Friday Edition, The (23 page)

Jonathan Church’s eyes were windows of steel when Sam opened her apartment door Tuesday evening. They stopped her cold, as a wave of darkness thick and deep thundered through her. They stood at the door a moment without words, eyeing each other. She had opened her door with a sense of foreboding and tried not to appear surprised that he had come.

“Can I come in?” he asked, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.

She quietly considered his request. After a moment she stepped aside and opened the door further as an invitation for him to enter. The apartment smelled of onions, garlic and olive oil. “Were you eating?” Jonathan asked, removing his overcoat.

“No, not yet, it’s in the oven.”

“Smells good,” he said.

“It’s spinach lasagna.”

Sam would have invited him to stay for dinner, but she knew he came with something else on his mind. All she thought of when she opened her apartment door were his initials on the police reports. She wondered if that was why he had come. They walked to the kitchen without words. The darkness that had overcome Sam when she opened the door intensified as she reached the kitchen. She could feel it searching for a place within her to settle. She felt nervous with him standing next to her and wondered if he sensed her fear. She shifted her thoughts and told herself to be strong.

Jonathan sat on a barstool as she finished making dinner.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “This won’t take long.”

Sam swallowed hard and thought of Robin. Who was it that she allowed so trustingly into her condo on Christmas Eve? It had to be someone she knew. Was it him? It had to be. “How’s April doing in school?” she asked, searching for something to say.

“Doing fine with English, but she’s having a tough time with math.”

Sam smiled. Math wasn’t her best subject, either.

“I’ve been helping her every evening,” Jonathan said.

His comment made her heart ache and she swallowed over the lump in her throat. “I’d love to see her over the weekend, if I can,” Sam said and tried to keep the desperation from her voice.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” he said matter-of-factly.

Sam felt her defenses drift to the surface and the darkness within her hunkered down a bit more. “Why?” she asked.

“She’s not here,” Jonathan returned.

Sam’s eyebrows rose toward the ceiling. “She’s not in Denver?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I put her on a plane to Seattle this afternoon. Mom will keep her through at least next week. Remember, I told you I would take care of everything.”

She felt the darkness mix with a sudden rush of emptiness. “She’ll be safer in Seattle. Does anyone else know she’s there?”

Jonathan shook his head. “Just us.”

Relief began to trickle down her spine. “Good. It’s better that way.”

Sam waited for a response, but he was silent. She noticed he was acting strangely. He was apprehensive and not his usual calm, collected self. He was tense and unstrung in a way she had never seen him.

Sam wondered whether to mention the police reports. She told Wilson and Nick what she had learned with Brady at city hall. The three of them had spent the morning discussing the article she would write for Friday’s paper. Sam also called Judie Rossetti to tell her to call her source at KCNC television on Friday. Judie, however, hadn’t returned her call before she left that afternoon.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked.

“I’m fine. Why?” he returned.

She shrugged her shoulders. “You seem distant.”

Jonathan loosened his tie and Sam noticed the top button was already undone. Upon further examination, he didn’t look his usual impeccable self. He easily had a day’s beard growth and his hair was disheveled. His shirt and pants looked as if he had put them on directly from the dryer. “I just wanted to come to see if you were all right,” he said.

Sam looked at him shaking her head slightly. It wasn’t something she expected to hear coming from him. “I read your article about the coroner’s office reopening Robin’s case,” he said. “Why reopen it?”

She told him why.

“Discrepancies, huh?” he said.

She nodded. “There were some inconsistencies with the autopsy.”

“Such as?” he asked.

“Such as the fall,” Sam returned.

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t consistent with having jumped.”

“More like she was pushed?” Jonathan said.

Sam eyed him suspiciously. “Yes, exactly. Like I told you from the beginning.”

“Makes sense,” he said. And his tone was casual.

“Then there was the wound on Robin’s temple…” Her voice dropped off when she noticed that Jonathan’s eyes seemed to come alive at her comment.

“A wound?” he asked.

“Judie said it’s more like a bruise, like something hard may have been pressed against her temple,” Sam said.

“Like what, for example?”

“A gun muzzle.”

Jonathan nodded. “Did Judie say anything about marks on her arms?”

“What kind of marks?” she asked.

“The same thing, bruises.”

She studied him silently. “What’s going on, Jonathan?”

Jonathan did not respond. Then it came to her. Panic jumped into her throat. She groped for the counter and blurted out her thoughts before she could stop herself. “You know who killed Robin, don’t you?”

His lack of response confirmed her suspicions. “Is that why you’re here tonight, Jonathan? Was it something in the article?”

He looked from her to his hands. They were folded, but when he spread them out evenly on the counter, they were shaking.

“Jonathan?”

She decided to ignore that small voice telling her not to mention the reports. She had been thinking she was still so far from learning the truth. She knew now, she wasn’t. Adrenaline rushed through her when she realized she was close to completing the puzzle.

“I need a drink,” he said.

She laughed harshly. “Isn’t that my line? Besides, I don’t have any in the house.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

Her anger made her confidence gush forth in a torrent. “I know why you’ve come tonight, Jonathan.”

She stared at him hard for an intense, brief moment. “I’ve seen the police reports,” she said firmly.

“What reports?”

“You know damn well what reports I’m talking about. The ones with your initials.”

“Lots of reports have my initials on them,” he returned calmly.

“You know the ones I’m talking about,” she shot back.

And he did. She could tell by the empty, drawn look on his face that he knew.

“You might want to know where else I’ve been tonight,” he said.

She looked at him, trying to keep the look on her face neutral.

“Remember our conversation about High Pointe Warehouse?”

Sam tried hard not to flinch.

“I went there after I took April to the airport.”

Sam remembered the night she went with Rey, when she told him about her father. She had felt so free, so liberated since then. Now she didn’t. It was as though her wings had been clipped and she had come crashing to earth. She thought of them sitting in the cold stairwell capturing dozens of images with the digital camera. Some of the photographs would be used with her story Friday. She decided she no longer had a reason to hide what she knew.

“Yes, Jonathan, I remember. I know about the warehouse. I’ve been there,” she said with a confidence she did not feel.

“With Rey?” he asked in a confident, knowing voice.

She was not ready for his response and gasped slightly. “Yes,” she breathed.

She could feel the darkness growing, reaching up from within her with invisible hands. It was becoming harder to see, harder to reason and harder to comprehend what she was being told. “That’s why you came to the office last Monday after Rey was killed, wasn’t it?” Sam asked, her anger mounting. “You knew we were working together. You wanted to see my reaction when you told me he’d been killed. You wanted to see me squirm and try to act like he was just another cop that I wouldn’t know from the others. Didn’t you, you miserable bastard?”

Jonathan nodded only slightly, offering a small smile.

“Tell me the man in the car that hit Rey he …”

Jonathan interrupted to finish her sentence. “Didn’t have a seizure.”

Darkness was seeping through her body, getting closer to her brain, ready to shut out everything. She narrowed her eyes at him and spoke through gritted teeth. “You … you son of a bitch.”

A sense of fear overwhelmed her and took her breath away. She felt lightheaded and sat on the other barstool. Too weak to stand, praying he didn’t notice.

“You’ve been getting some rather disturbing messages lately, haven’t you?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes.” The answer slipped from her mouth as if she couldn’t stop herself from replying.

“Don’t you want to know how I know?” he asked.

She nodded numbly.

“I sent them. Drug dealers use pagers and text messages to communicate deals all the time. It’s the easiest way to communicate. Remember? I told you that.”

“You … you sent them, those … messages … but … but … why?” she said and the words tumbled from her mouth clumsily.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Would you really do something to harm your own daughter?” she asked.

“It was meant to scare you, even protect you, Samantha, but you’re too stupid to realize that.”

Sam pressed her hands firmly against her chest. “Protect me? How?”

“If you had the sense to back off like you were asked.”

Sam didn’t know how to respond.

“Sunday afternoon in the garage.”

She sat straight up in her chair. “You!”

“No,” he said. “Not me.”

She felt drained of the last of her energy. She could not stand to hear another word, but she had to. She had to convince him to continue. She had to know what else he knew. Sam knew at that moment that she could no longer rely on her own confidence, determination and physical strength to get her through. She did something she had not done in years.
Please, God, help me to get through this. Please help me to be strong. Please don’t let him defeat me. Please help me to stand on my own two feet.

Jonathan shifted gears to keep her off balance, overload her senses.

“I guess Champ didn’t do a very good job of convincing you, huh?”

She frowned and shook her head, trying to rack her brain. “Champ?” Why did she know that name? Her face went smooth when it came to her. “The bartender at Tim’s Place. Was it a set-up?” she asked bleakly.

No wonder he was so friendly, and generous with his help. She felt sick. “You … you weren’t really watching me at Tim’s Place, were you?”

He shook his head. “He made a nice sum of money when he agreed to help us,” Jonathan said as his attention flickered toward the stove. “Smells like dinner’s burning.”

Sam smelled it, too. She looked at the oven door, but felt too numb to move. Jonathan went to the oven, turned it off and began to search through the cabinets.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“You probably could use a good stiff drink right now,” Jonathan said as he continued to open and look through her cabinets.

Sam shook her head and watched, too paralyzed to get up to stop him. “I told you it’s gone. You won’t find any in the house, Jonathan. I’ve stopped.”

“You’ve stopped? Really? For how long this time, Samantha? A week? Two weeks? A month? You don’t know the meaning of the word sobriety. You could never stop. You’re too goddamn weak and too goddamn stupid to know better.”

Looking in the last cabinet, he turned to face her. He could see the energy had been sucked from her body. Her shoulders were limp and turned inward. Her face looked sullen and dark. “Tell me your initials on those police reports don’t mean what I think they do,” she demanded. “Tell me you’re not really involved in this horrible operation.”

Jonathan stared at her. “It sounds like you’re pleading, Samantha. That’s what you want me to tell you. I wish I could, but I can’t,” he said, but his voice was flat and offered no remorse.

“How long have you been involved?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “The years have started to run together.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “How could you be involved in something so evil and corrupt for so long? You never seemed different. I never noticed any warning signs,” she said.

“You were just too drunk to notice,” Jonathan shot back.

Sam sank back against the barstool. “It wasn’t all the time,” she whispered meekly. Sam stared numbly at her hands, looking to where her wedding ring once was, trying to recall when they were married and their monetary situation had improved. It didn’t require much thought. “It started when you got involved with the gold investments didn’t it, Jonathan, after the real estate deals failed,” she said in a knowing voice.