The Squad Room (16 page)

Now, entering the restaurant, he found one of the others waiting for him. Claudia was at the bar, drinking one of her aforementioned pineapple martinis. Morrison gave her a kiss on the cheek, and signaled to the bartender.

“I’ll have another of the same,” he said, smiling at her. “You won’t regret it, I promise,” she said. “So how did your day end out? As good as you were saying before?”

“Yeah, it was a good one. One of my teams managed to get a tail on one of our suspects, so hopefully our case will be making strides soon. But let’s talk about you first—I really miss you when I’m not with you—I want to know all about you.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “But that’s a big question! Where should I start?”

He wasn’t quite sure. “Well, you’ve said you have the same feeling I do, that this is a big break for you, that you’ve had a bad history with relationships—you were married before?”

“Yeah,” she mused, toying with her glass. “Angelo. I don’t know why; he was the biggest mistake of my life. I think I was just getting older—I mean, not really that old, but thirty, you know—I think I was just afraid I’d miss out on being married. It was a big deal for me growing up; there’s a lot of pressure to get married in Greek families like mine.”

“Was he Greek too?”

“No, but that didn’t matter to my family. They were just relieved that I was getting married. My parents really wanted me to have a big wedding, especially my dad, so we did—”

“Big Fat Greek Wedding, huh?”

She laughed. “Yeah, just like that, except not all good. Mostly bad, really.”

“Why so?”

“Oh, Angelo was a jealous man—really over-the-top jealous. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. He had to know my every move. When I was a little girl in Astoria, I had a Greek teacher who’d come to the house on Wednesdays—oh, of course,” she said as his eyes widened, “there was
no way
I wasn’t learning the Greek language. We’re a very proud people! Well, this teacher would use my parents’ phone to talk to his wife, you know, constantly asking her questions.
Where did you go today? Who were you with?
Very possessive. Anyway, Angelo reminded me of that teacher. But he started to change—or at least I finally started to notice it. I overlooked everything for a long time to keep my family happy.”

“How do you mean, he started to change? He got more possessive?”

“No, that stayed the same; he just got more distant. I think he never wanted me, but he didn’t want to look bad either—he had an old-fashioned Italian family, so in a way we both got married for the wrong reason. But the change was really obvious. At first he wouldn’t come home. I thought he was off playing bocce; he was in lots of clubs.
Then he started spending all his time on the Internet, talking to his friends. He was in the computer field—that was his business—so at first I assumed it was research he was doing. I later found out he was talking in chat rooms.”

“To other women?”

“So I assumed! But then I came home early one day and his computer was on, and I looked. He was talking to other men.”

Morrison nodded. “I see.”

“I was shocked,” she said. “All that time I thought it was me!”

“But that’s not the worst thing that could happen, I guess,” Morrison said. “At least you knew it
wasn’t
you.”

“Yeah. We were both hurt, but we were both relieved to stop living a lie, too. It wasn’t really all that bad; it just went on for a long time, for how unhappy it made both of us.” She took a sip of her drink. “Anyway, your turn, Silent Detective. Why’s your life so fucked up?”

“Oh, mine’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night.” She smiled. “Well, not
all
night. But you know what I mean. Besides, they haven’t even shown us to our table yet.”

He laughed. “Well, it wasn’t so dissimilar, I guess,” he said. “Except I was married to what I thought was a really spectacular woman—had everything you could want. We had two great kids together. It’s kind of sad, but I remember the day I figured out she was cheating on me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, grimacing. “What happened?”

“Well, when I was a young cop there were two guys—old timers, as we called them, or hairbags. That was a nickname we had for guys with time on the job who wouldn’t leave. They used to talk before roll call; and when they talked everyone would listen, you know, out of respect. You just shut up. One of them had been at Guadalcanal, and the other was at Iwo Jima, and they used to argue over which of them was tougher. It was kind of like being in a history lesson—they’d argue about their beach landings, their combat tours, everything. But they were good to each other, and both very typical of that era, with wives they’d been married to for a long time. They’d all go on vacation together down
the Jersey Shore way, before Snooki and that bunch turned it into a sideshow.

“Anyhow, one day I’m talking to another young guy, and sort of complaining about how my life was going, you know, in a general way, and brought up how my wife had been acting. I was even joking about it, talking about this country song by Ronnie Milsap,
There’s A Stranger In My House.
So the old-timers were sitting in the back of the stationhouse, and I didn’t even realize it, but they’d stopped talking and were just listening to me. They’d never spoken to me before—I was too new for that—but all of a sudden one of them says to me,
Hey, kid. I overheard your conversation—did your wife, by any chance, recently go shopping and buy a bunch of new bras and underwear?
I was real surprised and I go, As a matter of fact, she did. And he asks,
Like, all of it?
And he was right there, too—she’d pretty much replaced everything.
Go home,
he says.
Your wife’s cheating on you.
And I was totally floored, because I knew the old fuck was right.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Well, so I start questioning her, and her answers weren’t adding up. When a person lies to someone close to them, especially if they’re cheating, their plans get very contrived. The amount of detail they give you goes way beyond a normal conversation. It’s similar to an interview with a suspect; they’re trying to give you so much detail, you won’t check it out. But the devil’s in the details, as they say. When something really happens to someone, they remember it that way forever. When they make it up, it changes every time they tell it.

“So one day she tells me she has to go to JFK to pick someone up for her boss from a Wings West commuter flight, Boston to New York. Unfortunately for her, I was a cop, and I knew the story sounded like shit. At the time, JFK didn’t have any commuter flights; those were all out of LaGuardia. So I got a little crazy.”

Claudia looked sideways at him. “What do you mean, crazy?” she asked.

He laughed. “I just mean, I went a little overboard on surveillance.
I got a copy of our phone bill—back then they printed out all your calls—and I noticed that whenever I was working, which was a lot, she would spend hours on the phone with one number in particular.”

“So did you bring it up?”

“Well, not yet; I kept my mouth shut. Then one night she was going out to see a band play, and I was supposed to be working but surprised her by taking the day off. So we go to this place, and—well, when you’ve been a cop for a while, you get these instincts. This band isn’t my kind of thing, and it certainly isn’t hers, but there’s this guy in the band, and the way they look at each other, I knew right away it was him. So on the way home, we’re both drunk, and I pull over and tell her I have someone else. She tells me she does too—
I’m so sorry this happened,
she says. Then I tell her I really don’t have anybody, and that I never wanted anyone but her, and she knew she was caught.”

“God, that sounds awful. What’d you do?”

“What could I do? I said all the usual stuff, called her a lying fuck, et cetera. I wanted to punch her in the head, but I couldn’t. She asked if we could start over; I was so stupid, I thought she meant it. I agreed to work on things, but I couldn’t get past this guy from the band. So a few days later, thinking things are worth another try, I decide to bring her flowers at her office—she was an assistant principal—and I walk in the office and who do I see sitting outside her office typing, but the guy from the goddamn band.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. He was her assistant. It all clicked. I told him that I needed to talk to him, and she went totally crazy. She was crying all over the place, not because she felt bad, but because she was afraid I’d hurt this asshole.”

“And did you?”

“No, no. I took him for a ride and told him I should put a gun to his head. That was it.”

“That’s good. What happened with her afterward?”

“Oh, we stayed married, even renewed our vows. It was a waste of time. It wasn’t long before I caught her again. This time the rug burns
on her back gave it away.”

Claudia couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry, I just—she sounds terrible.”

“Oh, she was—and this time she really showed it,” he smiled. “She didn’t want to look bad in front of her parents—it was already her second marriage, so she was determined not to have it be her fault if it ended. So she tried to make me out to be some sort of nut.”

“Really? How?”

“She started moving things around, even changed where I kept my socks. I even thought I was going out of my mind, just like she wanted everyone else to think. So I was suspicious again, and got a friend of mine who was a private investigator to hook up my home phone to a recorder. I thought I’d catch her that way, but this time she was ahead of me, and I never found any conversations with the new guy. Those were bad days—I couldn’t help being suspicious of her, and I thought I was losing it. I finally caught her when our kids recognized the guy at a baseball game. She’d been calling the guy Stephanie around the kids, so they wouldn’t blow it with me that she was spending time with a guy; and one day we’re at a ballgame and the kids recognized him and start pointing him out, saying
Look, Mom, it’s your friend Stephanie.”

“Oh my God,” Claudia laughed again. “I almost feel bad for her, that’s so ridiculous.”

“Oh, believe me, I was never so relieved in all my life. I missed putting the kids to bed, but it was for the best.”

“I’m sure. And what about them?”

“My kids? They turned out to be really good people, both of them. My son went to Princeton—hell of a ballplayer, too. He got a tryout with the Phillies a while back. My daughter took the breakup hard, but she came through okay, too. She actually followed in my footsteps, and is a detective up in Hartford. She’s great—I talk to her pretty much every day, just to tell her to have a safe tour and all that. I’m proud of both of them, really proud.”

“That’s great.” Claudia touched his arm. “And besides your son—the
one you lost—you have a daughter with your wife now?”

“Yeah, Nadia. She’s sixteen. She’s doing well—as well as sixteen-year-olds do, anyway. She does well in school. I feel bad about being away as often as I am, with the job and all, but I think she’s used to it. And ever since Billy—I just—”

He faltered, looking uncomfortably at the bar. His son’s name had run through him like ice water. Claudia leaned in closer.

“It’s all right,” she said simply. “We don’t have to talk about it right now, if you don’t want to.”

“I just don’t want to scare you off with it,” he said abruptly. He held her hand in his, suddenly unable to look her in the eye. “I do want to talk to you about it, Claudia—about everything. And everyone has a bad side, I know that. I don’t know, I guess I just want you to know a little about that side of me now, before we—before you get in too deep.”

At a mention of his name, Morrison turned. A host was standing behind him with menus, ready to bring them to their table. He turned back around to find Claudia smiling deeply at him.

“You’re a little too late there, darling,” she said. “I’m already in the deep end of this pool.” She finished her drink and squeezed his hand. “Now come on, let’s eat.”

18

Three days after surveillance had begun in Boston, Morrison, Rivera, and Medveded sat looking over a group of photos taken of their two prime suspects. So far the team had a number of photos of Adam Rutherford and Brian Anderson, both separately and together—running from the college to Fenway Park, working out in the campus gym—and the dynamic between the two men was clear. Rutherford came across as the obvious alpha of the two: he was taller, better looking, and possessed of a false bravado that seemed to play off of his friend’s lack of confidence. The shorter, slighter Anderson carried himself with a much more cautious air.

“Looks like we have a leader and a follower here, huh?” Morrison said. “Definitely,” Rivera agreed. “Rutherford’s taller by a few inches, better looking—smarter, too. He wasn’t bullshitting on his Facebook page about Harvard—he was offered a scholarship there, but turned it down. Anderson seems to have gotten into BC through connections.”

“Ought to be useful when we get to talk to these two,” Morrison said, looking over at Medveded. “Are we any closer to pinning them down?”

“Well, it’s still hard to get a match between these photos and our crime-scene videos,” Medveded admitted, “but we’re close. And we’re almost a hundred percent on Rutherford’s car being near that one scene.”

“How’s DNA recovery going?”

“Not great. Any potentials we’ve had so far were contaminated by others before the team could recover them.”

“We’ll keep trying. Are they hard to track?”

“Not particularly,” Medveded said. “They seem to be hanging around campus pretty exclusively—the car hasn’t moved since our team spotted it, and these guys don’t seem to be big on public transportation.”

“What about your connection through Louise Donohue, Cap?” Rivera asked. “Did you find out anything from the Boston PD?”

“I found out that they haven’t had anything close to our cases,” Morrison said. “And that goes for both homicides and sex crimes. I put McNamara in touch with them, though; we should see what he says. We ought to ask him about the DNA samples, too—we have a lot of good DNA from our crime scenes, and we ought to go for the DNA match if we can get it.”