Friday Edition, The (4 page)

When they reached her car, Wyatt put his hand lightly on Sam’s shoulder.

“Sorry about your sister, Sam. Jonathan’s told me lots about you both. It sounds like you were very close.”

Sam tried to manage a smile, but found it difficult. “Yes, we were.”

“I understand Robin was drinking and that may have been why she fell,” Wyatt said.

His comment sent an immediate surge of anger through her and the desperate message on her answering machine from Robin flickered into her consciousness.
She was on to something and someone was after her.
“That’s not true,” Sam said firmly.

Wyatt looked from Jonathan to Sam and said, “We understand how you feel. The cause of death hasn’t been determined yet, but when we know, you’ll be the first to hear, Sam. We have people working on it.”

She nodded as if that was expected of her, but Wyatt’s words brought little comfort. She had been watching Brady from the corner of her eye and the moment she dreaded had arrived. Sam felt familiar stirrings begin to move in her chest and her stomach felt thick with knots as Brady started in their direction. When he reached them, he acknowledged Todd and Jonathan, then his father, but did not look at Sam.

“Dad, I’m ready to go to the car,” Brady said, still looking at Wyatt.

Sam kept her attention fixed on Brady. He looked calm and unimposing, a pear-shaped, soft-spoken man, with a beleaguered way of laying his head to one side. Sam thought Brady always looked as if he was perpetually on the brink of a sigh.

Before Wyatt could answer Sam said, “Brady, I’m sorry I haven’t called, but it’s been so hectic and I’ve been ...”

Before she could finish her sentence, Brady pounced on her with an assault of words. “No!” he shouted. “You’re not sorry! You’re not! It’s all your fault Robin’s dead! It’s all your fault! Robin’s dead and I hate you! I hate you! I wish
you
were dead. You …” he pointed at the open grave, “should be down there, not Robin! It’s all your fault. You’re nothin’ but a drunk and you couldn’t help her even if you tried!”

Brady’s ears were glowing red and his cheeks were flushed with fury. Before he could say another word, his father intervened. “Brady! That’s enough! Go to the car!”

Brady ignored his father’s command and continued his verbal barrage. Sam stood mutely, biting her bottom lip. Jonathan and Todd watched Brady in surprised silence, experiencing a side of him that they had never known. “And you weren’t going to call me! You weren’t! You’re a liar!” Brady shouted. Those who remained after the services had now turned and were watching Brady’s outburst with growing interest. He suddenly grew quiet. “Robin needed you,” he whimpered softly and his eyes were glassy with tears. “Robin needed you. She … she needed you.”

His words reached Sam’s soul, finding places that yawned deep and wide, where few people, including her, had ever visited. His words found a place, dropped anchor and settled. She felt as fragile as thin ice. She could hardly hold herself up as she watched Brady storm toward the Caprice. Todd, Jonathan and Wyatt were speechless and watched helplessly with Sam as Brady reached the car, opened the door and fell inside. He slammed the door so hard the car shook.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Wyatt said. “He’s upset about Robin.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes.

“I’d better get over there and calm him down,” Wyatt said before looking at Jonathan. “I’ll be in touch.”

As Wyatt was about to retreat, Sam’s pager chirped loudly, capturing everyone’s attention. The men silently stood on as Sam fumbled for it. They watched as she read the message several times, moving her lips as she read. She looked at them, feeling her face flush with heat. “Sam,” Wyatt asked. “Are you all right?

Sam had enough sense not to say anything. She was determined not to let anyone see her surprise, and hoped she was not failing miserably at masking her emotions.

“Sam? What is it? You’re pale. Are you all right?” Jonathan asked and put a reassuring hand on her elbow to steady her.

“It’s … it’s a … nothing,” she stammered. “Just something I need to check on later.”

Sam glared at Jonathan as she saw him trying to catch a glimpse of the message and folded her hands around her pager. “Would you please just leave!” she said and pulled away from his grasp.

Jonathan and Wyatt left and walked toward the Caprice. Sam was shaking so hard inside that she could hardly stand. Her hands trembling, she clipped the pager to her waistband, her worst fears confirmed. The text message in the phone’s screen was etched in her mind:

Your sister’s death was not an accident

Trust me

Todd put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You’re shaking, Sam. Are you sure you’re all right?”

She ignored his question and crossed her arms tightly across her chest, looking at the green awning covering the hole over Robin’s grave. The folding chairs were empty now, turned this way and that. Someone would come soon to fill the hole with dirt. She closed her eyes and turned away. It was something she did not want to witness.

“Want to get a cup of coffee?” Todd asked.

Sam shook her head and managed to turn the thin line of her lips into a small smile. “I just want to go home.”

On the way home from the funeral Sam was thinking so intently that she couldn’t have begun to sort everything out. One phrase rang, like a bell, over and over.

Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.

The anonymous text message had confirmed what Sam had known almost from the beginning: Robin had been murdered.
But who wants my trust?

And how could she trust anyone? The text message at the cemetery was unnerving, but the first message
—
the voice mail that came from Robin on Christmas Eve
—
set her on edge.
Robin needed help. She must have sent me a message Christmas Eve and I didn’t know it.

Sam pulled to the side of the road to check the number again, to make certain it was Robin’s home phone number. One long dash and another number followed it:

555-8809—911.

911, Sam thought.
The three numbers spun around in her head like a whirlpool.

“Something was urgent. Robin was trying to tell me something,” she said aloud.

She thought of Brady’s outburst at the cemetery.
You’re a drunk.
Many people had called her a drunk, but not Brady. Never Brady. Maybe it was because of Robin, but he had always treated her kindly, though she suspected he had never much cared for her.

A drunk.
“What does he know?” Sam said as she steered her Mustang onto Sixth Avenue. “So I like to have a few drinks once in awhile. Big deal. It helps to take the edge off life. So what? What the hell’s wrong with that? I don’t have to have a drink every single day.” She drove in silence a moment, fuming. “And now you’re talking to yourself, Sam. Do drunks talk to themselves, too?”

She realized she was griping the steering wheel hard. She took a deep breath and relaxed her grip. The drive gave her time to think. It was as if Brady’s words had opened a floodgate, and she allowed thoughts to creep in that she usually kept at bay. Nothing seemed to work anymore. She was having more bad days than good. She had lost track of the times she had become aware of herself at the wheel of her car, staring at her apartment building, wondering how she had made it home alive. Relief would flood over her that she hadn’t hurt someone in an accident, or worse.

Then there were times that she would wake up at home, often on the floor, and not know how she got there. She began to wonder lately how much longer she’d have her job at the
Grandview Perspective
. Only last week she was trying to write an article and couldn’t remember her source’s name. As if that wasn’t enough, she had filed the story only to have her editor send it back. She had the name of the company spelled two different ways. That’s what got her into trouble at the
Denver Post
.

Sam ran through the examples in her mind with detached abandonment as she drove by the liquor store a few blocks from home. She didn’t stop. She turned on the radio. A button on the radio dial was programmed to her favorite oldies station. One of her sister’s favorite songs was playing. Sam’s gloomy mood brightened and she turned the volume up as loud as it would go. She smiled widely and began to sing along softly at first, her fingers tapping lightly against the steering wheel. Then she couldn’t help herself and began to sing louder. Before she knew it, she was snapping her fingers and singing at the top of her lungs. The song faded and Brady’s angry words came rushing back. They were deafening. She turned off the radio.
Robin needed you.

“I know she did, Brady, I know she did,” Sam said and her smile turned to tears and she did nothing to stop them from rolling down her cheeks.

Sam pulled into the numbered slot behind her apartment building, switched off the lights and turned the key. The engine died. She sat still in the seat listening as the car settled. She remembered the graveyard shift she had spent once at the Denver Police Department’s emergency dispatch center. The endless calls for help; the constant, calm response from dispatchers:
“911. What is your emergency?”

Sam opened the car door, swung her legs out and stood up. “Robin,” she said as she shut the door, “what was your emergency?”

Robin had been with the Truman County District Attorney’s office going on four years. When she first started as an assistant DA, she had given Sam
the code to her office and a spare key. Tonight, both would come in handy. Sam felt as if sludge were moving through her veins as she drove to the DA’s office. It was after 9 p.m. when she steered her Mustang into the parking lot. Sam knew from what Robin had told her not long after she had started at the DA’s office that the security guard would be taking his cigarette break about that time. He would be in the employee smoking area, so the main lobby would be deserted. From her Mustang, she could see that the guard was gone and the lobby was empty.

She got out of her car feeling as if Robin had been gone forever, not just a week. The raw wind did nothing to improve her spirits. She cursed the wind and hurried to the building. She punched the code in and let herself inside. She wore tennis shoes and hurried silently toward the elevators. She pressed the up arrow. A car arrived within seconds and Sam stepped inside. She punched the button, the floor number illuminated and the door slid shut. She checked her watch. It was 9:15 p.m. when she stepped from the elevator. She walked on cat’s feet toward Robin’s office. Despite the thick carpet the silence seemed to magnify every step she took.

Robin’s office door was closed. Sam wrapped her hand around the knob, but hesitated. She took a deep breath and held it as she tried the door. It was unlocked. Quickly stepping inside, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The air in the room was stale and Sam guessed that the office door had probably been closed all week.

The blinds were drawn slightly. Sam saw that Robin’s desk was spotless and that her black leather chair was facing the foothills. Sam thought of her own desk filled with piles of newspapers, reporter’s notebooks, files for stories and coffee cups stacked anywhere she could find room. Robin used to tease Sam about the way she kept her workspace. Sam said a reporter’s trademark was a messy desk.

Sam stayed in the doorway, afraid to move. A telephone ringing in a nearby office startled her and she turned in the direction of the sound. She exhaled, realizing that she had been holding her breath. She stepped further into Robin’s office and closed the door with a soft click. She locked the door and became aware of her heart pounding in her chest. She felt like a spy on a secret mission. She was momentarily safe now, behind enemy lines.

Sam moved toward Robin’s desk, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as she crossed the carpet. She sat in Robin’s chair and caught sight of the two photos on the desk. One showed the sisters standing shoulder to shoulder on a bridge over the Arno River, the other showed Robin and Brady at an office Christmas party.

Sam tried to open the center drawer. It was locked, but she knew where Robin kept the key. She reached beneath the drawer where Robin kept it hanging on a small nail. As she reached for the key, several pieces of tattered newspaper, scattered on the floor next to the trashcan, Distracted her. “Well, well,” she whispered as she collected the snippets of paper.

She set the paper on the desk to smooth out the wrinkles. “It looks like some kind of a news report,” she said softly and frowned as she studied the newspaper article.

One section of the newsprint was in small block letters typed in bold:

Hundreds of Accounts Frozen Across The C...

Sam’s frown deepened. The rest of the sentence was gone. She smoothed the wrinkles from the second piece of newspaper and felt a surge of uneasiness. She scanned the article slowly, moving her index finger carefully beneath the words.

“Hundreds of bank accounts, some holding as much as $400 million in Colombian and Mexican drug cartel money, were frozen yesterday. The move has been viewed by law enforcement experts as a dividend from the U.S. attack on Panama.

The federal government announced that it had blocked access to 684 bank accounts, mostly in New York and Florida. Officials requested transaction records from 70 more accounts as part of a massive probe into the flow of drug money in and out of the United States...”

Sam arched an eyebrow. Her apprehension rose a notch. “When was yesterday?” She read on.

“Drug cartel accounts were traced to banks in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Federal officials have noted that there was no evidence linking any of the banks with solicitation of drug money. Federal officials also said that some banks in America were being investigated.

Three local banks—First Security Bank, the National Bank of Grandview and Smith National Bank—have accounts that federal authorities were planning to investigate.

In Miami yesterday, federal agents issued subpoenas to 87 banks, ordering them either to block transfer of funds from accounts or to supply all records for these acco...”

“Damn!” she said and read the tattered pieces again, but saw nothing else written on the page.
Robin, I want to help you, but how? Tell me how?
She grabbed the trashcan, pulled it within reach and dumped the rest of the contents on the floor. She scooped up the pieces of paper and put them on the desk. Slowly and precisely she began to smooth out the remaining pieces of the newspaper. Within fifteen minutes, she had reassembled most of the jigsaw puzzle.

“… Eventually, prosecutors will file civil forfeiture papers to seize any money found in the accounts. Similar subpoenas were being served on more than 50 New York City banks.

The actions were tied to a three-year federal investigation known as Operation Iceberg. It involved Justice and Treasury department agents in several states.

One part of that investigation led to indictments in several American cities this past spring. Charges included drug smuggling and illegal money laundering.

An affidavit in that case, unsealed yesterday, outlined how the operation worked …”

Her frustration mounting, Sam looked again in the trashcan, but it was empty. She glanced at the paper again. She was surprised to see that she had missed something. A name was printed on the lower right hand corner of the article and underlined twice.

Sam recognized the familiar script. Robin had written the name,
Roy Rogers.

The Silver Screen Cowboy?

She half-scanned the page looking for references to Trigger and Dale Evans. She had a hunch, however, that this had nothing to do with a western and this Roy Rogers was not one of the good guys.

Sam last talked to Robin the morning of Christmas Eve. Robin said she planned to leave the office by two that afternoon. They were having an office party later that day and then she was going home. Sam knew that Robin would be home alone Christmas Eve. She closed her eyes, rested her elbows on the desk and gently massaged her temples. She didn’t know if this was a new headache, or the nagging one that had been with her since Christmas morning. She shrugged her shoulders and forced herself to sit up straight. She grabbed the key and unlocked the center desk drawer.

A brief search netted a
Denver Post
newspaper article centered in the middle of the drawer. A grainy black-and-white of two Denver police officers taking a man away in handcuffs accompanied the article.

Sam recognized the reporter’s byline, W. Robert Simmons. Just seeing the name made her lip curl slightly.
Walter
was his real name, but he went by his middle name. They never got along when she worked there and nothing had changed. She read the bold-faced headline that spread across the top of the page:

11 Arrested, $1 million Seized in Cocaine Investigation

A deckhead explained more of the article:

Denver International Airport hub for transfer

of drugs from Colombia to Cheyenne

She read eagerly, her eyes moving quickly across the page. The article reported that officials were calling the drug bust one of the largest cocaine investigations in the Rocky Mountain region in recent years. Twenty-two pounds of the drug had been seized at DIA. The street value totaled more than $1 million. The seizure had come after the arrest of several street-level dealers, capping a two-year drug investigation. After entering the United States, drugs were shipped from Los Angeles to Denver and Greeley. Simmons’ article reported that the Wyoming capital was also a major destination point for the shipments.

As Sam read, she remembered that Jonathan once told her about one of the biggest drug investigations the Metro Area Drug Task Force Unit had successfully handled. As the lead officer for the unit, Jonathan was proud of his efforts on that investigation. The Metro Area Drug Task Force investigators broke a drug smuggling ring that had been operating from the Truman County Airport.

She remembered he said that his team of investigators had used electronic intercept devices to listen to their suspects’ conversations and learned that they were disguising drug deals with electronic codes punched into their pagers. Hard to imagine now with smart phones and the like that people still used pagers, but Jonathan always used to tell her that they had their place in the drug-dealing world.

He told Sam they had capped that drug investigation after a tip that sixty-five pounds of cocaine could be found stashed in the cockpit of a small jet that had flown to the county airport from Latin America. Sam recalled Jonathan had told her that the informant knew everything there was to know about the smuggling operation, right down to the details of the 100-pound bricks of cocaine wrapped in black plastic and stuffed in the jet’s overhead panel. One of W. Robert Simmons’ stories, she remembered, reported the street value of that cocaine was almost $3 million.

The article Sam found in Robin’s desk had the same story line, but a different day and a different drug bust with a different street value. She folded the article and put it in her jacket pocket. Then she ran her hand along the inside of the drawer and hit a blunt object. She grasped it and pulled it into the light.

It was a pager. She shook her head and smiled. For a moment she did not realize the implications of the pager, then she was seized with a sudden burst of fear so bleak and powerful that she was unprepared for her own reaction. She rested her hands flat on the desk to steady herself.
Was Robin murdered over a drug deal gone wrong?
Was she blackmailing someone? Did she know something she shouldn’t have?

Sam felt her fear beginning to get out of control so she forced her attention back to the pager. She pressed the display button. The pager responded with only one number.

555-1618

She did not recognize the number. She picked up the phone and dialed, but quickly disconnected the call. She would call later, from home.

She searched the rest of Robin’s desk but found nothing. She clipped the pager to her sweatpants, slipped quietly from the office and hurried toward the fire exit, where she knew she could leave the building without being seen.

The cold night air took her breath away. The chill filled her with a sense of relief to be out of the building. She hurried to her Mustang, and when she was safely inside, she removed the crumbled pieces of paper from her jacket pocket. Something in one of the paragraphs had set off an alarm within her earlier. She scanned the paragraphs until she reached the words she wanted. Then she held her breath and read and reread them.

“The National Bank of Grandview.”