Brutality (3 page)

Fina bypassed all the tasteful, elegant options and clicked on a chunky diamond bracelet interspersed with gold
X
s. “That looks like something she’d wear.” She stood back and took in the astronomical price. “But doesn’t she have a diamond bracelet already, Dad?”

Carl clicked on the purchase button and directed her back around the desk. “She has a few, but she can never have too many. So what’s going on?”

Fina sat down in the chair across from him. “I’ve got a potential case that I thought might be of interest to you.”

He frowned. “Not one of our clients?”

“No, but there may be something in it for us.”

“Go on.”

“Have you heard about the woman who was attacked in her Hyde Park home this past Thursday?”

“It’s vaguely familiar.”

“Well, her name is Liz Barone, and I just met with her mom and husband at MGH. Liz is in the ICU.”

“That sounds like a criminal matter,” he said. “Nothing to do with us.”

“Just wait,” Fina said, rising and walking over to the small but well-stocked bar on the other side of the room. She pulled a diet soda from the fridge and returned to her seat. “She was working with an attorney before she was attacked. She was planning to sue New England University.”

“For what?” Carl’s eyes flicked from his phone to her, his curiosity piqued.

“She played on their soccer team twenty years ago and has since been diagnosed with MCI.”

“Concussions?”

“Bingo.”

Carl tapped his fingers on his leather blotter. “Who’s representing her now?”

“A guy named Thatcher Kinney in Natick, but I gather that her mom isn’t happy with the job he’s done.”

“Never heard of him,” her father said, indicating that Thatcher Kinney couldn’t possibly be important if he wasn’t on his radar screen. “Does the mom think the attack is linked to the lawsuit?”

“She doesn’t know, but she wants someone to investigate, independent of the cops.”

“She doesn’t trust the cops?”

Fina shrugged. “She does, but she’s doing anything she can to help her daughter. I think she wants to feel useful.”

“Why’d they contact you?”

“Because I’m the best.” Fina pulled out her elastic and gathered her hair into a tidier ponytail.

Carl gave her a withering look.

“And because of all the press from the Reardon case,” she admitted. Fina’s most recent case had involved the murder of a prominent Boston businessman. The case generated a lot of press, and Fina and the firm got their share of ink.

“And why would I want you to spend time on this?” her father asked. Carl liked to do this. He liked to make you state your case and win the argument, even if the argument was obvious and he’d already been convinced.

“Because if I figure out who attacked Liz Barone, her family will be eternally grateful, thereby wanting us to represent them in the case against NEU. A case that has potential to be huge, given all the athletes who are reporting cognitive issues due to sports injuries.”

“What about the husband? You haven’t said much about him.”

“He seems reluctant to have me involved, which is peachy as far as I’m concerned. Maybe he did it, and I can wrap this thing up pronto.”

Carl considered her for a moment. “Fine. Take the case, but I still may need you for something else.”

Fina rose from her chair. “Of course, Father.”

“Smart-ass,” Carl murmured as she turned to leave.

She smiled. That was practically a term of endearment in the Ludlow family.

2.

Fina was feeling weary and sore, which could be partially attributed to the previous day’s sledding excursion, but which she also chalked up to a general winter malaise. Everything was harder in winter, especially a snowy winter. You couldn’t just walk down the sidewalk or pop out to the store for something. Every movement required more energy and attention, and it added up at the end of the day. Fina understood the wisdom of hibernation given the current conditions. Home was where she wanted to be.

For almost a year, Fina had been living in her late grandmother’s condo overlooking Boston Harbor. Carl had originally purchased the condo to keep his mother and wife out of each other’s hair, and Nanny had loved the prime location her perch provided for plane-spotting at Logan Airport. Before Carl could contemplate selling it after Nanny’s death, Fina had moved in. She and Nanny had always been thick as thieves, and she knew her grandmother wouldn’t mind. It had been suggested to Fina that she might want to update the décor, which smacked of old lady, but she couldn’t be bothered. As long as she had a comfortable couch and a sizable TV, she was good. And the décor wasn’t the first thing that visitors noticed, anyway; it was the view. And then the clothes, files, books, and magazines that Fina left strewn about the space.

She took a hot bath and pulled on sweats before checking her e-mail. Bobbi Barone had already responded to the e-mail Fina had sent from Ludlow and Associates detailing her rates. Bobbi wanted to proceed, so Fina named a new folder on her desktop and opened a Word document. She contemplated the blank page for a moment, then wandered into the kitchen. A leftover container of pad thai appealed, as did a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra. Decisions, decisions. Fina grabbed the pad thai and a pair of chopsticks, feeling virtuous.

In the living room, she plopped down onto Nanny’s overstuffed blue velvet couch and scooped up a mouthful of peanutty noodles. She chewed, then reached for her phone.

“Menendez,” Cristian answered after the first ring.

“Hey. What are you up to?” Fina asked before taking another bite.

“I’m interviewing a man who believes that he can talk to God through his espresso machine.”

“Huh. That’s too bad.”

“It is.”

“I can barely get my coffeemaker to make a cup of coffee, let alone deliver a message from our Lord.”

“If our Lord ever starts communicating through appliances,” Cristian said, “I assure you, he won’t start with yours.”

“So cynical.”

Fina could hear phones ringing in the background, and the rise and fall of conversations. She didn’t know how Cristian ever got anything done in the squad room, which seemed more like a three-ring circus than a place of work.

“So I wanted to give you a heads-up.” She plucked a shrimp from the container and dropped it into her mouth.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Cristian said.

“I can’t win with you.”

“What are you up to?”

“Well, I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bobbi Barone has hired me to investigate her daughter’s attack.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Why?”

“Not because she thinks you’re incompetent,” Fina rushed to explain, “but because she’s worried that you guys can’t devote the necessary time to the case. Why are you on the case, anyway? You usually do more high-profile stuff.”

“This is high profile. The mayor recently launched his Home Safe Initiative, and less than thirty days in, a woman gets clobbered in her kitchen—her kitchen in her family-friendly neighborhood.”

“Got it. I think Bobbi just wants to feel like she’s doing something, and hiring me fits the bill.”

“You should just join the BPD,” Cristian suggested. “Then you and I and Pitney could work together officially. Oh, wait. That’s right. They’d never let you in.”

Fina laughed. “That’s me, harboring a fantasy to work for the man.”

“So what do you want from me?” he asked.

“This really was a courtesy call, but now that you mention it, if you have anything to give me, I would be most appreciative.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m sure I could give you something in return,” Fina said.

They were quiet as they mulled over the options. Sexual favors were out given Cristian’s current interest in a speech pathologist named Cindy. Fina had recently suggested that Cristian find a hobby other than obsessing about his ex-wife’s love life. Bolstering his own love life, however, was not what she’d had in mind.

“How about Bruins tickets for you and Matteo?” she asked. The Ludlows had boxes at Fenway, Gillette Stadium, and the Boston Garden—she didn’t care what anyone said, it would always be the Boston Garden to her even if some new corporate sponsor bought it tomorrow—and distributed tickets as thank-you gifts and bribes.

“He’s three and a half. I don’t want to take him to a hockey game.” Cristian murmured thanks to someone.

“Well, how about
Disney on Ice
? That show is like a bad penny; it keeps turning up,” she said.

“Admit it. You loved it when we took him last summer.”

Fina had scored tickets months earlier and accompanied them to a show that was heavy on
Beauty and the Beast
. She spent most of the performance worrying about the physics related to the Beast’s enormous head and those skinny blades.

“That show was beyond ridiculous, but I did like watching Teo have a good time,” Fina said.

“Well, get on the horn to Goofy,” he said, “and I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“And you’ll soften the blow with Pitney?”

Cristian scoffed. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Fina replied.

Fina sent an e-mail to Scotty’s secretary—for some reason Carl’s assistant wasn’t very helpful, perhaps because Fina paid no attention to her—inquiring about Disney dates at the Garden.

She dropped the empty takeout container in the kitchen trash and grabbed a spoon and the Karamel Sutra. Back on the couch, she typed “Liz Barone” into a search engine. There was nothing revelatory in the results. The most recent links were related to the attack, and the handful of others referenced her work at an NEU lab or her involvement in soccer. Fina narrowed her focus; there was a lot you could find out online if you knew where to look. After an hour, Fina had determined that Liz had never been arrested nor had she ever been involved in a civil suit. Her driving record was clean, and she and her husband had purchased their Hyde Park house seven years earlier.

Fina had to wonder: If Liz Barone was such an upstanding citizen and a contributing member of society, why would someone shove her head into a kitchen counter?

—

F
ina wanted to speak with Jamie and Bobbi again before diving into the case, but they were both unavailable on Sunday. Liz was undergoing a battery of tests, and her mother and husband wanted to stay close throughout the day. Bobbi promised to call Fina on Monday when they had a free moment, and in the meantime gave her the contact information for Thatcher Kinney. Given that he was a small-town lawyer, Thatcher Kinney wasn’t even answering his phone on Sunday, let alone scheduling meetings.

It was hard to get work done on a Sunday, and Fina supposed if the Lord was allowed to rest, then so was she. Perhaps she took it a little far by not showering, dressing, or leaving the condo, but by Monday morning, she was ready to jump into the case.

Savvy and powerful people often went out of their way to avoid speaking with a private investigator, which was why Fina was a fan of dropping by unannounced and planting herself in their waiting rooms. But if an interviewee didn’t fall into the savvy and powerful category, it was often better to schedule an appointment. The effort of calling ahead would be misconstrued as respect, and the subject wouldn’t know better than to agree to the meeting. It was a win-win as far as Fina was concerned, so she called Thatcher Kinney first thing on Monday and was told by his sunny secretary that he could see her at eleven
A.M.

The appointment time left her with a couple of hours to burn, so she threw on some workout clothes and headed down to the building’s fourth-floor gym. Fina didn’t enjoy working out, and her fast metabolism deemed it unnecessary in order to maintain her weight, despite her unorthodox diet. However, with each passing year and physical skirmish, she was increasingly aware that being fit wouldn’t always be a given, so she was trying to exercise more often. Her on-the-job pursuits weren’t consistent enough to qualify as cardio training.

Fina logged a few miles on the treadmill, lifted some weights, and was back upstairs with enough time for a shower, breakfast, and a quick review of Thatcher Kinney’s bio. He didn’t have an online presence with the exception of a mention in the Roger Williams University School of Law alumni bulletin. Assuming he attended law school not long after graduating from college, he was probably in his midfifties. Thatcher Kinney didn’t seem to generate many headlines, which was great when discretion was required, but it rarely was in personal injury lawsuits.

There was a backup on the Mass Pike, proving Fina’s theory that rush hour no longer existed; traffic was a reality of urban living that followed no tidy schedule or predictable pattern. She spent forty-five minutes cursing her fellow drivers and scanning the dial for anything that approximated music. The Top 40 station was repetitive, and the hip-hop option featured lots of moaning and “slap it here, girl,” “work that booty, baby.” Who said romance was dead?

Natick Center, where Thatcher’s office was located, was a hybrid of the past and the present. The main street featured mom-and-pop businesses fighting the good fight against bank branches and chain coffee shops, but the newest additions to the area were large municipal buildings constructed to look old. The railroad tracks bisected the area, a testimony to the town’s role as a bedroom community for Boston’s professional workforce.

Fina found a parking space next to the town common and fought to open her car door against a snowbank. She squeezed out of the car, only to have to climb the hillock of dirty snow that was blocking her path. With no time to spare, she dashed across the street to a Victorian-style house that was the home of Thatcher Kinney, Attorney at Law, as well as a dental practice and an independent insurance agency.

Inside the front door was a small separate foyer with a row of mailboxes built into the right-hand wall. Fina stamped the slush off her boots and turned the doorknob leading into the hallway. A steep flight of stairs carpeted in industrial-looking gray rose directly in front of her. The door to her left was ajar, with a discreet black-lettered sign identifying it as Thatcher Kinney’s digs.