Front Page Fatality (8 page)

5.

Deep background

There’s nothing more frustrating for a reporter than a heap of unanswered questions. Facing a blank computer screen with only a sketchy idea of what killed five people, each of whom had been the center of someone else’s universe, had me zipping past frustrated and aiming straight for pissed off. Talking to Brian Freeman’s mother had only made me feel worse. She lost her husband in January, and Brian had been her only child.

I slammed my hands down on my desk and jumped to my feet. What the hell was so hard about “Why was the boat out there?” I paced behind my cubicle as my mind tried to force this puzzle into some logical order. There were way too many holes to see a clear picture. I finally asked myself what I’d tell Jenna first. Which, of course, was what Charlie hadn’t already told the greater Richmond metro area. That worked, and I resumed my seat and quickly lost myself in the rhythm of the keystrokes.

After receiving information regarding Friday night’s fatal boating crash on the James River, FBI agents joined Richmond police in combing the riverbank for clues Saturday.

“We got a tip,” Special Agent Denise Starnes said Saturday, “that this might be more than it seems.”

I quoted Lowe about the internal affairs investigation next, and wrote about the victims, including notes Parker emailed me about the pitcher, DeLuca, and his two friends. Describing the scene at the river, I used Aaron’s estimation of how the accident happened. I put the accident history for the unit I’d gotten from Jones toward the end, and finished with Valerie Roberts’ emotional assertion of her husband’s innocence.

I added Parker’s name to the bottom of the article as a contributor and copied him when I emailed my story to Bob.

While I waited for a reply from my boss, I skimmed through the twenty-seven emails in my inbox, saving three replies from defense attorneys about other cases I was following, and deleting the rest.

Bob’s edits arrived as I finished reading the last junk press release. He asked me to clarify a couple of things and said he hadn’t heard about the FBI’s tip-off or the internal investigation. His equivalent of a thumbs-up, which was especially gratifying when a story had actually given me a headache. I fished two Advil out of my purse.

I was halfway through my second Coke of the afternoon when Parker found me loitering in the break room. Once it was time to leave, I’d discovered I didn’t want to go home.

“Thanks for the stuff you sent me.” I leaned back in my chair and smiled when he stopped in the doorway. “It was good. Nicely done, scoring an exclusive with the families.”

“Thanks. And anytime.” He walked into the room with his hands in the pockets of his navy blue slacks. “What are you going to do tonight?”

“I have no plans,” I said. “After the day I’ve had, I should go home and go to bed. But I’m starving. So I need to eat first.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a plan. I could eat. Mind if I join you?”

Really? I opened my mouth to make an excuse, and realized I didn’t have a good one. I eyed him for a second. Oh, what the hell? I’d been to dinner with people from work before, and he’d certainly been a lot of help. 

“Why not?” I stood up. “Let me grab my purse.”

“Anyplace in particular you were planning to go?”

I grinned as my stomach growled. “Do you like barbecue?”

Pop-Tarts were never intended to provide an entire day’s nutrition, and the hickory-and-meat smell in the air reminded me of that as I climbed out of my car in the restaurant’s postage stamp of a parking lot a few minutes later.

Parker strapped a shiny red helmet to the seat of a still-dealer-tagged BMW motorcycle in the space next to me and I raised one eyebrow. It was a nice bike for a reporter’s salary. Maybe he had family money or something.

I followed him through the picnic tables on the covered porch. He held the door as I stepped inside, the fantastic aromas coming from the kitchen momentarily overpowered by a clean, summery cologne when I ducked under his arm.

“I have an ulterior motive for inviting myself to dinner,” he said as we joined about ten other people waiting in line in the cramped entryway. “Did you read my column today?” His eyes dropped to the floor and I laughed.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to hear, but that wasn’t it.

“I wasn’t going to ask,” he said. “But I can’t stand it anymore. If it sucked, you can tell me.”

“I have not,” I said, wondering why he cared what I thought. “Though not because I don’t want to. I will, I promise. And you know, I meant it when I said your stuff was good today. So I’m sure it doesn’t suck.”

“I hope not. Sometimes I wonder if people are just nice to me because I used to be a decent ballplayer, you know? But you’ve never seemed impressed by my slider.” He cocked his head to one side, and I surmised he wasn’t too used to people who didn’t fall all over him. “You’re the real deal. Syracuse, right? I hear their j-school is the best. How’d you end up here, Texas girl in Virginia by way of New York? There has to be a story there.”

I stepped up to the counter and ordered a chopped barbecue sandwich and a double helping of sweet potato fries, glancing at Parker as I signed my credit card slip. “There’s a story. I’m not sure it’s very interesting, but everyone has one, don’t they?”

He ordered ribs and spoon bread and dropped a few bills from his change into the tip jar, stuffing a thick wallet back into his hip pocket and turning from the counter.

“Something tells me yours is more interesting than most.”

We found a booth in the back of the tiny dining room, talking about how the place should really be bigger. It boasted what was easily the best barbecue I’d ever eaten, and given my Texas roots, that was saying something. With less than a dozen tables inside, standing room only was a common state of affairs.

I left Parker at the table with his bottle of Corona and went to fill my glass with the best sweet iced tea in town, glancing at the flat screens on the far wall as I waited in line. One offered a cooking show, the other a Red Sox game. His and hers entertainment. What ever happened to talking to each other over dinner?

Parker flashed me a grin when I sat down across from him again.

“So? What brings you to this neck of the woods, Miss Clarke?” He leaned forward on the wide walnut bench, resting his forearms on the scarred wooden table and looking genuinely interested.

“You really want to hear this?” I laughed.

“Shoot.”

“Well, I did grow up in Dallas, and I did go to Syracuse,” I said. “I thought I was hot stuff when I graduated, too. I was the editor of the
Daily Orange
. I was a University Scholar, which is a big deal award given to twelve people in the graduating class every year. I even got to go to a dinner at the Chancellor’s house for that one. I carried a double major in print journalism and political science, and I just knew the
Washington Post
was going to fall down and beg me to come take their seat in the White House press corps.”

“Ah. But they didn’t so much commence with the begging?”

“They did not.” I shook my head. “They all but dismissed me. The politics editor wouldn’t even see me, and the metro editor said he didn’t need the headache of training a green reporter. Told me to come back when I was seasoned.”

“Ouch.”

I nodded. The memory stung a little, even half a decade later.

“That’s about it. Confidence shot to hell, I figured I wasn’t going to get hired anywhere. My mom let me whine for a while and then told me to apply in a medium market close to D.C. and get to work making the guy sorry. Bob took a shot and gave me the police beat. I saw a way into the courthouse when they started slashing personnel two years ago, and I took it. I’m just waiting for the story that’s going to make the
Post
notice me. I thought Ken and Barbie might get it, but so far…crickets.

“The FBI interest in this one makes it sexier than your average accident. Maybe if there’s really something to this and I can stay ahead of Charlie this week, I might blip up on their radar.”

He nodded. “See? Interesting. And good luck. Though it could be hard for Bob to fill those heels of yours if they stole you from us.”

They called our order and he stood up before I could.

“You hold the table,” he said. “They’re a precious commodity in this place on a Saturday night.”

He disappeared into the growing crowd.

A pulled pork sandwich, sitting tall in the plastic basket next to a huge pile of cinnamon-sugared sweet potato fries, appeared in front of me with a flourish.

“Dinner is served, ma’am.” Parker’s Virginia drawl didn’t quite lend itself to the Texas accent he tried to affect.

“Why thank you, kind sir.” I grinned, not even waiting for him to sit down before I popped a fry into my mouth. I devoured half the pile in the ensuing three minutes, ignoring the fresh-from-the-fryer temperature. I moved to get up as I gulped the last of the tea that was soothing my blistered tongue and Parker raised one hand.

“Iced tea?” he asked, already on his feet. “You eat. I’ve seen starving linebackers who couldn’t plow through fries like that. Something tells me you’re hungrier than I am.”

I thanked him when he came back with my refill, and tried not to laugh when he dripped barbecue sauce down the front of his pumpkin-orange polo before he’d taken two bites of his food.

“Blot it, don’t swipe at it,” I said when he made the stain twice as big trying to get it off.

“Oops. Oh well. I see shirt shopping in my future.”

“Spray some hairspray on it and let it sit,” I said. “It’s my mom’s cure-all for stains and it’s never failed me.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, then shrugged.

“Who am I to argue with mom?” He washed the beef ribs down with a swig of Corona. “Speaking of your mom, you said yesterday she had breast cancer. Is she okay now?”

I nodded. “She’s been in remission for almost four years. Five is the benchmark. She’s pretty amazing.”

The conversation drifted into a natural lull as we ate, and my thoughts strayed to my mother, and how proud I was of her. Not many women would have been able to do the things she’d done, leaving California the day after she graduated high school with her seven-month-old in the backseat of the car that held all her worldly possessions, and stopping in Texas because the bluebonnets were the prettiest thing she’d ever seen. She’d raised me by herself after my grandparents disowned her. Her pregnancy, and subsequent refusal to marry her boyfriend, embarrassed them at their Hollywood cocktail parties.

She fussed over me and I tried to make her proud. We had danced around our cozy living room like Publisher’s Clearinghouse had arrived with a giant cardboard check the day my acceptance from Syracuse came.

I’d been determined to go, thousands of dollars in student loan debt be damned. Then the week before I’d turned eighteen, my absentee grandparents dropped the bombshell of all bombshells. A courier arrived with a fat yellow envelope full of legal papers from a firm in Malibu telling me I had a college fund.

The smaller envelope that fell out of the paperwork had “Lila” written in intricate calligraphy, and my mom had tears in her eyes by the time she finished reading the letter.

Her mother wrote an apology, explaining there were no strings attached to the gift and they hoped I’d use it well. I’d read it so many times in the last ten years, I had to tape it back together when the paper gave from being folded and unfolded over and over. I’d often picked up the phone and started to dial the number in the letter, always hanging up before I pushed the last button. Ten years and a free education later, and I still wasn’t sure if I could forgive them for not wanting me. Or for punishing my mother for so many years just because I existed.

“Did you find out anything more about what happened to your drug dealers from yesterday?” Parker’s voice snapped me out of my reverie and I tore a paper towel from the roll on the table and wiped my mouth.

“I didn’t even have time to ask,” I said. “But the good news is, neither did anyone else. I’ll check Monday, though.”

“Your job is never dull, huh?” He spun his empty beer bottle back and forth between sure hands.

“Very rarely. Though it’s usually not quite this insane, either. I miss my happy medium.”

We chatted about nothing in particular for another half hour. As the sun sank in the western sky, I told him goodnight and slid behind the wheel of my car, flipping my scanner on and sighing in relief when I heard nothing but normal Saturday night traffic cop chatter. Thank God. I wanted nothing more than to sleep until Monday.

By the time I tended to my Pomeranian, Darcy, and crawled under the duvet, my thoughts were tangling again, my headache threatening to return. Charlie. Shelby. Dead people in a boat accident nobody could explain. Dead drug dealers nobody robbed. They all fell together in a hopeless jumble, making my brain hurt. I wondered, as I closed my eyes, if the odd cast of characters heaped together in my head would create weird dreams. If they did, I didn’t remember them by morning.

My phone was ringing when I got to my desk on Monday. I stared at it for half a second, my innate inability to ignore a ringing telephone battling with the certainty that answering it would make me later for the meeting.

“Clarke,” I sighed, picking it up. “Can I help you?”

“Nichelle?” The voice that came through the line was so hesitant I almost didn’t recognize it as belonging to my narcotics sergeant.

“Mike? Is that you?” Maybe Sorrel had something on the dope dealers. I dug in my bag for a pen, flipping over a press release and scribbling Mike’s name and the date across the top. “What can I do for you?”

“I, uh, I need to talk to you. There’s some stuff I think, well, you might be interested in.” He sighed. “Not might. Will. It’s big. Can you meet me for coffee?”

“Sure.” Curiosity made it difficult to keep my voice even. I knew Sorrel fairly well, and he didn’t sound like himself. “Meet me at Thompson’s in twenty minutes?”

“NO!” I moved the phone away from my head, but it was too late. His Greek heritage came with a booming voice that left my ear ringing. “I’d rather go someplace out of the way. Can you meet me at the Starbucks in Colonial Heights in forty-five minutes?”

Agreeing, I cradled the phone wondering what was all the way out in Colonial Heights.

I hitched my bag back onto my shoulder, the desire to avoid snapping a heel on my newish, strappy red Manolos the only thing keeping me from breaking into a sprint on my way to find out.