A Confidential Source (29 page)

“Can I help you?” a kindly voice asked. An older woman was putting a coffee mug down on the reception desk. She wore enormous
glasses with a rhinestone star in one lens.

“Yes,” I said, waving my ticket.

The reception lady saw my scratch card and smiled. The little rhinestone star caught the light and glittered. “Your lucky
day?”

“You bet,” I said, smiling back.

She pointed to one of the terminal windows far to the left. “That’s the validation area, right there. You go ask Tina to help
you. She’ll give you a claims form.”

I stood at that window for a couple of minutes before a woman appeared from one of the back offices. Tina was about thirty
years old, with large breasts revealed by a dress that fit her like a dance leotard. She had a very large, Mick Jagger mouth
and the whitest teeth I’d ever seen.

“Oh, wait a minute.” I’d remembered the $50 ticket, which I’d stuck in my pants pocket. She looked surprised when I passed
it to her. “Guess it really was your lucky day,” she said, handing me two claims forms and a pen.

I returned to a table in the waiting area and began copying the serial numbers from the tickets onto the forms. When I’d finished
adding all the pertinent data and digging my photo ID from the bottom of my purse, I returned to the validation area.

For a moment at the counter, I felt nauseous. I didn’t want to let the tickets go. Didn’t want to pass them under the glass
for fear my luck would disappear. Tina saw my hesitation and laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t eat them.”

Reluctantly, I surrendered the tickets. Glancing at the leprechaun’s hand of cards, Tina said, “I always tell my husband I
got the best job in the world. All I do all day is deal with winners.”

The nausea disappeared. I was a winner. Not a newsroom reject. Not a talk-radio junkie. Not a lonely woman without family
or career.

Tina scratched off something from the bottom of the first ticket and glanced up at me a second before feeding it into what
looked like the base of the terminal. The machine beeped. She did the same thing with the second ticket, and the machine made
the same high-pitched sound.

“Something wrong?”

“Lawrence!” she called over her shoulder to offices in the back. Her voice sounded shrill, but when she saw my expression,
she caught herself. Leaning forward, she explained, “I’m gonna need him to cut you a check!”

I was overwhelmed with relief.

Lawrence walked over with an air of managerial authority. His suit must have been too warm for the sunny office because he
already appeared to be sweating. He took both scratch tickets from Tina and studied them carefully. She handed him my claims
forms with my Massachusetts driver’s license. He studied the license as if Massachusetts didn’t count. “We like to have two
photo IDs,” he said slowly. “You got anything else?”

I dug into my knapsack for my
Chronicle
ID. My hand swam over the familiar shapes of my keys, my notebook, lipstick, pens, wallet. I dove deeper into the knapsack
for the thick plastic square. It occurred to me then that it might still be on the kitchen table where I’d overturned my knapsack
last night. My hand began to flail in panic. I squatted to the marble floor to empty the entire contents onto it. Nothing.
“I must have left it at home.”

Tina smiled at me in an apologetic way, but her voice sounded strained. “We’re always extra careful with the big winners.”

“State police have to review any payoff over a grand. It’ll be a few minutes,” Lawrence said in a practiced way. He pointed
to a row of upholstered chairs against the wall. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I gathered my possessions from the floor and stuffed them back into my knapsack. In the waiting area, I found a
People
magazine. I had no idea who the celebrity was on the cover, but sat down, prepared to flip through the magazine without being
able to read a single word. What was taking so long? Finally, Tina reappeared from a back room followed by a state trooper.
I heard a buzzing sound and the state trooper left the glassed-in area and headed toward me.

He was an older man, early sixties, but still very much in shape. He hadn’t lost any of the state-trooper swagger and he held
the scratch tickets tight enough to inflict permanent damage. “Where did you get these?” he asked.

I noticed he said “get” instead of “buy” and I had to squelch a panicky feeling rising in my chest. “I bought them. In Providence.
The Mazursky Market.”

The kindly reception lady was shaking her head as if she’d seen it all. The state trooper asked me to come into the back office
to answer a few questions.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

The state trooper pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket and waved it over the bar code on the bottom of both scratch tickets.
“What’s wrong is that you have two winning scratch tickets and
both
are counterfeits.”

There was an empty hole of time while I stared at the scratch tickets that could have changed my life. My heart started pounding
with a ricochet effect in my brain. Instantly, all major body systems were in distress. All my stupid hopes, my new furniture,
my noble plan to pay back my mother. Counterfeit?

As we walked through a hallway to a private office in the back, the state trooper scraped a fingernail along one of the cards
and stopped to show it to a secretary. “They did a helluva job duplicating the latex,” he said.

In the office, I wound up sitting at someone’s desk, staring at a framed picture of two children poking their heads out of
a leaf pile. I tried to take deep breaths to slow the whirlwind inside me. I’d missed a question. “What?”

The state trooper asked me when I’d bought the tickets, and then, why I’d taken so long to cash them.

I thought of the scramble in my apartment last night, the thrill when I’d found the tickets under the place mat. Counterfeit?
A heavy feeling settled over me, a feeling of futility and depression. “I misplaced them for a couple of weeks, that’s all.”

He gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care. He asked me if it had struck me as unusual that I’d had
two winners from the same game. What did it matter? I wanted to ask. I was a loser after all.

And then the state trooper asked me if I’d bought scratch tickets at any other stores.

“Fraser’s Liquors in South Kingstown.”

“How about Mazursky’s Smith Hill Market? Or the one in South Providence?”

Slowly, the murky, heavy feeling began to lift. I could see through the devastation to my first positive thought. “Why? Have
you come across counterfeits from those stores?”

He didn’t answer.

“Is there an investigation into this?” As I heard myself ask this question, the sky above me opened and the light hit.
I was wrong about why Barry was murdered. But it wasn’t an armed robbery, and the cops have known it all along.
Barry had been selling counterfeit lottery tickets. This was why he was killed. And Drew Mazursky had proof of it. On tape.
“Have you come across counterfeits from the other Mazursky Markets?”

The state trooper’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say you did for a living?”

“I’m a reporter for the
Chronicle.
”

He pulled himself up from his chair. “That’s it. We’re going to headquarters.”

“What?” It was nine-thirty. I had to meet Leonard in half an hour. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I paid for those scratch tickets.
Bought them at a convenience store. A registered lottery agent. I can’t go to headquarters. I’ve got to go to work.”

This only seemed to strengthen his resolve. “I have to ask you to come in for questioning.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll have to take you into custody.”

*    *    *

State police headquarters was a complex of buildings at the end of a long, circular driveway hidden in the woods. I was escorted
into the first building, past the dispatcher and into a spartan room with a desk and a small conference table.

The state trooper, who’d finally introduced himself as Corporal Linsky, asked me questions I had already answered at the lottery
offices: how long I’d lived in Rhode Island, who I knew in Providence, the restaurants I frequented, and the other places
I hung out. But now he also wanted to know if I was claiming this winning scratch ticket for someone else.

“You think I’m working for someone else? Passing counterfeits?” I was insulted by the implication. “Hey, I’m the victim here.
I told you, I paid good money for those things. Could I just use the phone?” I needed to call Leonard, tell him where I was
and what was going on. I wished to hell I’d been able to pay my cell phone bill and hadn’t canceled my service.

“Give me a minute,” said the state trooper, getting up from his desk. “I’ve got to call the detective sergeant.”

He disappeared through the door before I could ask how long
that
would take. After several minutes passed, a female state trooper entered and asked if I wanted coffee. She was short, with
a wide Slavic face and purplish-red hair tied in a ponytail. I told her I wanted to make a phone call instead. She said she’d
go find Corporal Linsky.

The room was colorless, with cold, hard chairs and very little sunlight. There was an abundance of fluorescence, though, and
I felt my nerves begin to cook, as if I was under a warming light. I needed to call Leonard. And Carolyn, and maybe a lawyer.

I rubbed my right hand. The small bones just beneath the knuckles ached in a strange way, and I realized it was from the way
I’d been clutching the counterfeit scratch ticket. But I couldn’t let myself think about all that early-morning hope, all
those solutions to my problems. I was broke again. That was it. I had to focus on the opportunity, the story: Barry Mazursky
had been selling counterfeit lottery tickets, and someone had killed him because of it.

I heard footsteps in the hallway, and straightened. If I wasn’t under arrest, they couldn’t keep me here. I could demand to
leave. Demand to be driven back to my car, at lottery headquarters.

The footsteps stopped, and for a moment I heard nothing. I felt like a race car stuck on a track. White-hot fuel replaced
blood in my veins. I had a front-page story. Maybe another shot at the investigative team. I had to get out of here and meet
Leonard before he gave up on me. I paced back to the door and stared into the hallway. I couldn’t get out of the building
without the dispatcher buzzing me through.

“I want to get out of here!” I shouted down the hall. The female state trooper returned and guided me back into the room.

“Just another minute or two.” She had the faintest accent, as if she’d immigrated here as a teenager. “Detective Sergeant
Randall should be here any minute…problems with the little one at home, I think.”

“I don’t care about his problems at home,” I said. “I’m late for work. You can’t hold me here!”

“You are upset,” she said soothingly, as if to validate my anger. Raising a finger that asked for another minute, she backed
out of the room. “I understand. Very upset. I’ll see what I can do.”

I paced the small room for the next five minutes waiting for her to come back. The police couldn’t actually charge
me
with counterfeiting. I’d paid money for those things. And if they weren’t going to arrest me, they had to let me go.

Finally, I went back to the conference table, grabbed my knapsack from the floor, and swung it over my shoulders. If they
wanted to keep me prisoner, they were going to have to physically subdue me. Police brutality. Wait until I wrote about that
on the front page.

But I didn’t get far. Just as I reached the door, it swung open. It wasn’t Corporal Linsky, the female state trooper, or the
detective sergeant I’d been waiting for. It was Matt Cavanaugh holding his hands up in front of him as if to protect me from
ramming into his chest.

I stepped back awkwardly. “I want to get out of here,” I said.

Matt was dressed for the office, but in rumpled clothes: a pair of chinos, button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and
loosened tie. He was carrying one of those vat-size cups of coffee and he had dark circles under his eyes. He looked both
wired and weary, and for a moment, I felt for him. But when he shut the door behind him and gestured for me to take a seat
at the table, I got pissed off all over again.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I repeated.

“Just a few questions and I’ll drive you back to your car, I promise.” His eyes met mine. The offer seemed genuine. I felt
relief. A way out of here. A way back to my car.

“How long ago did you buy these tickets?” he asked.

“The night I met you,” I said, sitting down again. “The night Barry got shot.”

Something clicked in his eyes, and I knew he remembered me waving my winning scratch ticket at him when we stood together
at the register. He shook his head again, as if awed by the chain of events. “What are the odds of this happening?” he asked,
mostly of himself, as he dropped to the chair beside me and put his coffee cup on the table.

“To a reporter working on the story? Pretty long odds, I’d say.”

He looked physically pained by this remark. And then his expression grew determined. “You can’t write about this incident,
Hallie. You’ve got to promise not to write about this.”

“Are you kidding?” Nabbed as I tried to cash in scratch tickets purchased at a convenience store where the owner was mysteriously
murdered? Without one word of confirmation from Matt, without any other connection at all to Barry’s murder, I had a front-page
story.

He took a moment to regroup. The tone became more personal. “Couldn’t we work together on this? Couldn’t you wait just a couple
of days?”

“For what?”

He refused to answer. But he looked away, as if he was just too tired to deal with me, and I sensed an opening.

“Oh yeah, you expect me to trust you, but you won’t give me anything to work with. Why should a couple of days make a difference?”

He turned to me with an open look of exasperation.