Guilt (3 page)

Annie put her hand on Jackie's arm.

“I
knew
something was going to happen,” Jackie added.

“What do you mean?”

“Her aura. Everyone has an aura, you know.” Jackie tilted her head to one side and gazed at Annie. “You, too. A pale blue band, right next to your skin. That's protection and strength. When I saw Miss Boudreaux this morning, that's what I noticed. The blue was real faint. I tried to tell her.”

They'd never talked about it, but Peter was pretty sure where Annie stood on the subject of auras. Same place she stood when it came to alien abductions and crop circles.

“It's my fault.” Jackie's voice was barely a whisper. “I should have made her listen. Warned her. And it's my fault we met there. I was afraid that Joe—” Her eyes widened. “You don't think Joe could have … I mean he didn't know where I was going to be. How could he? I was at work. He was at work…” There was a second's pause and her eyes lit up with anxiety. She jumped up, knocking over a chair. “Sophie!”

Peter exchanged a look with Annie. “You go,” he said. “I'll find my way back to your office and meet you there later.”

He knew as well as she did that Jackie wasn't thinking clearly. But then, sometimes irrational fear called for irrational action. You couldn't always sit around and calmly analyze the situation. Jackie needed to know her daughter was safe.

3

A
NNIE WAS
already out of her chair holding her car keys. She raced for the door with Jackie after her. They darted across the street, between the stalled-out cars, to her Jeep.

Annie started the car, and Jackie gave her directions to Sophie's school. Traffic going into the Square still wasn't moving. Fortunately, the school was in the opposite direction. She gunned the engine, and the Jeep seemed to leap from its parking spot.

“I'm sorry,” Jackie said, staring down into her lap.

Annie squashed the surge of anger.
Don't apologize!
she wanted to scream. It was all of a piece with what Jackie had learned from years married to that abusive louse. Whatever bad thing happened, he managed to make it her fault. If he had to beat the crap out of her, well, that was her fault, too. Peter probably had a fancy term for it. Annie called it “doormat syndrome.” At least in self-defense class Jackie was learning how to fight back.

Didn't sound as if Mary Alice had had a chance to fight back. Wrong place, wrong time. Shit happened—that's what everyone said. It would be a long time before Annie would get to where she could accept this particular piece of shit. She felt herself choking up. She couldn't cry, damn it. Now was not the time.
Focus.

She punched the radio and news came on. A commentator was on the scene, talking about the explosion. The entire Harvard Square area was closed to traffic. The Red Line subway trains were stopped. Dozens had been hurt, at least one fatality. A breathless witness reported: “It was a woman. I saw her. She shouted something, and then she blew herself up.”

Now the commentator was spinning—a female suicide bomber, unheard of just a few years ago, was no longer a shocker.
Suicide bombing my foot
. Annie noticed that her knuckles were going white. She eased her grip on the steering wheel.

“You have to explain what happened to the police,” she said, holding Jackie's gaze before turning back to the road.

“I…” Jackie started. “The police? No way.”

“Jackie, I know how you feel about cops. But this is different. You've got to talk to them.”

Jackie stared out the car window, her jaw clenched. “To them I'm just another junkie.”

“Ex-junkie.”

“Tell them that. They're waiting for me to blink funny so they can call DSS and take Sophie away.”

Annie took a breath and counted to ten. “You were there. You saw what happened. Maybe you saw someone or something that will help the police catch whoever did this.”

Jackie's look hardened. “I didn't see anything. It was like I told you.”

Annie accelerated, barely making it through a light. “You said Jackie came out on the steps with a backpack, or whatever it was, and called out to someone. Did you see who?”

“No, but…” The words were barely audible. There was a pause. “Annie, please, don't make me—”

Jackie got enough browbeating at home, Annie didn't want to add more. But she couldn't let it go. “They think Mary Alice was a terrorist.”

Jackie swallowed. “There might have been a man. I'm not sure.” She strained forward. “Go right at the next corner.”

Annie turned and continued along a one-way side street lined with triple-deckers and parked cars.

Jackie kneaded one hand over the other and shook her head like a terrier worrying at a chew toy. “The police. They twist your words.”

“All they'll want to know is what you saw.” Annie put her hand on Jackie's arm.

Jackie jerked away. “Yeah, right. I don't trust any of them.”

Annie pulled the car in the loading zone in front of the school. She yanked the hand brake. “Would it make a difference if the cop was someone I know? Someone
I
trust?”

Jackie stared down into her lap, a muscle working in her jaw.

Annie pressed. “What if I can get him to come to my office and talk to you there? You won't be sorry.”

Jackie rolled her eyes, as if she'd heard that one before.

*   *   *

Sour milk and pine cleaner—did every school have the same disgusting smells? Annie wondered as she and Jackie entered the rambling, cinder-block-and-glass building. It was not a bit like Annie's old elementary school, red brick with columns and wide front steps. She'd played freeze tag with the boys in the parking lot that doubled as a playground.

VISITORS MUST CHECK IN AT THE MAIN OFFICE
said a sign opposite the doors, along with an arrow pointing left. Annie could feel Jackie wanting to break away and run to Sophie's classroom, but she let herself be led to the office.

At least there was no hard wooden bench in the hall. “You're benched, Miss Squires” was what Annie's fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Hathaway, mistress of the hissy fit, used to shriek. Annie couldn't even count the times she'd been thrown out of class for mouthing off and worse. She'd have to sit on the bench outside the principal's office. Everyone who walked by knew she was bad or she wouldn't be sitting there, waiting for Mr. Gross to come waddling up the hall, his comb-over flapping. She no longer remembered if Gross was his actual name, or if they called him that because he was. He'd see her sitting on that bench and his eyebrows would come together. If he'd been a cartoon character, steam would have shot from his ears.

MAIN OFFICE
was written on the pebble glass inset in the door in front of them. Annie was about to ask Jackie if she was ready to go in when she noticed Jackie's bloodshot eyes and dirt-streaked face.

“Better make a pit stop,” she said, and propelled Jackie to a door marked
GIRLS
. They went in.

Lavatories hadn't changed, either. Four stalls with swinging doors, pink gelatinous soap that plopped out of a metal dispenser, brown paper towels, and water faucets that you had to press down. Feeling suddenly like the giant Alice after she ate the mushroom, Annie realized that the sinks and toilets were miniaturized.

Jackie rinsed her face and ran her fingers through her hair. She stooped to see herself in the mirror. She took a deep breath and composed her face. Then they headed back to the office.

At the main desk, Jackie explained that there'd been a family emergency and she needed to take her daughter home. A woman with kind eyes asked to see identification. She consulted a computer and wrote out a pass for Jackie to give to the teacher.

Jackie stumbled down the hall, just barely keeping herself from breaking into a run. The classroom was around the corner. Jackie hovered, uncertain, the paper trembling in her hand as she stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, her hand over her heart.

The children saw them before the teacher. A heavy girl with cornrows in her hair pointed and whispered to the boy beside her. He poked a little girl with shoulder-length dark curls, a slight build, and shoe-button eyes who sat at her desk, gripping a pencil and concentrating as she wrote. The little girl looked up and stared with her mouth open, the questioning look on her face quickly changing to dread. That had to be Sophie Klevinski.

If Annie's mother had come to pick her up in the middle of school, “What did I do now?” would have been Annie's first thought. “Are you all right?” was what Sophie said as they walked out of the school building. She held on to Jackie's hand and slid Annie a wary look.

When Jackie told Sophie she was fine, her schedule was just a little crazy and she needed to pick her up early, Sophie said, “It's Daddy, isn't it?”

Only seven years old and already
she
was taking care of
them
.

*   *   *

Annie drove Sophie and Jackie to her office. It still gave her goose bumps to see
SQUIRES INVESTIGATIONS
stenciled under
FERGUSON & ASSOCIATES
on the front door of the law office. For ten years, Annie had worked with attorney Chip Ferguson in the public defender's office. Now they shared this second-floor office in a renovated turn-of-the-century stable near the Cambridge Courthouse, just a half-dozen blocks from the Charles River.

She settled Sophie with a soda and a bag of pretzels at a desk in the outer office where, according to their accountant, they could now afford to hire a receptionist. Annie had posted an ad and had an avalanche of resumes in response, but neither she nor Chip had had time to look through them. They needed an assistant to hire an assistant.

Peter and Chip came out of Chip's office. Chip looked somber and tired in rolled shirtsleeves, his tie loosened at the neck—not at all the slick, suited appearance he presented to a jury. He pressed his lips together and Annie returned his long, sad look with a shake of her head. He'd been supervising Mary Alice's internship at Legal Aid, and Annie had been the one who'd recommended that Jackie go to Legal Aid for help with her restraining order.

Annie went to her office and looked in her date book for Detective Sergeant Joseph MacRae's cell phone number. She dialed. “Mac? It's me, Annie,” she said when he picked up.

Through the open door, she could see Peter scowl. She wanted to kick him.
Will you get over it?
She was sick and tired of explaining that she and Mac were friends, old friends, able to support each other in difficult times—but that it would never amount to anything more than that. On the other hand … she suppressed a guilty smile. Maybe a little jealousy wasn't such a bad thing. She kicked the door shut.

“What do you want?” Mac said. “I'm in the middle of something.”

“I know you are. At the law school, right?”

“Shit. Are we on the tube already?”

“The victim is Mary Alice Boudreaux.” That shut him up. She could imagine him grudgingly fishing his pad out of his pocket.

“B-O-U—” Annie started. Suddenly she felt like the floor was moving under her. She needed to sit down to finish spelling the name. She was so used to dealing with violence and murder. She knew how to keep her head down, do her job, and hold tragedy at arm's length—but this was different.

“She's a second-year law student. Was.”

“How the hell—?”

“A friend of mine was with the victim right before the explosion.” Annie hated that word
victim
. So anonymous. “She—” Annie wanted to rat-a-tat the details but she couldn't. She gasped as her insides seized up. Good thing Mac couldn't see her.
Would you get a grip?
That had been a favorite expression of Mary Alice's, one she often addressed to herself.

“This eyewitness. Her name?”

“This woman, she's in shock, and—” Annie started. The phone crackled static. “Hello?”

“I'm here. Yeah, pretty horrendous thing to see happen. Hang on.”

There were voices. Mac barked an order to someone. Then, “I'll need to talk to her.” His voice faded, came back. “We need to take her statement. As soon as possible. Bring her over.”

Typical Mac, assuming that once he gave an order she'd salaam like a good girl and do as she was told.

“She'll talk to you, but not at the station.”

“Annie, we need a statement and we need it fast. You know as well as I do that the first few hours are critical. I haven't got time to hand-hold some flighty woman.”

He could be such a pig. “Just because she's a woman doesn't mean she's flighty,” Annie said, barely holding on to her temper. “And she”—Annie edited out the word
won't
—“would rather not come to the station. Can't you come here?”

“Shit, Annie, you can be such a royal pain in the ass.” There were more back-and-forth asides on his end. There was a pause. “Okay, okay. I'll send someone over.”

Halfway home, but not quite. “Mac, she's a friend.” She waited a few beats. “And she's had some bad experiences with cops.”

Mac sighed with exasperation. On any stubbornness scale, she could match him point for point.

“All right, all right. I'll come over myself.”

“Thanks, Mac. I owe you one.”

“
Another
one,” he said, grunting. He disconnected.

Jackie was standing, her eyes trained on the office door, when Annie emerged. Sophie was on the floor, drawing on paper with whiteboard markers.

“This friend of mine, he's a detective,” Annie told Jackie, keeping her voice low. Not low enough. Sophie looked up, her eyes bright. This was a kid used to listening for nuance.

Jackie and Annie stepped into Annie's office, leaving the door open.