Edited for Death (4 page)

Clarice’s blond hair hasn’t gotten any more attractive during the chase, and a half hour of running her hands through it as she writes doesn’t help. What began as a short, spiky do is now a series of clumps and wisps falling in her eyes. She blows a few strands away and says, “You’re right. I know you’re right. In another life I maybe should have been a cop. But I really don’t want to. I love what I do and I want to do it well.”

I touch her shoulder as we walk out of the bar. “Good work today, Clar, I really mean it. I don’t want you to go off and be a cop, I want you to stay with journalism. You’re too good to lose. I plan to be reading you in the
New York Times
some day.”

She looks at me with a wicked grin.

“You will, Amy, you will,” she says and opens her car door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

My favorite part of the job has always been the adrenaline.

I began in journalism on the cops beat. It’s a place where there’s always news and I loved it. It’s how I met my first husband, Vinnie-the-cop. His family called him that; I took it up through osmosis.

I was learning the ropes, getting more and more story assignments when I got pregnant with Heather, our daughter. When I went back to work, Vinnie insisted that I take a different, less dangerous assignment, so I starting covering local politics. Safe as milk until a disgruntled city sanitation worker holed up in the mayor’s office as I was interviewing His Honor.

SWAT was called, no shots were fired, everybody walked away, but Vinnie was upset.

“Goddamn it Amy, you’re supposed to be safe!” he roared at me. “I’m the one with the dangerous job.”

“Hey, my job isn’t supposed to be dangerous,” I yelled back. “That was only a fluke. You know that. Jeez, nowadays you can be doing the most innocent thing and get shot by some jerk-off going postal. What about all those people who are just waiting in line to buy stamps when an idiot comes in! What about the school shootings? Those crazies use AK-47s to mow down kids on a school playground.”

“I know, I know. I just want to keep you and Heather safe,” he yelled back.

“Well, we can’t stay locked up in the house forever. I’m a big girl. I have a career that I love. I take precautions. You can’t just wrap us up in cotton wool. And you can’t just dictate to me!”

We fought for a couple of months until I finally caved in and said I’d ask for a features beat. I loved Vinnie, Heather was my soul, but reporting and writing were my breath.

Less than a year later, I was back at the
San Fernando Valley
Globe,
covering local government again. Vinnie was a good cop, a careful cop, but he let the hysteria of a high-speed chase get him involved in a gun battle. The bad guy—who’d killed two innocent kids in a drug deal gone bad, then taken off in a stolen car—was dead. But so was Vinnie.

My widow’s pension wasn’t enough to support us and I couldn’t just stay home and be a mom. Too many ghosts were in my head. I needed something big, something challenging, to keep them buried.

The San Fernando Valley Globe
helped with this. I was back into politics and one assignment was a local rally for a councilman looking to make a state-wide run. I was chatting with a campaign staffer when a good-looking man came up and joined us. The staffer’s eyebrows rose, but he introduced me anyway.

“Amy, this is Brandon Colby. He’s a lobbyist in Sacramento Brandon, this is Amy Hobbes. She’s with the
Globe
.”

This Brandon guy was smooth. This Brandon guy was pretty. This Brandon guy was going to be dangerous.

I spent the next year putting a gag on my intuition. When Brandon called, my knees quivered. His voice turned my brain to jelly. My body was taking over and to hell with reason. I found myself one May afternoon in Monroe standing in front of 150 strangers saying “I do.”

Heather was in middle school, I was playing political hostess, Brandon was moving up in his firm. I didn’t miss the news business as much as I thought I would. Maybe being a mom, and surviving the devastation of Vinnie’s death had burned through the adrenaline.

My life was on a different track than I’d planned, but it was secure and safe. Until the day Brandon came home and announced he’d taken a different job. It was bigger and better and paid more. He’d be working at the national level. It was in Chicago. And Heather and I wouldn’t be joining him. He was moving with his pregnant girlfriend, a staffer in the Illinois legislature.

It took two weeks before I got out of bed and went down to the
Monroe
Press
to talk to Calvin O’Keefe.

When I wake up every morning still in Monroe, I blame the asshole car thief who started Vinnie on a high-speed chase.

CHAPTER NINE

Jim Dodson calls me directly when Janice Boxer’s autopsy results come back.

“We’re probably going to need your help on this one,” he says. The sheriff’s voice is country with an urban overlay.

“Our initial thought was that Janice had just driven off that road. It was funny, because she was up and down those roads, day in and day out. Hell, I’d even seen her put her own snow chains on.”

“What kind of help do you need,” I ask warily. “What was the report?” It’s an iffy proposition working closely with the cops. I want to maintain good relations with them but there are times when I’m left out of the information loop.

“Janice Boxer was dead before her car went off the road. We still don’t know what the killer used but her skull was smashed She’d been hit in the head a couple of times before she was put in the car. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and her head went into the windshield so the coroner had to pick through a bunch of bone and glass to get to the hits that actually killed her.” In my imagination I can hear the man sigh.

I’m silent for a minute. Monroe was small by big city standards and I’ve never known anybody besides Vinnie who was murdered. I’m not a close friend of Janice Boxer’s but she’d been helpful and friendly when I was looking for a house and understanding when I backed out of the deal after rethinking winter snow.

Janice laughed—not her perky real-estate lady’s laugh, a real I-get-you chuckle—and told me that she’d had the same fears. She worked for a large corporation in San Jose before she moved to the foothills and began selling real estate.

It took time to acclimate to mountain living.

Dodson’s voice brings me back. “Are you still there?”

“It’s different when you know the victim,” I say. “You know we’ll have to get all sides—interview her family, friends, co-workers. Maybe talk to some people she did business with.”

“I know, and that’s what I’m counting on.” This time I can hear a slight sigh.

He’s convincing, but I need to stand my ground. “Hey, we’re not going to do your work for you. You know that the only information we’ll give you is what we print.”

“I know that. I’m not asking you to do the investigation. Completely off the record and for background that can’t get used or repeated, we’re going to be looking at the perpetrator coming from the Bay Area. We’re a tiny department. I don’t have the bodies to send to San Francisco or San Jose for interviews. If you do a story on the murder maybe one of the big papers will pick it up. Somebody with some information might read it and call their local police. Then we can ask for mutual aid from those big departments. If I call them, they won’t be interested. We use all the state-wide stuff; computer identity and AFIS, DNA lab if we ever have any reason. The daily grunt work, door-to-door, follow-up on tips and interviewing witnesses we’re on our own. We’ll be better off with more people asking questions.”

What Dodson is saying makes sense. AFIS, the automated fingerprint identification system, only compares prints on file. DNA testing only works if you have samples. That’s high-tech forensics. This is just boring repetition, knocking on strange doors. Cops—hell, all law enforcement, including the FBI—will call a press conference when they run out of leads.

I’m sold. “OK. Send me the details with information on her family or background. I’ll tell Clarice. Thanks for the call.”

That frisson, the hair on my neck doing a stand-up dance, gives me an all-over shiver. Of what? Fear? Anticipation? Anger? Maybe recognition that Clarice’s suspicions hold water.

I hang up and sit for a moment, staring out into the newsroom. Clarice isn’t due in to work for another hour. I use the time wisely.

I have my nails done.

Over the years, I’ve learned that you get your information where you can. I started going to the trendiest nail salon in town when I married Brandon. It was a local who’s who of Monroe’s movers and shakers and a crash course into the place. Now I still get gossip and story ideas, but just spending an hour with a bunch of young women speaking Vietnamese is a respite. I don’t understand anything and don’t have to say anything, just let the voices roll over me.

I use the window of time to sort out how I want to tell Clarice about the murder. Marshalltown had only one murder in the last decade. A local meth-head knifed his dealer and dropped the body down a mineshaft. The tweaker was picked up two days later trying to pawn the dealer’s watch.

With two murders in a few days, I’ll have to work with Clarice to handle this assignment carefully. I don’t want to be accused of over-blowing this and start a frenzy about some serial killer loose in the foothills.

When Clarice gets to work, the fax from Marshalltown and a “See Me” note are taped to her computer screen, the only sure-fire way I know to get instant reaction from a reporter. And I’m not wrong.

Clarice drops her purse, cell phone, pager and keys in a pile, rips the notes off her screen and is breathless when she comes through my door, colliding with another staffer on his way out.

“Now are you happy? I told you there was a lot more going on there! What’s Dodson hiding? What didn’t he tell us?”

“Damn it, Clarice, slow down, stop.” I wave my fingers to help the almost-dry polish. “This is going to turn out fine, but we can’t go stomping around in his turf. He called me, was very nice on the phone, asked for our help in publicizing the murder. I really got the feeling that he’s one of those we can work with.”

I recap my conversation with Dodson. I tell Clarice about the Bay Area connection because she needs to know the audience. Clarice is making notes.

“OK. I’ll start with Boxer’s background, the background of the recent boom in the real estate market in the foothills, the background on San Juan County and the sheriff’s department,” she says, busy with her squiggles. “Can you get the intern, what’s-her-name, to do routine cops calls?”

Even after a couple of years, I’m still amazed at Clarice’s cluelessness about basic office etiquette. “Her name is Shana. I’ll see if she has time,” I say.

Clarice looks up at me as she’s dialing the San Juan County road department. She’s picked up the hint of sarcasm but doesn’t let it stop her.

“Thanks,” and into the phone, “This is Clarice Stams from the
Monroe
Press
. I need some statistics on car accidents and deaths.”

I walk over to the tiny cubicle that the intern gets to call her own and ask her to make the cops calls. This time her pretty, young face lights up. Meeting announcements are the scut work of the newsroom and she’s discovered that she likes cops. Come to think if it, they probably like her as well.

Clarice is also calling the San Juan County coroner’s office for how often they run across violent death and the state real estate licensing board to see if being killed while showing a property is considered an occupational hazard.

She writes a straightforward story on Boxer’s murder, laying out the facts and quoting San Juan County Sheriff Jim Dodson, “We’re all distressed that this happened to Janice Boxer,” he said. “She was an asset to our community and her death is still under investigation.”

Clarice and I will start early tomorrow and head to Marshalltown with a photographer. She’ll visit the cabin and the spot where Janice’s car went off the road. She’ll interview Janice’s co-workers. She’ll interview Sheriff Dodson and get his picture. She’ll find a picture of Janice to run with the story. And she’s clear that she can follow this story as long as she doesn’t let her other work slack off. I may have looked like a pushover with Shana today, but I won’t let Clarice bull her way across the staff.

I’ll meet Royce Calvert, get more background on the family and the hotel. I’m going to need to know a hell of a lot more before I think about tackling a project like a book. I may be just living in a dream world, grasping at straws to help get me out of Monroe but it’s a relatively safe form of self-medication.

My car is a toaster oven after sitting all day. I put down the windows and crank up the air, driving home with a mini tornado trashing the remains of my hairdo. Once home, I let Mac, my black Scotty-mongrel, out, fix his dinner, change into shorts and a T-shirt while he eats and walk him. Exercise is a constant black cloud. My job is stressful but sedentary. To work off tension, I know I should get more exercise, but I just don’t.

I’ve pooh-poohed Clarice’s ghost obsessions. I’ve casually joined in with the other reporters when they joke about her; her co-workers think she’s way too serious and only cares about crime. I’ve tried to stretch her interests and skills by giving her light, funny or wry stories.

CHAPTER TEN