The Tin Man (3 page)

Relief washed over
Thea, but the bath was short-lived. “Did you say
bodies
? Plural?”

“Eight in all.
Shot at their desks. Execution style.”

“
What about the M.O.? Were any of the victims marked like Connolly?”

“That’s
something you’re going to need to find out.” While Glenda talked, Thea padded into the kitchen and started making coffee. “Apparently, after calling the cops, Buchanan had a run-in with the gunman himself.”

“
Oh my God.” Thea damn near dropped the glass carafe she’d been filling in the sink, but recovered it in time. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“As far as I know,”
Glenda said. “The police are questioning him now. At the scene. Which is where you should be—if you want the story.”

“Oh, I do
,” Thea assured her. “Definitely.”

“Good
. Then get going. I need something on the website by two o’clock.”

They talked a little more about brass tacks
—which photographer to assign and the kinds of shots they might want—before they hung up. As Thea set the phone down, she took a breath. Gone were the days of late-afternoon deadlines and morning deliveries, and with them, sadly, the days of thoughtful, in-depth reporting. Except, thankfully, on the investigative desk.

As
Thea poured a cup of coffee, relishing the rich aroma, she glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was noon. A two-hour window didn’t give her much time to do the legwork and write the story, while somehow allowing enough time for the online editors to fact check, copyedit, and post the text. And she still needed to get showered and dressed.

Eager to get to the scene to talk to the cops and
Buchanan, she hurried into the bathroom, stripping off her lace camisole and satin pajama bottoms as she went. When the shower was ready, she stepped in and stood there letting the hot water pelt her skin as she considered possible motives for the killings.

Ha
d each victim coincidentally run something that offended the same crackpot? That struck her as implausible. Why not just write a letter to the editor—or sue for libel if it was something really defamatory? There were redresses available short of murder. Was it so somebody could take over their enterprises? That made more sense, but she just couldn’t see a connection. Atlas was about to go on the auction block while the
Voice
, with all its employees dead, was essentially out of business.

Poor
Buchanan. What the poor man must be going through.

But
, suppose the murders weren’t related. Suppose the hit on the
Voice
was one of those copycat crimes, a smokescreen created to divert the cops. Maybe the motive had nothing to do with business. Maybe it was personal, somebody out to ruin him, financially and reputationally. Maybe he had bad debts, gambled, or took drugs. Like Robby, she thought with a qualm. Not that Buchanan struck her as the self-destructive type. Then again, how well did she really know him?

Not well at all, actually.

She’d met Alex Buchanan back in 2008 while both were covering the Elliot Spitzer call-girl scandal—he for
World View
and she for the
News
. She found him ruggedly handsome in that way that always made her heart beat just a little faster. He had a limp, but so what? In her book, that made him better. Without it, he would be too perfect. Who wanted to date Mr. Perfect except Ms. Perfect? And that sure as hell wasn’t her.

After a quick shampoo, she stepped out
and grabbed a towel off the rack. The mirror was too foggy to see in, so she swiped her hand across it before grabbing the comb and pulling it through her shoulder-length mostly black hair. She’d thought a few times about taking out the gray, but what the hell? She’d earned every one of those gray hairs just like she hoped to earn a Pulitzer one day for her hard-hitting investigative reporting.

Letting out
a sigh, she looked hard at her reflection. She was thirty-eight, still single, and hadn’t had a date in months—partly because of her busy professional life, but also because she’d become invisible.

Not literally, of course, but in the way women over thirty-five did in
America’s youth-obsessed culture. Sadly, she’d reached that depressing age when strangers now addressed her as “Ma’am” instead of “Miss” and she no longer looked “good,” she looked “good for her age.” The kitten had matured into a cougar—a predatory older woman. She swiped a “paw” at her reflection and hissed before laughing it off.

S
he twisted her wet hair up the back of her head and secured it with a clip. Grabbing her coffee, she hurried to the closet. She had lots of questions for the cops and Buchanan and was eager to get to the crime scene before it was flooded with reporters. She pulled out a cream-colored charmeuse blouse, a pair of charcoal gabardine slacks, and her favorite low-heeled pumps.

After dressing,
she returned to the bathroom. Standing before the mirror, she gazed into her own almond-shaped brown eyes, wondering if she shouldn’t maybe put on a little lipstick and mascara. Normally, she wouldn’t bother. But then,
normally
, she didn’t get a chance to repair a bad first impression on the man she believed, deep down in her heart of hearts, might very well be “the one who got away.”

* * * *

Buchanan—wet, wounded, and shaken to the core—sat alone in the lobby Starbucks, head rocking in his hands. He felt numb, desolate, defeated, lost, and angry. Grief tore at his heart. In one fell swoop, he’d lost everything he had left in the world—his staff, his business, his livelihood. In short, his reason for getting out of bed every morning.

T
he killer was still out there, waiting to get another shot at him. Witnesses had seen the gunman getting into a black sedan waiting at the curb. Because he and the driver wore masks, there were no descriptions. The getaway vehicle, the police informed him, was a Lincoln Town Car stolen the night before from a Philadelphia car service.

Buchanan
combed his fingers through his close-cropped hair before picking up the briefcase at his feet. Setting it on the empty chair beside him, he opened it, staring down at his Glock as he removed the other items he’d rescued from his office before the police cordoned off the entire sixth floor: his laptop, his flask, and his cigarettes. He took a long pull of whisky, savoring the burn as it swam toward his belly. Swiping his hand across his mouth, he laughed, but bitterly. Here, he’d left Scotland hoping to find a better life, afraid that, if he stayed, he would end up like his miserable excuse for a father—a broken man who drowned his despair in whisky.

O, irony, thou art a cruel mistress. Why dost thou taunt me so?

Unanswerable q
uestions also taunted, starting with: Why? Why would anybody do something like this? What possible motive could there be? His editors were good people, hard-working people with friends and families, people who cared about the terrible shite that was happening in the world.

Shite
like this, for example.

He searched his mind for any possible explanation. All he really had to go on was that t
he gunman had called him a “filthy dissident”—words etched on his brain. Along with the look of utter disdain in the assassin’s eyes. Baghdad, revisited. Wasn’t that what his torturers had called him as they used him as a human punching bag? A filthy dissident? But what did that have to do with this? Surely, none of them would come after him now. What possible reason could there be?

His encyclopedic memory
offered him Salman Rushdie and how, after he’d published
The Satanic Verses
, his controversial novel inspired by the life of the prophet Mohammed, the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a
fatwa
ordering Muslims to kill the author on sight. Could this be something like that? Was he the object of a
fatwa
? Or was it the act of a rogue cell of terrorists? Skeptical, he shook his head. What reason could terrorists have to target
The Voice
? And what had he written that Muslims might construe as blasphemous? He could think of nothing. If anything, he had been a staunch defender of their rights, railing against the government-endorsed racism Muslims had been subjected to since the Twin Towers attacks.

Could it be something else
he’d written? Something that had nothing to do with Islam? One of his in-your-face editorials, perhaps, that struck a raw nerve? Something that had enraged someone enough to kill? That hardly seemed likely. Slaughtering his entire staff was hardly a proportional response to a bit of bad press. No. There had to be more to it than that. Clearly, somebody wanted him out of business. And there was only one man he could think of with a motive for that: Milo Osbourne.

Only a week ago
, Osbourne had tried to buy him out. The offer was for $3 million in cash and to stay on as editor-in-chief or sign a non-compete agreement promising not to start another similar news site for five years—obvious ploys on Osbourne’s part to eliminate “the boil on his neck” he and
The Voice
had become.

The meeting
—in Golden Age’s Taj Mahal of a conference room—came back in snatches: Osbourne sitting there with his battalion of barristers looking so high and mighty in his bespoke suit and tie. Who did he think he was, king of the fucking universe? Five minutes into the meeting, Buchanan wanted to smash his fist through that Crypt-keeper face of his. All of their faces, actually.

Sitting there stewing, getting hotter under the collar by the second,
Buchanan had started to feel like he was in a scene from
It’s a Wonderful Life—
the one
where Mr. Potter, having failed to get the upper hand on George Bailey, tried offering him a job. George almost went for it too, until he realized what Potter was trying to pull and called him a scurvy little spider.

A smile twitched on
Buchanan’s compressed lips. Oh, aye. A scurvy little spider described Osbourne to a tee.

He’d turned the
old prick down flat, of course. He wasn’t interested in selling, hadn’t started this enterprise as a dalliance or a way to make a fast buck. Rather, he had started
The Voice
because he felt that, now more than ever, the world (Britain and America especially) needed an alternative source of news, needed somewhere thoughtful, truth-seeking people could turn for a different perspective. And that was precisely why he planned to do everything in his power to block the merger, including filing an antitrust lawsuit.

He’d announced his intent
ion to do so in last week’s commentary, which appeared the day before Osbourne extended his generous purchase offer. Coincidence? Buchanan thought not, but also wondered: had Osbourne hired someone to kill him because he couldn’t be bought?

It was a possibility, however improbabl
e, that he had already mentioned to the police. He had spent two grueling hours being grilled by the homicide detectives, answering the same questions repeatedly until he wanted to scream. The CSI crew was still upstairs combing the scene for evidence.

They we
re finished with him, for now at least, but the detective in charge—some clown named Bradshaw—had asked him to stick around until further notice. Just in case. Therefore, essentially, he was stuck here, which was just as well. Where else was he supposed to go with the assassin still at large?

* * * *

Thea disconnected the unanswered call to her grandfather without leaving a message. What was the point? There was no Internet access where he was. There also was no electricity and no telephone. And the cellular signal, she’d discovered over the past several weeks, was hit and miss at best.

She put the phone away,
returning to the business at hand—namely, the shootings and Alex Buchanan. She still cringed inside whenever she thought back on their date—an “epic fail” as kids today would say.

They had
agreed to meet for a drink at the Four Seasons and, hoping to knock his socks off (among other garments), she had slipped into her sexiest Little Black Dress. He was waiting when she got there, though she wasn’t late. And God, but he looked good. He’d worn an impeccably tailored black suit. Hugo Boss, if she had to guess. She had seen him around a few times, at press conferences and the like, always in a tweed jacket and jeans. Not that it was a bad look for him. On the contrary, he always looked good enough to eat. But that night, he was a big old slab of prime Angus filet mignon.

They sat, ordered drin
ks, made small talk, told each other stories and jokes, and laughed easily. The undeniable spark between them flared hotter with every lingering glance or chance brush of knees under the table. She was sure he felt it, too. All the signs were there. And then, he took out his cigarettes…and everything went to hell.

Normally, s
he wasn’t an anti-smoking zealot, but she had recently lost her mother to lung cancer and, when she saw that he smoked the same brand, something inside her snapped. She launched into an anti-smoking tirade that would have made Bob Schieffer blush.