And Leave Her Lay Dying (6 page)

“Just six months,” Fox answered. He frowned; the clam had left a sour, unpleasant taste.

“Still on your honeymoon,” Janet smiled at him.

“I was almost married once,” Ralph Innes offered, trying to decide which clam to devour next.

“What happened, Ralph?” Janet Parsons asked. “Did her father run out of shells for his shotgun?”

“Look at this fat little guy,” Innes said, holding an over-sized clam for everyone to admire. “Naw, Janet. I just figured that the screwing you get isn't worth the screwing you get!” He pried the shell open and looked around at the others at the table, his eyes settling on McGuire. “You've been married, right Joe? Couple of times, weren't you?”

McGuire nodded but didn't reply. He wanted out of there.

“Janet, you're married to the luckiest hash slinger in town.” Ralph Innes skewered the clam meat with his folk and waved it in her direction. “Now there's a guy to envy. A bar full of booze and sweet old Janet to come home to every night.”

“How are those grey files coming, Joe?” Tim Fox was waving a waiter over to the table.

“One down, a million to go,” McGuire replied.

“Have you come across the Cornell file?” Ralph Innes asked.

“The one in the Fens?” McGuire shook his head at more beer. “Just to look at. I'll start working on it in the morning.”

“Broad gets her head conked over in the Fens,” Ralph Innes began explaining to the others as he sorted through the remainder of the clams. “Falls in the water and drowns. Me and Bernie, we worked on it, looking for her brother. Best lead was her brother . . . Archie, Allen . . . Andrew, that was it. Then we got yanked. The case died after that.”

McGuire looked up from his clams. “Who yanked you?”

“Jack the Bear. Said we weren't getting anywhere so he moved Fat Eddie Vance on it. Fat Eddie went nowhere, far as I know. Thing's cold now, worn down like a hooker's heels. We had three good suspects too.” Innes looked up at McGuire. “Take a look at that one, Joe. You figure it out, you're Sherlock Holmes, I swear.”

Tim Fox snapped his fingers. “I remember that one now,” he nodded. “Fat Eddie spent maybe two days scoffing some free drinks from a bar where the victim hung out. Did it all alone too. Kept me on the desk scratching my ass. Fat jerk.”

“That's a case for you if there ever was one,” Ralph Innes said, pointing his fork across the table at McGuire. “I can see you and Ollie Schantz taking that one apart. Old Ollie, he'd sit back, shake out all the garbage, and write it up over a bowl of chowder. Am I right, Timmy?” Tim Fox nodded agreement. “Hell, he was some guy, wasn't he?” Innes rambled on before launching into a story about Ollie Schantz. The tale had the smooth burnish acquired from being told many times over many bowls of clams and pitchers of beer. The others chewed and sipped in silence while Innes dotted his story with laughter and obscenities, speaking of Ollie Schantz as though he were a legend from a distant era.

The telephone was ringing when McGuire arrived at his apartment near Kenmore Square. He walked briskly to his desk at the bay window facing Commonwealth Avenue and picked up the receiver while watching Janet Parsons back her Honda into a parking space.

The caller introduced herself as a reporter from the
Globe
. “Do you have any comment on the charges made by lawyer Rosen today?” she asked.

McGuire told her he hadn't seen them.

“But they were covered by all the television stations this evening,” the reporter noted. “How could you miss them?”

“I was performing my duties,” McGuire said. Down in the street, Janet stepped out of her car and locked the door.

“Your police duties?”

“That's right.” Janet glanced up at his window and waved.

“Did you assault Arthur Wilmer?”

“I have never assaulted a prisoner in my life.” He leaned forward to watch her climb the steps into his building.

“Did you plant evidence that might implicate him?”

McGuire turned to study his apartment door, visualizing Janet ascending the staircase to his second-floor apartment. “Don't be ridiculous,” he said in a tired voice.

“Would you consent to an interview tomorrow?”

“Only if you clear it with Berkeley Street first,” he replied. Promising to get back to him quickly, the reporter hung up.

By the time McGuire had begun to make coffee, he could hear Janet tapping at his door. When he opened it she was leaning against the frame, eying him from behind lowered lids.

“What kept you, sailor?” she smirked.

“Some reporter,” he answered. He checked the hallway, then closed and bolted the door behind them. “Rosen's press conference has stirred up—”

The telephone rang again.

“She's back,” McGuire shrugged. “You want to finish making the coffee while I get rid of her?”

He strode to the ringing telephone, seized the receiver and barked his name into the mouthpiece.

There was no voice on the other end. Instead, McGuire heard distant rock music hovering above a soft roar like running water: the background noise of a busy diner.

Finally, a hoarse whisper: “She's there, isn't she?”

“Who?” McGuire asked. “Who are you talking about?”

In reply he heard the distant wail of an amplified guitar, and then another wail, closer to the telephone, this one soft and human, before the man hung up.

McGuire replaced the receiver and turned to see Janet watching curiously from the kitchen door.

“Your husband,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

She reacted with a toss of her head. “Was he upset?”

“I guess so.” McGuire sat heavily on the edge of the desk, looking at his hands. “He was crying.”

Paul Desmond's saxophone floated from the stereo, soaring romantically through the melody of an old and forgotten ballad. Janet leaned against McGuire on the sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, her hands cupping a coffee mug. Such long, slender hands. McGuire had watched those hands squeeze six shots from a Police Special .38 to score the third­highest rapid-fire score in the history of the Boston Police Department.

“Anything I can do?” McGuire asked, and she shook her head sadly.

They sat in silence as Desmond wove in and out of the melody, lighting upon it and flitting away like a hummingbird. McGuire loved jazz from the late fifties. It was a time when music fit neatly into a small number of well-defined categories. Jazz was accessible, rock and roll was for hoodlums, and the classics were highbrow.

“I used to be flattered he needed me so much,” Janet said when the music ended. “He was this big, good-looking guy who could handle himself in any kind of situation, and he needed me. I had never been around an independent man who needed me like that.” She sipped her coffee, staring into the darkness. “Every woman wants a strong man to need her. They're the two biggest attractions for a woman, strength and need. The strong father figure and the weak child, all in one. But the more a man like that needs you, the less appealing his strength is and the less independent he becomes. And that's what attracted you in the first place.” She turned to look at him. “Can men understand that? How the more someone needs you, the less you are attracted to them?”

McGuire nodded. But he didn't understand at all.

Before she left they kissed at the door, long kisses empty of passion but suffused with feeling. He watched her descend the stairs before closing the door and walking to his window, where he stood until the tail-lights of her car receded into the darkness. Then he turned and opened the thick grey folder holding details of the investigation into the death of Jennifer Judith Cornell on a soft June morning in the murky waters and tangled gardens that the people of Boston have always called The Fens.

 

PRIMARY HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION REPORT

FILE#: 885–531

INVESTIGATING DETECTIVES: B. Lipson, R. Innes

DATE: 6/11/89

VICTIM'S NAME: Jennifer Judith Cornell

VICTIM'S ADDRESS: 2281 Park Drive, Apt.2A

VICTIM'S AGE: 33

MARITAL STATUS: Single

CRIMINAL RECORD: None

BIRTH DATE: 11/9/56

BIRTHPLACE: Augusta, Maine

NEXT OF KIN: Unknown (see ref. re: A. Cornell)

INVESTIGATING POLICE OFFICERS: T. Whalen, L. Wade

DATE/TIME OF INITIAL CALL: 6/11/89, 7:42 a.m.

REPORT DETAILS: Call received on 911 from two joggers (see witness/report statement) who found deceased under bridge connecting Park Drive and Fenway St. Investigating officers arrived 7:47 a.m. Head was immersed in Fens water, body in prone position resting on bank. Officers observed apparent injury to victim's head. M.O. Hayes confirmed death at scene 8:15 a.m. (approx.) Fallen branch found at scene with blood and hair adhering to one end (see forensic report #T–55980 attached) (See photos A to L, film strip #89–7639)

INTERVIEWS: (LIST ON REVERSE IF NECESSARY):
Richard Fleckstone, TV Producer
Gerald Scott Milburn, underwriter, Upton Insurance Company
Irene Hoffman, Proprietor, “Irene's”
Frances O'Neil, Waitress, “Pour Richards”
Marlene Richards, Proprietor, “Pour Richards”
Henry Reich, Superintendent, Parkway Apartments

AUTOPSY REPORT
Attached [X]
Not Attached [ ]
If not, why?

CURRENT STATUS

1. Case reassigned, E. Vance, T. Fox, 7/5/89
2. APB Andrew Cornell, NKA, age 36 (see attached APB #88–99310) for questioning
3. Last Update: 8/2/89
4. Authorized HOLD file status: 9/1/89

Andrew Cornell, the brother Ralph Innes had mentioned. Why focus so much attention on him? McGuire flipped through the pages, pausing at the autopsy report prepared by Mel Doitch. His eyes skipped over the usual clinical descriptions to the paragraph headed “Preliminary Findings”:

Victim expired as a result of drowning while unconscious, said condition the result of a single blow to the posterior of the right squamous temporal, producing a minor fracture and moderate bruising of adjacent parietal lobe. Estimated time of death: 2:00 a.m.

The autopsy report and the statements from the two joggers who found the body gave no indication of a sexual attack, just one blow from behind which, on its own, would not have been fatal. He scanned the rest of the details. Scars on each wrist. Old and properly healed fracture of left arm, apparently during adolescence. Small strawberry birthmark on right hip. Callous on ball of right foot. No evidence of having given birth. No other distinguishing marks or features.

McGuire read on.

She carried no identification, no purse, no keys. A passing neighbour recognized her and directed the police to her apartment building where she was positively identified by the superintendent.

Colour photographs in the file showed the grassy banks of the Fens, brilliant green in the sun of an early June morning. The body of Jennifer Judith Cornell lay under a picturesque stone bridge, hidden from the street above. She had been pulled from the water and, in a close-up photo of her face, McGuire recognized the surprised expression he had seen so often on murder victims.

Other pictures accompanied the report, including three eight-by-ten publicity photographs of Jennifer Cornell. In these professionally posed portraits, the face that looked back at McGuire was almost beautiful. The eyes and smile were a little too wide, the eyebrows too heavy, the shoulder­length hair too perfectly coiffed. Careful lighting had almost hidden the shallow crow's-feet at the corners of the eyes but failed to conceal the desperation in their studied gaze.

He stared at the face, searching for clues to the dead woman's personality, looking for something in her that could inspire someone with enough rage to commit murder on a night in June. But all he saw was the face of a sensual woman whose expression said she was frightened and whose records said she was dead.

More documentation: transcripts of interviews; a report of items recovered from dragging the immediate area of the Fens (two baby carriages, five automobile tires, one bicycle, several dozen cans and bottles, one typewriter, one drafting table. . . . A drafting table?); a description of the victim's apartment (neat, tidy, well-furnished). McGuire frowned and reached for a pad of paper. He began making notes.

Her purse was found on a dresser with wallet, credit cards and almost one hundred dollars cash inside. Two sets of fingerprints were lifted from the apartment, both relatively fresh. One set was positively identified as Jennifer Cornell's. The other, located in the bedroom, on the closet door and the exterior apartment door, belonged to someone unknown. Nothing appeared to be disturbed.

Andrew Cornell, McGuire muttered. Tell me about Andrew Cornell.

TO ALL DISTRICTS

APB # 88–99310

STATE-WIDE: [X]

F.B.I.: [X]

DATE: 6/21/89

B.P. D. CASE#: 885–531

NAME: Andrew (“Andy”) Cornell

SEX: Male

RACE: White Caucasian

ALIAS: None known

AGE: 35 to 38 (approx.)

HEIGHT: 5'8” / 5'10”

WEIGHT: 150-165 lbs.

HAIR: Brown

EYES: Brown

BIRTHPLACE: Unknown

BIRTH DATE: Unknown

SOCIAL SECURITY#: N/A

DISTINGUISHING MARKS/CHARACTERISTICS:
1. Walks with limp (right leg)
2. Speaks with slight lisp and southern accent
3. Well-proportioned physique; may frequent body-building gyms, etc.

WANTED FOR: Questioning regarding murder of sister, Jennifer Judith Cornell

LAST KNOWN ADDRESS: 2281 Park Ave., Apt. 2A

McGuire read on through the night, filling his notepad with scribbles. He wrote reminders to himself, sketched a map of the murder scene, and drew lines to connect names and locations until the sheet of paper resembled a perverse maze. When he finally stretched and looked at his watch, he was surprised to discover it was past three in the morning and he forced himself to set aside the files.

Later, waiting to fall asleep, he visualized the body of Jennifer Cornell in the last photographs ever taken of her, lying on her back, her wet hair clinging to the shape of her head, her eyes staring out in perpetual surprise.

He stepped out of the shower stall to hear the telephone ringing, and left a wet trail to his desk where the details of Jennifer Cornell's murder still lay.

“You got the media on your ass yet?” Kavander snarled before McGuire finished answering.

“About what?”

“Hell, you don't watch TV?”

“Somebody from the
Globe
called last night—”

“Yeah, you're on their front page this morning. Saying ‘No comment.' Very original, McGuire. You write that yourself?”

McGuire rubbed his head with the bath towel. “Jack, I just got out of the shower and I'm standing here looking like a hockey stick with hair. Get to the point, will you?”

“The point is, I need your butt here by ten o'clock. In case you don't wear your watch in the shower, that's forty minutes from now.”

“What's happening?”

“You, me and Don Higgins, we're going to talk about this mess. Then we're going to face the hounds from the press and try to convince them that Boston cops don't go around kicking puppies and beating up defence lawyers. Wear something in sincere blue,” Kavander ordered and hung up.

Prosecuting attorney Don Higgins wore sincere blue suits exclusively, usually Brooks Brothers. In his profession, political instincts and a thrust for the jugular were deemed essential. Higgins achieved success with minimal quantities of either, replacing them with keen intelligence and an unshakeable code of ethics in a job which frequently scoffed at both.

Tall and movie-star handsome, Higgins seemed cursed with what might have been an insurmountable handicap for a criminal law career: naïveté. Democrats and Republicans alike had approached him to run for office in almost any capacity he desired, convinced that his good looks and squeaky-clean image would harvest votes in bumper-crop numbers. But after extensive conversation, the political scouts soon cooled their enthusiasm.

“Guy is as clean as an Eagle Scout,” said one Democrat following an afternoon with Higgins. “But nobody's ready to vote for a forty-two-year-old guy who still says ‘Golly!' and thinks being underprivileged means not going to Disneyworld every year!'

Now, in a subtle blue pin-striped suit and quiet striped tie, Higgins rose from his chair in Kavander's office and extended a pink, perfectly manicured hand to McGuire. “Hiya, Joe,” Higgins smiled. “Jack says he has you on special assignment.”

“I'd like to have him strung up by the thumbs,” Kavander growled, leaning back in his chair. “Let's get to it.”

McGuire sat in the other chair, facing Kavander's desk. “Why not start by filling me in?” he said, ignoring the captain's outburst.

Kavander swung his feet on the desk and talked around the toothpick in his mouth. “The good news is, Judge Scaife isn't pressing contempt charges against you. The bad news is, Rosen has launched two million-dollar law suits against the city like we expected. One is for him, charging criminal assault and naming you and the entire B.P.D. The other is for that weasel client of his, charging false arrest and harassment, naming you and the great city of Boston.”

“They are both without merit, in our opinion,” Higgins said, his smile erased. “We'll propose a simple apology for the assault, since it's clear that no injury was made on his person. He'll sputter and complain, but the citizens of Boston won't want to see a million dollars of their money going to a lawyer who owns a garage full of Ferraris.”

“The false arrest, it's all grandstanding, right?” McGuire asked.

“Even less chance of succeeding than the assault charge,” Higgins smiled. “But it will let him keep his client off the street and delay proceedings. We'll be fortunate if we can go back to trial within a year.”

“And every prospective juror from here to Cape Ann will believe we're railroading Wilmer,” Kavander muttered. “Which is just what Rosen wants.”

“So what's happening today?” McGuire asked.

Higgins leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “We'll try to neutralize the impact in the media. We can stop saying ‘No comment' and begin stating that Rosen's charges are baseless and that we have total confidence in the Boston Police Department staff in general and you in particular.”

“Very kind of you,” McGuire said grimly.

“Hey, Joseph!” Kavander removed his toothpick and pointed it at McGuire. “You're not in any position to make smart remarks, okay? All you have to do is dance to our choreography, don't trip over the footlights, stay away from here, keep your lip—”

“Stay away from here?” McGuire echoed, rising out of his chair.

“—keep your lip buttoned and we wait—”

“Back it up, Jack!” McGuire shouted. “What the hell does ‘Stay away from here' mean?”

Higgins was smiling and waving his hands at the other men. “Hey, fellows, come on.”

Now Kavander was standing too, his hands on his hips. He swivelled to stare at an empty corner of his office, breathed deeply once, and turned back to face McGuire. “That's the deal, Joe,” he said in a soft, almost conciliatory voice. “The official word is, you're on special assignment. You keep your pay, your pension and your badge. Most of all, you keep your nose out of here.”

“Just until Rosen milks whatever he wants out of the charges and drops them,” Higgins added quickly.

“You want me to disappear?” McGuire asked, looking from one to the other. “Go away, sit home, watch soap operas?”

“I don't give a fuck if you fly to the moon on a broom,” Kavander snapped. “Just don't show your face around here for a couple of weeks at least.”

“What if I stay out of here permanently?” McGuire asked. He reached inside his jacket to retrieve his badge.

Kavander sat down. “Suit yourself,” he began, but Higgins interrupted, reaching to touch McGuire lightly on the arm.

“Not a good idea, Joe,” the prosecuting attorney said gently. “If you resign it will be construed as an admission of culpability. Rosen's case would immediately become strong enough for litigation. And that would be just the beginning.”

“Of what?”

“According to our legal advice, resigning now would leave you open to full indemnity on both million-dollar suits filed by Rosen. The city would be relieved of the financial risk and of any obligation to provide you with legal support.”

McGuire stared at Higgins to be sure he was serious—a wasted effort. Higgins was always serious. “You mean I would be out on my own, facing two million dollars in law suits, and the city would be off the hook?”

Higgins nodded, a look of concern on his face.

Kavander was less comforting. “Not everybody would be sorry to see it happen, McGuire.”

“Does that include you, Jack?” McGuire demanded.

“Hey, what difference does it make?” The captain leaned back in his chair. “What are you, too proud to take a paid vacation?”

“We're looking at a month, two months at the most,” Higgins said. “When Rosen drops his suits, everything is back to normal.”

Kavander rustled in his drawer for a fresh toothpick. “For once in your life, McGuire, be reasonable. If I was you, I'd be out booking a cruise, getting away from this lousy weather, maybe hustling rich old broads all over the Caribbean.”

“What about the grey files?” McGuire asked.

“Leave them. I'll pass them on to Eddie Vance, see how he does with them.”

“Fat Eddie's the reason most of them are grey in the first place, Jack. I solved one of them in a day.”

“You came up with a half-assed theory is what you did.” Kavander looked across at Higgins. “Silky Pete Genovese, remember him? Buick used him for a bowling ball and a telephone pole for the head pin. McGuire thinks it was a murder and suicide. Some guy's way of handling a customer complaint with his friendly neighbourhood loan shark. Trouble is, nobody cares.”