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“I’m surprised Barbieri didn’t show up himself.” Arnett peered down the road as if he might materialize.
“He’s in Maine, attending his father’s funeral.” Hanson turned to Jo. “Hayes’ skepticism aside, Sandra just got the indictment for Ronnie Loren. He has a strong motive to want her dead.”
“Ronnie Loren?” Arnett asked. “The guy responsible for ninety percent of the fentanyl and iso in western Mass?”
“That’d be the one,” Hanson said.
Jo took a deep breath. “It’s possible, I suppose. But if this is a drug-lord hit, a sniper hidden in the woods would be safer. Even if they were trying to send a message with an execution, it’s strange they shot her first,thenblindfolded her.”
“Maybe they were trying to throw us off?”
“Could be. But everything I’ve heard about Loren, he’s smart enough to know that just because he takes out an ADA, an investigation of that magnitude isn’t just going to fall apart.”
“So, what are you thinking?” Hanson asked.
“The up-close nature of this feels more like revenge after the fact than someone trying to stall a case. We’ll also need to take a look at the other cases she’s currently prosecuting, and any that have wrapped recently. Has anybody threatened her, anything like that?”
“Defendants never put us on their Christmas card lists, but nothing specific.” Hanson held out the folder he was carrying. “I brought a list of her current cases, and her logins for her work systems. How far are you going to go back?”
Jo glanced at Arnett. “As far back as we need to. But my guess would be two, three years?”
“Sounds about right,” he said. “Anything farther than that, it seems strange they’d suddenly act out now.”
“Unless it’s someone who was recently released from prison, so we’ll check that too,” Jo said.
“I’ll get you access to her paper files too,” Hanson said.
“We also have to consider this has nothing to do with work. I hear she divorced recently?” Jo asked.
Hanson’s brows rose. “Yes, and despite her usual circumspection, I overheard a few heated conversations. The divorce wasn’t his idea, and he wasn’t happy about it.”
“Any idea why she wanted it?”
“Same old.” Hanson shrugged. “You know how it is with the kind of work we do.”
Jo nodded. Long hours. Heavy workload. Facing the worst in human nature every day, and having to make a choice to bring the horrors you’d seen home and inflict them on the person you love, or bottle it all up to protect them, which inevitably pushed them away and created a pressure-cooker of unprocessed emotions that leaked out in some unhealthy way—most traditionally, alcohol abuse and difficulty with personal relationships. Jo had managed to avoid the former, but had plenty of struggles with the latter.
“Any idea why she went in for early retirement?” Arnett asked.
Hanson’s eyes shot to Racinsky and his voice dropped. “She told me she needed to get out while she still believed in the justice system.”
Jo dropped her voice, too. “Was she referring to something specific?”
“Not that I know of. When she told me she was leaving, she waved me into her office, closed the door, then pulled out a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Told me over three fingers that she’d ‘had it.’ Guilty men going free, innocent men going to prison, hundreds upon hundreds of victims she tried to help but couldn’t. Said the nightmares that came to her at night were starting to take over.”
The desperation in the words tugged at Jo. She had nightmares of her own where injustice was a tsunami crashing down on the legal system’s fragile attempts to maintain order.
“Got it.” She cleared her throat. “If you can keep your ear to the ground, we’d appreciate it. We’ll do everything we can on our end, and we’ll give you regular updates.”
Hanson nodded grimly, his voice tight. “Much appreciated. Sandra was a damned good ADA. Whoever did this, I want them locked up and the cell soldered shut.”
* * *
As Hanson drove away, Jo pulled out her phone. “I’m alerting Lopez that we’ll need her help going through everything as soon as possible. Work accounts and schedule, cell phone records, and Sandra must have a laptop somewhere.”
“Isn’t Lopez off somewhere with her boyfriend?”
“Yep, they went to some B&B up in Maine. But this is urgent, and with one of our ADAs involved, she’ll want to take the lead on anything tech related anyway. She’s not going to trust anyone else with this.”
