Move to Strike (2 page)

‘I hear that ass talked Scaturro into promoting her to Katz's second-in-charge in Scaturro's absence,' offered David, referring to the current Suffolk County District Attorney Loretta Scaturro who, late last year, had taken extended leave to look after her Alzheimer's stricken mother.

‘A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do,' smiled Tony.

‘As long as she does it with you, am I right, Bishop?' said David.

Tony grinned. ‘I'll be on my way to pay my respects then,' he said, using a napkin to wipe his mouth before rising from his cream silk chair to head towards the other side of the room.

‘At least he's consistent,' said David, returning his attention to Joe.

‘Regular as sunshine in August.'

‘Hello,' said a soft voice, and David turned to see a thin, pale-skinned woman now perching in Tony's vacated seat beside him.

‘It's Stephanie,' she said with a smile, obviously realising David had failed to recognise her. ‘Stephanie Tyler from . . .'

‘College,' finished David, taking her hand – surprised by the narrowness of her face, the coldness of her grip and the whisper-like texture of her voice. ‘My God, Stephanie, you look . . .' He wanted to say fantastic but in all honesty the woman before him appeared a smaller, meeker shadow of the vibrant, boisterous girl he remembered from law school. But then he saw the spark in her bright blue eyes, and the memories came rushing back.

‘Gosh it's good to see you,' he said – and he meant it. ‘This is my friend Lieutenant Joe Mannix. Joe's a cop who works homicide so be careful what you tell him.'

Joe reached across the table to shake her hand. ‘Pleasure,' he said.

‘Nice to see the force present at one of these do's, Lieutenant.'

‘I owed dateless David here a favour,' explained Joe.

‘Ah. You
are
a good friend then,' she smiled.

‘Not that good,' said Joe. ‘I'm heading to the bar, if I'm not back in ten you can send out a search party.'

‘You bail on me and I'll kill you, Mannix.'

‘And you see the irony in that, don't you?'

‘I guess I do.'

David moved his chair so that he might face his old friend.

‘You look good, David,' Stephanie said. ‘How long has it been – thirteen years, fourteen?'

‘More like seventeen,' he said. ‘In fact the last time I saw you I think we were trying to work out a way to explain to your father how we had commandeered his cruiser, broken the steering equipment, flooded the motor with gasoline and . . .'

‘Failed to check the fuel gauge so that we . . .'

‘Ran out of gas about fifteen minutes into our clandestine trip,' he finished with a laugh.

‘We made you swim back. Do you remember?' she smiled.

‘Do I ever – a good mile to the jetty with an empty petrol tin strapped to my back. I remember getting about a quarter of the way and looking back to see you and Tony and Karin laughing yourselves senseless on the top deck.'

‘We got seriously drunk,' she laughed.

‘And I got the nastiest head cold I'd had in years.'

This was fun, David thought, as his mind cast back to a time when he and his first wife Karin double dated with Stephanie Tyler and Tony Bishop. Karin was David's first love – his teenage pre-med-student sweetheart who he married at nineteen and divorced at twenty-three after she fell in love with a bigwig Washington surgeon by the name of Professor Stuart Montgomery. And Tony Bishop – the same tall, dark and handsome attorney who was currently sweet-talking Amanda Carmichael mere feet away, was Stephanie's ex – the two of them genuinely in love, at least at the time.

‘Tony was just here,' said David, thinking aloud. ‘Did you . . . ?'

‘Yes, I noticed,' she said, gesturing at the obviously preoccupied Bishop. ‘Hasn't lost his touch then?' she joked.

‘Tony always knew a beautiful woman when he saw one, Stephanie.'

‘I'll take that as a compliment then,' she said.

‘Please do.' He smiled.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,' he said, referring to Malcolm Tyler, sole owner of one of the most successful, independently owned wineries in the country. David had read that Tyler, a single father to his only child Stephanie, had died in an unfortunate boating accident some time late last year.

‘Thank you,' she said, taking a breath. ‘At least he died doing what he loved best.'

David nodded, noticing her wide blue eyes fill momentarily with the slightest tinge of sorrow.

‘So tell me,' she said. ‘What have you been up to? Not that I haven't been following your successes – the Martin Trial, Montgomery and the Matheson thing last year.'

‘I'm about to become a father,' he said, feeling the need to tell his old friend the most important new development in his life. ‘My partner Sara is a couple of months pregnant – she's in Atlanta for the weekend. You two would get on like a house on fire, Stephanie. She works with me at our firm and, well . . . things are good.'

‘Oh that's just wonderful,' she said. ‘Parenthood is the best, David. I know. I've done it twice.'

‘Your kids must be all grown up now,' he said, recalling that Stephanie married and had children not long after she left college.

‘Chelsea just turned sixteen and J.T. is thirteen.'

‘Unbelievable,' said David.

‘Time flies,' she said, her eyes glistening once again – perhaps with a sense of sorrow at the momentum life had forced upon her.

‘And your work?' asked David then, sensing a change of subject was in order. ‘The last thing I heard you accepted some big job at Cunningham, Eather and Groves. Not that you didn't have a million offers out of college, with your grades and . . .'

‘I was in corporate development,' she interrupted him. ‘Oh it was terrific, David, interesting, demanding – a real challenge. But I was only there a year when I met Jeffrey and got married and had kids and . . . long story short, now I run a small practice from home, servicing local businesses and the like.'

David got the sense that Stephanie Tyler was almost ashamed of her lack of career advancement – ashamed or regretful, or maybe just resolved.

‘My husband works long hours, you see,' she said, as if in justification. ‘And he travels to and from the west coast – he's in television.'

‘I know.' David smiled. ‘When Tony heard you married the famous Doctor Jeff,' he said, referring to Stephanie's husband, the popular TV talk show psychologist Doctor Jeffrey Logan, ‘he didn't eat for a week.'

‘Or until the next eligible bachelorette came along,' she said, and smiled.

‘Fair point,' laughed David.

‘In the very least he's. . .'

‘. . .
consistent
,' they said together – and then laughed.

David looked at her, her long neck thrown back in that familiar joviality – her deep, enthusiastic, slightly guttural laugh filling him with
memories from not so much
happier
, but definitely
easier
times. People's lives didn't always end up as you expected, he thought.

If anyone had asked him years ago who would have been the most likely of their BC graduate year to conquer the world, he would have named this bright-eyed, auburn-haired, sharp-minded woman hands down.

But here she was before him, looking small and fragile and meek – and while David could totally understand her decision to give up her career for family, respect it even, he wondered why she, of all people, appeared so defeated by the choices she had made.

‘Anyway,' she said, taking his hand once again and this time squeezing it slightly in a gesture that told him how pleased she was to have run into him, ‘I had better find Jeffrey. Despite the fact that I am the lawyer in the family I am afraid he is the one who scored us a seat on the head table – and my absence, while perhaps not missed, will be duly noted.'

‘It's been great to see you, Stephanie,' said David. ‘In fact, Sara and I, we would love to have you over some time to . . .'

‘Catch up?' She smiled. ‘Of course,' she added, but her head was already shaking in the negative.

‘We'll see each other soon then,' he said as she got up to leave. ‘We'll keep in touch.'

Friday 11 May
Three months later

‘W
ho's in charge here?' asked Lieutenant Joe Mannix as he lifted the yellow crime tape that cut off half of the narrow street so that he and his fellow Boston homicide detective Frank McKay could duck under and push forward towards the house.

‘O'Donnell,' shouted the rookie, a kid named Reno who was sharp and ready to please. ‘We secured the scene as soon as we could,' he continued to yell above the din. ‘But the media picked it up on the wires. They noted the address. Were here before we could even . . .'

‘
Reno
,' yelled another cop, Reno's partner, an older officer named Schiff. ‘The animals are encroaching,' he said, lifting one arm to shield his eyes from the TV lights and the other to point at the barrage of five, six, maybe more ‘live transmission' vans now blocking the well-preserved roadway and making it close to impossible for police and other ‘official' vehicles to get either in or out.

‘I need you over here. I need . . . Oh, sorry, Lieutenant,' said Schiff, recognising Joe. ‘I didn't see you there. These lights are enough to . . .'

‘Lieutenant, Detective,' interrupted a third police officer from behind. It was Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell, the most senior uniform on site.

‘O'Donnell,' said Joe and Frank as they all shook hands.

‘We've secured the scene,' said O'Donnell, now falling into step with the two detectives, turning back the way he had come. ‘The crime lab guys are already at work. Parked their vans out back.'

‘There's a back?' asked Joe.

‘Yeah,' answered O'Donnell as they reached the house. ‘A narrow garage at the rear.'

‘Schiff,' said O'Donnell, turning to the older of the two officers moving with them. ‘I need you to keep those people back.' He gestured at the ‘audience' with his thumb. ‘The ME's technicians can't fit their truck around the back entrance. We are going to have to bring the body out front and I don't want these people gawking . . .
Oh shit
,' said O'Donnell, now noticing the hubbub from above. ‘Helicopters,' he said, craning his neck to look beyond the roof. ‘Our job is hard enough without all these parasites breathing down our necks.'

‘Who the hell is this guy?' snuffled Frank McKay at last, as Schiff and Reno waved off and made their way back down the footpath. Frank had a heavy chest cold and O'Donnell instinctively moved a foot away so as not to catch his breath.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I'm on leave as of Monday and the missus will kill me if I'm sneezing my way through Florida. We're taking the grandkids on vacation – me at Disney World, if you can believe that.'

O'Donnell took a breath. It was an old cop coping mechanism Joe knew, reminding anyone in earshot that life went on beyond the gruesome catastrophes of their profession. O'Donnell was a little shaken, Joe sensed, which meant this one must be worse than the usual. Not that the usual was ever actually anything near usual in your average guy's stretch of the imagination.

‘Jeffrey Logan,' said O'Donnell, back on the beat, answering Frank's original question. ‘As in Doctor Jeff, TV psychologist extraordinaire.'

‘The relationship guru with the talk show?' said Frank. ‘Jesus, my wife loves that guy.'

‘I thought the vic was a female?' said Joe, getting them back on track as they took the sandstone front steps of the three-storey Beacon Hill brownstone two at a time. The crime scene traffic was thick and fast, the echo of police radios beeping and scratching beyond the front entranceway.

‘Sorry,' said O'Donnell. ‘She is. She's the doc's wife. One Stephanie Tyler. She's an attorney – works from home.'

‘A lawyer,' said Mannix, the name ringing a bell.

‘Yeah, graduated magna cum laude of BC if the certificate on her office wall is anything to go by.'

And then he remembered.

They pushed into the hallway.

‘So what's the story?' asked Joe, trying to visualise the small-framed redhead he had met briefly a mere three months ago. His eyes danced over the expensively decorated rooms around him: the original artwork on the walls, the antique rugs under their feet, the European furniture, subtle lighting, heavy drapes and flower-filled vases.

O'Donnell flipped open his notepad. ‘Stephanie Tyler, thirty-eight. COD single gunshot wound to the chest. The weapon was a Mark VDGR, the calibre a .460 Weatherby Magnum.'

‘DGR?' asked Frank.

‘Dangerous game rifle,' replied O'Donnell.

‘So not for rabbits,' said Frank.

‘Not unless they have a trunk and a pair of long ivory tusks to go with it.'

O'Donnell, Mannix and McKay put their backs to the hallway wall, allowing two crime scene guys to shuffle past with a nod. Joe noticed the looks on their faces. This one
was
bad, he could smell it.

‘This way,' said O'Donnell, leading them towards the back of the house. ‘Vic was shot at the kitchen table while drinking a Shiraz and reading an old issue of
Vanity Fair
. The wine was one of her family's, by the way. Tyler was the heir to the Rockwell Winery fortune.' O'Donnell let this little fact hang, not attaching it to anything as yet, most likely because he was not too sure where, or even if, it might fit.

‘Shot came from just inside the kitchen door. Point blank. Bang!' he said, kicking a louvred door open with his foot as they left the house through a side passageway and headed south once again.