Mission Hill (2 page)

The bottom of my coat closet is lined with an assortment of shoes: stilettos, wedges, sneakers, flats. I rummage around and select a pair of sensible black pumps. There's no predicting how far I'll have to walk or what I'll be stepping on. Mud, gravel, viscera.

Ty starts to stir. “Is that you, babe?”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.”

He sits up and wipes invisible sleep from his eyes. “Where are you off to?”

“Jamaica Plain.” I put on my coat and double-wrap a scarf around my neck.

“I'll walk you to your car.”

“That's okay, I'm in a hurry. Don't get up.”

Ty stands, steps into a pair of cowboy boots, and throws on a leather jacket. I grab my tote, and we head out the door.

 

Chapter Three

Manny Lewis, the night doorman, is in the lobby of my building. He stands when he hears our shoes scuffle across the marble floor. Manny knows the drill, is accustomed to my crazy hours. He nods and adjusts the name tag on his lapel. The condo board insists that he wear an identification badge even though he's been working here for twenty-five years.

My last apartment was in a charming brownstone on quiet, tree-lined Marlborough Street, where there was no doorman, no security. That was before Rodney Quirk entered my life. Now it's all about being anonymous and vigilant. Living in a high-rise building, walking a different route to and from work every day, reciting my list.

I untwist a key from my silver circle ring and hand it to Manny. “Can you get this to Lilia?”

“Didn't you used to keep a spare for your housekeeper here at the front desk?” Manny says.

Ty flashes a smile and dangles the key that I gave him last month. “I'll go down to the hardware store on Charles Street and have another one made,” he says. “I'll drop it off later.”

I hadn't intended to surrender permanent access to my apartment to Ty, but my upstairs neighbor flooded my bathroom last month, and Ty volunteered to oversee the renovations. Temporary convenience, not long-term commitment, was the impetus for our arrangement, but it works. I used to dread coming home late to an empty apartment. He's easy company, willing to tolerate my neuroses, and, as much as I try to resist, he's filling a space in my heart.

“Are you headed to that murder in JP?” Manny says.

His tablet is on the reception counter, streaming the news. The crawler at the bottom of the screen has a special alert.
Breaking News … Sixth Murder of the Year … Homicide in Jamaica Plain … Boston Police Officer Believed to Be Victim … Name Not Yet Released.

“Oh, God, it's a police officer.” My stomach drops. “I've got to go.”

“Careful—there's black ice out there,” Manny says.

The automatic glass doors slide open, and a blast of cold air hits my face, causing my eyes to tear up. Ty and I walk two blocks, up Beacon Street, to where my Prius is parked. I use the remote to unlock the car. Ty opens the trunk and pulls out my Kevlar vest.

“This thing weighs more than you do,” he says, helping me slip it on.

The armor feels long and bulky under my cashmere coat.

“Why don't you take an unmarked Taurus like the rest of your squad? You'd have the lights and siren.”

“I like my hybrid. I want to do my part, help save the planet.”

Ty looks at me and raises his eyebrows, not buying it.

“Okay, I want to fly under the radar,” I say. “Navigating the underbelly of the city in the middle of the night is dangerous enough without being mistaken for a cop.”

“Then you should've kept the Audi your parents gave you for your birthday.”

“Audis are magnets for carjackers. I don't know any self-respecting criminal who would jack a Prius.”

Ty moves to kiss me good-bye, but I've already turned my head away. His lips land on my ear. I open the door, toss my tote on the passenger seat, and turn back to kiss him.

“Stay safe,” he says.

I close the door and press the ignition. Idling in neutral, I turn on the radio and scan the stations for news of the murder, desperate to learn the victim's identity. All the reports are the same:
Name withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The mall that runs the length of Commonwealth Avenue is festive; thousands of white lightbulbs are twisted around the branches of the leafless trees. Barreling through the darkness, I pass familiar landmarks. The stately brownstone on Dartmouth Street where an investment banker bludgeoned his wife to death with a nine iron. The nightclub on Tremont Street where a French au pair was snatched off the street, eviscerated, and tossed in the garbage. The corner of West Dedham Street where a Tufts medical student was mugged, knifed, and left to bleed out on the sidewalk.

A couple of miles from my apartment, the landscape shifts from artisan bakeries and yoga studios to liquor stores and bail bondsmen. The GPS instructs me to take a left, but Kevin mentioned a shortcut. I reach over to the passenger seat and feel around for the paper with his directions. I must've hit a patch of ice—I skid and regain control of the car.

A group of gang kids watches me drive by, one spits on the sidewalk—a sign of disrespect, aimed at me. He's made me, in spite of the Prius. I want to tell him that I'm a lawyer, not a cop. I can't arrest him. I don't carry a gun. I'm lost. And I'm scared.

 

Chapter Four

The area around the tow lot is controlled chaos. A swarm of uniforms and plainclothes detectives hold flashlights as they scour for evidence. Technicians roll measuring wheels and use white chalk to mark distances. The crime scene unit erects a white tent, affording investigators privacy, shielding the victim from view. Lookie-loos gather, assess, speculate. A pack of reporters and cameramen prepare to set up live shots. A young aide in a rumpled suit sets up a podium with the city seal, a sign that there's going to be a press conference.

My boss, District Attorney Max Lombardo, is standing on the sidelines, talking to Mayor Ray Harris. Lately, Max has been putting out feelers, toying with the idea of running for mayor, and Ray knows it. The two men are political rivals, vying for attention, usually taking swipes at each other in the press. Tonight they seem to have set aside their differences. They look united in their solemnity and purpose.

Max catches my eye and holds up a finger, signaling that he'll be with me in a minute. I nod in recognition and duck under the yellow crime scene tape.

“Evening, ADA Endicott,” Officer Santos Muniz says. “Kevin Farnsworth has been looking for you. I'll let him know you're here.”

Santos is holding a clipboard, and he writes down my name. Everyone who crosses the perimeter must be accounted for.

“Thanks, Santos,” I say. “Booties?”

He offers up a cardboard dispenser filled with blue paper shoe covers, and I take two.

“If I was you, I wouldn't be in a rush to get over there,” he says.

“I appreciate the heads-up, but at this point, I've pretty much seen it all.”

“Yeah, me too. But this one is really bad. I wish there was a way to un-see what I just seen.”

The sight of a dead body repulses me. I know that it's important to view the decedent firsthand, that every corpse tells a story, but I prefer to get the information secondhand from the medical examiner. When I was new to the homicide unit, I forced myself to attend every autopsy. Once I made my bones, had several convictions under my belt, I begged off.

Memories of those procedures still haunt me. The bodies of my victims, splayed out on a cold, hard slab. The medical examiner holding a scalpel, slicing into the torso, making a Y-shaped incision, and prying open the flaps of skin. The lab assistant plopping the rubbery, reddish-brown liver onto a scale, and dumping the stomach contents into a plastic container. And there's the smell, the unforgettable combination of odors, formaldehyde and freshly cut bowels. I tried all sorts of tricks to mask it. Wearing heavy perfume. Breathing only through my mouth. Drinking from a can of Coke with a smear of VapoRub under my nose. Nothing worked.

I glove up, steady myself on a hydrant and slip the booties on over my pumps. Carl Ostroff, an anchor from Channel 7, charges over. Carl has camera-ready good looks, overbleached white teeth, and perfect hair, but he's not afraid to roll around in the mud. We have about as good a relationship as a reporter and a prosecutor can have. I leak information to him when it serves my case, and he gets the exclusive. He hasn't double-crossed me yet, but chances are that he will.

Carl stops just short of the crime scene tape and pushes a microphone in my face. A klieg light flips on, blinding me. I block the glare by cupping my hands over my eyes, and stare at him. He's not dissuaded.

“I'm here behind Lattimore's Towing with Abigail Endicott, chief homicide prosecutor for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. Abby, I know this has to be a difficult one. What can you tell us?”

“This better not be live.”

He waves off the cameraman. “I thought you'd want to go on the record, share some thoughts about the victim.”

“Come on, Carl, I just got here.”

“Yeah, but you know, right?” He seems genuinely confused.

Kevin is moving away from the tent, rushing toward me. His right arm is extended, palm facing me, like a traffic cop.

“Hold up, Abby. Let's talk for a minute.” Kevin takes my elbow and tries to turn me in the opposite direction, but I jerk my arm away.

“Enough of this protective, paternalistic bullshit,” I say. “Everyone knows what's going on but me. Who is it?”

“I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Okay, I'm here. Tell me.”

On the periphery of the white tent, a technician holds a magnifying glass as he meticulously dusts a Ford Taurus for prints.

“That's a detective's car,” I say.

“No, the vic wasn't a detective,” Kevin says.

He starts to explain, but something catches my eye, distracting me. It's ten feet away, on the pavement, encircled by a chalk outline, a few inches from an orange cone evidence marker. I stare in disbelief.

“Abby, listen,” Kevin says.

“It can't be.”

Everything starts to swirl in slow motion, the noise around me sharpens into a shrill hum. This is worse than anything I ever could have imagined. The reports got it wrong. It's not a cop.

“Try to breathe,” Kevin says.

I take a few steps closer to get a better look. There's no mistaking what it is: his trademark blue-and-white NY Yankees baseball cap.

Plenty of people wear Yankees paraphernalia in Boston—students, tourists, my uncle Dalton. But there's only one man who has the irreverence, bravado, and sense of humor to wear a Yankees hat while tossing back a pint at Doyle's or sitting behind the wheel of an unmarked Boston police car.

I know who it is but I have to see for myself. With Kevin by my side, I inch forward and peer inside the tent. There he is—Tim Mooney—with a bullet hole in his head.

 

Chapter Five

Tim and I started our careers together. We shared an office in the decrepit Suffolk Superior courthouse, before it was evacuated and condemned, like one of my crime scenes. There were eleven of us crammed into a windowless room, buried between floors. Chips of paint, most likely lead, fell from the walls. It was unbearably hot in the summer and even hotter in the winter. The water dispenser was permanently out of repair and the only bathroom was public—sometimes it doubled as a shooting gallery for defendants who needed a heroin fix.

We were district court prosecutors, earning $27,000 a year, working long hours under impossible conditions. Unwilling victims berated us, sleazy defense attorneys challenged our ethics, political hack judges mocked us. And we loved every second of it.

Now we're each assigned to our own offices, windowed and carpeted, in a modern building, One Bulfinch Place. Most prosecutors at our level have plaques, commendations, citations, adorning their walls. The only decorations in Tim's office are snapshots of his wife and daughter tacked to a bulletin board. My walls are filled with pictures too—mug shots, crime scenes, and murder victims. I don't keep any family photos, birthday cards, or posters from my favorite museums. Nothing that could give visitors a clue about who I spend time with or where I go outside of work.

“You're shaking.” Kevin unscrews the cap from a water bottle and hands it to me. “Here, drink this.”

I force the breath out of my throat. “That baseball hat—it's Tim's.”

“I'm sorry. I know you guys were close.”

Kevin doesn't know the half of it. No one does. People think that we're the kind of friends who would eventually realize we were meant for each other. Like Ross and Rachel or Mulder and Scully. The truth is that Tim and I dated secretly, off and on, for years. He's the only man I ever felt sure about. I was convinced that he was the one, even after he broke my heart.

Four years ago, Tim met Julia at a retirement party for her father, a Boston police sergeant. We were all introduced to one another at the same time. We got into a discussion about TV cop shows, each declaring our favorite. Mine was
Prime Suspect
—the British version. Tim's was
Law & Order—
the original version. Julia's was
Monk
. I don't think that
Monk
qualifies as a cop show, but I didn't want to seem petty, so I didn't debate the issue.

Tim was okay looking, kind of short at five eight, nondescript with his rep ties and boy's regular haircut. But there was something about his quiet self-confidence, his resolve, that was apparent upon first meeting him. He made you feel lucky to be in his presence. Julia was drawn in, just like I was.

Everything about Julia was gentle: her laugh, her smile, her flowing auburn hair. Tim was attracted to her immediately, and she to him. She's everything in a partner that I'm not: trusting, patient, nurturing, reliable. She was the perfect mother, the perfect wife. Tim, however, was not the perfect husband.