Disturbance (7 page)

“Let me give you a hand with your gear, Jack,” Ethan said and left with him.

“Ethan, giving us privacy?” Frank asked when they were gone.

“You’re wasting the four or five minutes of it we’ll get,” I said.

Once the dogs had completed their exuberant rituals to celebrate the reunification of the pack, and Frank had cleaned up and stowed his gear, he asked me all the questions Reed had
asked and a few more, doing all he could not to make it seem like an interrogation. It really wasn’t—he wanted to be caught up, but not so that he could take over the case. I understood the way his mind worked. We both were in professions that require a person to be inquisitive, and the only way to the real answers is through the right questions.

Ethan came back to say he had walked down to the end of the street but complained there was no getting anywhere near the crime scene. He gave Frank a hopeful look, but Frank shook his head. “I’m not going to get my ass chewed out for interfering just for your sake.”

Ethan shrugged. “I wasn’t down there for my sake.”

Frank looked chagrined. “Of course. Look, thanks for coming over here last night. I owe a lot to you and Ben for that. But as much as I’m grateful, this would be the worst time for me to try to butt into Vince and Reed’s investigation.”

“Yeah, I understand. Besides, even the television news ’copters can’t get a view of it. Coroner’s got those privacy barriers up.”

We watched the late news together and saw that Ethan was right—the coroner’s office had essentially tented the car, protecting the body—and most of the car—from being seen by cameras. The television reporters didn’t have anything we didn’t know—in fact, we had more details. The police hadn’t released the information that the body was frozen, or that it was painted.

“Better check with Reed and Vince before you write anything about that,” Frank warned.

Ethan and I exchanged a look, and Frank swore under his breath but didn’t say more.

Ben came to the house to pick up Ethan. He told us that the police had no leads on the identity of the woman in the trunk, but we all knew that if none of her personal effects were in the
car, and she wasn’t a known criminal or otherwise familiar to the police, in all likelihood much more time and lots of effort would be required to find out who she was.

A good portion of that work would probably fall to Ben, since the coroner’s office often brought him in to help with any case where the body wasn’t newly dead, or where it was found in an unusual condition. He’d use his expertise as a forensic anthropologist and that of whatever team he assembled to work with him to preserve as much evidence as possible from the trunk and her remains. He’d then try to determine the victim’s identity—if not from her DNA or fingerprints, which might not be in any law enforcement–accessible database—then by studying indicators of age in her teeth and bones. He’d discover whatever her remains might tell about her general health, previous injuries or surgeries, whether she was most likely left- or right-handed, and perhaps her possible occupation or hobbies. He’d learn what he could of her dental health, and perhaps where she most likely had had any dental work done. He’d learn whether she had been injured before being killed. He’d also be looking for evidence left by her killer that might lead to that person’s identity. He’d study the style and nature of the artwork on her body, the materials used, and determine whether she had been painted before or after death.

Ben looked troubled, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him any questions—he was needed at the coroner’s office and didn’t have time to do more than pick up his gear and take Ethan home. By then, everyone was ready to call it a night.

I crawled into bed with Frank. I could feel his tension. I hadn’t wanted his homecoming to be like this. I put my arms around him and used my fingertips to tap in a pattern on his back. I was halfway through the message before he realized what I was doing. “Morse code?” he said, laughing.

I replied:
-.-- . ---

He knew Morse code, too, and I could feel him smiling in the dark. He waited as I repeated my invitation. He didn’t respond to it in code, but he clearly got the message.

Frank was still asleep when
I left for work the next morning. The day was postcard beautiful, and once I was away from the place where Marilyn Foster’s car had been parked, I spent the rest of the drive telling myself I had much to be thankful for, to cheer up, and lots more along those lines. By the time the Wrigley Building came into view, the pep talk was working. The Wrigley Building was one of those imposing old newspaper palaces, complete with gargoyles. You couldn’t look at it without knowing something important was going on inside.

When I turned down the alley to the employee parking lot, I got a shock. Something was going on, all right. The lot was full. I hadn’t seen so many cars parked there in a decade.

And oddly enough, that told me something was wrong.

I parked on the street and went in through the front doors. Geoffrey, our ancient security guard, looked up. His face was tearstained.

“Geoff?”

“Go on in, Irene. Go on in.”

Just then one of the accounting office workers came downstairs. She said, “Mr. Wrigley asked me to send you into the meeting, Geoff. I’m sorry.”

For a moment I thought he was going to refuse to go.

“What meeting?” I asked.

Her brows rose as she noticed my presence. “They’ll want you, too, Ms. Kelly. Everyone. In the room where they held the press conference.”

I walked with Geoff to the stairs. “We’re shutting down,” I
said, knowing nothing else could bring so many people into the building at one time.

He nodded. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

We took two seats at
the back. Others filed in, including Lydia, who took the empty seat on my other side. Ethan came in a moment later and sat next to her. John was standing at the front of the room, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. Wrigley asked everyone to please give him their attention. Once he had it, he handed the meeting over to one of his cousins, James Anderson, the current chairman of the publishing board. It was a good strategy, I thought. Anderson was well liked by the staff. Someone who cared but had been given power way too late to use it to save the paper.

His words were soft and measured. About our history. About efforts made to try to preserve the paper. Something about “an untenable position.” I was too numb to hear the rest of what amounted to a eulogy.

I kept telling myself I had expected this to come one day, but only then did I realize how fervently I had hoped that day would never come.

Anderson was saying something about the decision to shut down now, when they could still give everyone two months’ pay in lieu of the sixty days’ notice California law otherwise required. Someone from HR would give us more details about all of that, and insurance, pensions, and any other benefits.

If Wrigley thought he wasn’t going to have to face the wrath of his employees because his cousin delivered the bad news, he was wrong. Anderson handed the meeting back to him, saying as he did so that he was sure Wrigley wanted to spend some time answering our questions, a patently false statement. Anderson added that they were here for us, and would stay to talk things out as long as any staff member had questions.

As Wrigley took the microphone, there were plenty of angry shouts, dozens of questions he was unable to answer, and a few he was afraid to answer. He looked nervously at me a couple of times, probably expecting anything from a verbal skewering to a physical assault, but I found he seemed more insignificant and unworthy of my attention than ever before. I heard a soft, choked-back sob next to me and put an arm around Geoff’s skinny shoulders as his tears fell. There were tears on other faces, too, although I found myself unable to cry. A glance at Lydia told me she was in a state similar to my own. Numbness.

Wrigley handed the mike off to the head of HR, who said there were packets to be handed out, come and get yours when your name was called.

So I signed my name for receipt of my packet and went upstairs to gather “personal possessions only” under the watchful eyes of a set of security guards hired from an outside company. A few friends stopped me in the hallway to mention that they hoped to see me in church, which was a form of invitation to join them at Banyon’s, a local watering hole popular with the press and off-duty cops.

I walked toward my desk and came to a halt. My desk—or the one I still thought of as mine—was the only wooden desk in the newsroom. It was a plain desk, nothing fancy about it, but it had belonged to Connor O’Connor, my mentor, and the thought of parting from it seemed unbearable to me. I started to empty it out, but the more I thought of letting it be sold off to some liquidator, the more I felt certain that I had to at least try to save it. I hurried back to the room downstairs.

Almost everyone was gone or in the newsroom emptying their own desks by then. A couple of people were talking to the chairman of the board, and John was still leaning against the wall. Wrigley was ambling across the room, heading for the door, when he saw me and came to a standstill, a look of alarm
on his face. He had to be feeling guilty about something, given the way he kept reacting to me.

I walked toward him and, out of the corner of my eye, saw John straighten and begin approaching, too.

“Mr. Wrigley,” I began.

“Irene, excuse me, I’m just heading out—”

“I want to buy my desk.”

“The desk? Oh.” He looked at his shoes. “I thought perhaps you—”

“Perhaps I what?”

He glanced back at his cousin, then muttered, “I am sorry if yesterday’s press conference disturbed you in any way.”

So Wrigley had been given a reprimand. Judging from the scowl on John’s face as he approached, he was about to get another one. “It did, but it’s too late to worry about it now. So apology accepted. About the desk—how much will it cost?”

“I’m not really sure the paper will want to part with it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked in disbelief. “There is no paper.”

He turned red, then said coldly, “You want to start buying our assets? Fine.” He then named a price that was ten times my annual salary.

“Wrigley, you are such a little turd biter,” John snarled before I could reply. “Every time you open your mouth, shit falls out from between your teeth.”

“Now see here,” Wrigley said indignantly.

“You put her through hell yesterday, made her front for your last little attempt to boost your ego. Don’t you think you could be reasonable about a desk?”

“What’s going on?” a new voice asked. We turned to see Mr. Anderson approaching.

“Ms. Kelly wants to buy her desk,” John said. “Mr. Wrigley has offered to sell it to her.”

“Sell it to her?” Anderson repeated blankly.

“Oh yes.” John repeated the price, and Anderson’s brows rose.

Wrigley’s face went redder still, but he said, “It’s an antique.”

“It’s a beat-up piece of shit that you’ve tried to get rid of every year,” John snapped.

“If that’s so, Ms. Kelly,” Anderson said, turning to me, “why do you want it?”

“It was O’Connor’s,” I said.

“Ah.” He turned to Wrigley. “Winston, setting prices is really not within your authority at this time. Actually, there isn’t anything more that will be needed from you. Perhaps you should go home.”

Wrigley slouched away in defeat.

“The desk is yours, Ms. Kelly,” Anderson said.

“Yes, that’s the one I want.”

“No, I mean, the desk is yours to take home.”

“Oh, thank you. But how much—?”

“Not a cent.” He paused. “I was very fond of O’Connor myself. I know he’d want you to have it.”

“Thank you,” I said and couldn’t manage to say more.

He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You let me know if I can be of any help to you. I mean that. We were always proud of the work you and your colleagues did. I’m so very sorry we couldn’t continue.”

And I knew, perhaps in a way I hadn’t known before, that he was telling the truth, that if he could have found a way to continue publishing the
Express
, he would have done it.

He told me he’d leave word with Geoff to let me into the building whenever I wanted to pick up the desk, provided I could do so within the week.

“You’re keeping Geoff on?”

“For as long as we can,” he said.

John walked upstairs with me. “Thanks for sticking up for me,” I said.

“What are editors for?”

I could hear the bitterness beneath that. “John—”

“Oh, never mind me. I should thank you for giving me a chance to light into him. Not one tenth of what I’d really like to say to him, but you have to take your opportunities where you find them.”

“Come to church later on,” I said. “I think there will be a choir there singing that same song.”

I heard laughter from the newsroom. Ah, gallows humor. I was going to miss that. As we walked in, I heard the tail end of the next rude joke, and more laughter.

“You guys should have been downstairs just now,” John said and told them how much Wrigley wanted for my desk.

That led to impolite speculation on what Wrigley planned to do with the money.

I finished packing up my desk. As I gathered my notes from unfinished stories, I found myself wondering who would tell the story of Las Piernas now. Who would write about Marilyn Foster, or the woman in the car trunk? Those stories were sensational, so maybe someone at the television or radio stations would. But sensational murders are a very small part of what goes on in a city of half a million people.

How would the people of Las Piernas find out about the high school baseball games, or how much the new school uniforms might cost? Who would warn them that a fee hike was being proposed for use of the biggest local park? Or tell them that the mayor was using taxpayer money for family vacations? That their state assembly representative didn’t really live in the district and had defaulted on the mortgage for his sham address?

And what the hell was I going to do with myself all day?