Mission Hill (7 page)

Manny is at the reception counter. He greets me and hands me an envelope.

“Mr. Epps in 7-C asked me to be sure to get this to you. It's from the homeowners' association.”

I open the envelope and unfold the letter.
Second Notice of Delinquency. Your condominium fees are 60 days past due. Failure to pay will result in the issuance of a lien, and the commencement of foreclosure proceedings.

“The condo board has had it out for me since the day I moved in.”

“Maybe they just want their money,” Manny says.

I stuff the papers in my tote and press the button for the elevator.

“I've been kind of busy.”

He purses his lips and blows out air. “Those condo fees pay my salary.”

The elevator doors open and I step into the car. “Sorry, I'll do it tomorrow.”

Manny is the last person I want to offend. He's the only one in the building I care about. It's not that I don't have the money—I have ample funds. The family trustee deposits $15,000 into my checking account every month, and if I need more, all I have to do is ask. But I've had more pressing matters. Plus, there's an element of passive aggression aimed at the condo board that I enjoy. I guess I'll have to find another way to express myself, like leaving a brick of Limburger cheese in the trash room or taking up tap dancing.

The dead bolt on my front door is unlatched; my housekeeper must have forgotten to set the lock. Opening the door slowly, I hear the swaying sound of bossa nova music. Ty is in the kitchen doing something I've never seen him do before: cooking dinner.

“I thought you were performing tonight.” I fling my coat over a chair.

Ty puts down a bottle of olive oil and wipes his hands on a dish towel. “I heard about what happened.”

“You canceled your gig?”

“I'd never leave you alone at a time like this.” He looks me in the eye and gives me a gentle kiss. “I tried calling a bunch of times, but you didn't pick up. I was worried.”

I remove my waterlogged $475 Ferragamos and toss them in the trash. They might be salvageable, but it feels good to discard something, shed some part of this horrific day.

“Are you okay?” he says.

Sapped of energy and emotion, I look at Ty and start to speak but don't know what to say. He wraps me in his arms, holds me close, and makes me feel safe. We share a moment of silent intimacy until I pull away.

In the kitchen, Ty uses a fork to lift two steaks out of a marinade and throw them on the grill. Small flames shoot up as the meat starts to sizzle.

“Smells good,” I say.

“I figured all you've had to eat today is a bag of popcorn, like twelve hours ago. You need protein.”

He whisks together a vinaigrette, tosses a salad, and finishes grilling the steaks. After he plates the food, we move to the dining room table. I remove my laptop and brush aside a stack of papers to make room for two place settings. He brings out a bottle of Malbec and two cloth napkins.

I slump into a chair. “I really appreciate this.”

“I got you,” he says.

The meat is tender and juicy, but after my second bite, I start to feel queasy. I put the fork down and sip my wine. I check my cell: nineteen missed calls, one hundred and six e-mails on my office account. I don't even want see what's in my personal account.

“Your father stopped by,” Ty says.

I look up from my phone. “My father was here?”

“He seemed pretty freaked out, said he's been calling all over the place, trying to reach you.”

“What time was he here?”

“A few hours ago. Looked like he was on his way home from the gym.”

“He doesn't belong to one—he works out at the Harvard Club.”

Ty and my father have never met. So far, it's been easy to avoid introductions since my parents are never in Boston at times when most families gather—Thanksgiving and Christmas. As an only child of divorced narcissists, Ty is used to spending holidays on tour or with friends. If he finds it odd that I haven't invited him home to meet my parents, he's kept it to himself.

I rarely talk to my family about anything personal, including boyfriends, and Ty is no exception. I don't want to subject myself to the scrutiny. I wonder if my father is shocked that I'm dating a black man. My parents are elitists, not racists, but this is still Boston. We like to think we're evolved when it comes to issues of race, but there's a deep history of division that still hasn't fully dissipated.

I have a hard time imagining Ty and my father, standing across from each other in my living room. Ty clad in jeans and a T-shirt; my father, in a dark suit, holding a briefcase and a squash racket.

“That must have been awkward,” I say. “He never comes here.”

“It was fine. We were going to meet this weekend anyhow.”

I look at him blankly and sip my wine.

“Your brother's wedding is on Saturday, right?” he says.

“Oh, shit.”

During a moment of weakness, I extended a wedding invitation to Ty and then promptly blocked it out of my consciousness.

He takes a few bites of steak, has a sip of wine. “Your father didn't seem to know anything about me. He's probably got a few questions, like, ‘Why didn't you tell me that you're practically living with someone?'”

Ty deserves an explanation, but fully unraveling the reasons for my neurotic secrecy will take insight and a good therapist, and at the moment, I don't have either.

“Did he try to enlist you in his campaign to get me to quit my job?”

He refills our wineglasses and looks at me. “Everyone is worried, especially after what happened last night.”

“You think I should quit too?”

“I didn't say that. I'll text your father, let him know you're okay.”

“He gave you his number?”

The thought of Ty and my father engaged in a conspiratorial relationship aimed at getting me to leave the DA's office makes me feel a combination of comfort, frustration, and fear.

Ty looks at my plate. “You barely touched your dinner,” he says.

I drop my head into my hands. “I don't know what I'm doing anymore.”

“Baby, it's going to be okay.”

Suddenly the dam breaks. My body trembles, and tears fall, slowly at first and then a flood. My breathing turns into soft hiccups that evolve into deep, chest-heaving sobs. It goes on for several minutes. I don't even try to make it stop. Ty hands me tissue, stays by my side, rubs my back.

“I'm in over my head. It's like I'm drowning.”

“You've got to be exhausted.”

He takes my hand, leads me into the bedroom, and helps me remove my clothes. He pulls down the covers, and I fall into bed.

“Try to sleep.” He turns off the light.

“Can you leave the door open a little?”

After he's gone, I close my eyes and listen: Ty's footsteps as he walks across the living room floor. The clattering of plates as he clears the table. The clinking of silverware as he puts it in the dishwasher. The whoosh of the machine as he turns it on.

The terrace door slides open—he's gone outside to smoke a joint. I'd like to join him, escape my reality. Instead, I snuggle into the down comforter, sink my head deeper into the pillow, and recite my list. Tonight I add my newest killer: number twenty-seven, Orlando Jones, gunned down three people as they sat on a porch, enjoying a summer night.

 

Chapter Thirteen

Bulfinch Place is empty at six
A.M.;
the next person won't arrive for hours. I run my security badge over the sensor and press the elevator button for the eighth floor. The suite that houses the homicide unit is quiet, the only noise the hissing of heating vents.

The corridors are lined with scores of banker's boxes, swollen with files and stacked from floor to ceiling. About a dozen of the boxes have my name on them, my most recently closed cases. Number twenty-three, Mauricio Flores, stabbed his neighbor with a broken beer bottle. Number twenty-four, Riley Stimpson, shot a pharmacist during a stickup. Every month, a clerk inventories the contents of these boxes, transfers them into enormous plastic tubs, and transports them to our on-site storage facility in the basement.

The automatic lights kick in when I enter the threshold to my office. I search my desk drawers for a K-Cup and find a gift-wrapped box of Dunkin' Donuts coffee from last month's Yankee Swap. My coffee mug is plain black. I have cups with identifying logos—the Ogunquit Playhouse, MoMA, or the Santa Fe Opera—but I leave them at home. The milk in my minifridge expired two weeks ago. I toss the carton in the trash and check my briefcase for a stray sugar packet. In the side pocket, I find last night's steak, wrapped in tinfoil. I smile, thinking about Ty, how thoughtful it was for him to pack my lunch.

I sip my coffee as I walk down the hallway and around the corner to the organized crime section. Bright-yellow tape is stretched across the doorway to Tim's office, blocking entry.
Crime Scene—Do Not Enter.

Two days ago Tim was sitting in the chair behind his desk. We were laughing about Detective “Inch” Donovan and whether I should demand that he stop calling me “Toots.” Tim said he thought the term was demeaning, that I should be offended. I said I didn't mind, that it's endearing.

Tim wasn't the most organized lawyer and he had a tendency to hoard. His desk is buried under stacks of files. Piles of papers, exhibits, maps, diagrams line his floor. There's a spent shell casing from an old investigation on a bookshelf. Reams of grand jury minutes are spread on a table. Soon investigators will review every item in this room, hoping to gain insight into his murder.

Crossing into a crime scene without authorization is prohibited, as it could compromise the integrity of the investigation. I pry off the strip of yellow tape, careful not to tear it, and step inside the office. There's a legitimate reason for breaking the rule: gathering Orlando's files for my trial. There's also a personal reason: finding and destroying evidence of our relationship.

I sink into Tim's worn leather chair, feel the permanent imprint left by the shape of his body. A photo of him with Julia is thumbtacked to a cork board over his desk. It looks like Chatham, where they spent a week two summers ago. Julia either didn't know or didn't care that Tim hated the Cape. He would come back from their trips to the beach and complain about the mosquitoes and traffic on the Sagamore Bridge.

The mounds of paper represent a panoply of cases, both active and resolved, a walk down memory lane. A mob hit that went down in a North End pizzeria. A rape-murder solved by cutting-edge DNA but complicated by the fact that the suspect had an identical twin brother. An exhaustive investigation into the Big Dig, a bazillion-dollar construction project. Work on the tunnel was plagued with problems, cost overruns and delays, and it was finally completed seven years ago. Five years later, part of the ceiling broke off and a schoolteacher was killed when a slab of concrete slammed through the roof of his car. Tim investigated allegations of negligence and corporate malfeasance against the contractor.

I pull out anything that has to do with Orlando Jones and place it in an empty banker's box. There's a small, fading photograph in the top desk drawer, taken on the night Tim and I first met. We're standing next to each other, being sworn in as new assistant district attorneys. We were both so excited to start our careers. After the ceremony, he bought me an inaugural martini, and we toasted to a future of guilty verdicts and life sentences. It's hard to believe that ten years have passed. I slip the picture into my jacket pocket.

Tim and I e-mailed and texted each other often. We never sexted, but a lot of our communication had flirtatious undertones. I log on to his computer and try a few passwords—iterations of Julia and Emma, hitting it on the third try, Emma's birthday. Tim wouldn't mind the invasion of his privacy; at the very least, he'd want to protect Julia from scandal.

Tim was undisciplined when it came to official record keeping, and he was reckless when it came to personal communications. There is a jumble of e-mails; none have been sorted, archived, or deleted. I search for anything to or from me, deleting the more personal ones, saving those that relate to cases and investigations.

I find a message that he sent shortly after he and Julia got engaged, one of the many times that he decided we shouldn't see each other anymore.
Please, Abby, you have to stop calling my house. Julia isn't stupid. She's going to figure us out.
Or the one he sent two months later.
I miss you. Let's meet at your place tonight, after work.
My heart races. I move the e-mails to the trash folder and empty it, but it's a temporary fix. I've overseen enough computer searches to know that nothing can ever be fully erased.

A recent message from Josh McNamara catches my eye.
Subject: Our Meeting.
Josh is a special agent assigned to the FBI's public corruption unit. He's one of the young, energetic up-and-comers, dispatched to Boston in the aftermath of the Whitey Bulger fiasco.

The e-mail was sent two nights ago, and it looks like Tim never opened it. He must have received it shortly before he was killed. It's odd that he never mentioned working an investigation with Josh. Sometimes we work cases with the feds—the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. attorneys' office—but it's not a common occurrence. Tim and I talked five times a day about far less interesting matters, and a case with the feds is something we definitely would have talked about, or so I'd thought.

Josh's message is terse, unrevealing:
Tim, I need to postpone. I'll touch base tomorrow to reschedule.

Most federal investigators and assistant U.S. attorneys look down on us locals. I was one of the few from my law school class who applied to, and received offers from, both the DA's office and the U.S. attorneys' office. None of my Harvard classmates had any interest in becoming a local prosecutor, though a handful became feds.