Murder at The Washington Tribune (27 page)

“Good night,” she said as she climbed into the car, started it, looked back at him, and drove away.

It wasn't until she was home and preparing for bed that it came to her, one possible reason for thinking she'd recognized the pages of his manuscript. They looked as though they'd been typed on the same typewriter as the note from the serial killer to her father. She rummaged through a pile of newspapers until coming up with the edition in which the letter had been reproduced as part of the article.

“Wow” was what she said. And to herself: Oh, wow!

TWENTY-FOUR

Vargas-Swayze was happy to work late that night. Not so for Dungey. He'd pulled a hamstring during a basketball game and had asked for time off, but was pressed into an extra shift because the full moon seemed to bring out the homicidal urges of some. For her, working an extra shift would keep her mind off the divorce and the nasty turn it had taken. For both, the overtime pay was welcome.

A woman stabbed her boyfriend to death after she found he'd been seeing their voluptuous female neighbor. A sixteen-year-old boy had been beaten to death by a gang whose members coveted his jacket and sneakers. While these incidents occurred in the city's less affluent neighborhoods, the evening's homicides weren't restricted to those areas. A German industrialist, in Washington on company business, was mugged and shot to death not far from the State Department in relatively upscale Foggy Bottom. So much for diplomacy on the streets. And another man had been found bleeding to death in Franklin Park, the scene of Colleen McNamara's murder not many nights before. He died en route to the hospital without having identified his assailant.

“How's your leg?” Vargas-Swayze asked Dungey as they left the building at three in the morning and headed for his car.

“Hurts,” he replied with a crooked grin. “They say you're supposed to play through the pain, but that's BS. I hurt, I don't play.”

She laughed. “Did you want to play in the NBA when you were a little kid?” she asked.

“Nah. I wanted to be a major-league baseball player, but it wasn't for me. I'm built more for basketball. Want something to eat?”

“I'm hungry,” she said.

She told him over platters of eggs and bacon at the Diner, her favorite haunt in Adams Morgan, the latest details of her ongoing financial hassle with Peter Swayze.

“The guy is slime,” Dungey said as they pulled up in front of her apartment building. “You're a lot better off without him.”

“You don't have to tell me that,” she said. “I'm more aware of it every day. By the way, you never said what you thought of our visit with LaRue.”

“I was wrong about him I guess,” he said. “I don't get the same bad vibes I did the first time around. You?”

“He seems okay. When are you going to run an ID on him?”

“Maybe I'll get around to it if I work twenty-four seven. See you tomorrow.”

“Today. It's today.”

“Yeah, it is, isn't? Good night, Edith.”

“Good night.”

She'd almost reached the front door to the building and was fishing in her purse for her keys when a honking horn caused her to turn. Dungey had switched on the lights in the car and was waving for her to rejoin him. She leaned in the open window on the passenger side. “What's up?” she asked.

“This,” he said, handing her a computer printout of details, pointing to the section dealing with the DOA from Franklin Park.

“What about it?” she asked.

“The address,” he said.

She squinted in the dim light. “Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “This Rudolph Grau lived at the same address as our French friend.”

“He had to live somewhere,” she said.

“I know. Just thought it was interesting.”

“We'll be back there later to canvas the building.”

“Right. Well, anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning.”

“It was, Wade. Grab some sleep. See you in a few hours.”

TWENTY-FIVE

When they got home from the restaurant, Joe and Georgia Wilcox, one hunger sated, made love, an infrequent event of late. Both slept soundly. Joe was first up, feeling refreshed. After showering and dressing in his favorite gray suit for a TV interview later in the day, he donned an apron and made scrambled eggs and toast, another infrequent event, and had it ready and piping hot when Georgia appeared in a freshly pressed robe.

“Still celebrating?” she asked playfully.

“Right you are,” he replied, “but not about the book. I thought I'd forgotten how to do it—and don't give me that ‘it's like falling off a bicycle' routine.”

“You haven't forgotten a thing,” she said. “Not even your bicycle. What's up today?”

“The same. I've got to come up with a new slant for the series.”

“I wish they'd catch him.”

“So do I, but not too soon.”

“Joe!”

“I didn't mean it the way it sounds, Georgia. I hope they catch the guy before he kills anyone else. At the same time, I'd like to be able to play out the story a while longer. Morehouse sure as hell would like that.”

He finished breakfast, kissed her, and said, “We should do it again soon.”

“I'm here,” she answered, walking him to the door. “You look great.”

“Thanks. Be sure to watch.”

“I will. I'll tape it and run it over and over.”

He drove his usual route into the District, but instead of going to the
Tribune
Building, he drove to Michael's apartment house. He parked a block away and called his brother's number. The machine answered. He hung up without leaving a message, got out of the car, and went to the door. The duplicate keys Michael had provided allowed him to enter the building and the apartment. Maggie meowed as she came from the kitchen where she'd been eating from her bowl, and rubbed against his leg. He bent and ruffled the fur behind the cat's ears, went to the desk, pulled a piece of blank paper from where it was neatly stored in a drawer, inserted it in the typewriter, and began to type. Ten minutes later, and after assuring himself that everything was as it had been when he entered, he bade Maggie a farewell, locked the apartment behind him, and emerged from the building. An older woman, pulling a collapsible shopping cart, came up the walkway. She stopped, blocking his way. “Terrible, isn't it?” she said.

“Hello,” he said and tried to go around her.

“Poor man, being killed like that.”

His first thought was Michael.

“Who was killed?” he asked.

“Mr. Grau, from One-E. Do you live here?”

“No, ma'am.”

“He had a drinking problem, you know, but one can't be harsh in judging him, with his war injuries protecting us and the country. Poor man. He was in such pain and—”

“Excuse me,” Wilcox said, using the grass to circumvent her and walk quickly to his car to drive off.

Not long after he left, Edith and Dungey arrived to go through the motions of questioning others in the building about the deceased's habits, known enemies, close friends, and whether anyone heard or knew anything about the killing. Knocks on Michael LaRue's door went unanswered. Talks with residents revealed that Rudy Grau was a hard drinker, a difficult man at times, but considering the wounds he incurred defending the country—and that he always walked with a cane—“Why didn't he use it to ward off his attacker?”—and that he always helped the other tenants of the building with heavy grocery bags and the like—and that he sometimes went out to dinner with Mr. LaRue, the nice gentleman in 1C—but little else. The interviews completed, the detectives returned to the park where they sought someone who might provide information or have seen something to help in the investigation. A wasted exercise, one of hundreds they'd walked through in the course of their careers.

Morehouse called an editorial meeting soon after Wilcox arrived at the
Trib.
Lacking anything new on the killer, it was decided not to try and force another article on the subject, which was fine with Wilcox. He had other stories to write that day, including an article about the previous night's spate of murders; the media appearance would take time, too.

He called MPD's public affairs office to get a quote about the most recent killings in the District, dutifully took down what the officer said, which was not much, and began to work on the piece, which was not much, either. Once he had the details written, he would attempt to contact family members of the victims in the hope they would give him some quotable comments, the more anguished the better. It wasn't long ago that the tabloid and TV practice of wringing quotes from grieving relatives of murder victims was anathema to him. He ran through imaginary dialogues.
“What are you feeling at this moment?” “Oh, I'm just tickled to death that my son and husband were killed during the holdup.” “How did you feel . . . ?”
But readers liked hearing about others' pain. That's what his chosen life's work had come to, and it was either get with the program or take early retirement.

The last report he reviewed was on the knifing of one Mr. Rudolph Grau, found barely alive in Franklin Park, who'd expired in the rear of an ambulance between the park and the hospital. According to MPD, no immediate family members were known to exist, nor had the wielder of the knife been identified.

Wait a minute, Wilcox mused. Franklin Park. Two murders there within days of each other. He tried to recall other homicides in that particular park and came up empty. The victim's name was Grau. Rudolph Grau. The shopping cart lady at Michael's apartment building asked whether he knew that a resident named Grau had been killed. The inquisitive neighbor he'd bumped into at the apartment building during his second visit there said his name was Rudy. And there was Grau's address on the police report—Michael's address.

What kind of coincidences are these?

He put aside his jumbled thoughts about the Grau stabbing long enough to make calls to the homes of the other murder victims from last night. With any luck, he'd reach people willing to talk on the phone.

The mother of the teen slaughtered over a pair of sneakers and a jacket was so inconsolable that Wilcox could barely make out what she said, but he did decipher that her son was a good boy who never hurt anyone, and that if they weren't forced to live in such a lousy neighborhood he would be alive today. No argument from Wilcox.

The sister of the man knifed to death over his alleged fling with the buxom neighbor said in a calm, steady voice that her brother was a fine, God-fearing man who suffered from a weakness of the flesh—didn't everyone?—and did he deserve to die for his indiscretion?—and he was now in the hands of the good Lord, who would make the final judgment and forgive him his sins and—”

A spokesman for the Washington office of the German conglomerate referred Wilcox to its Munich headquarters.
“Danke,”
Wilcox said, the only German word he knew, and decided to not bother making the overseas call.

He ate lunch in the employee cafeteria, caught up on two months' worth of expense accounts, was interviewed for three minutes on the local CNN channel, and headed home. He left the highway and wended his way into his subdivision. He'd lived there for so long that he seldom took note of what was going on, people walking their dogs or trimming shrubbery, or the stages of bloom on trees and bushes. But this day his antenna was up, and he took in his surroundings as though there for the first time, a potential homebuyer scouting the neighborhood.

He turned onto his street and drove slowly, eyes glancing right and left. He passed a Verizon repair truck parked six houses from his; someone must be having phone trouble he reasoned—hopefully not the whole block.

He slowly crossed the street's center line, pulling up in front of his curbside mailbox so that it was within his arm's reach from the driver's side. The mailman had flipped up the red metal flag. That it remained up meant that Georgia hadn't fetched the mail, which was what he'd hoped. She seldom did, seeming to never remember that it would be there, and it was his habit to grab it before pulling into the driveway. He pulled a clutch of mail from the box, almost allowing some catalogues and magazines to slip from his hand and fall to the ground. Another look around preceded his next move, which was to remove the letter he'd written at Michael's apartment from his inside jacket pocket and slip it in with the day's mail. It didn't matter that his fingerprints would be on it. Of course they would be. He'd handled it along with the other mail.

“Hey, anybody home?” he yelled on his way to the kitchen where he dropped the mail on the countertop in the same spot he always did.

“What are you doing home so early?” Georgia asked as she came from the basement where she'd been folding laundry.

“I finished up early,” he said, hugging her. “Nice to be home at a decent hour for a change.”

She returned to the basement to complete her chore. He hung his jacket over the back of a chair, stripped off his tie, poured a small Scotch, and took it to the patio. It was a lovely day, warm but not uncomfortable. He drew a deep breath, sipped from his drink, sat at the table and extended his legs in front of him. She joined him a few minutes later.

“Drink?” he asked.

“Too early, thanks. What's new? You were great on TV.”

“Thanks. I felt comfortable. Not much new at the paper. We decided that since there's nothing new, we'd skip tomorrow's edition.”

“Good,” she said. “Have you heard from Michael?”

“No. Robbie?”

“Not today.”

She turned in her chair and saw through the window the pile of mail on the kitchen counter. “Mailman bring anything interesting?” she asked.

“I didn't look.”

She fetched the mail, brought it to the patio table, and started going through it. A home-decorating catalogue caught her attention, and she browsed it, pointing out items that appealed to her, including a set of vivid red silk sheets and pillowcases. “Like it?” she asked.

“Very sexy. We should have had them on the bed last night.”

“Our old sheets did just fine, don't you think?”

He laughed. “Sorry, but I wasn't thinking about the sheets last night.”

She squeezed his hand and continued perusing the catalogue. Finished, she went back to seeing what other mail was there. Joe watched out of the corner of his eye.

“What's this?” she said, pulling the sheet of paper, sans envelope, from the pile and unfolding it.

“What is it?” he asked. “Some contractor drop off a flyer? That's against the law.”

She handed it to him without a word. Her face went ashen, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

He pulled half-glasses from his shirt pocket and read. “Jesus,” he said. “He must have put it in our mailbox himself.”

“Call the police,” she said.

“Right. I'll call Edith. This is hitting too close to home.”

Before placing the call, he made a copy of the letter on their fax machine that doubled as a photocopier and slipped it under other papers on the desk in the library.

Georgia stayed on the patio, her fist pressed against her lips. When he returned, she asked, “Did you reach her?”

“On her cell. She and her partner are heading here now.”

“I hate this, Joe.”

“I know, I know, but it'll be okay. I'll ask the police to provide security. If they won't, we'll hire our own. Don't worry, Georgia, we'll be fine.” He patted her hand to reassure, knowing it wouldn't.

Vargas-Swayze and Dungey arrived forty-five minutes later and Wilcox handed them the letter.

“He's ratcheting it up now, isn't he?” Vargas-Swayze said, her reaction raising Georgia's already elevated anxiety level.

“You listed in the phone book?” Dungey asked.

“No,” Wilcox replied. “We've been unlisted for years. Too many nuts out there read something you write and decide to challenge you up close and personal. But it's not tough to find out where anybody lives. I've done it plenty of times chasing down stories.”

“Can we have police protection?” Georgia asked.

“I'll see what I can do,” Vargas-Swayze said. “Did you notice any strangers in the neighborhood today, Georgia?”

“No. I've been in the house all day. Those hedges out front block the view of the street. I can't even see the mailbox from here.”

“I wonder why he didn't mail it,” Dungey mused, “like the last one.”

“He's delivering a message beyond what he wrote, Joe,” Vargas-Swayze said. “He's making a point that he knows where you live.”

“What I find interesting,” Wilcox said, “is that the first letter didn't attack me personally. This one does. He's angry that my articles paint what he calls a ‘warped picture' of him. Warped picture! What other view can you have?”