Front Page Fatality (10 page)

“So you said in your message,” Simmons said. “Do you mind if I ask you how you know about that?”

“I do, actually.” So that’s why he’d returned my call. “I can’t reveal my source on this story. But I am wondering if you have any comment on your investigation.”

“The situation is being investigated by internal affairs for possible officer involvement, but we don’t know anything definitive yet,” he said a little stiffly.

Strike one.

“Captain, I know you’re frustrated. I can imagine your job is pretty stressful, and I’m really not trying to make it worse.” If the sympathy plea had worked on Agent Starnes, it could work on anyone. “I’m just trying to do mine, that’s all.”

Silence. I held my tongue, knowing this game well: he who speaks first loses.

Simmons hauled in a deep breath. “I can appreciate that, ma’am, but I need you to understand this is a very sensitive matter.”

Strike two. I had one tactic left.

“Yes, but the taxpayers who pay your salary have a right to know what’s going on. I’m not the only person in town who thinks so, or I wouldn’t know about it in the first place.”

More crickets. Another long breath.

“Look, lady,” he said. “This has everybody upstairs convinced the four horsemen are on their way or some shit, pardon my French. I’m sorry—no comment.”

A swing and a miss, and the two most dreaded words in the English language for the out. I thanked Simmons for his time and hung up, tapping the nail of my index finger on the handset. He confirmed the theft, but I wanted more than that. Though given his position, I supposed I should be thankful he’d even called back.

I glanced at the file Mike gave me. Gavin Neal. The attorney who’d been in the evidence room on Sunday. Assuming he wasn’t busy stashing four hundred thousand dollars in drug money, maybe he’d talk to me. Lawyers were generally easier to pump for quotes than cops.

I dialed the CA’s office and found Neal in the robot-voiced directory. And got his voicemail. Reeling off my name and phone number, I wondered if my aversion to checking messages stemmed from having to leave so many of them.

I cradled the phone and stared at the log from the evidence locker. The longer I stared, the fuzzier the lines became, until something finally jumped out at me. Neal’s signature was scribbled hastily. So hastily, someone went back and printed his name next to the scrawl. If I were planning to make off with half a million dollars, I’d be in a hurry, too.

I wondered if my friend DonnaJo, who was also a prosecutor, might be able to help me track down Neal before deadline. I called her cell and dispensed with the pleasantries quickly, asking if she knew him.

“He’s one of our best attorneys, Nichelle,” she said. “A great guy, and a damn smart lawyer. Very charismatic—juries love him. I just cannot believe this rumor that he’s a crook. Anyone who knows this man knows he’s not a thief.”

My eyebrows went up.

“Jump to conclusions much, counselor?” Not that I hadn’t, but she seemed pretty defensive. “I think they just wanted to question him.”

“Which would be no big deal, if he were around to question. The grapevine has it the cops went to pick him up and his wife reported him missing. He never went home after he went to the PD yesterday. I hear she’s pretty freaked. Their kid has some sort of medical condition, so Gavin never misses her calls.”

My thoughts careened in several directions at once. Part of what I loved about covering crime were the puzzles embedded in the stories, but this one was getting more complicated than the three-dimensional Capitol Building my mom sent for my last birthday. It had frustrated me to the brink of throwing it out half-finished, and I never attempted another.

Now the lawyer was missing? Did a family man with a successful career really take off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in evidence and not even tell his wife? Or was the wife lying?

Medical condition meant medical bills. And prosecuting isn’t where the big bucks are in the legal game. Sounded like a motive to me.

I cleared my throat.

“Hey, DonnaJo,” I said, running a finger over the evidence locker sign-in. “Do you have any idea why Neal would have been at the PD on a Sunday?”

“I go up there sometimes, if there’s evidence I want to look at again when I’m prepping for court,” she said.

“How long would it take you to get me a list of the cases he’s working on?” I asked. “The PD isn’t talking, and I want this for my piece today.”

“About an hour. I have a hearing.”

“Can you also see if there’s anyone he put in prison who’s gotten out recently?”

“Sure. It might take a bit longer, but I’ll send you both. If you’re going to run them, they didn’t come from me, though.”

“No worries. The courthouse fairy brought them to me.”

I thanked her and hung up.

Glancing toward Bob’s door, I got up to go ask if he wanted a separate piece on the attorney by way of the soda machine. I decided as I ambled along, the condensation from my Coke bottle mingling with the sweat breaking out on my hands, that my best bet was to lay out the facts for him as lightly as I could, and ask him if he thought the attorney’s disappearance warranted its own headline. Writing about a lawyer, I didn’t want to get in hot water with legal for tying him to the missing evidence if there was a reason I shouldn’t.

I kept my eyes on the mottled brown carpet as I walked through Bob’s door, my nerves overriding my manners and making the knock more cursory than usual. Perching on the edge of my seat, I began listing the latest developments in my story before I looked at my editor, who was slumped over in his chair, barely breathing.

7.

In a heartbeat

“Bob!” I knocked over the wastebasket and pushed a tape dispenser and a bottle of white-out off the desk dragging Bob’s heft from the chair, which crashed into the wall when I kicked at the casters under it to get it out of the way.

Once he was on his back on the floor, I knelt and popped his cheek with my palm, rapid-fire style.

“Bob!” I shouted, my nose inches from his. My hand left a red mark on his otherwise bloodless skin.

He didn’t move, his breathing still shallow.

“Help!” I turned my head in the general direction of the door I couldn’t really see from behind the desk.

“HEY!” I bellowed in my best press conference voice. “In Bob’s office. Someone help! We need an ambulance!” Damn. Mid-morning on a Monday was not the best time to find newsroom staff in the office.

“Nichelle?” Shelby’s voice came from near the doorway.

“Shelby, thank God.” I’d have been glad to see Adolf Hitler himself right then if he knew how to call the paramedics. “Over here, behind the desk.

“Call 9-1-1. Then go get someone who can help with CPR, just in case he stops breathing.” I barked the orders automatically, having been through this more than once when my mom was weak from her chemo.

For the first time ever, Shelby didn’t argue with me or offer a smartass retort. She gaped at Bob for a split second and then snatched up the phone, giving the operator the building’s address before she sprinted out into the newsroom.

She returned shortly, hauling Eunice behind her.

“Christ on a cracker, what’s going on in here?” Eunice’s golden brown eyes widened as they studied Bob, and she laid a hand on my shoulder. “Shelby said you needed help with CPR, but he’s breathing.”

“I just want to make sure it stays that way,” I said, stroking Bob’s hand and meeting Eunice’s gaze as she gripped the edge of Bob’s desk and eased herself onto the floor next to his legs. “His pulse is thready. His breathing is getting worse. Shelby called an ambulance. This looks like a cardiac something-or-other. Or maybe a stroke.”

I pinched my eyes shut, praying for the heart attack. People survived them every day. A stroke…well, what that might do to my quick-witted editor was too horrible to contemplate.

“Don’t you worry, sugar. The Good Lord don’t want Bob up there giving Him orders. It’ll be just fine.” Eunice reached out and patted my knee as I laid my fingers over Bob’s carotid artery and stared at my Timex.

“Hang on, chief,” I whispered. “The cavalry’s on its way.”

Just then, shouting from the newsroom heralded the paramedics’ arrival. They brought a small gang of onlookers from our floor, comprised of section editors and copy desk folks. Most of the people in the building continued about their Monday with no idea that our resident journalistic legend needed medical attention, sprawled on carpet that still stank faintly of cigarettes from the days when chain-smoking and reporting went together like champagne and strawberries.

I took two steps backward, willing away the pricking in the backs of my eyes that meant tears were coming. 

“He’ll be fine,” I said, my nails digging into my palm. “He’ll be just fine.” A couple of deep breaths dispelled the waterworks.

Shelby whimpered, and I looked around to thank her for her help and found her burying her face in the managing editor’s shirtfront, sniffling as he patted her back.

“Are you all right, sugar?” Eunice asked me, watching the medics lift our boss onto a gurney.

“He was slumped in the chair when I came in.” I cleared my throat. “I got him onto the floor so his airway would be less constricted.”

“Great land of plenty.” She folded her arms over her soft chest and shook her head. “I just saw him at the meeting. He was fine.”

“Obviously not,” I said. “But he will be. He has to be.”

The medics started for the door.

“What do you think?” I asked the one closest to me.

“Looks like a heart attack. I can’t say anything for sure, though,” she said, not looking up from her watch on Bob’s heart rate and oxygen level. “We’re taking him to St. Vincent’s. Has anyone called his family?”

“He doesn’t really have one,” Eunice said. “His wife’s been gone three years now, and he doesn’t have any children.”

Both medics nodded as they rolled Bob, still unconscious, through the onlookers.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He did, too, have a family. Just like me, the
Telegraph
was his family. And I’d be damned if he was going to wake up in the hospital alone. I stepped toward the door and Eunice put a hand on my back.

“You going to watch after him, sugar?”

I turned slightly and smiled, blinking at the threatening tears again.

“We’re his family.” I said simply.

She wrapped my left hand in her arthritis-twisted fingers and nodded. “You’re damned right we are. Give him our love when he comes to. And let me know if you need me to do anything.”

I packed up my things and turned into the hospital parking lot less than ten minutes later.

I had grown up without a father or a grandfather, and I’d always thought I didn’t need either in my life. Then I came to Richmond with no job and no friends, and Bob hired me. After his wife died, he found himself as orphaned and out of place as I sometimes still felt. That kinship, coupled with our fondness for each other, had forged a bond as strong as one shared by any blood relatives. Sure, he gave me hell about deadlines and scoops, but that was his job. I knew he liked me, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for him.

I left the car at the curb, tow away zone signs be damned, and rushed through the sliding glass doors, accosting the first white coat I saw.

“You have to check in with the front desk before you can see him,” the doctor said, raising an eyebrow in the direction of the fingers I’d curled around his arm. I ignored the look, but thanked him over my shoulder as I bolted for the desk.

I tried my best to be patient with the harried clerk, but it seemed to take hours before she glanced in my direction, and when she finally did, she flashed a halfhearted smile that looked out of place on her perky face. “I’ll be right with you.”

I fidgeted as I waited, my thoughts running to the weeks I’d spent at Parkland Memorial with my mom. But she was fine now. Making bridal dreams come true every day. Bob would be back to glaring at my tardiness soon enough. I refused to entertain another option.

By the time the clerk began typing information into the computer for the fifth person who’d walked up after me, I was over polite waiting. Glancing around at a roomful of people who were caught up in their own problems and paying me absolutely no mind, I edged to the end of the long counter and slid a black clipboard off the edge of it, then turned toward the doors to the treatment area.

Bob shared a theory with me once that clipboards are the most commanding of office supplies, instantly lending an air of authority to anyone carrying them.

“I hope you’re right, chief,” I muttered, flattening myself against the wall outside the secured double doors.

When a tiny redheaded woman carrying a sleepy toddler came out, I slipped inside. Straightening my shoulders and ramrodding my spine, I kept my eyes on the clipboard and walked to the back edge of the nurse’s station. A dozen or so women and men in scrubs milled about, talking. Hanging near the corner, mostly out of sight, I scanned the whiteboard of patients’ last names, doctors, and room numbers. Jeffers, no doctor name, room twelve.

White-knuckling the clipboard, I strode down the hallway, not making eye contact with anyone. And it worked. Either Bob was right about the power of the clipboard, or everyone was too busy to notice me, but I rounded the corner into his room without so much as an eyelash batted in my direction.

Once inside, I stopped so suddenly I teetered forward on my stilettos. Bob looked frail, half-reclined in the narrow bed, a myriad of tubes and wires tethering him to four different machines. So much like my mom had after her mastectomy, it knocked the wind out of me.

I pulled in a long breath and looked closer. The heart monitor’s beeping was reassuringly steady, and Bob’s chest rose and fell in a much deeper, more even pattern than it had before.

I stepped to the side of the bed, grasping his big hand in both of mine, and Bob opened his eyes.

“Nicey?” He blinked and looked around, the confusion obvious on his face. But that face was symmetrical, his words clear. “What the hell?”

“They think it was a heart attack,” I pasted a smile on my face and tried my best to sound breezy, thanking God silently for the lack of stroke markers. “We tried to tell the paramedics that we give you those every day around deadline, but they insisted you come see a doctor.”

Bob laughed and then winced.

“Shit. That hurts. No more wisecracks,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” I saluted and clicked my heels together and he smiled.

“A heart attack, huh?” Bob surveyed the equipment in the room. “Well, hell. You want to fill me in?”

“I went to tell you about my latest hot scoop and found you passed out in your office,” I said. “I pulled you out of the chair, screamed for help, the paramedics came. And here we are.”

“Thanks, kid.” Bob half-smiled at me. “I owe you one.”

“Eh. Just keep ignoring my tardiness so I can keep up with my workouts, and we’ll call it even.”

“Done.” His color was coming back, at least a little. The monitor kept up its steady rhythm, and I smiled.

“Speaking of tardiness, my story’s going to be late if I don’t start typing soon,” I said. “What time is it?”

Bob pointed to the clock on the wall before he read it to me. “When the big hand is on the six and the little one is just past the one like that, it’s one-thirty. You find out anything from the internal affairs guy?”

I poked my tongue out at him.

“Smartass comments mean you must be feeling better.” I planted myself in a chair in the corner where I could keep an eye on him before I reached for my laptop. “Internal affairs was less than forthcoming. Lucky for me, I have a girlfriend at the CA’s office. Guess what? That prosecutor who signed in to the evidence locker yesterday didn’t go home last night.”

Bob grunted. When I looked at him, his brows were knitted together over his closed eyes.

“Really?” He sounded a little less tired. One of the machines next to the bed beeped, and I jumped.

“Don’t go getting too excited about that, chief.” I smiled. “I wouldn’t want to have to cut you out of the loop.”

Bob smiled, his eyes still closed. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I was ever out of the loop,” he said. “I am the loop.”

“Truer words may have never been spoken.” I opened a blank document. “And we’re glad to still have you around.”

“I’m too stubborn to die,” Bob said, and his tone was so genial that I burst out laughing.

“I stand corrected,” I said. “I think that might be the truest thing ever said.”