Murder at The Washington Tribune (4 page)

His questioning of colleagues hadn't produced anything even resembling a lead, any more than MPD's efforts had—unless, of course, their probing had been fruitful.

He studied the list carefully, made checkmarks next to those he wanted to see again, and started calling. Jean's parents, who lived in Delaware, had returned home with their daughter's remains after authorities had released her body. He didn't relish a drive to Delaware and decided to not follow up with them that day. Instead, he called Roberta at the TV station.

“Hey, Dad, I just got in. What's up?”

“Not much. Let me ask you something.”

“Hold on.”

He heard her shout to someone to arrange for a camera crew at two that afternoon. She came back on the line. “Sorry, Dad. Shoot. You said you had something to ask me.”

“Right. Did you say in one of your reports that Jean Kaporis's mother said something that pointed to a suspect or motive?”

There was a telling silence on her end.

“That's right,” she finally said.

“Look, I know I'm intruding into your turf, but I'd really appreciate knowing what she told you.”

“Dad, I—”

“I know, I know, I'm out of bounds here. But—”

“She told me that her daughter had said she was seeing someone at the
Trib.
”

“She said that? I mean, Jean told her mother that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you report it? I'm sorry, but I don't catch every one of your newscasts.” He laughed. “Some father, huh?”

“About dating somebody at the
Trib
? No, I didn't. She didn't have any names so there wasn't anything to report. The MPD spokesman had already said they were focusing on her coworkers.”

Wilcox heard her say to someone, “Hey, get your hands off the cookies.”

“Roberta?”

“Sorry. I baked a batch of peanut butter cookies, Mom's recipe, to take to the cop whose mother died from that botched operation last week. You heard about it.”

“Yeah, sure. You're baking cookies for him?”

“My secret weapon. Amazing how much information a few cookies will buy.”

“I don't wonder,” Wilcox said, barely audible.

“Dad? You okay?”

“Oh, sure, Robbie. Just checking in with my daughter, the crack reporter. If anything comes up—I mean, I'm getting a lot of pressure here and—”

“I'll keep you in the loop,” she said. “Have to run. Covering an MPD news conference this afternoon, and got to deliver these goodies before the cookie Mafia cleans me out. Love you. Bye.”

He hung up, sat back with his arms behind his head, and smiled. Roberta's enthusiasm was palpable, uplifting. There'd been a time when he attacked each day with that same zeal, the world something to be conquered, obstacles no more than minor bumps in the road to be easily vaulted. Age had something to do with it, of course. Roberta, like so many other wide-eyed young professionals, awoke each morning with a sense of immortality and youthful superiority bordering on arrogance. Like the smug, ambitious Gene Hawthorne sitting three cubicles from Wilcox, whose appreciation of experience and history, of the
Trib
's founders, leaders, and outstanding newsmen whose photos lined the corridor walls, was nonexistent.

Roberta's zest was replaced by the unpleasant realization that Morehouse had been right—he hadn't asked the right questions of Kaporis's mother, actually her stepmother. He'd asked only about young men Jean might have been dating, which elicited a denial by the mother of knowing anything about her daughter's social life. Why hadn't he followed up with specific questions about her life at work, about whether she'd ever mentioned dating a coworker? He would have done that automatically a few years ago. Silently, and emptily, he pledged to get his act together.

He made two other calls that morning, the first to see whether a friend from the Associated Press, John Grant, was free for lunch. He was, and they arranged to meet at noon at the Press Club. His next call was to Mary Jane Pruit, Jean Kaporis's roommate.

“Hello, Mrs. Pruit, it's Joe Wilcox from the
Trib.
”

“Hello, Mr. Wilcox.”

“I was wondering whether I could grab some of your time later today.”

“Why?”

“To go over a few things, some loose ends.”

“I have nothing else to say,” she said in a sleepy voice. “I told you and the police everything I know.”

“I'm sure you did, but there are a few issues I'd like to clarify. I won't take much of your time. Promise.”

“What time?”

“Your call. Whatever works for you.”

“Three would be okay.”

“Three it is. Your place?”

“Uh huh.”

“Great. See you then.”

He thought about the interview he'd done with Mary Jane Pruit the week following her roommate's murder. He'd asked her about men in Kaporis's life and basically received the same response he'd gotten from the mother. But while he'd accepted the mother's denial of knowing anything, that answer didn't ring true in retrospect coming from a roommate. He was chewing on that thought as he entered the National Press Club at Fourteenth and F Street, NW and went directly to the Reliable Source Bar. Grant was sitting with other members at the bar, a drink already in front of him. Wilcox slid onto a stool next to his AP buddy and ordered a white wine.

“How goes?” Grant asked.

“I've been better,” Wilcox said. “You?”

“Good, considering the terrorism Popsicle is now orange flavored. You realize our Muslim friends never have to actually attack us again? All they have to do is keep chattering, as our security experts term it, and we spend another billion protecting targets that aren't going to be hit in the first place. What's new with the Kaporis murder?”

Wilcox sipped his wine. “What's new? Not a thing. You pick up anything around town?”

A shrug and an order for a second drink. “Just the ex-boyfriend,” he said to the glass.

“What ex-boyfriend?”

Grant turned to Wilcox. “I was working that real estate scandal—excuse me,
alleged
real estate scandal—involving Congressman Coakely from Maine. Somebody at MPD, who shall remain nameless, told me Kaporis broke up with a boyfriend a month or so before the murder. Hell hath no fury like a spurned boyfriend, especially when the fox you lost in the hunt looked like her. I was looking at pictures the other day. Man, she was gorgeous.”

“Yeah, she was. A really nice looking young lady.” Although they hadn't worked stories together, he'd gotten to know her a little, casual chats in the halls or cafeteria, a wave when she passed his cubicle. Whenever he thought of her and her brutal murder, he thought of Roberta. How could he not?

“So, tell me about this ex-boyfriend,” Wilcox said.

“Nothing there, Joe. The kid split for California right after the breakup. The cops out there interviewed him. From what I'm told, he came up clean. Wasn't even near DC the night she died.”

“Thanks,” Wilcox said. “Nothing else?”

“Hey, I don't cover the cops beat, Joe. That's your bailiwick.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. It's just that I need—”

“Need what?”

“A story. An angle, something new on
this
story. You know that old joke about Casey, crime photographer?”

“No.”

“They called him Casey, crime photographer, because the way he took pictures, it was a crime.”

“Sounds like a line from some old Borscht Belt comic.”

“It was. They're looking at me at the
Trib
like Casey.”

“No.”

“I'm serious.”

“Tell 'em to go screw. What've you got, a year, two, to the pension?”

“Two, but that's not the point.”

They took a table away from the bar and ordered BLTs.

“You okay, Joe?” Grant asked mid-meal.

“Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”

“I don't know, you seem down, really down. Everything okay at home?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“Your daughter's doing great. I catch her on the news. Ratings up since she went over there, or so I hear.”

“That's right. She's terrific. Makes her old man look like an amateur.”

They went to the lobby where Wilcox pressed the elevator button.

“You up for some poker?” Grant asked. “Carlos has a game going in the back.”

“Thanks, no, John. I've got some interviews this afternoon.”

“About the Kaporis case?”

Wilcox nodded as the elevator doors opened.

“If I pick up on anything, I'll call.”

“Great. Thanks,” Wilcox said as the doors slid closed, leaving him alone with a knot in his stomach for the thirteen-floor descent.

FOUR

Task forces in Washington, D.C., are as ubiquitous as Frisbee tossers on the Mall. When in doubt, and the pressure is on in the military, in government, in corporations—whatever—announce the appointment of a task force by whatever name. Which is what the MPD did that morning for the unsolved Jean Kaporis murder at
The Washington Tribune.
In reality, it consisted only of the two detectives already working the case, Edith Vargas-Swayze, and her partner of the past year, Wade Dungey. They met with their boss, Bernard Evans, over a lunch of hoagies and Diet Cokes in a cramped office at First District headquarters at 415 Fourth Street, SW. On the scarred table were recent clips of stories that had appeared in newspapers and magazines, and transcripts of radio and television news reports.

“See what I mean?” Evans asked.

“Big deal,” Dungey said. “Since when do we march to what the media says?”

Evans, whose nickname was “the Professor,” was a sixteen-year veteran with a reputation for calmness under fire. He leaned back in his chair and squeezed his eyes shut as though seeking inner calm. Evans removed his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, rubbed his eyes, replaced the glasses, and opened his eyes. He was a slight man with a chiseled wedge of a face, wisps of gray hair on his bald pate, and a known fondness for tweed jackets and books about the Civil War. He seldom raised his voice, which carried a trace of his North Carolina roots, and was especially adept at resolving personality and professional clashes between his detectives, a valuable, intangible skill in an MPD that sometimes resembled the war he loved to read about.

Dungey had been promoted to detective in the Violent Crimes Branch a year earlier after six years in uniform. Tall—six feet, four inches—and painfully thin—155 pounds—he was a D.C. native who'd spent three years in the army before applying to the MPD. Everything about him was long: his neck with a prominent Adam's apple, fingers, nose, and arms. His nickname, of course, was “Slim.”

“The Kaporis murder isn't the only one we're working,” said Dungey, uncrossing his legs because one had fallen asleep.

“It is now,” Evans said. “I'll give you all the backup I can spare. Look, I don't decide which cases are high profile. The public decides that.”

“The media decides it,” Dungey offered, his disdain of the press worn on his sleeve like the elbow patches of his sport jacket.

“Whoever,” Evans said, not about to get into a debate. “The point is that the Kaporis case isn't about to go away unless we make it go away.” Dungey started to say something but Evans held up his hand and sighed wearily. “Beautiful blonde working for one of the nation's most important newspapers is killed right there, on the premises. Chances are good—no, they're better than good—that another member of that Fourth Estate institution did the deed. Unless another murder occurs that involves somebody more interesting than Ms. Kaporis, like a senator or congressman, or cabinet member, she's number one.” He pushed the clippings and transcripts around on the tabletop. “This is why the brass wants us to pick up the pace. The brass—
our
brass—tends to get testy when the press asks why we're not doing our jobs. So starting right now and until the case moves from cold to solved, you two think about nothing else. Any questions?”

“We're it, huh?” Vargas-Swayze said with a laugh. “The task force.”

Evans joined her laughter. “What a task. What a force. The mighty duo, Dungey and Vargas-Swayze. Put on your capes and save Gotham.” His expression shifted to serious. Okay,” he said, “lay out for me everything we've done so far and what we intend to do.” He turned to his female detective: “You're well-sourced at the
Trib,
Edith. Somebody inside there must know something about who was cozy with the victim, some reporter she'd been making eyes at and seeing after hours, somebody who got mad enough to squeeze the life out of her.”

“I'll talk to them again,” she said.

“Good.”

“But give me something to offer.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sources at the
Trib
are looking for news from us. If I can dribble out some new stuff, it'll go a long way to getting somebody over there to do the same.”

“Just don't give away the store.” To Dungey: “While Edith works the
Trib,
go back into Kaporis's personal life, friends, roommates, family, anybody and everybody who knew her since she came to D.C.”

“I've already interviewed them,” Dungey said.

“Wrong, Wade. We're starting from square one. It's a brand-new case. We start today looking outside the box. Toss out everything anyone has said and push harder this time.” Evans stood and started to leave. He stopped, returned to the table, picked up his half-eaten hoagie, and disappeared through the door.

Meanwhile, the daily two o'clock editorial meeting at the
Trib
was under way. The assistant managing editor of each section of the paper—National and International; Metro, including the Government Diary and obituaries; the Panache section with its gossipy columns and features, comics, horoscope and crossword puzzles; Sports; and Business—gathered in an eighth-floor conference room to pitch stories they intended to include in the next day's edition. The run-up to the meeting had produced a discernible increase in activity throughout the newsroom. The leisurely pace of the morning had been replaced by a growing sense of urgency, matched in other departments throughout the building. The advertising department coordinated closely with editorial to determine the number of pages that would comprise the paper the following morning. The more ads, the more editorial material would be needed. Simultaneously, a separate editorial staff responsible for the special section that would be inserted the next morning—Health, Food, Home, Weekend, or Real Estate, depending upon the day of the week—put the finishing touches on their product.

“What's new on Kaporis?” Paul Morehouse was asked after he'd gone over the list of stories he intended to include in his Metro section.

“Not enough to lead with. MPD announced a task force this morning, whatever the hell that means.”

“What
does
it mean?” asked the deputy managing editor chairing the meeting.

“We're working on it,” Morehouse replied. “Mary's greenlighted money for our own task force.” Mary Lou Castle, the
Trib
's comptroller, was the voice of money. “I've got Joe Wilcox heading it.”

The deputy managing editor's face went sour. “Is he making any headway?”

“Not yet, but we're ratcheting things up. Joe's been—how do I say it? He's been distracted lately, but that's over. He's well sourced at MPD.”

“Well, he'd better get his sources to start saying something. Mail is heavy, asking why we're covering up. You know, protecting one of our own.”

“That's nonsense.”

“You want to answer the mail, Paul?”

Morehouse didn't reply.

“Jeanette's going to do something on it in her Ombudsman column day after tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“In the meantime, get something we can run front page this week, some break in the case.”

“We're on it,” said Morehouse to the man who outranked him in the
Trib
's hierarchy.

Which sufficed for the moment.

They would meet again at six when final decisions would be made, including which stories would appear on the coveted front page of each section. For reporters writing the stories, being on Page One was like hitting a game-winning home run, grabbing the brass ring, and winning the Medal of Honor, an Oscar and the America's Cup all at once. They wore their front-page placements like notches on a belt or gunstock. How effectively their bosses lobbied for them at the two and six o'clock meetings went a long way toward determining how many notches they'd end up with—or how many flesh wounds.

Wilcox was on his way out of the newsroom when Morehouse came from the meeting.

“Got a minute?” Morehouse asked.

“No,” Wilcox said. “I'm on my way to see Jean's roommate again. Running late.”

“Check in when you get back.”

You forgot the please,
Wilcox thought, and nodded.

Mary Jane Pruit lived in a twelve-story apartment building across the Potomac, in Crystal City, Virginia. The doorman buzzed her and Wilcox was directed to apartment number 8-C on the eighth floor where she stood in the open doorway.

“I appreciate you taking time to see me,” Wilcox said.

“It's okay,” she said.

Wilcox had been surprised at the apartment's size during his first visit. The living room was larger than his at home, and sliding glass doors opened on to a balcony from which D.C., as well as arriving and departing flights from nearby Reagan National Airport, could be seen. A dining area and kitchen were at one end. A hallway led to what he assumed were the bedrooms, probably a couple of them considering that two single people had lived there.

Mary Jane was a tall, slender young woman with an elongated face framed by blond hair with a bleached coarseness, worn long and straight. She was dressed that day in white shorts, a sleeveless navy blue tank top, and flip-flops. He judged her to be somewhat older than Kaporis, maybe by three or four years. Kaporis had been twenty-two. Her former roommate might by pushing thirty, he thought, but certainly no older than that. She sat in a chair, crossed her legs, and lit a cigarette. An ashtray on a table next to her was almost filled with extinguished butts. Wilcox wasn't sure where to sit. The last time he was there, he'd taken the couch. But that would place her to his side, an awkward arrangement. Instead, he pulled an ottoman from in front of another chair and positioned it directly in front of her. He pulled a reporter's notepad and pen from his inside jacket pocket and said, “I know we've already gone over things, Ms. Pruit, but I have some additional questions to ask. Okay?”

She drew on the cigarette, snubbed it out in the ashtray, and said, “Go ahead, only you're wasting your time. I don't know anything more than I told you before.”

“Fair enough. How long did you and Jean Kaporis live here together?”

“You already asked me that question, Mr. Wilcox. Is this a truth test? Jean moved in here about a month after she came to Washington. That was a year ago, give or take.”

“How did she end up living with you? I mean, was this your apartment, or did the two of you find it together?”

“It was mine. Another roommate moved out. A friend of mine met Jean and told her I was looking for someone. That simple.”

Wilcox nodded and made notes. He looked up and asked, “Did the two of you get along?”

Pruit laughed and lit another cigarette. “Sure we did.”

“I mean,” he said, “sometimes roommates have conflicts about—well, about things like noise or friends spending time here or—”

“We got along.”

He noted it and said, “The last time we spoke, Ms. Pruit, I asked about Jean's boyfriends. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You said you didn't know anything about the men in her life.”

“I still don't.”

“That strikes me as strange,” Wilcox said.

“Why?”

“Well, I have a daughter who's had roommates. From what she's told me, the most popular topic of conversation among young female roommates is the men in their lives. Or out of them.” He cocked his head, pen poised over the notepad.

“We didn't talk about things like that, Mr. Wilcox.”

“What
did
you talk about?”

“Not much. We were on different schedules. I work nights, she worked days at the paper.”

“Ships passing in the night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where do you work, Ms. Pruit?”

“I'm a freelancer.”

“Oh? Writer? Artist?”

“I'm a freelancer,” she repeated. “Let's leave it at that.”

Wilcox wrote “freelancer” on his pad, but he was thinking beyond those simple words. What was she, a prostitute, perhaps working for one of the city's many so-called escort services? A freelance
what
?

“Could you be more specific?” he asked.

“Look, I have to be someplace. Could we wrap this up?” Another cigarette.

“Jean's mother said that her daughter was seeing someone who works at the
Trib.
She never mentioned that to you?”

She shook her head, sending her hair into motion.

“Never?” Wilcox said.

“Yeah. Well, she said something about it.”

“What did she say?”

A shrug and a stream of exhaled air. “Just that she had a fling with somebody there, some reporter, I guess. That's all I know. We didn't talk much.”

She snuffed out her cigarette, stood, and said, “Sorry, but I have to go.”