Be Mine (8 page)

“You bet.” Tom bent down to examine Zach’s neat work on the turrets
and guns. He patted Zach’s shoulder and his son beamed.

“Tom.” Ann approached them from the hallway. She was wearing a
tailored suit. He loved how the fine gold necklace he’d given her for their
last anniversary looked with her V-neck top. “Phone. It’s Irene Pepper.” She
passed him their cordless. “Zach, honey, go finish your breakfast.”

“Hi, Irene,” Tom said.

“Nice job on today’s piece. Have you seen the paper yet?”

“Not yet.” Tom resumed rummaging in a futile search for the card.

“We absolutely killed everybody. Good work. You think Molly might
give us a first-person account today?”

“I don’t know. It just seems early. Have you talked to her?”

“Just briefly. I never raised the story with her. I was wondering if
you, being close to her, would sound her out on it?”

In the silence that followed Tom felt the heat of Pepper’s
determination to pull a story from Molly. He forced himself to hold his tongue.

“Dad!” Zach called from the kitchen. “You’re on TV!”

“Irene, can I talk to you when I get in?”

She let a beat pass.

“Fine.”

In the kitchen, Tom saw himself on the portable TV on the counter.
Zach lifted his face from his cereal bowl and boosted the volume.

“We have to get going, Zach,” Ann said from the table where she was
going through the morning papers as Live Action Bay News broadcast the last of
its interview with Tom Reed, senior crime writer, the
San Francisco Star
,
according to the graphic under his head.

“And tell us, Tom, do police have any suspects in Inspector Hooper’s
homicide?”

“No. Not that they’re saying. They’ll examine everything at the
scene, retrace Hooper’s final steps--” he said as the item ended.

Zach thudded down the hardwood hallway. Ann collected her keys and
her bag. “I tried to call Molly last night,” Ann said. “Her line was busy. How
do you think she’s doing?”

“Holding up, I guess. You know how these things go better than
anyone.”

She nodded and he stroked her hair. Her color was natural again.
Nothing obvious told of the events that had befallen her several months ago.
How she’d been out running an errand when, in a heartbeat, she was staring down
the barrel of a gun. Ann had been trapped in an armed robbery where a police
officer was murdered before her eyes. She was terrorized by his killers. The
scar of her experience was not visible. But Tom saw it in her face. Heard it in
her voice. She’d changed. Fear now nested in her heart and he did all he could
to assure her she was safe.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.

“I know.”

But Tom saw the concern rising in her eyes.

“Covering crime, getting close to horrible things, it’s my job. It’s
what I do.”

“I know. It’s fine. I’m okay. Really.”

Ann no longer wanted him to quit. She didn’t want him to stop being
what he was. Her therapy sessions had helped her accept that.

“Ready, Mom.” Zach slung his pack over his shoulder, hugged his dad,
and thudded to the door.

“Give my love to Molly.” She kissed Tom good-bye.

He switched off the set, then made one futile sweep of the house for
the card before leaving.

On his way to the
Star
, he decided to swing by Hooper’s
neighborhood and knock on a few doors.

A retired lawyer was convinced he’d seen a man leaving the apartment
just before Molly found him. “A white man with a dark shirt,” he told Tom. But
he was unsure of the time. A few doors down a mother with two small children
thought she’d seen a white man in a light-colored shirt near Hooper’s place.

Tom wasn’t sure what to make of it when he got to his desk and began
prospecting through his notebooks, newspapers, press statements, and cassette
tapes for the card that had accompanied Molly’s flowers. He was rifling through
it all when Simon Lepp appeared holding a file.

“What’ve you got there?” Tom asked.

“I was in the news library, going through some of Hooper’s cases,
then I tried calling around to see if there was any bad blood. It’s something
worth checking.”

“Sure.”

“Tell me, do you know if they’re going to release what they found at
the scene?”

“What do you mean?”

“Trace evidence, anything from the forensic or ballistics report. I
know this stuff from the science beat.”

“Depends. Usually they hold back on that kind of thing.”

“I’m just wondering what motivated this homicide.”

“Maybe the guy who killed Hooper is a nut job.”

“Could be psychotic. Maybe,” Lepp said. “Maybe not. Could be
Hooper’s death is related to something entirely different.”

“Such as?”

“A message, a lesson? Maybe it was to settle a score.”

“A score with who?” Tom said.

“Maybe it’s related to one of his old cases.” Lepp shrugged.

“Maybe.” Tom gave up searching for the card and went to the newsroom
kitchen for a coffee. Hank Kruner, a weathered old copy editor who’d worked
under Pepper on the national desk, pulled him aside to offer some free advice.

“Heard what happened the other day with you and Pepper and the
scanners.”

“Did you?”

“Irene hates to be challenged. And you not only challenged her,”
Kruner said, “you averted a disaster that was her doing. Violet was not pleased
about us being so late on that cop murder. You proved Irene wrong. Again. Like
you did with your undercover story when she was on national.”

Tom nodded.

“Watch your back with her,” Kruner said. “Watch it good.”

Back at his desk, Tom’s line rang. It was Irene Pepper, demanding he
come to her office. When he arrived she swiveled in her high-backed chair,
tapping her pencil against her nails.

“I’d like to change our approach to the Hooper murder,” she said.

“Change it how?”

“You agree this story is huge.”

“Absolutely.”

“I want you to lead a reporting team on it.”

Tom said nothing. Her pencil tapping stopped as she assessed him.
“I’ve recently discovered something about you,” she said. He noticed a
personnel department folder on her desk. “You’re one of the highest paid
reporters in the newsroom.”

She let the fact hang in the air.

“Well, there’s my Pulitzer nomination, the fact that I break
national exclusives, and, oh yeah, Violet Stewart gave me a raise so I wouldn’t
take offers from other papers.”

“Ancient history. What’ve you done lately?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said. “Just let me do what
I’m paid to do. Let me chase the leads I’m developing on Hooper.”

“You have leads? What leads?”

“I’ve got some calls out. Just let me do what I do best rather than
babysit a team. You be the manager. I’ll be the reporter.”

“All right. Tell you what. I’ll cut you loose to chase exclusives,
on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“Press Molly about that first-person piece. I’m not giving up on
that.”

Tom eyed her briefly, reining in his distaste before returning to
his desk, where he called Molly’s apartment.

Della answered.

“How’s Molly doing?” he asked.

“She’s a bit shaky but functioning.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s out with Cliff’s sister and Ray Beamon picking out a casket.”

Tom said nothing.

“You sound funny,” Della said. “Is Irene getting to you?”

“Just a little tired of all the BS.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Tell me something. Remember when you took the flowers from Molly’s
desk to her place last night? She ever guess who sent them?”

“Naw. She’s been getting so many she can’t keep track--you know the
D.A., the tactical team, newsroom people, fans. Why do you ask?”

“Something you said got me thinking. The first flowers came so
early, like almost instantly.”

“Right.”

“Who would send her flowers so fast after she’d found Hooper?”

“I agree, they were fast, but someone’s got to be first. Besides,
who’s to say they were about Cliff? Maybe they were for something else. You
know, a story. We get that sometimes. Her show with Vince Vincent or something
else in her life. I mean, without the card it’s hard to say who sent them and
for what reason.”

“I found the card last night under her desk, but I lost it before I
could read it.”

“Then it’s a mystery. Listen, I’ll tell Molly you called. I have to
go.”

Tom tried to sort out his frustrations. First with Pepper, then over
the fact that he’d lost the card. Well, if he was going to work this story, he
should track down Sydowski. Standing to leave, he bumped his keyboard and an
envelope appeared.

The card.

There it was. A blank envelope. Unsealed. He turned it over in his
hand thinking there was no harm in looking. He opened it. The flat, square card
inside had an embossed frame and a flowered corner. Written in longhand with a
blue pen was the message
Please think of me. I’m thinking of you.

No signature.

A nocturne by Chopin
floated through the
Chevy’s six speakers as Linda Turgeon drove them back to Hooper’s neighborhood
in the rain. Sydowski’s gut twisted as he stared at the latest ballistics
reports, because the only thing he could see was Beamon’s scraped knuckles.

Ray was his suspect.

But Sydowski wasn’t prepared to reveal his suspicion to anyone. If Turgeon
hadn’t come to it already, she would soon enough. Their sworn duty was to
gather the evidence for a solid case. And that was what they would do. Problem
was, he didn’t have a single shred of anything he could use to challenge Ray.

Not yet.

As the car’s wipers flapped, Sydowski chewed hard on a Tums and went
back to the reports. They knew Hooper’s gun hadn’t been fired. And they hadn’t
found the murder weapon. The bullet pried from Cliff’s apartment wall and the
bullet recovered from his hemorrhaged brain were confirmed as being .40-cal
Winchester SXT Talons. The standard issued to all SFPD officers. It was also
available to the public.

“What about the lands, grooves, and twists? Were the bullets fired
from a .40-cal Beretta?” Turgeon asked.

It was the weapon issued force-wide.

“One of the rounds was badly damaged,” Sydowski said. “Ballistics
still has more work to do, then there’s imaging and the databases to check
against other unsolveds. Other pistols besides a Beretta can also fire this
kind of bullet.”

“Still, your thinking on this is that Cliff knew the shooter.”

“He was punched. That’s an intimate type of assault.”

“Right.”

“If he didn’t fight back, it fits with the possibility of it being
someone he knew. Maybe he tried to talk his way out of it.”

“So it’s personal.”

“And it could be something else entirely.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

Sydowski said the fact that OCC and Management Control were quick to
pounce on Hooper’s case troubled him. What did they know about Hooper? Maybe
everything. Maybe nothing. If it was an execution, then Hooper had been a
threat to someone. Hoop had been a cop long enough to make a lot of people
unhappy. But who would be stupid enough to kill him and think they’d get away
with it?

Molly had given them the names of old boyfriends, guys she’d dated
for a significant time. None of them held any grudges or were the jealous type,
she said. Sydowski and Turgeon had confirmed their whereabouts and quickly
cleared them.