Damage (10 page)

"You're lucky I'm hungry," she said and reached over to take the container from him. "Anyway, I wasn't talking about the food. I was asking what that stuff is all over your clothes."

Ray explained the events of the morning, taking care to arrange them to infer there had been no spare time for making phone calls or writing articles. He went light on the gorier details in deference to Becky's appetite. She picked large bits of raw onion from the chili as she listened.

"You lost the new camera?!" she blustered when he got to that part of his tale.
 

"I didn't lose it," he said. "Redmond confiscated it. What was I supposed to do?"

"Call me!" she barked. "He had absolutely no right to take it from you, especially since you were chaperoned the entire time by one of his own deputies. The only way he could justify it is if he thought you lifted it from their house. That's what I would have told him, and that's what you should have told him. For Christ's sake, Ray, you've got to use some common sense once in a while."

Ray held his tongue and seethed in his seat. If the imitation leather under him could have registered the temperature of his thoughts, it would have melted. That knot in his stomach was retying itself.

"Shit," she grumbled.

"Do you want me to call Redmond and get it back?"

Becky glared at him.
 

"No, I'll do it," she said. "You write this up properly, like you should have done this morning. Get an update on the wife's condition, call your detective friend, or your cousin, or somebody, and get a quote on the investigation. And when you're done with that you can give me a piece I can use about Lonesome Pines before the groundbreaking is ancient history. I'll run it tomorrow, assuming I can get the camera back in time."

Monday, Part IX

Life at a small-town newsroom is fairly predictable.

Each day begins quietly before sun up. A reporter, typically the one who stayed out latest the night before to cover a meeting that ran into the wee hours, shows up to begin structuring what he or she hopes will be a variety of stories on different topics discussed at that meeting. By seven o'clock, several other people wander in from the production, distribution, and advertising departments. The office is buzzing like a proper hive within another thirty minutes. As eight-thirty draws near, the ladies in advertising are working with production on the placement of last-minute advertisements, the odors of ink and chemicals overtake the building as the press cranks out the interior pages of the day's edition, and the editorial department changes from focused determination at the keyboards to a gab session. A reporter, typically the same one who arrived early with a slew of notes to type up, might be frantically clicking away to finish one last article before deadline.

To be sitting at his desk at midday trying to write an article without a looming deadline proved fruitless. When one is accustomed to the application of pressure to perform, the absence of it causes a creative vacuum. Ray could have sat there for hours, rewriting the same sentences over and over until his fingers were more numb than his brain, but those hours wouldn't result in half the quality of storytelling as twenty minutes under the weight of the clock.

Exasperated, Ray shoved the keyboard away, knocking his phone off the desk in the process. Only when replacing it did he notice the faint message light flashing. He dialed in to retrieve a message the system told him was left short after six o'clock that morning. He recognized the residential telephone number. It was his own.

"Ray?"
 

He wasn't sure how a person could slur a name with no consonants, but Jake had given it his best college try.
 

"Where are you, mother fucker! I want breakfast, bitch."

The noise of bowls, plates, cups and other sundry kitchen cabinet contents falling to the floor spiked in his ear. It didn't sound as if anything had shattered, probably helped by the fact most of Ray's kitchenware was plastic. Ray was already thinking of the best way to apologize to his neighbors for the early morning racket caused by his drunken, drug-addled friend. He hoped this time Jake had gone straight for his place, not like last time when he had banged on poor old Mr. Moore's door for fifteen minutes before realizing he had the wrong apartment. Ray spent an hour that day making excuses for Jake and trying to talk Mr. Moore out of filing a complaint with the police.

Jake swore in the background, apparently oblivious to the fact he had initiated the phone call and was leaving a message. The message continued on this way for half a minute before Ray hung up without deleting it.

Walter returned from the Greasy Spoon and took his seat two desks in front of Ray. All but one of the desks in the editorial department were lined up in a neat row, each reporter facing another's back. The exception belonged to assistant editor Charlie Lee. His desk sat at the head of the line, in a corner off to the left, facing the others. It had been Becky's station when Ray started his career at the Citizen-Gazette seven years earlier, until the end of his third year when she took over as managing editor and moved into the big office.

"Not going so good, is it?" Walter said as he read over Ray's shoulder.

"No, it still sucks," Ray groaned.

Ray's phone rang. Walter quickly grabbed the receiver. "Office of Raymond Waugh, journalist extraordinaire, recently tormented soul. How may I help you?"

"Give me that, you idiot." Ray snatched the phone from his hand. He smiled in spite of his prevailing mood. "Hello, this is Ray."

"Hey, man," Billy said.

"Hey," Ray responded. "How'd things go after I left? Redmond didn't seem too happy with either of us this morning."

"Yeah, he read me the riot act," Billy said, cutting himself short. "Anyway, it's all good now."

"Look, I'm sorry, man," Ray said. "I guess it was just a bad day for us to be hanging out."

"It's all good," Billy repeated. "Listen, Ray..."

"Have you heard anything about the wife?"

"Amy?"

"Not your wife, stupid," Ray said. "Evan Wallace's wife, Correen."

"Oh. Uh, no," Billy stammered.

"Christ, I felt so useless just waiting there for help to come," Ray said. "She kept looking up at me like she expected me to do something. I'm trying to get things done here, but I can't focus for shit. I just keep seeing her face."

"There was nothing you could've done different, Ray. She jumped from a big height and hit the ground hard."

The wording caught Ray by surprise.
 

"She didn't jump, Billy. Somebody chucked her out that window. Pritchard said so himself."

"Yeah, I heard him saying something like that to the sheriff, but he'd changed his mind after they went upstairs to check it out. I heard Pritchard myself say it looked pretty good that she must've thrown herself out."

A prickling sensation crawled across Ray's scalp from his forehead to the nape of his neck. He lifted the day's edition to see his byline on an article stating, with little room for uncertainty, Correen Wallace had been attacked and thrown to the ground. Not only did the article suck stylistically, now he was being told the information it relayed was incorrect.

"What about the husband?" Ray asked. "Did he shoot himself and then hide the gun? I mean, come on, Billy. You saw the same thing I did. That window was smashed clean out. Are you telling me she took a running start and leapt through it, glass and wood frame and all? That's bullshit."

"Well, nothing's technically official yet," Billy said. "I'm just telling you what the sheriff and Pritchard was saying. Sheriff figures she shot her husband and then tried to kill herself. They found a shotgun upstairs he figures is the one she used. Figures she's been planning this for a while, cause she made arrangements for the kids to be out of the house over two weeks ago."

"So they could celebrate their anniversary!" Ray argued. "Not reenact a scene from a Hitchcock movie."

"Look, whatever," Billy said, clearly finished with this topic and ready to move to the next one. "Have you heard from Jake?"

Ray needed a minute to process his looming predicament. None of what he had just heard made any sense to him. He couldn't reconcile the happy couple he'd seen the day before to the victims they had found that morning without factoring in an outside influence.

"Ray," Billy called. "Have you seen him?"

"Who?"

"Jake," Billy said.

"No, I haven't seen him," he answered, irritated the conversation was continuing when he had some serious ass-covering to accomplish. "He left a voicemail, though. Apparently he was ready for breakfast around six o'clock."

"Okay, thanks," Billy said. "Let me know if he shows up. Got it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, whatever."

Ray's head spun as he tried to figure out how proceed. It wouldn't be the first time the Citizen-Gazette ran a correction, but it would be the first for an article he had written. He would have to talk to Becky about it. Fortunately for him, she left the building not long after their brief meeting, carrying his cheeseburger with her as she left for her daily constitutional. He could wait for her to return and explain himself. At the time he wrote the article that had run, his source, a detective with the county sheriff's office, had told him Mrs. Wallace had been pushed. Okay, so he didn't so much say it directly as suggest it, but he had a source and that should be enough. The fact his source later had a change of heart was immaterial. But is that how Becky would see it?

His desk phone rang again. He didn't recognize the number, and he didn't feel like speaking with anyone at the moment, so he let it ring. Walter watched him not answer it. Two minutes after the ringing stopped, the little red light started flashing.

"Mr. Waugh," the message began. The caller's feeble voice sounded hollow, as though the man was unable to draw enough breath and had to pause for a shallow one after every few words. "My name is Avery Lowson. I read your article about my daughter, Correen, in today's newspaper. I want to meet with you. Immediately. I am at..."

Ray quickly grabbed a pencil and wrote Lowson's address on his desk calendar.

"...the St. Thomas Cottages, Unit C-3. I will leave your name with the lobby attendant."

The message ended and Ray deleted it. Best he could figure, he had two choices. He could hang around until Becky returned and deal with her first. It was almost twelve-thirty. He knew she would be back any minute. Or, he could head to St. Thomas and meet with Avery Lowson. There was no telling by the message he had left what the old man wanted from Ray, but the uncertainty of the outcome seemed more palatable than the certain tongue lashing he would get from Becky.

Five minutes later, Ray was walking north along Gorney Street in a misty rain to his apartment for a quick shower and a change of clothes, a copy of the day's paper in his hand.

Monday, Part X

Ray rented an apartment a little more than a mile-and-a-half from the office. Not the most convenient walk, most days, but sidewalks lined the entire way and he thought it might feel good to use the time to clear his head. A heavy mist carried along on gusting winds chilled him as he went. His thoughts remained cloudy as the skies above him.

Correen Wallace: the same woman who, according to Sheriff Redmond, allegedly shot her husband in the chest and jumped to her death, had been mingling with friends at a party and joking lovingly with her husband less than twenty-four hours earlier. He had never personally known anyone that had been a player in such a tragedy, and it would be difficult for him to argue he knew her well, if at all. Still, Ray could not accept the sheriff's hastily drawn conclusion. It seemed convenient, with the purpose of drawing the case to a close.

His stomach empty, the blood stains on his jacket wet and smearing once more due to the weather, Ray arrived at his apartment to find the front door closed and locked. Off to his right, someone raised a window in the neighboring apartment.

"The big dummy busted through your back window again," Mr. Moore called out to him. The old man's wispy gray hair flew in all directions around the top of his small head. His voice was heavy with disappointment.

"I'm sorry for the noise, Mr. Moore," Ray called back.

The fairly predictable scene before him wasn't quite so bad as he had expected. The television flickered in the dimly lit living room, but at least Jake hadn't cranked the volume. Ray assumed he must have passed out before finding anything interesting to watch. Lying face down on the sofa across from the television, his coat wrapped tightly around him like a blanket, Jake snored loudly. A sharp, vinegary odor emanated from the sleeping man as alcohol escaped through every pore of his body, mixed with traces of whatever other substance he had abused the night before. Ray left the front door open to help air out the apartment.

The kitchen looked like the scene of a rave party gone wrong. The contents of the cabinet in which he kept his plates, bowls and glasses littered the floor. To his amazement, only one of the smaller glasses had shattered. He gathered up the broken glass, careful not to cut himself again, and dumped the pieces in the trash. Everything else went in the sink to be dealt with later. Jake didn't stir through the clean up.

Ray grabbed a granola bar from another cabinet and a diet soda from the refrigerator and dropped himself into the tattered recliner next to his passed out friend. The remote balanced precariously in Jake's open hand. As he lifted it, Ray noticed a two-inch cut running along the inside of Jake's thumb that had dark, dried blood caked around it. Blood covered several of the remote buttons, as well.

"Dumbass," Ray muttered. "That's what you get for wrecking my kitchen."

Ray scanned the channels for the one that seemed the most obnoxious. He turned up the volume as loud as he thought Mr. Moore could bear and waited for a reaction from Jake. It took a minute or two, but Jake eventually lifted his head and scanned the room for the source of the noise. When he couldn't find the remote, he buried his face in the sofa cushions and pulled his arms over his head. Ray could barely make out his muffled pleas to lower the volume.