You Don't Own Me Read online

  Laurie introduced herself as the producer of Under Suspicion.

  “Dr. Robert Bell.” His handshake was firm but quick.

  His wife’s grip was barely a squeeze. “Call me Cynthia,” she said quietly.

  Laurie could see that Grace had already played hostess. They both had paper cups with cardboard sleeves to protect their hands from the hot liquid.

  “My assistant said you were here first thing this morning.”

  Dr. Bell’s eyes were icy. “To be honest, Ms. Moran, we assumed it was the only way we could be assured of a meeting with you.”

  She could tell that at least one half of the couple was already treating her as the enemy, and she had no idea why. But the only thing she knew about Robert and Cynthia Bell was that they had lost their only child to a homicide, which meant that she would go out of her way to be kind to them.

  “Please, call me Laurie. And, Dr. Bell, have a seat if you’d be more comfortable,” she added, gesturing to the unoccupied chair next to his wife. He looked at her suspiciously, but Laurie had always had the kind of demeanor that put people at ease. She could almost feel his blood pressure begin to lower as he got settled into the leather conference chair. “I assume you’re here about your son. I’m familiar with the case.”

  “Of course you are,” Dr. Bell said, sniping, and drawing a disapproving glance from his wife. “My apologies. I’m sure you’re a very busy woman. But I would certainly hope you’d at least know my son’s name, and the circumstances surrounding his horrific death. After all, we were the ones who contacted you. We wrote the letter to you ourselves, side by side, each word coming from both of us.” He reached over and held his wife’s hand on the table. “It wasn’t easy, you know, recounting that terrible night. We had to identify our only child’s body. It’s unnatural. We weren’t meant to outlive the next generation.”

  “We were childless for years,” Cynthia added. “We assumed it was never going to happen. And then, when I was forty years old, there he was. He was our miracle.”

  Laurie nodded but said nothing. Sometimes listening in silence was the most compassionate thing to be done for a murder victim’s loved ones. She knew that from personal experience.

  Cynthia cleared her throat before speaking. “We just wanted to hear it for ourselves: Why won’t you help us find our son’s killer? You’ve helped so many other families. Why isn’t our son worth the effort?”

  One of the hardest parts of Laurie’s job was wading through letters, emails, Facebook posts, and tweets from the survivors. So many unsolved homicides. People who just went missing. Their friends and families sent Laurie detailed timelines of the cases, complete with stories about the lives lost. Graduation photos, baby pictures, descriptions of the dreams that would no longer be fulfilled—sometimes it was enough to make Laurie cry. She had decided that it would do more harm than good to contact families personally when she wasn’t moving forward with their stories. But sometimes, like now, the families wanted to hear from her directly.

  “I’m so sorry.” Laurie had delivered this news so many times, but it never got easier. “It’s not a question of your son’s value. I know he had young children, and was a highly regarded physician. We only take on a few investigations per year. We have to focus on the ones where we really believe we have a chance of making progress where the police did not.”

  “The police made no progress,” Robert said. “Not even a named suspect, let alone an arrest or a conviction. Meanwhile, we have to watch Martin’s killer raise his children.”

  He didn’t need to use the suspect’s name for Laurie to know that he was talking about their former daughter-in-law. The details of the case were fuzzy now, but Laurie remembered that the wife had been unhappy in the marriage and appeared to be withdrawing money for unexplained purposes.

  “That’s actually the very worst part of it,” Cynthia added. “It’s bad enough to live with the fact that Kendra killed our son and got away with it. But grandparents basically have no legal right to see their grandchildren. Did you know that? We’ve had lawyers look at it from every angle. Until some court of law holds her responsible for Martin’s death, she has complete say-so over the kids. Which means we have to be nice to that woman, just to keep Bobby and Mindy in our lives. It’s sickening.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Laurie said again, feeling like a broken record. “It’s never an easy decision for us.”

  The mail through which Laurie routinely waded had taught her that the country was home to thousands and thousands of unsolved cases. Mysteries waiting to be solved. But many of them were mysteries with no leads. No loose threads to be picked. No holes to be dug further. For Laurie to do her job, she needed clues to follow. Laurie had pulled the Bells’ letter about their son’s case because it had seemed promising. It also had the added benefit of being a local case. She tried to travel as little as possible during Timmy’s school year.

  But, unfortunately, the case turned out not to be a good match after all. Under Suspicion required a suspect or suspects who were willing to go on camera and attest to their innocence. On television, there were no police around, no defense lawyers, and no Miranda rights, only tough questions. Not every suspect was willing to go along.

  “As the title of the show suggests,” Laurie tried to explain, “we can’t make much headway without cooperation from the people who have been living under the shadow of suspicion in the years that have passed since the crime.”

  “What other suspects are there?” Robert demanded to know.

  “That’s the type of thing we explore once we believe we might be moving forward with production.”

  “But you just suggested that was the reason you couldn’t use our son’s case. You needed cooperation from the people under suspicion, so to speak.”

  “Yes.”

  “So who are the other people? Maybe we can get them on board.”

  “We never got to that point, I’m afraid.” Laurie felt as if they were speaking in circles, like a bad version of “Who’s on First.” It had been obvious to Laurie, both from the Bells’ letter and a cursory review of press coverage, that any reinvestigation of Martin Bell’s murder would require the cooperation of his widow, Kendra. Had she been willing to participate, Laurie would have worked with her, the police, and other witnesses to identify alternative suspects and attempt to gain their participation as well. But once Kendra Bell made it clear that she was adamantly opposed to appearing on Under Suspicion, Laurie had moved on to another case. She did not understand why the Bells were so confused by this.

  “Kendra was our one and only suspect,” Robert said. “The police never named her as a suspect, but they certainly led us to believe that she was the leading contender. What more do you need?”

  The fog suddenly lifted, and Laurie got a tickle in her stomach. She realized the source of the confusion in the room.

  “And you think Kendra’s still willing to participate?” Laurie asked, testing her theory.

  “Absolutely,” Cynthia blurted, her eyes brightening with hope. “She was very upset that you took all these months to make a decision, only to turn her down. Oh, please, tell us that you’ll reconsider.”

  Laurie smiled politely. “I can’t make any promises. But let me take another look at the case, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.”

  Laurie hadn’t taken months to make a decision, and she certainly had never turned the case down. Kendra Bell had lied to Robert and Cynthia, and Laurie was determined to learn why.

  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 g
randfather 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.

  5

  Caroline told Bobby that the five-minute warning she had given him on his after-school “screen time” had passed. He snuck in a few additional moves on the cart-racing game he was playing, but otherwise complied with the unspoken request of her outstretched hand.

  He handed her the tablet and then joined his sister, who was content to sit on the sofa and work on a puzzle she had successfully put together dozens of times before. They had always been so different. Even as a toddler, Mindy seemed to live inside her own thoughts, while her brother Bobby was always seeking outside entertainment.

  As she passed the front bay window, Caroline spotted a handful of tourists clustered on the sidewalk below, appearing to examine the unoccupied driveway intensely. Their tour guide was lanky and had his long hair pulled into a “man bun” on top of his head. He wore his usual uniform of baggy black clothing and bright orange tennis shoes. He’d been coming around twice a week for almost four months now. He called the excursion the “Big Apple Crime Tour.”