The Scarecrow (22 page)

“What happened with the police?” she asked.

No howyadoin’, are you all right or sorry about Angela. Right down to business and I liked it that way.

“Well, let’s see,” I said. “I spent about eight hours being questioned. First by the LAPD and the FBI, then the Santa Monica detectives joined in. They gave me a break for about an hour and then I had to tell the whole story again to the Las Vegas police, who flew in just to talk to me. After that, they let me go but wouldn’t let me go back to my house because it’s still an active crime scene. So I had them take me to the Kyoto Grand, where I checked into a room—and put it on the
Times
’ tab, since I don’t have a working credit card—took a shower and then walked over here.”

The Kyoto was a block away and the
Times
used it to put up out-of-town reporters, new hires and job candidates when needed.

“That’s fine,” Fowler said. “What did you tell the police?”

“Basically, I told them what I tried to tell Prendo yesterday. I uncovered a killer out there who murdered Denise Babbit and a woman in Las Vegas named Sharon Oglevy. Somehow, either Angela or I hit a trip wire somewhere and alerted this guy that we were onto him. He then took steps to eliminate the threat. That included killing Angela first and going to Nevada to try to get me. But I was lucky. While I was unable to convince Prendo yesterday, I
had
convinced an FBI agent that all of this was legit, and she met me in Nevada to talk about it. Her presence kept the killer away from me. If she hadn’t believed me and met with me, you’d be putting together stories about how I killed Angela and went off to the desert to kill myself. That’s what the Unsub’s plan was.”

“Unsub?”

“Unknown subject. That’s what the bureau is calling him.”

Fowler shook her head in stunned disbelief.

“This is an amazing story. Do the police agree with it?”

“You mean, do they believe me? They let me go, didn’t they?”

Her face colored in embarrassment.

“It’s just hard for me to get my head around it, Jack. Nothing like this has ever happened in this newsroom.”

“Actually, the cops probably wouldn’t have believed it if it had just come from me. But I was with that FBI agent most of yesterday. We think we actually saw the guy in Nevada. And she was with me when I got home. She found Angela’s body when we were searching the house. She backed me up on everything with the cops. And that’s probably why I’m not talking to you through Plexiglas.”

Mention of Angela’s body brought a morbid pause to the conversation.

“It’s just horrible,” Fowler said.

“Yes. She was a sweet kid. I don’t even want to think about what her last hours were like.”

“How was she killed, Jack? Like the girl in the trunk?”

“Pretty much. It looked that way to me but I guess they won’t know everything till the autopsy.”

Fowler nodded somberly.

“How are they handling the investigation now, do you know?”

“They were putting together a task force with L.A., Las Vegas and Santa Monica contributing detectives and the FBI taking part as well. I think they are going to run it out of Parker Center.”

“Can we get that confirmed so we can put it in one of the stories?”

“Yeah, I’ll confirm it. I’m probably the only reporter they’ll take a call from. How many inches are you giving me for the story?”

“Uh, Jack, that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

“I’m writing the main story, right?”

“We’re going to go big with this. Main and sidebar on the front going to a double-truck inside. For once, we have a lot of space.”

Double-truck
meant two full inside pages. It was a lot of space but it took one of the paper’s own reporters getting murdered to get it.

Dorothy continued the plan.

“Jerry Spencer is already on the ground in Las Vegas and Jill Meyerson is on her way up to Ely State Prison to try to talk to Brian Oglevy. In L.A., we’ve got GoGo Gonzmart writing the sidebar, which will be on Angela, and Teri Sparks down in South L.A. working on a piece on the kid charged with the Babbit murder. We have art on Angela and are looking for more.”

“Is Alonzo Winslow getting out of juvy jail today?”

“We’re not sure yet. Hopefully, it will take another day and we’ll have that to run with tomorrow.”

Even without Winslow getting out, they were going big. Sending Metro reporters out across the west and putting multiple writers on it locally was something I had not seen done by the
Times
since the fires ravaged the state the year before. It was exciting to be part of it, but not so exciting when considering what caused it.

“All right,” I said. “I have stuff to contribute to almost all of those stories and I’ll still pull together and write the main.”

Dorothy nodded, hesitated and then dropped the bomb.

“Larry Bernard is writing the main, Jack.”

I reacted swiftly and loudly.

“What the fuck are you talking about? This is my story, Dorothy! Actually, me and
Angela’s
story.”

Dorothy looked up over my shoulder and out to the newsroom. I suspected that my outburst had been heard through the glass. I didn’t care.

“Jack, calm down and watch your language. I’m not going to let you talk to me the way you talked to Prendo yesterday.”

I tried to pace my breathing and speak calmly.

“Okay, I apologize for the language. To you and Prendo. But you can’t take this story away from me. It’s
my
story. I started it, I’m writing it.”

“Jack, you can’t write it and you know it. You
are
the story. I need to get you with Larry so he can interview
you
and then write the story. The switchboard’s taken more than thirty messages from reporters wanting to interview you, including the
New York Times,
Katie Couric, even Craig Ferguson from the
Late Late Show
.”

“Ferguson’s not a reporter.”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is, you are the story, Jack. That’s a fact. Now, we certainly need your help and your knowledge of everything related, but we can’t let the subject of a major breaking story also write it. You were in police custody for eight hours today. What you told them is the basis of their investigation. How are you going to write about that? Are you going to interview yourself? Write it in first person?”

She paused to let me answer but I didn’t.

“That’s right,” she continued. “Not going to happen. You can’t do this, and I know you understand that.”

I leaned forward and put my face in my hands. I knew she was right. I’d known it before I even entered the newsroom.

“This was supposed to be my big exit. Get that kid out of jail and go out in a blaze of glory. Put the big three-oh on my career.”

“You’re still going to get credit. There is no way the story can be anything but about you. Katie Couric, the
Late Late Show
—I’d say that’s going out in a blaze of glory.”

“I wanted to write it, not tell it to somebody else.”

“Look, let’s get this done today and then we can talk about doing a first-person piece when the dust settles. I promise you, you will get to write something about all of this at some point.”

I finally sat back up and looked at her. For the first time I noticed the photo taped to the wall behind her. It was a still shot from
The Wizard of Oz
that showed Dorothy skipping down the yellow brick road with the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow. Beneath the characters someone had printed in Magic Marker:

YOU
’
RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE, DOROTHY

I had forgotten that Dorothy Fowler had come to the paper from the
Wichita Eagle
.

“All right, if you promise me that story.”

“I promise, Jack.”

“Okay. I’ll tell Larry what I know.”

I still felt defeated.

“Before you do, I need to make sure of one last thing,” Dorothy said. “Are you comfortable going on the record with another reporter? Do you want to consult a lawyer first or anything like that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jack, I want to make sure you’re protected. It’s an ongoing investigation. I don’t want something you say in the paper to be possibly used by the police to hurt you later.”

I stood up but maintained composure and control.

“In other words, you don’t believe any of this. You believe what he was hoping you would believe. That I killed her in some sort of psychotic breakdown over getting fired.”

“No, Jack. I believe you. I just want you protected. And who is he that you’re talking about?”

I pointed out the glass toward the newsroom.

“Who do you think? The guy! The Unsub! The killer who took Angela and the others.”

“Okay, okay. I understand. I’m sorry I brought up the legal aspects of this. Let me get you with Larry in the conference room so you can have some privacy, okay?”

She stood up and rushed by me to leave the office and look for Larry Bernard. I stepped out and surveyed the newsroom. My eyes eventually came to Angela’s empty cubicle. I walked over and saw that someone had placed a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane diagonally across her desk. Immediately I was struck by the clear plastic wrapping around the flowers and it reminded me of the bag that had been used to suffocate her. Once again I saw Angela’s face disappearing into the darkness beneath the bed.

“Excuse me, Jack?”

I almost jumped. I turned and saw it was Emily Gomez-Gonzmart. She was one of the best reporters on the Metro staff. Always hustling, always going after a story.

“Hey, GoGo.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt but I’m putting together the story on Angela and wondered if I could get a little help from you. And maybe a quote I could use.”

She was holding a pen and reporter’s notebook. I went with the quote first.

“Uh, yeah, but I didn’t really know her,” I said. “I was just getting to know her, but from what I saw I could tell she was going to be a great reporter. She had the right mix of curiosity and drive and determination that a good reporter needs. She is going to be missed. Who knows what stories she would have written and what people she could have helped with those stories?”

I gave GoGo a moment to finish writing.

“How’s that?”

“Good, Jack, thanks. Anybody you can suggest I talk to over in the cop shop?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know. She had just started and I don’t think she had made an impression on anybody yet. I heard she had a blog. Have you looked at that?”

“Yeah, I’ve got the blog and it’s got some contacts on it. I talked to a Professor Foley back at the University of Florida and a few others. I should be fine there. I was just looking for somebody local and outside the paper who might have something to say about her more recently.”

“Well, she wrote a story on Monday about the cold case squad popping somebody for a twenty-year-old murder. Maybe somebody over there could say something. Try Rick Jackson or Tim Marcia. Those are the guys she spoke to. Also, Richard Bengston. Try him.”

She wrote the names down.

“Thanks, I’ll check it out.”

“Good luck. I’ll be around if you need me.”

She left me then and I turned back to Angela’s desk and looked again at the flowers. The glorification of Angela Cook was in high gear now and I was part of it with that quote I had just given GoGo.

Call me Mr. Cynical, but I couldn’t help wondering if the bouquet of carnations and daisies was somebody’s legitimate show of mourning, or if the whole thing had been staged for a photo that would be put in the next morning’s edition.

A
n hour later I was sitting with Larry Bernard in the conference room normally reserved for news meetings. We had my files spread across the big table and were going step by step through the moves I had made on the story. Bernard had brought his A game. He was diligent about understanding my decisions and acute in his questions. I could tell he was excited about being the lead writer on a story that would go out across the country, if not around the world. Larry and I went back a long ways—we had worked together at the
Rocky
in Denver. If anybody got to run with my story, I was begrudgingly glad it was him.

It was important to Larry to get official confirmation from the police or FBI on the things I was telling him. So to his side he had a legal pad on which he wrote a series of questions he would later take to the authorities before writing his story. Because of that need to get to the task force before writing, Bernard was all business with me. There was very little small talk and I liked that. I didn’t have any small talk left.

My throwaway phone buzzed in my pocket for the second time in fifteen minutes. The first time, I hadn’t bothered to pull it out and I let it go to message. Larry and I had been in the middle of a key point of discussion and I didn’t want the intrusion. But whoever called hadn’t left a message, because I didn’t get a follow-up voice-mail buzz.

Now the phone was buzzing again and this time I pulled it out to check the caller ID. The screen showed only a number but I readily recognized it because I had called it a few times in the past couple of days. It was Angela Cook’s cell number. The number I had called after hearing that she was missing.

“Larry, I’ll be right back.”

I got up from the table and left the conference room while clicking on to the call. I headed toward my cubicle.

“Hello?”

“Is this Jack?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“This is your friend, Jack. From Ely.”

I knew exactly who it was. There was that same empty-desert twang in his voice. Sideburns. I sat down at my desk and leaned forward to help insulate the conversation from any nearby ears.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To see how you’re doing,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I’m doing fine, no thanks to you. In the hallway at the Nevada, why’d you stop? Instead of sticking with the plan, you just walked on by.”