Impulse (2 page)

He shook his head and he was still smiling down at me. “No,” he said, “I’m not divorced and I don’t intend to divorce my wife even though she bores me and tries to spend more money than even I make. You’re very young, Margaret. I’ve enjoyed you. Perhaps I would have married you if you’d birthed a boy, but you didn’t. My wife is pregnant now. Isn’t that strange timing? Perhaps she’ll give me a boy. I hope so.”

“She’s your daughter!”

He shrugged. He did nothing more, just shrugged. And then he said, that smile still on his mouth, “Daughters aren’t good for much, Margaret. You need boys to build dynasties, and that’s what I’ve always wanted. A girl is good for cementing certain deals and for leverage, but things have changed and you can’t be certain that you can control your daughters, make them do what you want them to. Who knows? Twenty years from now daughters might go against everything their fathers tell them. No, Margaret, a girl is worth less than nothing to me.”

I just stared at him, frozen. “Who are you? What kind of man are you?”

“A very smart man.” And he tossed a check for five thousand dollars on the bed. I watched it float down until it touched the stiff hospital sheet. “Good-bye, Margaret.” And he was gone.

I didn’t cry, not then. I remember so clearly picking up that check and looking at it and then very slowly tearing it into tiny, tiny pieces. I was so happy that I
hadn’t told him about my inheritance, so relieved I hadn’t told him who I really was. Perhaps I’d known all along what he would do. Perhaps I’d instinctively kept back my only valuable secret. Perhaps…

Boston, Massachusetts
Boston
Tribune
Newsroom
February 2001

“Look, he told the police he did it because they treated him like…What’d he keep saying?”

“They treated him like dirt.”

“Yeah, dirt. Well, he’s also crazy dirt. Come on, Al, let it go.”

“No way, Rafe. There’s more to it than that, I can smell it.” Al tapped the side of his nose. “I want you to go to the lockup and talk to the guy. You got the talent for it, kiddo. I can trust you to find out what’s going on. You’re the big talent here, aren’t you? Our twenty-five-year-old investigative reporter from Wallingford, Delaware? On the big-city paper for only two years and you’ve already got star fever? Runaway arrogance?”

Rafaella ignored that gambit. “The TV people have gone into it more ways than Sunday. It stinks. It’s just exploitation and sensationalism now.”

“Actually, the TV folk have screamed ‘psychopath’ and dredged up cases from all over the country for a fifty-year period.”

“Longer. They also dredged up Lizzie Borden. Al, listen, it’s a crummy story. This guy isn’t bright. I’ve seen him on TV and I’ve read what he’s said. It’s pathetic but that’s all there is. It’s been overdone and
I don’t want anything to do with any of it.” Hands over breasts, legs slightly spread, chin up. The art of intimidation—quite good, actually, but Al wasn’t moved. He’d taught Rafe some of his best tricks in the two years she’d been in his kingdom.

“You ain’t got a choice, Rafe, so shut your chops and get with it. The man’s in jail. He’s harmless now. Talk to him, talk to his lawyer—a young squirt who looks like he just lost his pimples—and get the facts on this thing. I’m positive there’s something everyone’s missed.”

“Come on, Al, he murdered,
axed
, three people—his father, mother, and uncle.”

“But not his eleven-year-old half-brother. Don’t you find that just a bit intriguing? Puzzling?”

“So the kid was lucky and wasn’t home. The kid’s still missing, right? We’ve already treated the story responsibly. Now you want sensationalism, and I don’t want any part of it. Call that goon over at the
Herald
, Maury Bates, if you want more gore.”

“No, Maury’d scare the guy’s socks off.”

Rafaella played her ace. “There’s no way the police would let me in to see Freddy Pithoe. No way his attorney would let me in to see him. No way the D.A. would let me in to see him. You know how touchy everyone is on a case like this, how scared they all are about anything prejudicial happening. Let a member of the press in to see the crazy guy charged? No way at all, Al, and you know the way I work—I’d be knocking on their door, bugging everybody so I could see him maybe a half-dozen times. Well, maybe if I had to, twice. Yes, twice would be enough.”

He had her. She’d talked herself into it. But he decided to reel her in slowly. It was more fun that way. “No problem, if it were kept real quiet. Benny Masterson owes me, Rafe. I’ve already talked to him. You keep it low-key,
real
low-key, and he’ll look the other way. He’s cleared you.”

“Lieutenant Masterson must owe you his life to allow a reporter in to see Freddy Pithoe. He could lose his pension, he could get his tail chewed from here to Florida. He’d be taking a huge risk. Lord, everyone, including Freddy, would have to be sworn to silence.”

Al Holbein, managing editor of the Boston
Tribune
, was more stubborn than Rafaella, and she knew it, plus he had twenty-five more years of practice.

He waved his cigar toward the
Tribune
’s metro editor, Clive Oliver, seated in a sea of assistants and reporters in the middle of the huge, noisy newsroom. There was a near-fistfight at one end, between two sports reporters, and a can of Coke was flying through the air from a police reporter to the cooking editor. “I’ve talked to Clive. He bitched, but I told him I didn’t want him to dump any assignments on you until I told him it was okay.” Al reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “Here’s your new personal password. Only you and I will be able to access anything you write on this story. Don’t show it to a soul—”

“Come on, Al, you know I don’t.”

“Yeah, well, don’t this time either. I want this thing kept under wraps. As far under wraps as possible.”

“The only thing that will be under wraps is what I write. This assignment is probably all over the newsroom by now, probably even down in classified.” She opened the paper and stared, then laughed. “‘Ruffle’? That’s my password? Where’d you get that one?”

Al gave her that smile that had seduced Milly Archer, a TV reporter, just six months before. “It’s my favorite potato chip. Now look, Rafe, just maybe there’s another Pulitzer in it for you. Who knows?”

That made her laugh. “When was the last time a reporter on a big newspaper won a Pulitzer? No, don’t tell me. You’ve got examples all lined up, don’t you?”

“Sure thing. Remember the reporters in Chicago
who ran that sting operation with a bar they opened themselves without telling the cops? That was a real beauty, and…” He paused, a light of wistfulness in his eyes. “In any case, just maybe you’ll find something. Think about how good it’ll make you feel. Remember how you felt when you cracked that group of neo-Nazis for the Wallingford
Daily News
?”

It
had
felt good, no doubt about that. “Yeah, I was pleased that I was still alive and the jerks hadn’t shoved their swastika armbands down my throat.” Then, “All right, Al, you win. I’ll go see the guy and talk to him. I’ll try to make him promise he won’t tell anyone, including his lawyer, about me. Maybe no one will know. I’ll even try to keep it from being public knowledge down in classified. Does your infamous nose have any concrete information for me to go on?”

Al always lied cleanly, to his mother, to his women, and to his reporters, so he shook his head promptly, his expression guileless.

Five minutes later, still grumbling, Rafaella Holland stuffed her oversize canvas bag with notebook, sharpened pencils, and umbrella, waved good-bye to Buzz Adams, the
Tribune
’s other investigative reporter, and left for the lockup to interview a twenty-three-year-old man named Freddy Pithoe, who, in a fit of rage—cause unknown—had wiped out nearly his entire family. His very inexperienced lawyer was going to plead temporary insanity—not very bright. Even Rafaella knew that old Freddy had purchased that ax two days before he did his family in. Premeditation, all the way. He wasn’t crazy, at least in the sense his lawyer was claiming. Freddy Pithoe was just waiting to get them all together, tell them what he thought of them, and ax them. That’s what the cops said, what the D.A. said, what the news media said. It was certainly the take on it that Logan Mansfield, bright and upcoming assistant D.A., shared. He’d made that perfectly clear
at great length during a spate of foreplay that had left Rafaella boiling—but not with sexual yearnings.

Al watched Rafaella wind her way through the desks and reporters and assistants to the wide glass doors of the
Trib
’s newsroom. She was nearly stomping, her London Fog raincoat flapping. He pushed himself back in his swivel chair, leaned his head against the ratty brown leather cushion that he’d refused to let Mr. Danforth, owner of the Boston
Tribune
, replace for five years now, and closed his eyes. He knew that if the anonymous tip he’d gotten from that old woman—she’d refused to identify herself—had any merit, Rafaella would discover it. He’d joked about her Pulitzer, but the job she’d done in ferreting out that den of neo-Nazis had been damned impressive and Mr. Danforth had called Al immediately after her Pulitzer had been announced. She’d taken a job with the
Trib
a month later. Imagine that vicious bunch using a candy store in a shopping mall in Delaware as a front.
Heil
Mr. Lazarus Smith. God, what a story that had made, for months. Rafe didn’t even have a sweet tooth for all he knew.

Oh, yes, if there was anything to this thing, she’d find out what it was. She was tenacious and, more important, had the talent to adapt her style, her approach, even her look, to each situation, to each person, no matter how disparate, no matter how weird. She’d find out why Freddy had almost decapitated his old man, struck his mother a good three blows in the chest, and very nearly hacked the uncle’s two arms off.

Al just had to wait until Rafe made the decision that she
wanted
to know. He’d really gotten her goat, and she’d have to work that through for a couple of hours, most of those hours wanting to punch him out. Then, he guessed, she’d be down at the jail by eleven this morning. She was good, and under his tutelage she’d get better. And she’d keep everything under wraps. No one would get in trouble over a reporter
visiting a prisoner. Not this time. Al sniffed things out; she felt things in her gut. This time his nose had had a bit of help from an anonymous tip.

If Rafe came up dry, then he’d give her the lead, for what it was worth, but not before. He guessed his caller was a neighbor. Rafe would find the neighbor; he didn’t have to worry.

Al lit a cigar and looked down at the story Gene Mallory, the paper’s youngest political analyst, had written on the budget crisis facing the governor. Boring but top-notch. Attached to the article was a handprinted note with the names of his sources. Careful, careful Gene, a clean-cut preppie. Al couldn’t imagine what Rafe saw in him. Gene was a plodder; she was spontaneous combustion. Al couldn’t imagine the two of them ever sleeping together. Rafe would probably fall asleep while Gene went through his checklist of foreplay tactics. Al had heard something about a guy in the D.A.’s office. Maybe he was more promising.

Brammerton, Massachusetts
That evening

“Another glass of wine, Gene?”

Gene Mallory shook his head, smiling slightly. “No, I’ve had enough. Tomorrow’s an early day for both of us, Rafaella.” He fiddled with the half of his Italian breadstick, then said, “I heard about your assignment to the Pithoe story. All the guys were talking about how you and Mr. Holbein were going at each other. No, don’t get upset, Rafaella. No one but me knows what you were yelling about. I—well, I just happened to overhear Mr. Holbein say the guy’s name and warn you about secrecy. I won’t say a single word, I promise. I’m just surprised Mr. Holbein decided to make you do it and not Buzz Adams. It’s a dirty mess, everyone
knows the guy’s as guilty as heck, and you’re—”

“I’m what, Gene?”

“Well, you weren’t raised to mix yourself up with that sort of garbage. After all, Rafaella, your stepfather
is
Charles Winston Rutledge III.”

Rafaella slugged down the rest of her wine to keep her mouth shut. She felt tight all over, and the bolus of wine didn’t help. “And you were?” she asked mildly. “Raised for garbage?”

“Of course not, but it’s more a man’s story—going to the grungy jail, speaking with all those guards and finally to that maniac. It wasn’t part of Mr. Holbein’s budget. He didn’t even mention the story in the news meeting.”

“His name is Al. I’ve heard him tell you to call him Al. He didn’t make the story part of his budget because he wants to keep it under wraps, which is very important, critical, as you very well know. However, Sally, the cleaning woman, knows about it. How, I haven’t the faintest idea. She left a note on my desk.
He’s got a weak chin. Guilty, I know it.”

“Mr. Holbein still should have brought the story up in the news meeting, and he shouldn’t have assigned it to you.”

Rafaella forced herself not to get mad and tear into Gene. She didn’t know what his problem was, but he was showing himself to be a royal pain in the butt this evening. She hadn’t noticed it so much before. He’d interested her simply because he was so straight. And he was good-looking in a very fair WASP way, and had a body that was worked to its limit every day. He’d been on the
Trib
staff for only two and a half months now.

She chose her words carefully. “I can handle any story that Al dishes out. My sex has nothing to do with anything. Or my background. Do you think you can interview men better than you can women?”

“No, of course not, but I’m not certain about a woman psychopath.”

He had a point there. “I’m not so sure about a male psychopath either. But I did it with Herr Lazarus Smith, if you’ll recall. Fascinating stuff, Gene—Freddy Pithoe, not old Lazarus.” Rafaella forgot her irritation and propped her chin on her folded hands.