4
After Laurie walked the Bells to the elevator, she made her way back to her office, eager to refresh her memory about the details of Martin Bell’s murder. She remembered how excited she had been when she first came across his parents’ letter in the backlog of accumulated fan mail. The case seemed so perfect for her show. Martin, by all accounts, was a doting young father and brilliant physician from a renowned New York family. His father had served as the head of surgery at Mount Sinai, and his grandfather had been the state attorney general. The Bell name was on more than a handful of buildings across New York State.
And then the beloved son, Martin, was shot dead outside of his beautiful Greenwich Village home.
A brilliant young doctor—a father—killed out of nowhere by gunfire in downtown Manhattan. Of course she had thought about her Greg at the time. How could she not?
The similarities to Greg’s case ended there, however. Laurie’s own son, Timmy, had witnessed his father’s murder. Only three years old at the time, he’d been able to provide his version of a description, based on the gunman’s eyes: “Blue Eyes shot my daddy . . . Blue Eyes shot my daddy!” Martin Bell’s young children had been inside the family home under the watchful gaze of their nanny, and no one else had observed the shooting outside in the driveway.
And unlike Kendra Bell, Laurie had never been treated as a suspect in Greg’s murder. Sure, she had felt a suspicious gaze here and there during the five years when Greg’s murder had remained unsolved. To some people, a spouse is automatically presumed guilty. But Laurie’s father, Leo, had been the New York Police Department’s first deputy commissioner at the time of the shooting. No officer would have dared speak of her in an accusatory tone without cold, hard evidence to back it up.
Kendra, on the other hand, had been churned through the machine that was the New York media’s tabloid-style crime coverage. Even before his murder, Martin Bell had been something of a celebrity. He had been a rising star in NYU’s Neurology Department when he left to start his own, bold practice specializing in pain management. He was the author of a best-selling book emphasizing homeopathic remedies, stress reduction, and physical therapy as a means to reduce physical pain, advocating prescription drugs and surgical intervention only as last resorts. Laurie remembered Greg saying he’d have far fewer patients in the emergency room if more physicians heeded Bell’s advice. As Bell’s celebrity grew, some people started referring to him as a miracle worker.
After his murder, the juxtaposition between his public image and the woman to whom he was married could not have been more stark. Photographs emerged of Kendra looking confused and disheveled. It came out that she was a regular at a dive bar in the East Village and had been withdrawing large amounts of money from the couple’s savings account. Reports leaked that she’d been so passed out at the time of the shooting that the nanny couldn’t wake her after calling 911.
Front page headlines dubbed her the “Black Widow” and, more colorfully, “Stoner Mom,” based on a rumored substance abuse problem.
After her preliminary online research, Laurie had contacted Kendra in the hope that she might appreciate the help of a major television studio to present her side of the story. Laurie liked to think that her show helped a crime victim’s family and friends find closure. It also helped those whose lives were left in limbo, never arrested or charged with a crime, but always viewed with a suspicious eye. As Kendra’s children got older, wouldn’t she want them to know who killed their father? Wouldn’t she want them to be absolutely certain that their mother had clean hands? Laurie knew how desperate she had been for answers about Greg’s murder.
But when Laurie arrived at Kendra’s house four months ago with a participation agreement for her to sign, Kendra had made it clear she wasn’t interested. She gave all the reasons Laurie had grown accustomed to hearing. She didn’t want to upset the police by suggesting that a television show might do a better job with the investigation than they had. She had finally been able to find a job and a new life without Martin, and feared that renewed attention would only trigger another wave of public scorn. And, perhaps most compellingly, she said that her children were now old enough to know if their mother was on television. “I don’t want to put them through that unless you can absolutely guarantee me that you’ll find my husband’s killer.”
Of course it was a promise that Laurie couldn’t be certain that she could keep, which meant it was a promise she couldn’t make.
It all sounded perfectly reasonable.
But now Laurie had a new piece of information.
She found Grace inside Jerry Klein’s office, adjacent to Laurie’s. Sometimes Laurie forgot that Jerry had once been a shy, awkward intern, when he first started working at the studio. She had watched as his confidence grew with each new accomplishment. Now he was Laurie’s assistant producer, and it was hard for her to imagine going to work without him.
“Grace was just telling me that Martin Bell’s parents showed up this morning,” Jerry said.
Apparently Laurie wasn’t the only one who remembered the case.
“It was certainly an interesting meeting,” Laurie said. “They seem to be under the impression that Kendra was eager to do the show. Apparently, she told them I was the one who declined the case.”
As usual, Jerry and Grace were her biggest defenders, immediately recounting Laurie’s enthusiasm about the investigation at the time.
“Why would she lie about that?” Jerry asked.
“That’s exactly what I intend to find out.”
For the first time, Laurie noticed that the show’s host, Ryan Nichols, was lingering beyond Jerry’s door. He always had a way of showing up just in time to interject himself into any situation. He also had a way of getting under Laurie’s skin.
True to form, he asked, “What are we about to find out?”
Laurie constantly had to remind herself of his credentials, which spoke for themselves: magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, followed by a Supreme Court clerkship and a coveted stint as a white collar prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Unfortunately for Laurie, however, Ryan had decided his undeniable legal abilities meant that he could launch a media career with no further experience. Laurie had trained as a print journalist for years and then worked her way up to her position as the producer of her own show.
Ryan, in contrast, had only a few talking-head gigs on cable news before landing a full-time position at the studio. In addition to serving as the host of Under Suspicion, he acted as a legal consultant to other shows and was already pitching ideas for his own programming. In the world of television, his good looks were certainly an advantage. He had sandy blond hair, wide green eyes, and a dazzling smile—and of course all of his ideas involved him in front of the camera. But what really irked Laurie was Ryan’s inability to see that his career’s largest boost had come from his uncle’s close friendship with Laurie’s boss, Brett Young. Brett was usually impossible to please, but in his eyes, everything Ryan touched was magic. Despite Ryan’s job description of “host,” Brett had made it clear that he expected Laurie to involve Ryan at every stage of the production.
“We were just talking about the Martin Bell case,” Laurie said. “The doctor who was shot in his driveway in Greenwich Village.”
Laurie had not involved Ryan when she had conducted her preliminary research into the case last fall.
“Oh, right. Had to be the wife, right? That case would be perfect for us.”
He said it as if he were the first one to think of it.
Laurie noticed Grace and Jerry exchange an annoyed glance. Their irritation with Ryan had grown over time, while Laurie had slowly come to accept Ryan’s role—as outsized as it had become.
“I had some conversations with Kendra—that’s the wife—around Thanksgiving, but she was a hard pass.”
“Because she’s guilty,” Ryan said smugly.
Laurie wanted to ask him how many times he needed to be wrong about one of their cases to begin keeping an open mind. “Well, at the time, it seemed as if she was primarily interested in protecting her children’s privacy. But now it looks like she gave her in-laws a different impression.” She quickly explained the conversation she’d had with the Bells. “My plan is to try to catch her off guard when she comes home tonight from work. Want to join me? You can be the good cop.”
“What time?”
“Five at the latest. We can’t run late.” Alex’s induction as a federal judge was scheduled for six-thirty, and Laurie was not going to let anything cause her to miss one single minute.
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll read up on the case a bit before.”
When Ryan was gone, Jerry and Grace were looking at Laurie as if they’d just seen the Hatfields and McCoys share an embrace.
“What?” Laurie said with a shrug. “If my instincts are right, Kendra lied to me the last time I saw her face-to-face. Having a former prosecutor there can’t hurt.”
As Laurie returned to her own office, she realized she’d been holding one other thing against Ryan: he wasn’t Alex Buckley, the show’s original host. Now that she and Alex were engaged, she no longer missed him at work. She was going to be with him forever. She could deal with Ryan’s imperfections.