written was a feature on bank customer service. But there was still time.