Matter of Trust (11 page)

Nora took Sara's hand. ‘David has faced some extremely powerful adversaries in the past, my dear – high level government officials, the FBI, national identities with the power of the media behind them. And
despite the incredible odds against him, he's always come out on top, if a little battered and bruised.' Nora managed a smile. ‘So when it comes to home – his friend's domineering mother, his brother's stubbornness, the memories of feeling ill at ease – I can't help but feel that David will take it all in his stride. He's a survivor, Sara – and he's dealing with people he knows, so—'

‘No,' said Sara, interrupting her well-meaning friend. ‘I know what you're trying to say, Nora, but in this case I believe David has no idea what he's getting himself into.'

Finally Nora understood exactly what Sara was trying to say. ‘You think Chris Kincaid had something to do with that poor woman's death?'

‘I'm not sure. But I think men like Chris Kincaid don't do anything without calculation. I think it is odd that he asked David to make discreet enquiries in the first place. I think it is strange he asked David to fly down to accompany him to see the Newark police.'

‘And if he was involved? If he is charged?' asked Nora.

‘Then I have no doubt David will represent him.'

‘But David never defends anyone unless he believes in their innocence.'

‘Then I guess he'll convince himself that Chris is exactly that.'

Nora met Sara's eye, and Sara could see that her friend knew she was right.

‘It's early days, my dear,' Nora said, as if in consolation.

But Sara was shaking her head. ‘I don't think so, Nora. I think that whether he realises it or not, the whole reason David took the bar in Jersey in the first place was to show he wasn't leaving them completely, just in case one day, he could play the knight in shining armour and save one of his family or friends and in doing so, prove to them all that his decision to leave, to become what he has, was the right thing to do after all.'

‘You think he seeks approval – from the people he loves most?'

Sara nodded. ‘Don't we all, Nora?' she said with a sigh. ‘Don't we all?'

I
n the State of New Jersey, the Office of the State Medical Examiner, or OSME, is established within the Division of Criminal Justice of the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Law & Public Safety and is under the immediate supervision of a State Medical Examiner, or SME.

The SME supervises the state's Northern and Southern Regional Medical Examiner Offices (NRMEO and SRMEO), which provide death investigation services to six of New Jersey's twenty-one counties, accepting close to 2500 examinations each year.

In the case of the NRMEO, the busiest office in the state by far, a staff of six or so headed by Regional Medical Examiner Salicia Curtis burn the midnight oil trying to keep on top of the huge numbers of cases that move through their office every year – cases that involve close to 1500 autopsies – hundreds of these sadly falling under the category listed as homicide.

For David, the trip to the ME's offices had been nothing short of suffocating. McNally had suggested they all go in his car and Chris had immediately agreed. David knew his friend was avoiding the inevitable one-on-one they would need to have as soon as they were alone – he felt Chris was dragging him down his road of deception as far as was
humanly possible, making it all that much harder for David to turn back.

Half of David hated his friend for the position he had placed him in, and the other half hated himself for not standing up and walking out the minute the first lie had been told. He could not help but recall the times when he'd followed Mike and Chris to the headmaster's office, often knowing that they were as guilty as sin. But back then, he'd felt a sense of gallantry in his determination to protect his two friends' backs, and right now, he knew beyond anything else, that what he was doing was . . .

‘Thank you for coming,' said Salicia Curtis, interrupting David's thoughts as she met them in the scantily furnished lobby. The area was pleasant but clinical, the only signs of life a friendly-looking receptionist behind a blue-coloured petition in the far right-hand corner and a series of climbing plants whose tendrils lay limp and disappointed on the brown tiled floor.

‘I appreciate situations like this are difficult, so I shall try to make things as easy as possible,' continued the attractive, straightforward woman who, it became obvious, was practised at explaining the tragic but necessary process of identifying the deceased.

‘In the case of the body in question, I need to warn you that her features will appear both swollen and distorted – an irreversible state caused by the length of time her body spent in the water. I suggest you examine the victim's facial features carefully, and try to ascertain if there is any chance that the woman in the neighbouring room might be the person you knew.

‘I want to stress that what you are about to see may be incredibly upsetting, and while we have done our best to clean her up following this morning's autopsy, we will understand completely if the identification process is impossible. You should not feel disappointed if you cannot make a call, one way or the other.'

Moments later, after McNally had excused himself briefly before returning to the viewing room, Curtis asked if they would move toward a window where a privacy curtain would be drawn and they could examine the body which she explained would be covered by a plain white sheet. And as the curtain was pulled, David took the slightest of steps back – a natural instinct at seeing a life reduced to the enlarged grey mass in
front of them – and Chris Kincaid took in an audible gasp before moving slowly, but determinedly toward the window.

While David knew he was there for Chris, he could not help but feel that this identification was a personal moment for him too. His eyes were drawn to the woman's white-blonde hair and her swollen, sightless eyes. And in that moment, he felt an inexplicable sense of relief, as if there was no way this lifeless form before him could be the Marilyn he once knew. It was ridiculous really, but he sensed that, given all Marilyn had put into life, there was no way that life would reduce her to this.

‘Chris,' he said, as he moved forward, so that he might stand next to his old schoolfriend, so that they could share in their relief together, and put an end to this unholy mess.

‘Chris,' he said again, as he watched Chris's eyes move slowly from the woman's face, and smooth blonde hair, down the crisp white sheet and over the mounds that hid her chest and her hips, to the box of what must have been her meagre possessions at the other end of the cold, aluminium table.

Chris's eyes watered as they flashed quickly from the body to David, to a now close-by McNally, and back to his old schoolfriend once again.

‘It's not her,' he said.

‘Are you sure?' asked McNally, David hearing the slightest trace of what he thought was disappointment in the detective's voice.

‘It's not her,' Chris said again, managing what looked to be a smile. ‘It's not Marilyn. I am sure.'

C
onnor Kincaid took another sip of his now flat Pepsi as he adjusted his butt away from the mangled foam protruding from a tear in the vinyl-covered bench underneath him.

It was late and he was at Greasy Frank's – a grungy all-night diner three blocks from Will's home in the largely Portuguese neighbourhood known as the Ironbound. Will and Jack were late, but he knew they would come – they had never let him down. His friends were like rocks, which was why Connor felt so guilty for falling to pieces on the phone to both of them earlier this afternoon. If guys like Jack and Will could hold it together, surely he could summon the courage to grow some fucking balls.

Jack Delgado was a hero born to hero – one of those rare people who suffered tragedy and rose from the ashes like a phoenix. His father George had been a decorated cop who became a local legend when he lost his life saving others at the World Trade Center, and his mother Vicki – having suffered the unbearable loss of a husband
and
son – followed suit by becoming one of those vocal post-9/11 Jersey women who fought long and hard for the ‘rights of their fatherless offspring'.

Jack's older brother Eddie rose the bar again by winning a sports scholarship to the University of North Carolina, and Jack – well, he was on the fast track for Harvard Law, having spent much of his high school
years either studying or attending fundraisers and memorials with his mom.

As such, Jack had had a paradoxical effect on Connor. On one hand, he lifted Connor up by showing him that anything was possible if you put your mind to it, and on the other, he made Connor feel like shit. Connor had spent his entire life begrudging the fact that he was born to a famous but unavailable father, and a timid, apprehensive mom – who he knew loved him but wasn't exactly too sure how to show it – while the financially hamstrung Jack, who had suffered the ultimate tragedy, was still altruistic enough to sacrifice everything to save his privileged pussy-assed friend.

Will Cusack – born to a Portuguese–American mother and a Polish–American dad – was the tough guy of their little group. While Connor did not know Will's mom so well, he gathered she had fallen apart after her husband's death and left Will to pick up the pieces, which he had done – largely because Vicki Delgado had looked after him as one of her own. Connor knew Will was struggling – financially and at school – and at times he felt like Will resented his privilege. But Connor had been proven wrong when Will stepped up on that fateful night – proving that he did consider Connor just as good a friend as Jack – and once again, Connor was grateful.

So it was no surprise that when Jack Delgado finally walked through Greasy Frank's finger-smudged glass front door, a determined-looking Will Cusack behind him, Connor felt a mixture of shame and relief. And he vowed then and there that he would pay his friends back in one way or another, as soon as this nightmare was over.

‘J
esus Christ, Chris,' said David. ‘What the hell was that all about?'

It was dark by the time McNally dropped them back at Chris's car. The detective had thanked them for their ‘community-minded spirit' and told them that their non-identification freed him up to follow other leads. McNally said these would include: asking the ME to do a full report on the unidentified victim's teeth so that they could try to match it with the dental records of another missing person, investigating the blow to the victim's head in an effort to identify the weapon used and the height of the perpetrator who used it, and trying to establish exactly who the woman was with in the hours immediately preceding her drowning – given the ME concluded that the deceased had engaged in sexual intercourse, and perhaps a physical struggle with her aggressor, not long before her death.

No-one was happier than David when Chris had concurred with his instinctive reaction that the poor woman lying on that cold slab in the ME's viewing room was not their teenage friend. But while he had felt compassion for Chris at the time, his relief at the negative ID was soon followed by a surge of anger that had been burning inside him since three that afternoon.

‘How dare you drag me into your lie?' David continued. ‘Did you plan this all along? Did you ask me down here so I could fit into your little
scheme of trying to pull the wool over Harry McNally's eyes? Well, I've got news for you, Chris, McNally saw right through that ridiculous reunion story the minute it came out of your mouth – which means that now he thinks I'm a liar too – and he's not far off, given I failed to—'

‘I'm sorry,' said Chris.

‘Sorry doesn't cut it. What you did back there, it's not what friends do. Hell, it's not what
any
decent person does. I don't care how scared you were – what I need to know is what motivated you to lie like that. Was it dread that the dead woman might be Marilyn, or was it pure panic that your dirty little secret might finally be out?'

‘I said I was sorry.'

‘And I said . . .' David hesitated as he looked out the window and realised they were heading in the opposite direction to his mother's home in Down Neck.

‘Where are we going?' he asked. But as soon as they turned the corner, he understood. Chris was taking him to the place where they used to bat things out as teenagers. Chris was taking him to Quincy's – a rough and ready Irish pub in Five Corners in the city's industrial east. The same place they used to escape to as young men – as under-aged drinkers who could barely manage a Guinness without puking up their guts.

‘I'll get us both a drink,' Chris said, as he pushed through the heavy dark wood doors and gestured for David to find them a booth. And despite himself, David nodded, the smell of smoke and beer and workmen's sweat now transporting him back to another time when conflict was resolved with physical fights and awkward apologies and lifelong pacts of friendship.

‘You remember, don't you?' asked Chris when he arrived at their shadowy corner table and placed two overflowing Guinnesses on the sticky cardboard coasters before them.

‘I remember,' replied David. And he did. He remembered that one night, after that gruelling, gut-wrenching fight between his two best friends, when he had brokered a deal that they would never let a girl come between them again. And he thanked God that the girl at the centre of that terrible brawl between Chris Kincaid and his good buddy Mike Murphy was not the swollen body under that misshapen sheet. Nevertheless, David noted that even in her absence, Marilyn Maloney still had the
power to take their lives and twist them, until either blood was drawn or hearts were broken, or maybe, in this case, both.

‘The pact still stands,' said Chris. ‘Mike may not be here but we agreed, all three of us, that our friendship went beyond how we felt for a girl – and that we would always protect each other, no matter what.'