“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m in your house, alone, and an armed man comes to the door? It matters to me.”
“I can’t get into it. It’s personal. But I promise, he doesn’t want anything from you.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“It’s complicated. Look, I’m sorry for the confusion. I’ll pay extra for the hardship, okay?”
“This is not about money. I agreed to take care of your cat. A man trying to break in—it’s more than I signed up for. I don’t feel safe.”
“That’s understandable. But you’re completely fine. Just stay inside, and when you order in food, check the camera to make sure that—”
“If I’m safe, why check the camera?”
“That’s just a smart thing to do in a city. I’m getting another call, and I need to take it. Okay? Get some rest.”
The call dropped.
Madison snorted. Another call. Right. The judge didn’t want to answer questions, that was all. A cop tried to break into her house. Someone she knew well, who seemed to be tracking her whereabouts. Their entire interaction had an air of impending violence. Yet the judge instructed her not to call 911, because it was personal. Was he a jealous ex-boyfriend?
A cop named Charlie. Charles.
Madison sat down cross-legged on the floor with her phone flashlight and flipped through the documents from Danny’s case, just to be sure she was remembering correctly. Yes. There it was, the very first line in the affidavit: “Detective Charles E. Wallace affirms and says…”
Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. She should try to figure out if he was the same guy.
She opened her laptop and googled the name “Charles Wallace” together with “Boston PD.” Several stories popped up, all from the Globe. One of them looked familiar. “Case Closed in Drive-By Shooting.” She’d read that just the other night, after Ty’s party, while researching the judge’s husband’s murder. Studying the accompanying photo and its caption, her stomach sank as she realized it was definitely him. The man at the door just now was pictured in a group photo of the team investigating Matthew Latham’s murder. It was all him. The man at the door, the lead investigator in the judge’s husband’s murder, and the detective on Danny’s case. One and the same. Detective Charles Wallace. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. The woman she’d admired since high school, and connected with so powerfully tonight, was mixed up with a dirty cop who’d failed to solve the murder of her own husband.
Danny claimed the judge was in on the corruption. My lawyer goes way back with this judge. Has her in his pocket. She’s dirty, too. Madison had refused to believe that. What if it was true? She needed to finish the research on that lawyer that the judge had interrupted earlier tonight. She already knew that Logue had numerous disciplinary complaints and had been suspended from the bar, then reinstated. Now, she looked into his cases—at least, what she could find on Google. There was an avalanche of results. Over forty years, he’d represented literally hundreds of mobsters, extortionists, murderers, drug dealers. She went cross-eyed reading the old news articles, yet learned little about his relationship to Judge Conroy. She’d been the judge on some cases where Logue was the defense lawyer, and—going back years—the prosecutor on others. Knowing that didn’t tell Madison much. She needed court records, but couldn’t access them from here.
There were a number of hits on “Logue” and “Wallace” together, though most of those were about the wrong Wallace—a detective named Edward Wallace who’d been murdered in the ’80s, gunned down execution style in his own driveway. Mob retaliation, they said. Case never solved.
Interesting coincidence. Gunned down in his driveway, just like the judge’s husband.
Researching Detective Edward Wallace, she was shocked to learn from his obituary that he was Charles Wallace’s father. That had to mean something—but what? She couldn’t think straight. Her back ached. Her vision was blurry. It was starting to get light outside, with a faint glow showing around the edges of the blinds. She needed caffeine.
Downstairs, she tracked down a bag of espresso, zapping the almond milk to make a halfway decent latte, which she took over to the sofa. The shelves on either side of the fireplace looked straight out of a shelter magazine, white vases and coffee-table books and framed stock photos with no people in them. This house was as sterile as the judge’s office. That seemed odd. Normal people had photos, scrapbooks, souvenirs. A pile of junk mail. Why didn’t the judge? Was she just a neat freak, or did she keep her personal things hidden for some reason?