Scoop (40 page)

“Have you ever seen this woman?” She held up a publicity photo of Gilda she printed off the Internet.

“I’m not very observant,” he said with a thin smile.

“How many occupants do you have that have been here for five days?”

The man sighed. “You know, in my business, people rely on me to be discreet.” He pulled out a dingy looking piece of paper and eyeballed it.

“Three.”

“How many female?”

“One.”

“Room number?”

“Forty-two.”

“Key?”

The man grumbled and handed it over. “Stay here,” Mack instructed the man. “We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

“Just don’t go shooting holes in my walls, okay? I just got four suites repaired.”

“Suites,” Mack said. “Right.”

The Laguna was a hotel, not a motel, with five stories. The elevator’s
creaky doors opened halfway. “Come on,” Mack urged then grinned. “I’ll catch you if we drop.”

“Funny.”

Mack pushed the button for the fourth floor, and the elevator crept upward like it was carrying an extra seven tons. Ray and Mack stood with their backs against the wall. Ray was pretty sure he could hear his own heartbeat.

“So how’d you get access to Gilda’s computer at the police station?”

“I have my ways. The toughest part was leaving. Captain Wynn apparently likes blondes with guns. Hayden tipped me off to the fact that he also likes to see himself on television. I worked that to my advantage, needless to say. Then I had to make him believe it was all a misunderstanding and that I didn’t find anything useful on the computer.”

“How’d you do it?”

“I told him I thought I saw a network reporter out front. It was like magic.”

Ray laughed. “Good one.”

“Thanks.”

They were only at the second floor. The ride seemed to be taking hours.

The silence was too much for Ray. “I yelled at your sister today and mentioned my underwear. I’m truly sorry.”

Mack didn’t look pleased. “In what regard did you mention your underwear?”

Ray swallowed. “In a…metaphorical sense.”

Mack raised an eyebrow. “Did my sister cry?”

“She almost made me cry, actually.”

Mack nodded like that pleased her. “Let’s keep your undergarments out of the relationship. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now let’s go find Gilda.”

There were many things Hugo should’ve been doing, and to anyone observing him outside his glass wall, he would have seemed to be in a feverish work mode. Instead, he was writing a lengthy e-mail to his wife. He knew better than to write something so personal on company e-mail. One employee had gotten burned when he thought he was passing a dirty joke along to a friend. Turned out it went to the entire station.

But he’d tried to call her and hadn’t had any luck. On a normal day, Hugo lived for this kind of news. The fact that his station was in the middle of it made it a bit more complicated, but still, he would’ve approached it with effort and fervor.

Instead, he was typing a letter to his wife.

Jill Clark opened his door, interrupting his thoughts. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m busy,” Hugo said without looking at her. Then he heard the sound of a shaking pill bottle.

“I stole them,” she said, placing them on his desk. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen you taking them,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was anxiety medication. I thought it was for a social phobia.”

“A social phobia?”

Jill looked embarrassed. “I thought it might help me approach this guy I like. I have trouble telling people how I really feel. I act one way but feel another. I don’t really know if it worked. It definitely made me feel calmer. But I felt bad for taking them.”

“You thought I had a social disorder?”

“Well, you are really calm. I mistook that for social problems. I’m sorry.” And she walked out.

Hugo looked at the e-mail. He had just been explaining to Jane about the missing pills. Before, he had known in his head how much she meant
to him, but he couldn’t feel it in his heart, and, he admitted, perhaps he’d become a little robotic in their relationship.

Hugo assured her that if she wanted him to keep his job, he would, but he begged her to tell him what it was she wanted, to give him another chance.

He closed by telling her that for a while he’d had his ideals about what his family should be like, where his wife should be and when. He’d been misguided to think that it was the modern world around him that was to blame for his discontentment. He’d realized, in fact, that he had to find contentment and peace with himself and the world in which he lived before he could make anybody else happy.

He ended it with a few simple phrases. “I’m praying for us. I’m praying for you. Pray for me.”

It’s what Hayden always told him, and it had sounded so foolish for so long. Now it seemed all he had to hang on to was prayer and divine intervention. He finished the e-mail and saw Hayden walk by. He rushed to his office door and called her in.

“Yes, Mr. Talley?” she asked. He shut the door and told her to sit down.

“Hayden, my marriage is falling apart.”

“Mr. Talley, I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching for his hand. He took it and squeezed it. He didn’t care who saw or what office protocol he was breaking. He just wanted hope.

“My marriage is the only thing I have left of who I was,” Hugo said. “It might shock you to know that I wasn’t always like this. I had ideals and convictions, you know. But after a while, you give in a little, and then you give in a little more, and the next thing you know, you can watch an entire family being brought out of a house in body bags with complete indifference. All you care about is getting it on the news first and making sure you’ve got the best pictures. I don’t need a stupid pill to numb me. I’ve been numb for a long time.” He wiped his tears. “Will you pray for me?”

“Of course I will. I will pray for you as often as the Lord brings you to my heart.”

“Will you pray for me now?”

He could tell that surprised her. “It’s time I felt a little discomfort,” Hugo said.

“Gilda?” Ray could hardly believe the sight in front of him. She stood in the doorway of her hotel room, decked out in a white bathrobe, her hair pulled back by a barrette.

“How did you find me?” she whispered, then noticed Mack. “And who is this?”

“We need to come in,” Ray said.

Gilda looked reluctant. She opened the door and said, “The cleanest place to sit is the window sill.”

Ray walked into the darkened room, lit with a single lamp. There was a crusty-looking bathroom and the lingering smell of pot that overflowed from the other rooms. A laundry bag sat on the chair next to the bed, and Ray could see the edge of what looked like a Hawaiian shirt poking out. The television was on, turned down low, and a few books were scattered across a filthy, but neatly made bed.

“Are you okay?” Ray asked, turning to her.

She nodded as tears flowed from her eyes. “You weren’t supposed to find me. What tipped you off?” she asked. Ray was about to explain everything when she said, “It was my accent, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“I tried to hide it, but it’s hard to hide a southern accent.”

Ray’s jaw dropped.
“You’re
the Electric Horseman?”

“Isn’t that how you found me?”

He shook his head, almost laughing. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“I bought the cheapest voice scrambler they had. I thought that’s what did me in.” She looked at Mack. “You look a little familiar.”

“This is Hayden’s sister, Mack. She’s a police officer.”

Gilda looked down. “Are you arresting me?”

“I have no jurisdiction here, ma’am, though don’t tell anybody that. I faked my way into finding you.”

Gilda looked at her. “Your sister, she’s got real talent. I’ve watched her every night she’s been on. She’s a natural. And really beautiful.”

Ray leaned against the window sill on Gilda’s advice. “Tell me why you’re here. What led to all of this? Was it the incident Thursday?”

Gilda scowled. “That’s what it was made to look like.” She sighed and threw up her hands. “I might as well tell you the entire thing. At this point, I don’t care if I go to jail.”

“Roarke’s in jail,” Ray said.

“Roarke?” Gilda looked astonished. “Roarke is the person of interest? Roarke is the one who’s been sending me the love letters?”

“He didn’t mean any harm,” Ray quickly explained. “You know Roarke. He’s not weird. He just didn’t know how to tell you how much he liked you.” Ray felt his throat swell a little. “Let him off easy, will you?”

“Easy? I’m not letting him off anything. That man owes me dinner and a bouquet of roses.” She smiled. “I’m glad it was Roarke. I thought it might be Tate or Sam, and that was really starting to worry me.” She shrugged. “You’re right, Roarke’s not really my type. But maybe that’s because I didn’t know what a romantic he could be.”

Ray smiled, but Mack didn’t look as engaged. “Ms. Braun, we need to know how you ended up in this hotel. There are a lot of people who want to know where you are.”

The joy in the room faded and Gilda slowly sat on the bed. “It started
with someone sending me anonymous letters over the last two months about the wastewater treatment plant. I began investigating the claims and found two employees who had been fired. They worked in different parts of the plant and didn’t know one another. Both of them had been laid off’ due to budget cuts, but they both suspected that it was because of what they knew. One was in accounting and had raised questions about the exchange of money between the two companies. The other worked as a safety coordinator. Neither one of them, however, was the real whistle-blower.”

“I read all your notes in a file called ‘Funny Forwards,’” Mack said. “You didn’t seem like the kind of person who would collect forwarded e-mails into a file.”

“Actually, I like them. Roarke was always sending me the funniest—anyway, the file was originally named ‘Wastewater Notes.’ Then things got complicated.”

“How so?” Ray asked.

“I was floored at what I discovered. But all I had was personal accounts. I couldn’t pin down any hard facts. Still, I was pretty sure I had a story building, especially when I discovered Howard Crumm’s background. I put together what I had and asked to meet with Chad. I wanted to begin putting an investigative piece together. It had been years since I’d done anything like it, but I wanted everyone to see that I was a real news-woman, not just a talking head. If I couldn’t be beautiful like the other anchors, at least I would be smart. And make a difference. I went straight to Chad because I wanted the story to myself and I knew it would probably be reassigned if I brought it up in the meeting.”

“What happened?”

“Chad shot it down immediately. He told me it was ludicrous and then asked me what exactly I thought I’d be accomplishing by suggesting that there was a bit of scandal inside a sewage plant. He said, and I quote, ‘If it’s not
sexy
, lurid, horrific, or dramatic, there’s no need to waste airtime.
There’s nothing sexy about sewage.’ And then he added that his sewage bill was down five dollars a month, so what did he have to complain about?”

“When did this happen?” Ray asked.

“A week before the plant exploded. The day it happened, I was furious. I sent Chad an e-mail and reamed him up one side and down the other. And that’s when it happened.”

“What?”

“He blackmailed me.”

“How?”

“Chad made the connection as to who P.G. was before I did, but when I told him we needed to go public with our information, he told me Green planned on suing our station and that I, personally, along with the station, was named in the lawsuit.”

“He had to have made that up,” Ray said. “I visited Green, and he never mentioned it.”

“Chad said that not only was my job on the line, but so was everyone else’s, and that if this lawsuit happened, he would make sure everyone blamed me for it. I was powerless. I didn’t know what to do. The conversation I’d had with Chad was in person, so I had no documentation proving he’d made the original call not to pursue the story.”