Front Page Fatality (3 page)

Home or not, I would’ve been on the first plane back to Texas if I had any idea what that particular dead guy was about to get me into. But that’s the thing about dead people: they can’t warn you to keep your nose out of things that are going to put your ass in danger.

2.

Pieces of the puzzle

“Have a seat.” Aaron cleared a stack of paper off a black plastic chair in his cluttered closet of an office. An ever-changing collection of maps, photos, and notes made it impossible to guess the color of the walls, and the small metal desk was buried under piles of manila case file folders. Judging by the detectives’ offices, Richmond was a downright dangerous place to live.

His gray upholstered chair rocked backward as he settled into it and looked at me expectantly, the genial manner that made him the department’s king of confessions evident in the smile that lit his round face. Aaron’s charm was his central talent. He had a real gift for getting people to talk to him, and was nearly as good at keeping his own hand close. Often, reporters left his office with little or nothing, and felt like they’d somehow been done a favor. Not me. Usually, anyway. Aaron and I had a nice little groove where he tried to bullshit me, I called him on it, and then we bantered until I talked him out of some actual information.

“Who is our unfortunate friend who was shot in the head?” I asked.

Aaron flipped a page on a legal pad. “Darryl Anthony Wright, African-American male, age twenty-five. Formerly a resident of cellblock seven at Cold Springs.”

I jotted that down and pulled the police report on the Noah Smith murder from my bag.

“Are you guys looking for some kind of Charles Bronson wannabe?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and chuckled. When he looked up, his hand slid down his face so his fingers rested over his lips and muffled the first part of his answer.

“Not pulling any punches today, I see. But I think so.” His hand dropped to the desk and he shook his head. “I can’t say anything for sure without ballistics.”

“When is the report supposed to be back?” I smiled as I scrawled his words into my notes. That was easier than I thought.

It took about thirty-five seconds to figure out why.

Ignoring my question, Aaron cocked his head to one side and grinned. “This whole damned thing is about to turn into a giant pain in my ass, isn’t it?”

I arched an eyebrow. His Detective Adorable routine was usually reserved for the TV crews. I waited, eyebrow up, for him to go on.

“In a lot of ways, a vigilante is going to be harder to prosecute than just another dealer or a junkie.” He widened the baby blues just enough to smooth out the lines that were really the only evidence he was pushing fifty. “The public tends to sympathize with vigilantes. I don’t suppose you want to keep that part out of the newspaper for me, do you?”

I felt my mouth drop open, and the other eyebrow shot up. “You’ve got to be kidding. I talked to my editor about this before I left the office. He’d fire me. Between what I have here,” I brandished the report, “and what I heard on the scanner, our copyeditor-cum-aspiring-cops-reporter could figure this one out. I can’t sit on it, Aaron. Not unless you’re offering me something pretty damned amazing in return.”

“What would it take?” He sounded like he meant it.

I sat back in my chair and studied him. Aaron’s people skills had contributed to the soft edges on his average frame, making him the obvious choice for department spokesman and thereby trapping him behind a desk in a building with too many Krispy Kreme boxes for too many years. His face looked as puppy-doggish as it ever did, but my inner Lois Lane was hopping up and down, hollering there was something else in play that I didn’t see. Why on Earth would he care so much about keeping something that, in the grand scheme, was pretty insignificant to him, out of print?

“Are you serious?”

“Don’t I look serious? When you get past the dashingly, heartbreakingly handsome, that is?”

I snorted and shook my head. “How could I have missed it?”

I felt my fingers wind into my hair as I focused on the roof of my house on the aerial map behind his head. A vigilante was a sexier story angle, but not having it didn’t preclude me from writing about the murder. And if it turned out the killer was on some sort of
Death Wish
trip, I’d get it at the trial anyway. Letting my hand fall back to my lap, I met Aaron’s eyes and nodded.

“All right, detective. I don’t know why you care, but I can keep the word ‘vigilante’ out for now. It’s going to cost you, though. One all-access pass, to be used at my discretion, on the story of my choice. No arguments, no negotiations, nothing held back.”

He rested his chin on his left fist and twisted his mouth to the side.

“That it?” Aaron was rarely sarcastic, and it sounded funny in his cheerful tenor.

“No.”

His eyes widened. “I was kidding!”

He wanted this. And badly. And I didn’t like not understanding why.

“I’m not. All access. Story of my choice. To be determined later. And someday, you’re going to tell me why you made this deal with me.”

“Done. Anything else you need today?”

“Just the report on this morning’s murder. I’ll leave out the vigilante hoopla, but I have to have something. Bob knows I’m here. Speaking of, how are you going to get around the TV guys?”

Aaron grinned. “Not worried about it. You and Charlie are the only ones who’ve even asked about the other guy so far. There’s a new girl at Channel Ten. Green as a March inchworm. And Kessler over at RVA…” he rolled his eyes and I laughed.

“If the report wasn’t on his makeup mirror, he didn’t look at it for more than ten seconds,” I said. “But what’d you tell Charlie?”

Charlotte Lewis at Channel Four was my biggest competition, usually one step ahead of or behind me on any given story. If she was going with the vigilante, Aaron would just have to get over it.

“Hey, if I can handle you, I can handle Charlie.” He laughed. “She left about an hour ago. She didn’t ask for nearly as much as you did, but she did make me swear on my grandmama’s grave I’d call her if you were running it. So you just made my afternoon a bit more pleasant. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. When can I have my report?”

“It’s waiting on forensics, but I asked Jerry to bring it in with him. He won’t be too much longer.”

He didn’t get the words out before the door flew open and a disarmingly handsome detective who looked like he was good at hiding from those Krispy Kreme boxes in the gym rushed in. His sheer mass made the small space feel crowded.

“Jerry,” Aaron said, “this is Nichelle Clarke from the
Telegraph
. Nichelle, this is Jerry Davis, the detective working on this morning’s shooting.”

I smiled, extending my hand and shaking his firmly. “Nice to meet you, Jerry.”

“Nichelle.” Jerry nodded, offering Aaron a folder full of papers and photos. He shot a sidelong glance at me, then focused on Aaron, who was reading something he’d pulled from the file.

An eight-by-ten glossy from the scene lay on top of the stack in the open folder. Darryl Wright, lifeless eyes staring at nothing, was sprawled across his sofa in a relaxed pose that mimicked the first dead dealer. Part of Darryl’s baseball cap was gone; the shot had come from the front and blown the hat and its contents across the lamp on the table next to the sofa and the wall behind it. I swallowed a curse, averting my eyes.

“Ballistics worked fast today. Same gun.” Aaron dropped the report over the photo and tapped it with his pen, raising his eyes to mine. “So, yes, Nichelle, we can’t say for certain that it’s the same shooter, but it’s looking that way. Jerry can answer some questions for you.”

Jerry folded his big frame into the other chair and rested his elbows on his knees, facing me.

“How does that change your investigation?” I asked, pen poised over my notepad. I prided myself on the fact that I’d never once been accused of misquoting anyone, especially since my inexplicable disdain for gadgets extended to tape recorders (and pretty much everything else with a battery that wasn’t my laptop or my Blackberry). I’d invented my own form of shorthand after I’d gotten frustrated trying to learn the real thing, but the accuracy of my notes would’ve made them admissible in court.

“Well, we can combine resources on the cases since we’re likely not looking for two different killers,” he said. “The more heads you’ve got looking at it, the better.”

“And what are you looking for? You have any working theories?” I asked.

Jerry glanced at Aaron and Aaron shot me a warning glare I pretended to ignore.

“We’re not ruling anything out yet. We have officers canvassing the neighborhood, and we’re waiting for all the relevant information to come in before we construct likely scenarios.”

Wow, that was a long way of saying a fat lot of nothing. I scribbled anyway. I was long-since fluent in cop doubletalk, and figured it would serve me well if I ever made it to covering politics.

“So you’ve stepped up police presence on Southside?”

“Yes. The number of uniformed officers on the streets of that particular neighborhood has been doubled and will stay that way until this is resolved. We don’t want our residents living in fear.”

I nodded. It wasn’t much, but I had two dead guys killed with the same gun. Not exactly Son of Sam, but worthy of a little space.

“Anything else?” Jerry asked.

I finished my notes and asked for the report, looking for contact information for the victim’s next of kin.

“Thanks for your time, guys,” I said as I stood up. “Aaron, you’ll call me if anything comes up?”

He nodded. “Always a pleasure, Nichelle. Have a good weekend.”

Not even my favorite CD could get the dead drug dealers out of my head on the way back to the office. I wondered if the victims knew each other as I sat at a red light, my mind attempting to order the jumble of information by creating a puzzle. A lot of the pieces were blank, though. Two drug dealers, living in the same part of town. It wasn’t such a stretch. I reached for my phone, but before I could hit the speed dial for the PD, the startling effect of the beeping horn behind me sent my Blackberry clattering into the fissure between my seat and the console.

Gunning it through the green light I hadn’t noticed, I managed to worm my hand through the narrow space to retrieve the phone just as I parked in the office garage, where there was never a signal. I rushed to my cubicle, drummed my fingers on the desk through the hold music, and blurted my question at Aaron as soon as he picked up.

He chuckled. “Nichelle, have you ever thought about a career in law enforcement? Jerry’s on his way out there now to look for family members and neighbors, trying to figure out if they might have been friends—or enemies.”

I laughed, and not just at the idea of the police uniform shoes. “I don’t particularly care for people shooting at me.”

He promised to call if Jerry managed to find anything interesting and reminded me about our deal.

“Oh, I won’t forget,” I said. “Just don’t go getting amnesia when it’s time for you to make good, okay?”

“I have a mind like a steel trap.”

I killed the line momentarily, my laughter fading as I dialed the number on the report for Darryl’s mother. I hated bothering people who just lost a loved one. It was the only thing about my job that felt like a burden. I let it ring a dozen times, sighing with equal parts relief and disappointment when I didn’t even get a machine.

Turning to the computer, I started typing.

Richmond detectives are investigating the shooting death of a second convicted drug dealer in three weeks on the Southside, stepping up patrols in the area until an arrest is made.

“The number of uniformed officers on the streets of that particular neighborhood has been doubled and will stay that way until this is resolved,” RPD Detective Jerry Davis said Friday. “We don’t want our residents living in fear.”

The latest victim, Darryl Lee Wright, Jr., was found early Friday morning in his home in the 2900 block of Decatur Street.

Wright, 25, was released from Cold Springs Penitentiary 18 months ago after being convicted of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute in 2009. Ballistics analysis found that Wright was shot with the same gun as Noah Leon Smith, who was found dead in his home last month.

I sketched out the few details I could and mentioned Wright’s family wasn’t immediately available for comment. Reading back through it twenty minutes later, I sighed. It would only amount to about an eighth of a page after they added a headline, but it was all I had. I pushed the key to send it to Bob for approval and went hunting for caffeine.

Wrinkling my nose, I strolled into the break room in the back corner of our floor. Proximity to the darkroom made the air in the narrow space perpetually reek of chemicals, even in the age of digital photography. Too many years of the smell seeping into the walls, I guessed. The old darkroom had become the photographers’ cave, outfitted with computers and high-definition monitors for photo editing. They didn’t seem to mind the smell.

I stared at the soda machine, debating between diet and not, then decided to save the sugar consumption for margarita mix. A third of the bottle was gone in one gulp. I was too thirsty to notice the artificial-sweetener aftertaste.

“Any more dead people pop up in your day?” Grant Parker’s voice caught me by surprise and I inhaled part of my second mouthful of soda. Dropping the bottle on the orange laminate next to the sink, I grabbed the edge of the countertop for support while I tried to clear my lungs.

“Are you okay?” Parker stepped forward into my line of sight. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I nodded as I coughed up the last of the soda, tears streaming down my face. I took a deep, hitching breath.

“I didn’t assume you did,” I croaked. “I just have the one corpse today. How about you? That column represent your A game, Mr. Baseball?”

“My A game, yes. That woman is amazing. I hope I did her justice. Your A game is probably in a whole different league, though. I’ve been reading your stuff on Barbie and Ken all week, and it was good. Really good. No matter what Shelby says. She’s just bitter. She’s been after the crime desk since the first time she set foot in this building.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis and flashed me the million-dollar grin.

I wiped my cheeks one last time and faced him, vaguely remembering a couple of the sports guys bantering about Parker banging a brunette from copy a while back. 

“Well, thank you. And I know. About Shelby, I mean. It took me forever to figure out what she had up her ass when I first came here, but I finally caught on. I’ve read some of her stuff in the archives. Her writing is solid. Given a chance, she might be good at this—if she could handle the crap and jump through the hoops. But I’d like for her to keep those skills at the copy desk for now.” I tapped the bottle on the countertop and smiled. “Keeps me on my A game.”

He nodded. “So, just the one dead guy? Is he an interesting dead guy, at least?”

“Yeah, there’s something,” I said, deciding to skirt the details of the deal I’d made with Aaron just in case Parker and Shelby still had a thing going. It didn’t really sound like it, but better safe than sorry. “I’m not exactly sure how interesting it is, but I can do a little digging.”

Parker’s eyes narrowed as he listened to a synopsis of what I had on the presses that night, which anyone could have pulled off the server and read.

“So all the drugs and money were still in the house?” He laughed, but it wasn’t the relaxed sound I’d heard in the meeting that morning. There was an edge to it I couldn’t place. “That sounds kinda suspicious to me, but what do I know?” 

“How many RBIs did Jeter have last season?” I grinned, pushing the subject away from my story. I wasn’t in the habit of sharing the down-and-dirty of what I was working on before I finished an article. People talk, sometimes to the wrong person, even when they don’t mean any harm.

“Hey, speaking of Jeter, do you like baseball? The Yankees are in town tonight.” Parker’s once-pitching-hero status and blinding grin had landed him the cushy star sports columnist gig, and though it didn’t require evening hours, he still loved baseball and chose to spend his summer nights at the stadium covering the city’s big league team. Bob, not surprisingly, didn’t object. “Want to hang out at the ballpark with me and a bunch of over-opinionated sports guys?”

“Tempting.” I laughed, not sure if I was lying or not, but relieved to have a better excuse than sitting at home with the dog and one of my ridiculously monochromatic puzzles. “But I have plans. It’s girls’ night. Margaritas and Mexican food.”

He nodded. “Some other time, then.”

Not likely, I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. Parker was the kind of guy who dated the kind of girls who starred in beer commercials. And I generally preferred men who spent less time on their hair than I did on mine.

I smiled instead and turned toward the door.

“I need to go see if my story’s set before it gets too much later,” I said. “Nice talking to you.”

“Back at you. Have a good time tonight.”

“You, too. I hope they win.”

I hurried to Bob’s office and tapped on the doorframe.

“Yeah?” He didn’t turn from his computer monitor.

“Did you need me to make any changes to my piece before it goes?”

“No. Not a lot of bite, but it looked like you didn’t have much to share. What happened to the vigilante?”

I kept my eyes on my shoes. “They didn’t have it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe Monday,” I said, making a mental note to come up with a plausible story to put him off again before then. “The cops are trying to figure out if these guys were connected. Hopefully they’ll get lucky this weekend.”

“Just as long as Charlie Lewis doesn’t have it Sunday.” Bob’s eyes never left the screen—I’d bet he didn’t even lose his place in the story he was editing. “Have a good weekend, kiddo. See you Monday.”

Not even sticking around to chat with Melanie at the city desk as I normally would, I called a goodnight to anyone who happened to be listening as I unplugged my laptop and slid it into my bag. Striding to the elevators, I waved at our features editor, a grandmotherly woman whose home cooked treats could’ve come straight out of Aunt Bea’s kitchen. She carted in batches of various baked and fried goodies at least once a week (twice, if she was stressed or there was an upcoming holiday) and was thereby solely responsible for any widening of my ass that might occasionally occur.