Front Page Fatality (16 page)

It was a tight space, with sleeping berths stacked up the walls on both sides, then a kitchen, bathroom, and booth-style table in the back. At first glance, there didn’t look to be much in the way of storage, but when I lifted on the lowest bed, it came up easily to reveal a bin full of life jackets. I dug through them, but the only thing sharing the space with them was a dead spider that might have made me shriek under different circumstances—the thing was almost as big as my thumb not counting the legs.

“Jesus, they do grow things bigger out here.” I shuddered and closed the lid, then crossed to the other bed and lifted it.

Empty. As were the kitchen drawers, the toilet tank, and the refrigerator.

So maybe he wasn’t a bad guy. Or if he was, he kept it to police department boats. But he wasn’t on vacation on this boat, that was for sure.

Where was he, then?

I sighed and kicked the door open a little too hard, looking for any other visible storage on Aaron’s sportfisher, but there was none.

So much for my first attempt at trespassing.

I’d just turned back toward the dock when I heard footsteps.

I glanced around, but there wasn’t much in the way of places to hide. I dove behind the end of a long bench seat and curled myself up as small as I could, listening for more steps and cursing the water, which was suddenly deafening as it slapped the hulls of the boats.

The steps grew louder, pausing just outside, from the sound of it, and I held my breath. 

I heard a low voice, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying, let alone who it belonged to or who it might be addressing, and I was afraid to look.

Then the voice stopped and the footsteps retreated as quickly as they’d come.

I stayed in my ball, in case whoever it was decided to come back. When it seemed reasonable I was alone again, I unrolled myself and crept back onto the dock, looking in every direction and listening hard for company. I only heard the water and cicadas.

I stared at the name on the hull for a long minute. Aaron’s family was his whole world. His face always lit up like a frat boy on Friday night when he talked about his daughters. His youngest had just been accepted to Princeton—he’d about popped a button off his shirt relaying that news, and I’d passed it on to Eunice and the features team, where it begat a very flattering profile of his little girl in our “Senior Class” section.

But was money for college really enough motivation to risk the job that put food on the table and paid the mortgage? To risk prison?

I didn’t think so. Especially not when that boat itself was probably worth about a hundred grand. Assuming dirty money hadn’t paid for it in the first place, selling it would buy her four semesters, at least.

I picked my way carefully back to my car by the moonlight, not wanting to lose a heel off my slingback Jimmy Choos to the spaces between the boards on the dock. Climbing behind the wheel and starting the engine, I wasn’t sure the trip had been worth it.

Pulling out of the lot, I turned the puzzle around in my head.

Someone was lying about Aaron being on vacation. The boat at the dock said that much. But whether it was Jerry, or someone lying to Jerry (Aaron or Lowe, maybe), I had no idea.

The road was narrow, with tight curves that looked much different by the light of my high beams than they had in the fading sunshine. I tried to push the story to one side of my brain so that the other could focus on not running the car into a tree, and thought I’d made good progress when a wide sedan roared up behind me, headlights either off or broken, careening to the left and attempting to pass me while straddling the center line.

I slammed the brake and turned the wheel hard, depositing my mini SUV into a ditch full of wild grasses and chiggers. Breathing like I’d been to the gym, I turned my head in the direction of the road. I didn’t even have time to honk.

“You can’t take your half out of the middle, Bubba,” I hollered at the stillness, my heart still pounding.

It took twenty minutes, every swearword I knew, and about a dozen chigger bites to push/maneuver the car back onto the road, and even by moonlight, I could see the dent in the fender. At least it was drivable.

It wasn’t until I was back on northbound 95 that I realized the only place the sedan could have come from was the marina, because it was the only thing between me and the water. The idea that my adventure in the ditch had been anything but a random bit of bad luck courtesy of a drunk redneck verged on terrifying when I considered it for more than thirty seconds, so I turned my attention back to Aaron. Or tried to. But if someone had tried to send me careening into the woods in the boondocks at forty miles an hour over the little info I knew, how far might they have gone to shut Aaron up if he’d actually found something? 

I needed more background on Deputy Chief Lowe. And there was still the pesky issue of not knowing who I could believe. Tuesday, I’d have called Jerry without hesitation. By Wednesday night, I wasn’t sure I trusted another soul save for my mom, Jenna, and Bob, none of whom could be much help to me right then.

As if delivered by the muses, the police chief’s all-American face popped into my head as I exited at Grove, and I resolved to call him for an interview early the next day before I’d even finished wondering if he was suspicious of Lowe. Or anyone else.

Someone had to have the answers I needed, and Donovan Nash seemed like an excellent place to start.

12.

Old news

Sweating my frustrations out at the gym took a backseat to getting ahold of Nash’s assistant, and by the time I walked into Bob’s office for the staff meeting Thursday, I had an appointment with the police chief the following morning.

“What are you looking so chipper about this morning, Clarke?” Les leaned his big frame back in Bob’s chair, not bothering to veil his sarcasm. “Given that Charlie didn’t have anything breaking this morning, I assume it has nothing to do with your job?”

I ignored the dig. I’d scooped Charlie three times that week by my count, and numbers were supposed to be his forte.

“As a matter of fact, I have an interview with the police chief tomorrow. And if I’m right, by next week, I’ll have all of Richmond going ‘Charlie who?’ for at least a month.”

I thought for a split second about keeping my suspicions to myself, but Bob had warned me against making Les mad, and I figured even he’d be impressed with the possibility of a drug ring running out of police headquarters. Since no one else had arrived for the meeting, I went ahead and told him.

He listened to the whole story and studied me in silence for a full minute before he spoke.

“Why would he rat out his deputy to a reporter?” he asked. “You’re assuming you’re right about Lowe, but are you also assuming Nash suspects his right hand of being a crook? If he does, he’s not going to tell you anything. And if he doesn’t, there’s no point in asking. You can’t seriously be thinking about telling him what you think. His loyalty will lie with his man, I promise you.”

So much for impressed. “I know it will, and no, I’m not stupid enough to accuse the deputy chief of being a crook. I’m counting on the chief being unaware of Lowe’s involvement. I’m working on a list of very specific, yet routine questions, like ‘Is Lowe responsible for training the officers in the river unit?’ I don’t know that I can get everything I need out of him, but I’ll be closer by the time I get through talking to him.”

“That might actually work.” He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, his elbows on Bob’s desk. “Make sure you have questions about a lot of different things: the boats, his role in an investigation like this, the FBI. As long as you don’t only ask about Lowe, you’re okay. Maybe.”

He sat back in the chair again and spun it toward the computer.

“You just make damned sure you have it dead to rights,” he said. “Libeling the deputy chief of police will not be good for your career, no matter how much Bob likes you. We cannot afford a lawsuit.”

“You got it.” I pulled out a notepad, jotting random questions for Nash around the important ones I’d already listed. As the rest of the staff began filing in, I wondered if there was any way to get on Les’ good side, or if I should just try to stay out of his way.

Chatter about politics and sports swirled around me, but it was difficult to keep my attention on the meeting. My eyes must have strayed to the clock forty times in as many minutes, and as soon as Les pushed the chair back to stand up, I jumped to my feet and bolted for the door.

“Where’s the fire, Lois?”

Parker. And I still hadn’t read his column from Saturday. I mildly regretted talking to him about it in the first place as I stopped outside the door and turned around, apologetic smile already in place.

“I have about eleventy billion things to do today, but I swear I’ll read your breast cancer piece tonight. Really.”

“You know, someone with less confidence might be bothered by the fact you haven’t made time yet.” He grinned. “I can take it, though. But hey, I wanted to talk to you about Bob when you have a minute. I’ll be around.”

He started to turn away and I sighed, leaning against a long row of filing cabinets.

“You have ninety seconds. Go.”

He glanced at his watch, feigning alarm. “What’d you make of how he looked yesterday?”

“He seemed fine to me, but he’s Bob. He doesn’t tend to let on when he’s not fine, obviously.”

“That’s what I thought. He actually tried to talk the doctor into clearing him to come in for today’s morning meeting when they were discharging him yesterday.”

I laughed. “Only Bob would have a heart attack Monday and try to come to work Thursday. She told him he was crazy, right?”

“She told him the first week he was permitted five minutes of walking, five times a day. She said he could progress to short trips out of the house next week as long as he feels up to it. He argues he feels fine and this place is going to implode without him.”

“Well, if Les doesn’t get off my ass, I may implode. But I think we’ll be all right long enough for Bob to recover.”

“Why is Les giving you a hard time?”

“You mean besides Shelby whispering in his ear about how happy it would make her to have my job when she’s not blowing him?”

Parker’s eyes widened and he pinched his lips together. Oops. Les wasn’t anywhere near Parker on a physical scale of one to ten, but he did outrank him in terms of pull with the powers that be. Still, that had to sting a little.

“Sorry,” I said hastily. “I figured if Bob knew that, everyone did. I’m usually the only person around here who pays so little attention to office gossip.”

“It is a newsroom,” he said. “But I must have missed that bulletin. She really is something else.”

He shifted his feet and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“So, have you found out any more about the missing lawyer or those dead drug dealers? See? I read your stuff.”

I wondered why he wanted to know. “Nothing definitive,” I waved a hand. “It’s there somewhere, though. I’ll get it.”

“Good luck. Let me know if you ever get around to reading my column.”

“Today. I swear.”

He gave me an exaggerated nod and disappeared into the maze of cubicles. My thoughts turned to Aaron and Mike, and I went to call Jerry for an update.

“Nothing new on the Sorrel case,” he said.

Except that it was now a “case.” Damn.

“Aaron hasn’t called in to check for messages?” I asked, but finding the boat had somehow cemented Mike and Aaron together in my head. If one of them was still gone, the other wouldn’t have turned up, either.

“No, but he didn’t say he was going to. Are you sure I can’t help you with whatever it is you want to talk to him about?”

“I don’t think you can, Jerry,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

I started to hang up.

“Hey, Nichelle?” His voice dropped in pitch and volume. “You can tell me to go to hell if I’m overstepping, but what’s wrong? We’ve had some strange shit around town this week, and now you’re worrying so much about Aaron calling in from his trip. I’m a detective, and a pretty good one. If you think something’s up, I could help. I could meet you after work, if you like. I don’t have plans to do anything tonight but watch the Seminoles in the College World Series, and I can DVR the game.”

I tapped a pen on my desk blotter, wishing I knew who to trust.

“Thanks, Jerry, but I have a lot going on right now. I appreciate the offer, though.”

“Just let me know if you change your mind.”

I hung up and turned to the day’s police reports. The lone interesting one had me giggling as I dialed the complainant for an interview, a junkyard owner who called 9-1-1 the day before when he got to work and found the driveway blocked by an abandoned casket.

“Turned out the damned thing was full of rusty hubcaps, of all things, but I made the cops come open it.” He spit audibly as he spoke and I swallowed a laugh, picturing a beer-bellied Bubba, complete with overalls, staring at a coffin someone dumped in his driveway.

He filled me in on the details of his call for help, clearly still annoyed at the amused response he’d gotten. “They asked me what was in there. Can you believe that?” he said. “I told ’em I wasn’t opening the damned thing. I didn’t want to be looking at rotted old bones first thing in the morning. That’s what my tax dollars pay them for!”

No rotted old bones before coffee. I could go with him on that.

Why anyone had the thing in the first place was a mystery, but Jerry said when I talked to him again there was no forensic evidence it had ever been used for its intended purpose. I laughed as I typed. It wasn’t a front-page exclusive, but the “news of the weird” vibe made it an interesting read—the kind of story likely to get a ton of Facebook shares, which usually made bean counters like Les very happy. So score one for the crime reporter.

After I filed the story, I opened my Neal folder and stared at the documents inside, trying to wedge him into my scenario with Lowe as the drug pusher. My brain sparred between DonnaJo’s praise of Neal and the idea that a failed bankruptcy filing and his kid’s mounting medical bills might make it pretty hard to walk past several hundred thousand dollars in cash.

No matter which way I turned my puzzle piece, I couldn’t make Neal fit with Lowe. But if he wasn’t guilty, where the hell was he?

What if he’s the victim? I listened to my instincts as I thought again about Mike’s parting words.
“If this was a cop, they’re into something very serious, something they could go to prison for. And going to prison is pretty much every cop’s worst nightmare.”

An assistant CA could certainly help put a crooked cop in prison. What if Neal suspected something? Or someone, and they decided their secret was worth killing Neal?

The skin on my arm pricked up into goosebumps. From everything I’d seen, if there was a way to make the lawyer the villain, the police department was determined to take it. Which made me wonder who would prove Neal’s innocence if he hadn’t done it. My short list consisted of DonnaJo and myself. A story that kept an innocent man out of prison and locked up a dirty cop as a bonus? There was no way the
Post
could ignore that. The goosebumps didn’t go anywhere.

You’re so far ahead of yourself, you’re going to lose sight of your own ass
, I thought, trying to couch the excitement. One thing at a time. I snatched up my phone and dialed DonnaJo’s cell.

“I have about three minutes. I’m in recess,” she said when she picked up.

I talked fast, not mentioning anyone specifically, but giving her a broad overview of what I suspected.

“I’m still in the middle of this,” I said. “But I have a pretty good hunch the cops want to send Neal up for it if they can.”

“What do you need?” There was no hint of reservation in her tone. “Those assholes at the PD aren’t going to set Gavin up. No way. He didn’t do it, Nichelle. I’d bet my license on that.”

“Hopefully I won’t need you to. But I do need to know about Neal. If he’s made any enemies, maybe? Assuming he didn’t take off with the evidence, our most viable option is foul play.”

DonnaJo was quiet, the background chatter from the courthouse the only sign I hadn’t lost her.

“Jesus, I guess it is, isn’t it? Makes you think,” she said finally. “I love my job, but I’m not willing to die for it. I really don’t know what Gavin has going on, but something’s had him in a foul mood for the past few weeks.”

I’d bet it had. And I had a sudden idea for how I might find out what that something was.

“Can we grab a drink tonight?” I asked. “I’ll come by there to get you about six?”

“Sounds good. I can meet you, if you’d rather.”