Back in the kitchen, she unfurled the newspaper. “Brooks Brothers Killer,” the headline shrieked, over a giant, four-color photograph of Kate and Griff on their wedding day. Poor Griff. Jenny felt awful for him, but it was the box story to the right of the main article that made her gasp. “Murder Victim Previously Present at Local Man’s Death,” it read. There was a tiny, blurry BRHS yearbook photo of Lucas under the headline.
Someone had put two and two together, and connected Kate to Lucas’s death. The byline said the author was Bill Buckwald, the same reporter who’d been interested in interviewing Kate at Jenny’s Labor Day party months ago. Buckwald reported that, twenty-two years before, the coroner ruled Lucas’s drowning a “death by misadventure,” and the Arsenault family fought unsuccessfully to overturn that verdict and open a homicide investigation. Jenny read the rest of the article with her heart in her throat, relaxing only when she got to the end and hadn’t found her own name. The article merely said that Kate had been present at the bridge the night Lucas died, and that the circumstances of Lucas’s death were the subject of dispute. The Register didn’t seem to be arguing—heaven forbid—that there was any connection between Lucas’s death and Kate’s. So why even publish such a story? Was this just for local color, or was Buckwald fishing for dirt on the Arsenault case? She’d have to keep her eye on that.
Jenny went into the den and clicked on the television, flipping back and forth between the local stations and the national morning shows to see what they were saying. Kate’s murder was everywhere. The local stations talked of nothing else, but even the national networks were covering it. Most of them seemed to be calling it the “Carlisle murder,” though a few had picked up “Brooks Brothers killer,” and one even had it as the “country club murder,” though neither Kate nor Griff belonged to a country club. One of the national networks flashed a picture of Kate taken when she was a teenager, in riding clothes in front of a mansion, looking gorgeous, rich, and extremely blond. Jenny knew that picture. It had been in the house on Faculty Row, the house Rizzo had just searched—Keniston’s house. Ditto the next picture, of Griff on the deck of a yacht looking like Thurston Howell the Fourth. How had the press gotten hold of those photos? Had Chief Rizzo taken them from the house and leaked them? He still hadn’t returned her phone calls, and she was increasingly uneasy with how he was handling the case. As she watched, the television news anchor started talking about yet another piece of evidence that should have remained confidential. A DNA test had apparently proved that scrapings of human skin taken from under Kate’s fingernails belonged to Griff. Evidence straight from the state crime lab, fed to the press. Now, maybe that was some rogue lab technician, but maybe it was Rizzo, trying to gin up public sentiment for a murder investigation so nobody would be able to slow him down. Jenny recalled her conversation with Robbie Womack about trying to build evidence to argue for Chief Rizzo’s removal. She’d been having her doubts about opposing the chief, but the press reports made her very nervous.
Jenny turned on her phone. Her voicemail box was full, and she had sixty-seven e-mails, mostly from reporters—some from as far away as Italy and Japan. There was also an urgent e-mail from the head of Carlisle Safety and Security saying that the town green and the Quad were overrun with TV trucks, that Belle River PD was completely AWOL and he couldn’t get through to the chief of police. Now that was something she could use. In a town like Belle River, the one thing people expected from the police was decent traffic control. Jenny forwarded that e-mail to every member of the town council, with the subject line “Carlisle concerns about Chief Rizzo’s performance.” Then she woke the kids and told them to grab a granola bar for breakfast.
An hour later, clad in a new black suit, her hair and makeup perfect and her speech memorized, Jenny headed down the hill into town. Traffic snarled the streets of Belle River beyond anything she’d seen in all her years here. Jenny had a meeting soon with Griff and the Eastman family to review funeral arrangements, and what normally was a ten-minute drive was already taking twenty. She decided to park at the office and walk to Mem Church so she wouldn’t have to fight the gridlock for that extra few blocks. After waiting nearly five minutes to make a left across traffic into the town garage, Jenny found an unknown car with out-of-town plates parked in her space, right under the big sign that said Reserved for Mayor Healy. That was the last straw. She whipped out her phone and dialed Owen Rizzo, who hadn’t answered her calls for the past two days. She planned to leave an angry voicemail, but to her surprise, he picked up.
“Chief Rizzo. Finally,” Jenny said.
“I see you forwarded an e-mail about parking problems to the entire town council,” Rizzo said, indignation in his voice.
“Yes, I did. I just drove through the downtown, which is overrun, and there was not one single patrol car in sight. I need to know what you’re doing about this situation.”
“So talk to me about it. Don’t go behind my back,” Rizzo said.
“How can I talk to you when you won’t return my phone calls?” Jenny said.
“I’ve been a little busy, as you may have noticed.”
“Unfortunately, I have noticed. We need to talk about how you’re handling Kate Eastman’s death. I thought we had a good relationship, Chief. But you don’t even call me when she’s found. You unilaterally decide that this is a murder instead of a suicide, and you go to the press without consulting me. I’m beginning to have some serious doubts about your judgment,” Jenny said, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Police matters are my department, Madam Mayor,” Rizzo said.
“You may be chief, but I’m the mayor of this town, and you need to work with me, simple as that.”
“Look, we had this discussion before when we had that ruckus over a simple staffing change. Ma’am, with all due respect, I need my independence, or I can’t do my job. I run the department my way. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you a few questions about Kate Eastman, given that you were a friend of hers.”
“You have questions? Well, I have an answer. This was a suicide. Everybody who knows Kate thinks that. It was not a murder. Her husband didn’t kill her. You’re off on a frolic and detour, with no proof.”
“I have proof. I have an expert report—”
“Right, I heard. How exactly did you pay for that, by the way?” Jenny demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m asking, where did you get the money to pay for an outside expert?”
“I really can’t brook this kind of interference,” Rizzo said.
“From what I see, you’re failing to look out for the well-being of this community, and that’s my business. This case could’ve been handled privately to spare the family the pain. Instead you’re off on some crusade, investigating some nonexistent crime, while the entire town is overrun by TV crews.”
“Madam Mayor, I’ll say it again. Managing the department is my job.”