The Other Woman (3 page)

“She
is
hot.” Alex yanked off his glasses, held the photo under his desk lamp. His wide gold wedding band glinted in the light. “No mistaking that.”

No mistaking?
Was that some sort of crack? She didn’t make mistakes, damn it.

Jane held up a different photo. “Who would wear this slinky getup outside? In October? She’s at least thirty years younger than Lassiter. And she sticks out like high beam headlights. You think she’s just doing her civic duty?”

“You can be a knockout and still be a political activist, Ryland.” Alex slid the photos into a pile, tamped down the edges, handed them to her. “These were to give you a sense of the campaign. Not to send you into reporter fantasy land.”

“Two little words,” Jane said, tucking the photos into her tote bag. “Monica Lewinsky.”

“Three little words,” Alex replied. “Leave it alone.”

“But—”

“Jane. Listen to your editor. Don’t go near this in print. This close to the election, it’s ethical quicksand. And if he’s having an affair? It’s hardly even news. They all do it.”

“But—” But Alex was ignoring her, swiping pages on his iPhone and almost turning his back.
Dismissed
. Fine. She had listened to him, exactly as he asked. But if “they all do it”? That simply confirmed there was a story. She was determined to find it.

4

“Jimmy never knew him.” Kenna made an infinitesimal adjustment to the photo on the polished mahogany fireplace mantel, caressing it for a moment as she spoke. “He was a month from coming home.”

The black-framed photograph of the marine, dark curly hair, desert fatigues, squinting into the sunshine, held the place of honor in the cozy Deverton living room. A folded American flag in a stark wooden box sat next to it.

“You must have been so proud of your…” Lassiter hesitated.

“Husband.” Kenna finished the sentence, slowly sliding her hands into her back pockets, the toe of her silver ballet flat tracing a pattern in the pile of the creamy shag rug. A blond curl escaped from the ribbon, fell across one cheek. She looked at Lassiter from under her lashes.

“Yes. I still think of James every day. Jimmy was less than a year old when it happened. Three years later, I’m still working on explaining it to him. Why he doesn’t have a father.”

“You—,” Lassiter began.

She turned to Lassiter, earnest. “No, please, this isn’t about me. Or even Jimmy.” She gestured through an archway toward a toy-littered playroom. “He’s happy entertaining himself with his trucks. Today is about you. And your campaign, Governor.”

“Owen,” he said.

Kenna agreed, with a shy smile, then tapped her silver-linked watch. “I believe you said your schedule allowed fifteen minutes here, Owen. That means only twelve minutes left for you to win me over.”

*   *   *

“May I speak to Mrs. Lassiter, please? This is Jane Ryland at … the
Register
.” The new title snagged her. “Sure, I’ll hold. I’m following up on the interview request from this morning.”

About six hours ago.

The scruffy chair rattled over the murky once-gray carpeting as Jane swiveled to get comfortable at her new desk. Her
half
of her new desk.

Tuck—was he the flannel-shirted surfer-looking guy in the photo pinned to the peeling corkboard?—had graciously cleared off one of three adjustable wooden bookshelves and emptied one of four battered metal desk drawers. Someone’s idea of sharing. He’d scrawled a note on a Post-it pad: “Welcome, Roomie.” Someone’s idea of camaraderie.

She thought of her old office at Channel 11. Sleek built-in corner shelves holding her kept-from-J-school tattered reference books. Lighted mirror. Huge bulletin board covered with dangling plastic-sleeved press passes, happy snaps, and souvenir campaign buttons. Mike the mailroom guy delivering fan letters, the occasional skeevy plea from a creepy admirer, sometimes even rants from hostile viewers. After the trial, she’d gotten a few particularly unpleasant ones, ridiculous, but she’d told Jake about them, just in case.
Where’s the mailroom here, anyway?
Back then, she’d had a door that closed. And locked.

Good-bye to that. This was her new domain. Fabric-covered cubicles. Tops of heads of strangers. Fragrance of aging coffee. Buzzing tubes of fluorescent lights. Half an office.

Now some huffy press assistant was asking, could she take a message?

“No,” Jane replied. “I prefer to talk to Mrs. Lassiter directly. Do you know when she’ll be available? And wouldn’t it be better if she took a break, as you called it,
after
the election?”

Silence. Then a tinny Sousa march as someone hit the Hold button.

Slipping the phone between her cheek and shoulder, Jane typed her password into the coffee-smudged beige computer on the desk, puffed the dust from the monitor. She pushed aside a haphazard stack of Tuck’s file folders, the one on top marked
LONGFELLOW BRIDGE
, and clicked into the
Register
’s Web site. The front page of the latest edition appeared on the screen.

The “hold” music stopped.

“Jane?” The new voice was soothing, conciliatory. Sheila King introduced herself.

Another press secretary. And soon after, yet another refusal of the interview.

“Sheila? I’m confused.” Jane leaned back in her chair, the heels of her boots stretching past the cubicle divider. “I’m simply looking for the standard-issue candidate’s-wife interview. No surprises, no big deal. Just, hey, how ya doin’. How goes the campaign.”

Jane stared at the dingy ceiling tiles as the press secretary spun out excuses and double-talk.
Give me a break.
She snapped her chair upright and clicked down the
Register
’s online front page.

The main headline, byline Tucker Cameron, read
POLICE CONTINUE TO DENY SERIAL KILLINGS
. Below that, a Tuck sidebar,
POLICE INSIST NO “BRIDGE KILLER
.”
My elusive deskmate is getting some big ink
. She clicked on “Politics.” There, the headline read
GABLE GAINS IN POLLS, LASSITER LAGGING
. Maybe Alex was on to something.

“No, you listen,” Jane said into the phone. “You’re telling me Moira Lassiter’s ‘not available’? ‘Not now. Not tomorrow. Not next week.’ That sounds a lot like ‘not ever.’ Might I ask why?”

*   *   *

“Dump truck. Box truck. And what’s this one?” Lassiter had folded his soft charcoal suit jacket over the back of the overstuffed couch and sat on the living room floor, legs akimbo, surrounded by a convoy of miniature vehicles.

Kenna clicked red and green Lego blocks together and apart, watching the man who wanted to be the next senator from Massachusetts play with a four-year-old. Fifteen minutes had long passed.

Over one cup of coffee, then two, she had drawn him out about his campaign, his policies, his strategy. She was fascinated, of course. Riveted. It was almost too easy. Lassiter had answered a second phone call with a terse: “I know what time it is. I’ll call you.”

“Dat is a oil truck!” Jimmy crowed. He grabbed the plastic vehicle from Lassiter’s hands. “I know it!”

“Maybe he can help with your Middle East policy,” Kenna said, smiling. She uncoiled herself from the chintz armchair, tossed two Legos into the rubber bowl. “Or transportation.”

“Absolutely. We can use a guy who recognizes his trucks.” Lassiter leaned back against the side of the couch, stretching his legs across the oriental rug. “The campaign could also use a well-informed mom who cares about his future. Ever thought about volunteering? Work for the Lassiter campaign?”

With an insistent buzz, Lassiter’s phone vibrated across the glass-top coffee table. The doorbell rang. And rang again.

“Your master’s voice,” Kenna said, looking at the phone. “I guess our time is up, Governor.”

“Will you do it?” Lassiter clambered to his feet and punched off his phone. “Join our merry band?”

“You’re a hard man to resist.” Kenna stood, hands on hips. “But I’d better answer the door before your staff comes looking for you, don’t you think?”

By the time Kenna returned, Trevor and clipboard in tow, Lassiter had rebuttoned his suit jacket and adjusted his tie. Jimmy, making
vroom
ing sounds, was running the oil truck up the side of the couch.

“Mrs. Wilkes has volunteered for the campaign.” Lassiter pointed a finger at his aide, delegating. “Make sure she gets the information and paperwork she needs. Tell Maitland to expect her downtown.”

He turned back to Kenna. “Right?”

She held out one hand, palm up, agreeing. “You got yourself a campaign worker. I like what you said about the environment. And your foreign policy is … well, James would approve, I’m sure.” She saw Lassiter’s eyes soften.

“I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Wilkes.”

Standing in the doorway, Kenna waited until the entourage drove out of sight. She slid open a drawer in the foyer’s mahogany desk. Took out a cell phone. Dialed. Waited for the beep.

“Slam dunk,” she said. She paused, taking a deep satisfied breath. “Now. Come take this damn kid away.”

5

Would anyone answer this time? Detective Jake Brogan stepped back from the front door, angling himself sideways on the concrete front steps in case the response to his second round of knocking was a bullet. He’d almost lost a partner that way, back when he and DeLuca were rookies.

Tonight DeLuca was on call, and Jake was scouting solo. Fine. Couldn’t solve a murder, two murders, from the couch of his condo. He didn’t have to touch the Glock under his shoulder to know it was there.

He strained to hear what might be going on inside the Charlestown three-decker, its white-vinyl façade a copy of the one next door and the one next door to that. Black shutters, random shrubs. Streetlights mostly working. Down the block, newer brownstones, carefully gardened, pumpkins on stoops, gentrified the neighborhood into class battle lines, townies versus yuppies, all in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. The granite obelisk in the middle of Charlestown marked the slaughter that began the Revolutionary War. People around here were still fighting authority.

Code-a-silence,
they called it. The townies never saw anything. Not much chance whoever was behind this door, or watching from the windows above, would admit to knowing what happened by the bridge last Sunday. Or would identify the victim, even if they knew her. Still, that’s what cops mostly did. Ask questions. Behind every closed door was a possible answer. This time on a Wednesday night, people should be home.

Still no response. Holding his BlackBerry under the feeble glow of the dusty porch light, he checked the canvass notes he’d tapped in. No grimy spiral notebooks for him, though the other guys sneered. “Harvard,” they called him. But he could type in the info, zap it to himself via e-mail. Instant filing, paperwork done.

“Boston PD,” he said, knocking again. “Anyone there?”

This time he heard something. A scraping, a creak. Maybe someone on a stairway.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he called out. Which wasn’t exactly true. “Just want to show you a few photos.”

A shadow behind the glass peephole, middle of the door. Sound of a dead bolt. The door creaked open, two inches, maybe three. The length of the chain. Then a slash of blue eye shadow, a heavy-penciled eyebrow. A fuzz of carroty hair.

“Ma’am?” Jake guessed. “Jake Brogan, Boston PD.”

“So?”

“Do you recognize this person?” Jake pulled postcard-sized sketches from his inside jacket pocket, held one up. The first was colored pencil, a redraw from the crime scene photos of Sunday’s Charlestown Bridge victim, the girl found three blocks from here. The real thing—bloated, bruised, basically grotesque—was too gruesome to show on the street. The sketch, brown hair, brown eyes, trace of a smile, softened the girl into someone’s college roommate. Anyone who knew her would recognize her.

“She had this on her leg.” Jake held up another drawing, this one depicting the green Celtic vine tattoo on one thin ankle. Minus, of course, the weedy vines the river waters had deposited around her leg. The tattoo was standard issue, another dead end, but he had a cadet hitting tattoo parlors and piercing places. Jake decided not to tell the reluctant townie exactly why he was asking.

In the drawing she didn’t look dead. “She from around here at all?” Jake asked.

“Zat the Bridge Killer girl?” The eye came closer to the chain.

So much for strategy. “You recognize her, ma’am? We could use your help here. Someone’s missing a daughter, maybe.”

“You people should catch that guy,” the voice said. “Before he kills someone else.”

And the door closed in his face.

*   *   *

Another campaign event canceled?
Jane clicked through the swirling graphics of the Lassiter campaign’s online newsletter, elbows on her desk and chin in her hands, weary, trying to focus. Trying not to listen as coworkers she didn’t know said good night to one another and headed for bars or gyms or someone special at home. The sounds of the newsroom, tapping keyboards, cell phone rings, beepers, and the occasional peal of laughter, were familiar, and yet—not.

It had been a while since she’d been the new kid. Some people were trying to be nice, but breezy hellos and good-byes aside, she was the outsider. Maybe they couldn’t believe Alex had hired her.
Everyone hates TV reporters.
Amy had reminded her of that reality. Nobody hates them more devotedly than newspaper reporters. Especially a television reporter who gets it wrong. And they all thought she got it wrong.

The Lassiter newsletter blurred with a twinge of tears. There was nothing she could say that people would believe. They thought she was defensive, or lying, or a has-been, someone to be pitied, or dismissed. She missed her old life. Missed the after-news postmortems at Clancy’s. Missed the sneaked lunchtime manicures with Margery. Except for Margery and Steve, stalwart pals who’d persisted with dinner and movie invitations, none of her “friends” from Channel 11 had even called. As if being fired were a communicable disease.