“Andy, I’m a little uncomfortable with this,” Lynn Canavan said.
For a moment I did not know what she was talking about. It actually crossed my mind she might be kidding. When we were younger, she used to like putting people on. More than once I got sucked in, taking seriously a comment that, a moment later, was revealed as a joke. But I saw, in the next moment, that she was quite serious. Or seemed to be. She had become a little hard to read lately.
There were three of us that morning in Canavan’s big corner office, District Attorney Canavan, Neal Logiudice, and me. We were seated at a round conference table, at the center of which was an empty box from Dunkin’ Donuts, left over from a meeting earlier that morning. The room had a dressy finish, with wood paneling and windows overlooking East Cambridge. But it still had the same chill as the rest of the courthouse. Same thin plum-purple industrial carpet over a concrete slab floor. Same dingy flecked acoustic tiles overhead. Same stale, twice-breathed air. As power offices go, it was not much.
Canavan fiddled with a pen, tapping the tip on a yellow pad, head tilted as if she was thinking it over. “I don’t know. You handling this case, I don’t know as I like it. Your son goes to that school. It’s a close thing. I’m a little uncomfortable.”
“You’re uncomfortable, Lynn, or Rasputin here is?” I gestured toward Logiudice.
“Oh, that’s funny, Andy—”
“I am,” Canavan asserted.
“Let me guess: Neal wants the case.”
“Neal thinks there might be an issue. I do too, frankly. There’s an appearance of a conflict. That does matter, Andy.”
Indeed, appearances did matter. Lynn Canavan was a rising political star. From the moment she was elected district attorney, two years earlier, there were rumors about which office she would run for next: governor, Massachusetts attorney general, even U.S. senator. She was in her forties, attractive, smart, serious, ambitious. I had known and worked alongside her for fifteen years, since we were both young lawyers. We were allies. She appointed me First Assistant the day she was elected DA, but I knew from the start it was a short-term gig. A courtroom mucker like me is of no value out in the political world. Wherever Canavan was headed, I would not be going along. But that was all still in the future. In the meantime, she was biding her time, polishing her public persona, her “brand”: the no-nonsense law-and-order professional. On camera she rarely smiled, rarely joked. She wore little makeup or jewelry and kept her hair short and sensible. The older people in the office remembered a different Lynn Canavan—fun, charismatic, one of the boys, who could swear like a sailor and drink like she had a hollow leg. But the voters never saw any of that, and at this point maybe the old, more natural Lynn did not exist anymore. I suppose she had no choice but to transform herself. Her life was now an endless candidacy; you could hardly blame her for becoming what she pretended to be for so long. Anyway, we all do have to grow up, put childish things aside and all that. But something was lost too. In the course of Lynn’s transformation from butterfly to moth, our long friendship had suffered. Neither of us felt the old intimacy, the sense of trust and connection we’d once had. Maybe she would make me a judge someday, for old times’ sake, to pay the whole thing off. But we both knew, I think, that our friendship had run its course. We both felt vaguely awkward and mournful around each other because of it, like lovers on the downside of an unwinding affair.
In any event, Lynn Canavan’s likely ascent created a vacuum behind her, and politics abhors a vacuum. That Neal Logiudice might actually fill it would have seemed absurd, once upon a time. Now, who knew? Clearly Logiudice did not see me as an obstacle. I had said over and over that I had no interest in the job, and I meant it. The last thing I wanted was to live an exposed, public life. Still, he would need more than bureaucratic infighting to get there. If Neal wanted to be DA, he would need a real accomplishment to show the voters. A splashy signature win in the courtroom. He needed a skin. Whose skin, I was just beginning to understand.
“Are you pulling me off the case, Lynn?”
“Right now I’m just asking what you think.”
“We’ve been through this. I’m keeping the case. There’s no issue.”
“It hits pretty close to home, Andy. Your son might be in danger. If he’d been unlucky enough to be walking through that park at the wrong time …”
Logiudice said, “Maybe your judgment is clouded, just a little. I mean, if you’re being fair, if you stop and think about it objectively.”
“Clouded how?”
“Does it make you emotional?”
“No.”
“Are you angry, Andy?”
“Do I look angry?” I counted out the words one by one.
“Yeah, you do, a little. Or maybe just defensive. But you shouldn’t be; we’re all on the same side here. Hey, it’s perfectly natural to be emotional. If my son was involved—”
“Neal, are you actually questioning my integrity? Or just my competence?”
“Neither. I’m questioning your objectivity.”
“Lynn, does he speak for you? Are you believing this bullshit?”
She frowned. “My antennae are up, to be honest.”
“Your antennae? Come on, what does that mean?”
“I’m uneasy.”
Logiudice: “It’s the appearance, Andy. The appearance of objectivity. Nobody’s saying you actually—”
“Look, just fuck off, Neal, okay? This doesn’t concern you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just let me run my case. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the appearance. The case is going slow because that’s the way it’s going, not because I’m dragging my feet. I’m not going to be stampeded into indicting someone just to make it look good. I thought I taught you better than that.”
“You taught me I should push every case as hard as I could.”
“I am pushing as hard as I can.”
“Why haven’t you interviewed the kids? It’s been five days already.”
“You know damn well why. Because this isn’t Boston, Neal, it’s Newton. Every frickin’ detail has to be negotiated: which kids we can talk to, where we talk to them, what we can ask, who has to be present. This isn’t Dorchester High. Half the parents in this school are lawyers.”
“Relax, Andy. No one’s accusing you of anything. The problem is how it will be perceived. From the outside, it might look like you’re ignoring the obvious.”
“Meaning what?”
“The students. Have you considered that the killer might be a student? You’ve told me a thousand times, haven’t you: follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
“There’s no evidence to suggest it’s a student. None. If there were, I’d follow it.”
“You can’t follow it if you won’t look for it.”
This was an aha! moment. I finally got it. The time had come, as I always knew it would. I was the one immediately above Neal on the ladder. Now he would target me the way he had so many others.
I made a wry smile. “Neal, what is it you’re after? Is it the case? You want it? You can have it. Or is it my job? What the hell, you can have that too. But it’d be easier for everyone if you’d just come out and say it.”
“I don’t want anything, Andy. I just want to see things come out right.”
“Lynn, are you taking me off the case or are you going to back me?”
She gave me a warm look but an indirect answer. “When have I ever not backed you?”
I nodded, accepting the truth of this. I put on a resolute mask and declared a fresh start. “Look, the school just reopened today, the kids are all back. We have the student interviews this afternoon. Something good is gonna happen soon.”
“Good,” Canavan said. “Let’s hope so.”
But Logiudice chipped in, “Who’s going to interview your son?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not you, I hope.”
“Not me. Paul Duffy probably.”
“Who decided that?”
“Me. That’s the way it works, Neal. I decide. And if there’s a mistake, it’ll be me standing in front of the jury to take the hit.”
He gave Canavan a look—See? I told you, he won’t listen—which she met with a neutral expression.