Read Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) Online
Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland)
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Always remembering You Never Know Day
August 18, 1995
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unending gratitude to:
Kristin Sevick, my brilliant, hilarious, and gracious editor. Thank you. The remarkable team at Forge Books: the incomparable Linda Quinton, indefatigable Alexis Saarela, and copy editor Julie Gutin, who noticed everything, thank you. (Sometimes, I repeat words. Imagine.) Talia Sherer, hilarious empress of libraries, I am so grateful. Bess Cozby and Desirae Friesen, you are terrific. Seth Lerner and Vanessa Paolantonio, thank you for turning words into pictures with another incredible cover. Brian Heller, my champion. The inspirational Tom Doherty. What a terrifically smart and unfailingly supportive team. I am so thrilled to be part of it. Thank you.
Lisa Gallagher, a wow of an agent, a true goddess, who changed my life and continues to do so.
Francesca Coltrera, the astonishingly skilled independent editor, who lets me believe all the good ideas are mine. Editor Chris Roerden, whose care and skill and commitment made such a difference. Ramona DeFelice Long—your insights are incomparable. You all are incredibly talented. I am lucky to know you—and even luckier to work with you.
The artistry and savvy of Madeira James, Charlie Anctil, Mary Zanor, and Jen Forbus. To Linda Miele and Chris Wayland and Ed Ansin and Bob Leider, who understood.
The inspiration of Linda Fairstein, John Lescroart, Mary Jane Clark, Tess Gerritsen, Suzanne Brockmann, Lisa Unger, William Landay, Nancy Pickard, Michael Palmer, and Robert B. Parker.
Sue Grafton. Mary Higgins Clark. And Lisa Scottoline. And Lee Child. Words fail me. (I know, a first.)
My dear posse at Sisters in Crime. Thank you. And at Mystery Writers of America—Reed Farrel Coleman, Jessie Lourey, Dan Hale, and Margery Flax.
My amazing blog sisters. At Jungle Red Writers: Julia Spencer-Fleming, Hallie Ephron, Rosemary Harris, Roberta Isleib/Lucy Burdette, Susan Elia MacNeal, Jan Brogan, Deborah Crombie, and Rhys Bowen. At Femmes Fatales: Charlaine Harris, Dana Cameron, Kris Neri, Mary Saums, Toni Kelner, Elaine Viets, Donna Andrews, and Catriona McPherson. At the old Lipstick Chronicles: Nancy Martin and Harley Jane Kozak, who brought us all together.
Financial insiders who, yes, will remain nameless, thanks for the scoop.
My dear friends Amy Isaac, Mary Schwager, and Katherine Hall Page, and my darling sister Nancy Landman.
Dad—who loves every moment of this. And Mom. Missing you.
And Jonathan, of course, who never complains about all the takeout dinners.
Do you see your name in this book? Some very generous souls allowed their names to be used in return for an auction donation to charity. To retain the magic, I will let you find yourselves.
Sharp-eyed readers might notice I have tweaked Massachusetts geography a bit. It is only to protect the innocent. And I adore it when people read the acknowledgments.
Keep in touch, okay?
http://www.hankphillippiryan.com
http://www.jungleredwriters.com
http://www.femmesfatales.typepad.com
CONTENTS
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
—Jane Austen
1
“I know it’s legal. But it’s terrible.” Jane Ryland winced as the Sandovals’ wooden bed frame hit the tall grass in the overgrown front yard and shattered into three jagged pieces. “The cops throwing someone’s stuff out the window. Might as well be Dickens, you know? Eviction? There’s got to be a better way.”
Terrible facts. Great pictures.
A perfect newspaper story.
She turned to TJ. “You getting this?”
TJ didn’t take his eye from the viewfinder. “Rolling and recording,” he said.
A blue-shirted Suffolk County sheriff’s deputy—sleeves rolled up, buzz cut—appeared at the open window, took a swig from a plastic bottle. He shaded his eyes with one hand.
“First floor, all clear,” he called. Two uniforms comparing paperwork on the gravel driveway gave him a thumbs-up. The Boston cops were detailed in, they’d explained to Jane, in case there were protesters. But no pickets or housing activists had appeared. Not even a curious neighbor. The deputy twisted the cap on the bottle, tossed away the empty with a flip of his gloved hand. The clear plastic bounced on top of a brittle hedge, then disappeared into the browning grass.
“Oops,” he said. “I’m headed for the back.”
“That’s harsh,” TJ muttered.
“You got it, though, right?” Jane knew it was a “moment” for her story, revealing the deputy’s cavalier behavior while the Sandovals—she looked around, making sure the family hadn’t shown up—were off searching for a new place to live. The feds kept reporting the housing crisis was over. Tell that to the now-homeless Sandovals, crammed—temporarily, they hoped—into a relative’s spare bedroom. Their modest ranch home in this cookie-cutter neighborhood was now an REO—“real estate owned” by Atlantic & Anchor Bank. The metal sign on the scrabby lawn said
FORECLOSED
in yellow block letters. Under the provisions of the Massachusetts Housing Court, the deputies were now in charge.
“Hey! Television! You can’t shoot here. It’s private property.”
Jane felt a hand clamp onto her bare arm. She twisted away, annoyed. Of course they could shoot.
“Excuse me?” She eyed the guy’s three-piece pinstripe suit, ridiculous on a day like today. He must be melting. Still, being hot didn’t give him the right to be wrong. “We’re on the public sidewalk. We can shoot whatever we can see and hear.”
Jane stashed her notebook into her tote bag, then held out a hand, conciliatory. Maybe he knew something. “And not television. Newspaper. The new online edition. I’m Jane Ryland, from the
Register.
”
She paused. Lawyer, banker, bean counter, she predicted. For A&A Bank? Or the Sandovals? The Sandovals had already told her, on camera, how Elliot Sandoval had lost his construction job, and they were struggling on pregnant MaryLou’s day care salary. Struggling and failing.
“I don’t care who you are.” The man crossed his arms over his chest, a chunky watch glinting, tortoiseshell sunglasses hiding his expression. “This is none of your business. You don’t tell your friend to shut off that camera, I’m telling the cops to stop you.”
You kidding me?
“Feel free, Mr.—?” Jane took her hand away. Felt a trickle of sweat down her back. Boston was baking in the throes of an unexpected May heat wave. Everyone was cranky. It was almost too hot to argue. “You’ll find we’re within our rights.”
The guy pulled out a phone. All she needed. And stupid, because the cops were right there. TJ kept shooting, good for him. Brand new at the Boston
Register,
videographer TJ Foy was hire number one in the paper’s fledgling online video news department. Jane was the first—and so far, only—reporter assigned.
“It’s a chance to show off your years of TV experience,” the
Register
’s new city editor had explained. Pretending Jane had a choice. “Make it work.”
Pleasing the new boss was never a bad thing, and truth be told, Jane could use a little employment security. She still suffered pangs from her unfair firing from Channel 11 last year, but at least it didn’t haunt her every day. This was her new normal, especially now that newspapering was more like TV. “Multimedia,” her new editor called it.
“We’re doing a story on the housing crisis.” Jane smiled, trying again. “Remember the teenager who got killed last week on Springvale Street? Emily-Sue Ordway? Fell from a window, trying to get back into her parents’ foreclosed home? We’re trying to show—it’s not about the houses so much as it is the people.”
“‘The people’ should pay their mortgage.” The man pointed to the clapboard two-story with his cell phone. “Then ‘the cops’ wouldn’t have to ‘remove’ their possessions.”
Okay, so not a lawyer for the Sandovals. But at least this jerk wasn’t dialing.
“Are you with A&A? With the bank?” Might as well be direct.
“That’s not any of—”
“Vitucci! Callum!” The deputy appeared in the open front door, one hand on each side of the doorjamb as if to keep himself upright. He held the screen door open with his foot. His smirk had vanished. The two cops on the driveway alerted, inquiring.
“Huh? What’s up?” one asked.
“You getting this?” Jane whispered. She didn’t want to ruin TJ’s audio with her voice, but something was happening. Something the eviction squad hadn’t expected.
“Second floor.” The deputy pulled a radio from his belt pouch. Looked at it. Looked back at the cops. His shoulders sagged. “Better get in here.”
2
“Why would he confess if he didn’t do it?” Detective Jake Brogan peered through the smoky one-way glass at the guy slumped in the folding chair of Boston Police Department’s interrogation room E. What Jane would probably call “skeevy”—too-long hair scraggling over one ear, ratty jacket, black T-shirt, tired tan pants. Thin. Late thirties, at least, more like forty. How old would Gordon Thorley have been in 1994, when Carley Marie Schaefer was killed? Late teens, at most. Around the same age as Carley. “This guy Thorley just shows up here at HQ and insists he’s guilty? You ever seen that? Heard of that?”
