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“Was?”
Lucien said.

Kurt paused.

“Shortly after Peter’s death was made public, I received a call from Sarah. This is a rather unusual move, but because of her talents I felt my instincts were on target … and when she said that she wanted to move to Boston to work for the
Insider
—so she could find out what happened to Peter … I offered her a position on the spot.”

“But … she won’t have any contacts here.” Lucien’s face was stricken. He shot a look at Ben. “Hell, most likely Peter got killed because he was driving Ben’s van. I was in on the Johansen story. What good is an investigative reporter who doesn’t know anyone?”

“I know you were on the story,” Kurt said. “In fact, I seem to remember assigning it to you. The point is that Sarah’s a highly talented investigator and writer and we’re lucky to have her. Surely you read her piece on the Teamsters.”

Lucien colored. Rumor had it that her piece missed a Pulitzer by degrees. In reputation and skill, she dwarfed Lucien, and everyone in the room knew it.

“So,” Kurt said, “I’d like to start this meeting off with a welcome to Sarah Taylor.” Kurt picked up the phone and asked his secretary to bring Sarah in.

A moment later, she entered, and Ben was struck that this was the first time he had ever met his best friend’s wife. Ex-wife, anyhow.

Sarah was in her early to mid-thirties. She was relatively small, with fine features, dark blue eyes, and a light complexion. There was a faint dusting of freckles on her cheeks and nose. Short, curly black hair.

“Face like a Girl Scout,” Peter had said. “A Girl Scout who can sell you a half dozen boxes of cookies and get you to confess every bad thing you ever did just because this nice girl is so damn
interested
in you.”

Ben could see it, the openness of her face. But now, tension was also evident there, the tightness of her mouth and a hollowness about her eyes.

Kurt introduced her to the group.

“Thank you,” she said. She looked around the group quietly before speaking. “I expect all of you are surprised that I’m here. I expect some of you aren’t too happy about it either, feel that I might be upsetting the balance of order. To which I’ll tell you that I’m sorry, but that it can’t be helped. I have a consuming interest in finding out what happened to Peter. And I know it sounds arrogant, but I’ve found that when I’m truly interested in getting to the truth of the matter, I just about always do.”

She looked around at each of them. Her eyes settled on Ben, locked briefly. She said, “I’d appreciate any help you can offer.”

Lucien looked down, but everyone else spoke up, made sounds of welcome and condolences. She thanked them all, but her eyes kept coming back to Ben.

Kurt stood up and formally welcomed her aboard. He told Sid, Glenda, and Leslie that they were free to go back to work now that the staff portion of the meeting was over. They filed out, leaving the new investigative team of Ed, Ben, Sarah, and Lucien. Sarah opened a notebook computer while Kurt turned over the first page of a flip chart he had standing in the corner.

On it was a list:

1. Johansen

2. Battered Wives

3. Cheever

4. McGuire

5. ???

“Anything else?” Kurt pointed to the question marks. “Any other stories that Peter was working on that he may have mentioned to you and not me?”

Lucien and Ed looked to each other and smiled.

“Until you handed me that story about the battered women to follow up on, I knew nothing about it,” Ed said. “Peter kept his stories to himself.”

Lucien nodded to Ben. “Maybe a word or two to his buddy here, but otherwise, you’d know more than us.”

“Fine,” Kurt said. “So this will be our base of stories and I’ll expect you to keep me informed if others appear.” Kurt smiled faintly. “We’ve promised the police to keep quiet to any other media outlets about the projects Peter was working on. Naturally, this is something we’d want to hold on to anyhow, because I want Peter’s story on the cover of
Insider
next week. Sarah and Lucien, this week I want you to work together on a lead-in starting from Ben’s experience with Johansen to a quick and dramatic summary of the explosion that killed Peter. Sarah, I also see a sidebar about your own reaction when you heard of Peter’s death and insight into the risks reporters take.”

Ben winced.

She appeared to pause, but then she simply nodded. “Makes sense,” she said.

Ben saw Lucien’s shoulders slump.

Kurt continued. “Now, all the other media outlets think Peter was simply using a company van when this happened. Let’s keep it that way for Ben’s sake, keep the random nuts from thinking they should go after him, do it right.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Ben said.

Kurt continued. “In any case, from there we go on to some background on Peter himself, and then we go into the violence the press can run into in the course of doing our jobs. Ben, see if your new friend at the FBI can secure an interview for you and Sarah.”

“Sure.”

“Sarah, you’re going to be the lead on any new investigation of both Jarrod Johansen and Jimbo McGuire. Ed, you’ve already started the prison ladies’ story, and I’ve got another assignment for Lucien, which I’ll get into.”

Prison ladies,
Ben thought. Peter’s term, Peter’s irreverence. It sounded forced coming from Kurt.

“So, first thing, go establish yourself with the cops,” Kurt said to Sarah. “If they don’t come through, we’ll write it as a slice of one reporter’s life and we’ll leave open the door as to which story killed him … if it was any one of these. Obviously, it’s possible that it was something in his past. The police are leaning toward the possibility that it was someone after Ben because of Johansen.”

Kurt shrugged and looked back at the list. “But this is what we’ve got for now. All right, how are you doing so far on the prison ladies, Ed?”

“I’m taking each woman’s story a case at a time,” Ed said. “Some of them should probably get out. Others, it’s not so clear.”

“The police forming any opinions about their husbands’ families or friends in regards to Peter’s death?”

Ed smiled. “The police don’t tell me all their opinions. But my impression is that they’re looking into it without a hell of a lot of interest. Most of the guys these ladies killed didn’t sound smart enough to set an alarm clock, never mind a bomb. I think the cops are assuming the same of their friends and family.’’

“Well, keep on it. Ben, you coordinate with Ed when he’s ready for you to go in. I’ll be looking for group shots and individual portraits.”

“All right.”

“That assumes you’re not too tied up on these other three angles. If so, let me know and I’ll send someone else out to the prison.” Kurt went back to the flip chart. “On Johansen, Lucien, I’d like you to share your notes with Sarah.”

Lucien’s face flushed, and Ben and the others looked away, embarrassed for him. Everyone had stories pulled away from them from time to time, but it was never easy to take.

“What about me?” Lucien said. “You said there was another assignment?” The plaintive tone in his voice was so clear Ben was again embarrassed for him. Ben looked at Kurt, as the others did, wondering if he was going to land on the young reporter with both boots.

But Kurt was smooth. “I’ve been looking for an opportunity for you to expand your political coverage. Therefore, I’m going to have you cover Senator Cheever.”

Lucien sat a little straighter. “That’s cool. What have we got?”

“Not much. I had met with Peter on Wednesday and he brought me up to speed then.” Kurt slid out a sheaf of photos and Ben, Lucien, and the others swung around to his side of the table to look. Sarah stood well back from Lucien, clearly letting him take the lead. There were over thirty prints of what were essentially three scenes.

Kurt didn’t try to hide his frustration. “Peter said he dinked around with your camera, Ben, and set the motor drive onto high speed and didn’t know how to stop it. He essentially took about ten to twelve shots each of what should have been only three photos before blasting through a roll of film. By the time he figured out how to rewind and reload the camera, there was nothing worth taking.”

Ben felt his stomach drop.

“You should’ve
insisted
Peter take another photographer,” Kurt said. “I can’t believe an operation like ours is being hobbled by ego like this. Peter was a great reporter, but too damn secretive for his own good… . In any case, this is what we’ve got through the window of Cheever’s town house on Beacon Street. Him sipping wine with an attractive young woman up in his office in the daytime with her clothes on.”

Indeed, there were three sets of black and white shots taken through the window. One set of the senator smiling as he put down a tray of two wine glasses on a table. The second was of a young woman standing in the window. She was laughing, her head back, the line of her throat revealed. The last was of the woman looking pensively out the window, the afternoon light revealing her as a beauty. Ben stacked the prints of the second set and fanned them against his thumb, making a small quick-time movie with the minor movements the woman had made while being photographed at eight frames per second.

Even in the jerkiness of the rudimentary film method, he could read her appeal, the way her chest and shoulders lifted slightly as she laughed, the sidelong look she directed back into the room, presumably at the senator.

“And who are Peter’s sources on Cheever?” Lucien asked.

“Damned if we know. From what the police told me, they’ve found nothing in his apartment, we’ve found nothing substantive in his computer here.”

Ed said, “The police say there was a burned vinyl notebook inside the van. Totally unreadable, even for their labs.”

“You want me to walk those shots into Cheever and ask who she is?” Lucien asked. “Get his reaction?”

Kurt paused.

“All right,” he said, slowly. “Do that. But go easy with him. Just say you’re following up on Peter’s story, relate the situation. Ask him if he has any comments, if he could identify the girl for us. Somehow, I don’t see the senator wiring bombs to hide screwing around on his wife. Not in the same state that voted for Teddy Kennedy year after year.’’

“Cheever’s still going to blow,” Ed said.

“Probably,” Kurt said. “Wear your asbestos suit, Lucien. And Ben, go along when Lucien gets the appointment. See if you can get Cheever’s reaction on film.”

Kurt turned back to Sarah. “All right, Peter was also working on a young punk from Southie.” He pulled out another manila envelope and laid out a sheaf of black and white prints. “Jimbo McGuire.”

Ben looked at the prints and sighed. He’d told Peter to stay away from McGuire. And yet, the story was right there to see. Peter had gotten too close. With the four-hundred-millimeter lens that Ben had left him with, he was achieving full head and shoulder shots.

Far too close for a guy like McGuire.

McGuire was an exceedingly handsome young man, with dark hair, an open, chipper look to him. The first shot showed him leaving a warehouse not too far from Ben’s studio down off the piers. Another of him going into Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant, looking back over his shoulder in front of the pebbled glass. A set taken most likely in Charlestown talking to a small balding man outside of a candy store. And the final was of him in a Mercedes with a young woman. His hand was on her thigh, and his head was turned directly toward the camera. Just her body was visible, wearing shorts and a halter top.

Lucien whistled. “Wished Peter got the full shot on her.”

Ben glanced at Sarah, who smiled faintly. Kurt laid out the rest of the pictures. There was another shot of McGuire talking with the same shopkeeper outside a redbrick building. And finally one that looked like the North Shore. Ben could see beachfront property, the Boston skyline faintly in the background. A home in Nahant, perhaps.

In the last three shots, there were two of McGuire. One, looking back over his shoulder, a scowl forming. The other of him pointing directly into the camera.

The third shot was a quick, poorly framed photo of a thick-bodied man walking close to the camera, his shoulders forward, his head down. Out of focus.

“McGuire saw Peter and sent somebody over,” Ben said.

“That’s right,” Kurt said. “Peter said he took off before the guy got hold of him.”

“They say anything? Make any threat?”

“No. Peter said it was all there to see in this guy’s face and the way McGuire was standing there, hands on his hips.”

“Huh.” Ben said. “Have the cops talked to them?”

“They’re not sharing that with me. That’s up to you and Sarah.”

Ben said, “I sure don’t see anything here that’s worth killing about.”

“I know.” Kurt leaned over the shots, looking at them closely. “Neither did Peter.”

Kurt asked Ben to stay a moment as the others were leaving the room. “I just outlined a lot of work for you here. Are you really up to it, physically?”

“I’m hurting a bit, but I’m all right,” Ben said. Thanking God for the little vial of Darvon in his pocket to help keep the pain at bay.