Mystery Dance: Three Novels (37 page)

A jurisdictional squabble erupted, with Hardison trying to seize the case while the SBI pulled their “state property” card and claimed superior resources. Both the sheriff and the SBI yelled at Moretz, with Hardison threatening to charge my reporter with tampering with evidence. But Moretz stuck with it until the body was pulled from the water and loaded into an ambulance two hours later.

Best of all, we still had an hour before deadline.

“No clippers at the scene?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers as Moretz jogged into his cubicle.

“None so far.”

“What else you got?” He’d texted me a couple of details, but his style was to downplay everything until he had enough facts to tell a story.

“I overheard Hardison tell the SBI that the same person had killed all three people, but one of the suits said serial killers tended to use the same
modus operandi
,” he said, bustling into his cubicle and dumping his laptop on his desk. “Because it was so close to the first scene, the SBI thinks this one was either a copycat or else a bait and switch.”

“What, a killing to throw the cops off the trail?”

“No. Like maybe the first two murders were committed to cover this one up.”

“Did you get this on the record?”

He slid behind his desk and opened his laptop. “No, Chief, but I heard it with my own ears, and that’s good enough for me.”

I had been pushing Moretz, but some little niggling whisper of the word “ethics” echoed around in my skull. After laying out the obits and then the comics page, where the Peanuts strip was the usual jumble of panels apparently tossed together at random, I needed a cold slap in the face.

“John, we can’t just run with an overheard conversation,” I said. “Do they have a suspect?”

“A dozen or so. Shumate is one of the Wade Murphy heirs.”

“Murphy? The metal furniture guy?”

We’d written several business features on the successful local factory, which used patented designs to create a high-end brand of decorative tables, chairs, sconces, fireplace accessories, wine racks, chandeliers, and other things normal people didn’t need.

The spin on the story was always how Murphy’s American ingenuity had bucked the trend that had sent most other manufacturing jobs overseas. But it looked to me like he’d employed the solid American ideals of exploiting your workers, producing on the cheap, and getting accountants to make everything look good on paper.

Either way, he’d achieved enough wealth to open three regional factories and was the fourth-largest employer in the county, behind the school system, the hospital, and the county government. And wealth meant motive for murder.

“That’s the one,” Moretz said.

The coincidence was a little much. “Didn’t you interview Murphy a couple of days ago for that economic-development piece?”

“Yeah. He wants the county to buy a parcel for a business park. Save infrastructure costs, he said, and encourage a whole new class of entrepreneurs.”

“I didn’t see that story in the news folder.”

“I haven’t filed it yet.”

We’d have to spike it. We couldn’t run a puff piece while the man’s niece was spread out on the medical examiner’s gurney. Still, I hated to waste the entire interview.

“Did he happen to say anything prescient?” I asked.

“Prescient?”

“Ominous. Like seeing the future.”

Moretz clicked open the file and scrolled through his notes. “Hmm. ‘You can’t just respond to future conditions, you have to create future conditions.’ That was a jab at the commissioners for cutting the planning department’s budget.”

I shook my head. “No go. What else?”

“How about ‘Success is built on tradition, and if you take away tradition, you might as well knock the legs off this chair I’m sitting in’? That was general advice to budding entrepreneurs.”

“Run with it. But let me think about the conspiracy angle. I don’t want to be irresponsible and let our readers assume somebody killed Loraine Shumate for money.”

“Chief, you can’t tell people what to assume.” Moretz was already typing, half ignoring me.

I tried to picture the headline.
Woman Found Dead At Lake
.

No sizzle, no sales. At first glance, it would appear to be a drowning. No, that wouldn’t help the publisher pay off his Porsche.

I had to admit,
Heiress Killed In Possible Plot
was a grabber. We’d have a lot of gaps, such as figuring out how much Murphy was worth and how much a relative might stand to gain. We also debated whether to use quotes from Hardison or the SBI, since technically they had been talking among themselves and not on the record to Moretz.

While I thought about it, I flipped through Moretz’s crime-scene photos to choose a centerpiece for the front. The first one on the roll caught my attention. It showed the two boys at the lake, one pointing into the water with his mouth open in surprise.

I could have IM’ed Moretz but I wanted to see his expression, so I went back to his cubicle. He was typing like a monkey trying to copy Shakespeare.

“John, that photo of the boys?”

“Yeah?” he said, not looking up, his tongue poking a little from between his teeth.

“It almost looks like you were there when they discovered the body.”

He stopped typing and glared at me. “What are you trying to say?”

“First on the scene. Every time.”

“You know how it works. We don’t doctor photos, but we can doctor reality. I staged that, got the boys to show me what they did when they found the body.”

“Before the cops got there?”

“Can I help it if the jurisdictional dispute slowed the response time? What if she had been seriously injured and needed a transport?”

“Yeah,” I said, laughing a little. “Maybe Hardison should put you on the payroll.”

“Then I could only tell one side of the story,” he said, resuming his typing. “We both know things are never as they appear.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that and was afraid to ask. Moretz made me afraid a lot.

I went back into my office and finished laying out the front page. It looked great, moved a ton of copies off the racks, and elicited the obligatory call from Hardison to ask where Moretz had gotten his information.

Another success. Then why was I feeling sick to my stomach?

9.

Moretz became a person of interest shortly before the fourth victim was discovered. The coincidences had piled up until even Hardison could no longer ignore them.

When Moretz told me the sheriff had requested a private meeting, my bullshit detector started clanging. Hardison had never, in his nine years of tenure, voluntarily summoned a member of the media, with the exception of his rare press conferences.

Sure, he always had someone phone in a tip any time a photogenic drug bust was scheduled, but he didn’t seek out bonus quality time with the press.

“You think he’s going to give you an exclusive?” I asked.

“It’s possible,” Moretz said, checking the battery-charge level on his digital camera.

“But you’ve been a step ahead of his department the whole time. It’s more likely he wants to find out what you know.”

Moretz almost grinned, and the expression was a cross between a possum’s and a caged politician’s. “We’re making him look bad, aren’t we?”

“He’s already threatened me with a frame-up.”

Moretz glared at me, sizing me up. Newspaper editors were like battlefield generals: they never asked their subordinates to tackle any job they wouldn’t do themselves. “Are you going to bust him on it? An editorial, maybe.”

I waved him off. “It was veiled. Nothing solid, and his word against mine. He’s been here longer. Plus, he’s under a lot more pressure than we are.”

That pacified Moretz, though his eyes retained the dark depth that chilled me to the core.

“Hold a hole for me,” he said. “I’ll get a story out of this one way or another.”

“Good. If we don’t get any fresh developments on the Rebel Clipper, we’re going to have to lead with a United Way fundraiser. And nobody buys the paper to read about charities.”

“You got it, Chief.”

I got busy laying out the back pages, filling up the business and religious sections first, those wonderful Friday features that failed to comfort the afflicted.  Due to a server crash, I had to rig a different route to get the pages to our designers, and I was so involved in the task that I didn’t notice Moretz had returned. But his story popped up in the news budget half an hour before deadline.

I read it cold, then IM’ed Moretz to summon him into the office. This time he sat, looking like a sullen student summoned to the principal’s office for cheating.

“My God, John, it looks like you were interrogated,” I said.

“It all adds up,” Moretz said. “I’m linked to each of the murders, I’m new in town, and since I got here, the sheet of unsolved crimes has tripled.”

I’d been thinking all that myself, but to hear him say it so calmly made the notion simultaneously more plausible and highly absurd. “You know what they say,” I joked. “Murder is best conducted among strangers.”

“Am I the first murder suspect in the history of print media to cover his own investigation? Is this a violation of journalistic ethics?”

“You’re innocent, aren’t you?” It was a question Hardison apparently hadn’t asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I’m not officially a suspect, of course.”

Still, you couldn’t tell by the article, which painted Moretz as living under a dark cloud of suspicion. After we’d put the edition to bed, I asked Moretz, “So, what kinds of alibis did you give the sheriff?”

“The usual. Working late, watching TV alone in my apartment, going for long walks in the park.”

“Jiminy Christ, that sounds like the kinds of activities a serial killer would list on his resume. And I suppose they have physical evidence linking you to each murder?”

“Well, I was present at each scene, wasn’t I?”

“Good point. I wouldn’t put it past the sheriff to haul you in, even though you’re innocent.”

“Sure. It would get people off his back and he’d show up the state boys by cracking the case while they were still dancing around the Attorney General on jurisdiction issues.” Moretz sounded equal parts cop and equal parts lawyer, with a little mystery novelist and conspiracy theorist thrown in.

“And it would sell a ton of papers,” I said wistfully.

“A win-win,” Moretz agreed. “Would I still be on salary while I was sitting in jail and filing a daily update?”

“There’s a statute that prevents a prisoner from profiting from his crimes.”

“You mean like Lindsay Lohan didn’t? Besides, I wouldn’t be convicted. I’m innocent, remember?”

“You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t seem fair that everybody benefits from a crime except the criminal. A property owner gets an insurance check, lawyers get more billable hours, police get overtime, and the media sells advertising with scare headlines.”

Moretz squinted. “Chief. You’re serious.”

I shrugged. “We’re here to serve the public.”

And sell papers.

And, if possible, piss off Kelsey Kavanaugh.

To make the plan work, Moretz and I had to drop a little extra evidence. I didn’t want to get him in a situation where he’d be denied bail, but I also needed something strong enough to make him a legitimate suspect.

Finding a pair of clippers in his desk drawer did the trick.

10.

The SBI was a little dubious, noting that such commemorative nail clippers could easily be ordered on the Internet for $4.95 plus shipping. Besides, Moretz was well groomed, despite that darkness about his eyes that made him look slightly wild and unpredictable.

But Hardison ran with it. He announced that “a closer look was being taken” at a person of interest. Kavanaugh broke the story, reporting that John Moretz had been seen leaving the sheriff’s office.

I had to bite my lip a little to see it go out across the Associated Press wire. I could have scooped everyone, of course, but then the smoking gun would have pointed back to me. No, to sell this one, I had to act surprised.

The district attorney even got into it this time. He was a short man with a walrus mustache who was fiercely loyal to the Republican Party. However, he never pushed a case he was likely to lose.

His usual tactic was to bluster around and wave his arms, then claim the defendant’s attorney had requested a delay. Since all the judges were Republican, the paperwork always looked good, and sometimes they all went months without actually having to work.

I could have taken on the court system in an editorial, but no one really cared if the courts did their job. After a few continuances, victims often got tired of wasting their time and asked the D.A. to drop the charges, or else the court happily accepted a plea agreement that often doubled as a future civil settlement.

For the Moretz incident, the D.A. even posed with Hardison for Kavanaugh’s photo, which ran in the state news section. The D.A. was quoted that he was behind Hardison all the way and was prepared to prosecute as soon as the sheriff was confident of his evidence.

Kavanaugh played the angle just as Moretz and I had planned: a reporter had moved to a small town and, finding success and attention after a few sensational crime stories, had become a little unhinged and decided to up the ante. If Moretz had been satisfied with that first murder, he likely would have gotten away with it for quite a while, Kavanaugh’s article implied. But hungry for attention, he’d gone for the second.

Even then, Kavanaugh wrote, investigators had nothing really linking Moretz to the two crimes besides coincidental timing. Then came the third victim, and practically everyone in town was under suspicion. The coverage implied that Sycamore Shade was populated by a bunch of inbred hillbillies who were only barely literate, and Moretz would have never gained a readership without a few screaming headlines.

Kavanaugh’s article didn’t mention me, though she’d asked me a few questions for deep background. Apparently Hardison had played it close to the vest and hadn’t told her who had tipped the deputies.

Technically, detectives would have needed a search warrant, but I reasoned that Moretz’s desk was the newspaper’s property and therefore I had a right to prowl in his top drawer. I’d been looking for scanner codes, I’d told Hardison, when I’d discovered the pair of clippers lurking in a tray full of bent paper clips.