Deadly Blessings (2 page)

My file was password protected.

Damn
.

Frustrated, I closed the request, and
returned the squeaky monitor back to its original position before
moving back to my own chair. I wouldn’t have guessed Marlene would
have had the foresight to close it so quickly. But she probably
dealt with dozens of us every day. And desperate people do
desperate things.

After checking the number on my pager, I dug
my cell phone out and put in a quick call to Bass. His assistant,
Frances, was no help. After he beeped me, he’d apparently walked
away. She transferred me to Jordan, and I got her voicemail. I left
a message to call me only if it was life or death.

Something was up.

Tucking the phone into my purse, I sat back
to wait.

Having my parents out of state gave me
latitude in my adoption quest. Caring people, my parents, they were
also just a bit protective. I’d gotten used to it, the way people
get used to annoying habits of people they love. You either accept
them the way they are, blowing off their idiosyncrasies, or you
learn to live without them in your life. For me it was an easy
choice.

Of course, when eccentricities become
annoying to the point of distraction, it might be time to rethink a
relationship.

Which reminded me that I hadn’t spoken with
Dan for two days.

My pager sounded again. This time, without
fear of getting caught snooping, I didn’t jump. But I’d
inadvertently buried the thing in my purse and the beeping mocked
my unsuccessful efforts to dig it out quickly.

Marlene’s backless shoes made their slapping
sound as she returned from the back room. She took her seat again,
her eyebrows raised as I fumbled through my purse, finally hitting
the silent button. A quick look at the display confirmed that it
was work calling me again.

I knew I should have called
back that moment, but Marlene had a manila folder in her
hands.
My
manila
folder—with at least a half-inch worth of papers and forms. I
decided to wait.

She opened it on her lap, in front of me,
careful to keep one side up so that I couldn’t read any of the
papers inside. “Let’s see here,” she said.

In my job, I’m calm. Cool.
I have to be. Our weekly broadcast of
Midwest Focus Television News Magazine
, brings us situations that run the gamut of feel-good to
make-your-skin-crawl. My job is to investigate, to find the story
that will touch the hearts of the viewing public. To interview, to
evaluate, to winnow through the chaff to find wheat worth
disseminating.

I talk to hundreds of folks every year. I
hear their stories. Some will do anything for that fifteen minutes
of fame. Others will break your heart with their willingness to
share their lives. But I maintain an even keel. Always. I have to.
It’s a defense mechanism, most likely. But it’s also an effective
tool to getting the job done well.

But right now my hands were sweating. My
feet, crossed and shoved far beneath the chair, were wiggling to
the beat of fear. I wasn’t about to rush Marlene.

“
We-ll,” she finally said,
stringing the word out into two syllables, “I don’t see that either
of your biological parents have filed the ‘Open to Contact’ form.”
She let the thought hang as she flipped through the file
again.

This was the moment of decision for her. I
knew it. I just knew she was considering throwing me a bone.
Something small. The town where I was born? The name of the
hospital? Maybe even a hint about my mother’s last name? I said
nothing, but tried my best to look hopeful and sincere.

“
Legally,” she said, her
eyes meeting mine, “there’s nothing in here I can tell you
…”

I returned her nod. Her eyes were a watery
shade of brown. Eyebrows carefully penciled into tadpole shapes
over draped lids.

“…
but you’ve made this
long trip down, and I understand how hard it has to be
…”

I wanted to shout, “Yes? Yes?” but my cell
phone shattered the moment. My face must have registered both my
frustration, and my moment of indecision.

“
Do you have to get that?”
Marlene asked.

Digging through my purse again, I nodded.
The timing couldn’t be worse, I thought, mentally cursing whoever
was calling. At the same time I knew that I needed to sound
pleasant, or risk ruining the impression Marlene had of me, thus
far. She still smiled. Maybe all wasn’t lost, yet.

The caller ID number told me it was Bass.
“Alex here.”

His voice boomed over the tiny handset and I
knew Marlene could hear every word. “Where the hell are you?”

“
I’m at an appointment, Mr.
Bassett.”

That took him aback, I knew. I never called
him Mr. Bassett.

“
Well, how long till your
return, Ms. St. James?” Oh, he was in a rare mood. “We got a
situation here.”

Marlene shook her head in a commiserating
way. I was engendering sympathy. Good.

“
It might be a couple of
hours.”

“
Why, where the hell are
you?”

“
I’m on personal time, Mr.
Bassett.”

“
I don’t give a rat’s ass
what kind of time you’re on. Get moving. This one ain’t gonna wait.
It’s that case you were following. The one we’ve been waiting on?”
He ended his sentence as a question. I knew Bass didn’t trust cell
phones. He thought there was a network of satellites that singled
him out and paid attention to every one of his personal
conversations. So I wasn’t going to get anything specific from him
here. As though to make his meaning clear, he enunciated his next
words with care: “The one with your unique perspective?”

Aha. So it was the priest story after
all—the holy man had impregnated a twenty-two-year-old Polish
immigrant and had then fled to Brazil when the truth came to light.
Being the only member of the investigative team fluent in Polish,
I’d landed this one. And it was a plum.

“
Okay,” I said. “I’ll be
there as soon as I can.”

“
You got till
noon.”

He hung up.

I’d never make it. I blew out a breath of
frustration, thinking that I’d call him again on the drive back to
massage his ruffled feathers.

“
I’m sorry,” I said.
Flustered by Bass’s call and whatever information Marlene was about
to impart, I didn’t pay attention as I tucked the phone away. I
snagged the tiny antenna in the front pocket of my purse. Open, it
somersaulted off my lap to the floor, spilling its contents as it
tumbled.

I could have lived through the embarrassment
of having my mints, my change purse, even my feminine products
strewn across the industrial carpeting. But what sealed my fate was
my press pass. It landed, smiling skyward, at Marlene’s feet.

She leaned over to pick it up. “Oh,” she
said, stringing the word out, “You’re with the media?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

“
Sorry.” Her eyes had
changed. No longer empathetic, she’d morphed into an efficient
clerk, wary of evil investigators. Tapping the manila folder with
proprietary little pat-pat, she said, “These records are
sealed.”

Chapter Two

“
What do
you mean you gave it to Fenton? Who the
hell
is Fenton?”

As though they’d conspired to make me feel
loud and obnoxious with my voice raised at least two octaves and
twenty decibels, the entire office staff took that very moment to
fall completely silent.

Bass was loving this. I knew he was. Glee
danced in his hazel eyes.

He and I were standing in the hub, the nerve
center of our television station’s administrative office. Support
staff desks made up this center section, set at ten foot intervals
across the spacious floor. The hub was home to six assistants, all
women, who fielded calls, made appointments, and moved at the speed
of light, as they often did, to help us get a story together. And
right now every single one of them had their eyes glued on me.

Bass smirked, letting the silence hang there
a moment, long enough for the watercooler thirty feet away to
gurgle before answering me. The bastard.

Philip J. Bassett hated being called Bass.
Which was why I did it. It was a career decision. Succumbing to the
temptation of calling the boss “prick” to his face could get a
person fired. Calling him by a nickname got his ire up, but since
the ire was usually way up there anyway where I was concerned,
there was no real harm done. I figured he should be happy I didn’t
call him “Hound” instead.

How he came to be known as Bass, I didn’t
know. It started before my time, back in the good old days by the
good old boys. Back then it might have even been an affectionate
nickname. Now, not even close. It was my rebellion, my chance to
get back at the little jerk. And little he was.

I stood a full inch taller than he did, and
in heels I towered over him. So much so, I had to resist the
constant urge to reach down and flick ever-present dandruff flakes
off the top of his head. Winter or summer, it always looked like he
just stepped in from a light flurry. And when he shook his
head—something he did often and with vehemence—rather than fly
about, the little flakes hung on for dear life, stuck as they were
to his greasy hair gel. He’d been raised in the Brylcream era, and
he must have stocked up.

Even with the thick-soled shoes he wore, he
wasn’t a breath over five foot five. Petite, diminutive, the guy
with his full head of brown hair and clean-shaven looks, had the
advantage of looking closer to mid-forties than his actual age of
sixty-something.

“
Fenton,” he said, in a
patronizing voice, “is new.”

“
And you
gave him
my
story?”

“
Look, Alex, this one’s
turned into a heater.” Another thing, Bass was a policeman wannabe.
He loved to sprinkle his conversation with law enforcement
vernacular. I suspected that he’d been turned down from applying
due to his lack of stature. Either that, or he watched a lot of
those shows on TV. The man was a veritable lexicon of
cop-speak.

I struggled to lower my voice. “You told me
to get back here fast. I got here as quick as I could.”

“
I told you to get back
here by noon, or you were outta luck.”

Like they were watching a
tennis match, the staff’s eyeballs, six sets of them, flicked from
me to Bass and back again. Like a freeze-frame in a movie, the
women were stock-still, fingers suspended over their keyboards, or
handing off folders, or poised to get up from their seats. Not
moving. Like being in a wax museum, with a little sign underneath:
“Busy office, circa early 21
^st
century.” Except for their watchful eyes and the performance
Bass and I were providing, the place was still.

I’d made record time flying up I-55. Fueled
by anger and frustration, I’d taken my mood out on the gas pedal,
breaking every speed limit I saw. I knew that if I’d gotten
stopped, I would’ve had no defense. But I didn’t care.

As I drove, I’d phoned Bass. Repeatedly. But
he wouldn’t take any of my calls. Frances, standing behind him now,
had sworn he wasn’t avoiding me. She wouldn’t tell me what the
scoop was, only that something big had happened. I hate it when
people tell you that something’s up, but won’t tell you what it is.
Makes my imagination work overtime. I had twenty possibilities to
my immoral priest story running through my brain.

But I hadn’t expected to hear that the young
woman had been murdered.

Twenty-two years old, Milla Voight had
maintained she didn’t know that Father Carlos de los Santos was a
priest until after she confronted him with the news of her
pregnancy. A recent immigrant to the United States from Poland,
she’d worked as a shampoo girl at a north side hair salon, making
minimum wage and hoping for a better life. She’d been in the States
no more than a month when she’d been introduced to the handsome de
los Santos through a mutual acquaintance.

The story might have remained quiet if Milla
hadn’t attempted to terminate her pregnancy at the very abortion
clinic where Father Carlos was staging a peaceful sit-in
demonstration. Rumor was, she knew he’d be there, and had seen it
as an opportunity to make him feel remorse for the situation he’d
put her in, while bringing her plight to the attention of his
colleagues.

Instead, feeling the tug of his priestly
collar perhaps, he’d taken the occasion to lecture her on the
sanctity of life. She’d reacted with hysterics borne of
frustration. And the entire exchange had been recorded by an
industrious second-string reporter who watched with delight as his
interview made the headline story on the ten o’clock news.

Milla didn’t get the abortion. What she got
was instant fame and an eager attorney willing to take her case,
pro bono.

And a month later when, about to be
subpoenaed, Father Carlos of the Saints fled in haste to Brazil,
her story made it to my desk as a possible feature for
investigation. When Bass had learned that I spoke Polish, he was so
tickled that I thought he might wet himself. Milla spoke almost no
English and I’d planned to arrange a meeting after my jaunt to
Springfield.

I’d never get that chance now. How lonely it
had to be, how overwhelming the odds against a young girl new to
the country, pregnant, and taking on an institution as powerful as
the Catholic Church. And now both she and her unborn child were
dead. Unceremoniously dumped in the Cal Sag channel, found floating
by a homeless guy who’d gone down there to take a leak.