The police report didn’t have much in it because I didn’t have much to tell. Even now, after three days of reliving it in my head, there was very little I could articulate about what had happened. And I’d never give up Benny as my informant—his ass was mine. “What do you think happened?”
“Ethan was targeted. Either by your stupidity or—” He snapped his mouth shut as the words nearly spilled out of him.
“Or what?” My voice somehow remained calm though I was vibrating on the inside with anticipation, like a high schooler with their first cup of coffee.
Tension filled his jaw and his entire body as he restrained himself from speaking.
I bit my lip to keep the questions inside. Who was this man? Why did he think that Ethan’s death was on me? What did he think happened that night? They were all right there, the questions, beating against the inside of my skull like a swarm of angry bees against a window.
He took another step toward me. I watched his lips, the flush of his cheek as he spoke. “I will find out what happened.”
I didn’t back down. Never backed down. “No, I will. He was my partner.”
His nostrils flared, and his knuckles went white at his sides. “Aye, but he was my brother.”
It was like steel bat to my midsection, and all the air left me in one quick assault.
Ethan never mentioned a brother.
In two years, I’d only known Emily. And as I spied the sea of unfamiliar faces that watched us, I didn’t know any of them. Not any of the other family members who had dropped a rose on his casket, not half of the attendees who hovered around, watching horrified as our argument escalated.
I took a step back and into Hayne, and his soft hands held my shoulders.
Ethan lied to me?
How could he? I’d told him everything. Everything about my father, my mother, the hunt of a story. Embarrassing high school stories and first loves. Everything.
And he had lied about having a brother.
There was one question in the swarm that had not been silenced by the man’s confession and the barrage of betrayal that threatened to pick me up and sweep me away. One that seemed to persist its way to my lips. “Who’s Piper?”
And like that, the other people in the parking lot stepped in. It was no longer me and this wrecking ball, but Levi and the blonde and then a bear-like man hauling my accuser across the parking lot.
Hayne stepped in front of me, blocking my view, preventing me from chasing after him. “We need to go.”
“Ethan lied to me.”
Hayne shook his head. “Come on, Lanard. It’s been a rough day. Let’s get a drink.”
I let him maneuver me back into the car, one question repeating over and over in my head: How had Ethan lied to the girl who always found out the truth?
CHAPTER TWO
“Lanard, I got it.” Steven the IT guy brought me Ethan’s laptop. He set it on my desk. “It had a 128-bit encryption, pretty good stuff, but I’m better.”
“So not the usual stuff you guys pre-load on the machines?”
Steven shook his head as the screen booted up between us.
I shoved my keyboard aside and pulled the laptop in front of me. Ethan’s desktop picture was of him and Emily on one of their monthly hikes.
I shot Steven a small smile. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Owe me? I thought Hayne approved this to get his pictures?”
“Right. Totally legit. Now don’t you have something else to hack?”
Steven disappeared into the background clattering of the newsroom as I started digging through the files. Technically, it was a company computer. Technically, it was part of an active investigation. And technically, the newspaper had paid Ethan for the images, so they were company property. But probably not meant for my eyes.
Ethan would forgive me for investigating his family. After the funeral, I couldn’t shake that Ethan had lied. Emily and Ethan had omitted a huge part of their lives from me, a brother. It trumped any story about the Mayor denying some meaningless construction bribes.
Ethan would understand that I needed answers if I was ever going to sleep without alcohol persuasion again, even if Hayne might not. Ethan would understand that I would stop at nothing to find the truth. And right now, the questions of why Ethan was hiding a brother drove my search toward his family.
I scanned through the files and was able to crack his email archive without IT help. He’d always been so romantically faithful, so of course the password was his wife’s name and their anniversary. I scanned through his emails, searching for new names.
Unfortunately, it seemed that they weren’t into email. Ethan’s messages were mostly newspaper HR spam and links to hiking websites from Emily. Nothing had a suspicious vibe. Nothing pointed to a secret life that would get him killed.
I opened his picture files and found one called “ML.” I double-clicked it, and my stomach dropped. It was full of pictures of me. Weird side shots when he was testing the lighting of places, odd shots of me laughing, and a few of me thinking. I opened one where he’d done some camera trick that made me look like I had a red halo or maybe the sun was setting behind me. I checked the time stamp. Two weeks before his death. In fact, there were quite a few from that time period and all of them featured me, surrounded by that same strange red aura.
“Lanard.”
I jumped at Hayne’s voice and slammed the laptop shut. I spun around in my chair to see him walking toward me, his arm around Emily’s shoulder. I rose as they stopped at my desk. I needed to be on my feet for this encounter.
My stomach immediately twisted into knots along with my tongue. I didn’t know what to say. I’d comforted a million victims’ families before, but those crime victims had never been my friend. The last time it was just Emily and I, we’d had a “girls’ lunch,” and over sandwiches, brainstormed ways to keep Ethan from growing a beard. Now we only had two feet of tile and a bag of her dead husband’s things.
“Mrs. Rhoades came in for Ethan’s possessions and Steven told me you had his laptop.”
I grabbed it from my desk and clutched it to my chest. “It’s company property and part of an active story.”
Emily’s doe eyes brimmed with tears. There was no denying that Emily was gorgeous. Tall with golden skin. And she was somehow more beautiful now as the grieving widow. It made me feel like Orphan Annie as I stood before her.
“It’s his laptop. I mean, it’s his work. Our work. Why do you need it?” I asked.
Emily tried to answer, but nothing really came out.
Hayne interrupted her silence. “Merci, just give her the laptop.”
Knowing there was no way I was going to win this, I handed it over. Emily took it and put it in a black canvas tote, where I saw the contents of Ethan’s desk: his extra shirt, his stress ball, and his “World’s Best Partners” coffee mug probably still smelling of whiskey. It took everything I had not to ask for that back and I’d fill it with regret for not having that last drink with him.
“Did you happen to see a silver medallion?” Emily voice wasn’t shaky, but wasn’t as strong as I remembered it. Definitely wasn’t strong enough to keep a classroom of thirty third-graders in check.
I gulped. The medallion bounced against my stomach in response to Emily’s answer. I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to give that part of him away yet.
Her shoulder’s slumped. “It must have gotten lost at the hospital.”
She turned to go, but I wasn’t done yet. There was something still unfinished as I stood there feeling like the kid with her hand in a cookie jar, a very bloody cookie jar.
“Emily, I … Ethan told me to tell you that he loved you.” I couldn’t say why that truth came out just then, but something inside me pushed me to share this bit of Ethan. It was as if talking about him might keep him alive for a little while longer, and keep her with me a little longer so I didn’t lose her too. And those are the words that came out, the truth taking the place of the li
e I’d omitted about the medallion.
“Why would you say that?” Emily asked, staring at me as if I’d asked about the proper way to eat a cockroach.
I flinched at her reaction. “It’s the last thing he said. ‘Tell Emily I loved her,’ and ‘Tell Piper I’m sorry.’”
Emily pressed her lips together and shook her head. Her eyes sparkled with tears as they locked with mine.
“Who’s Piper?” The last time I’d asked, a group of people had pulled me away. But it was just Emily and me now, the two people who had to want to know what happened to Ethan.
Emily bit down hard on her lip and her chin quivered. She was keeping something from me. Was it about his family? Was it about his death?
The electricity started to brew again in my head and sizzle down through our connection, pressing her for the answer, pushing the question at her. “Do you know who killed Ethan?”
Emily turned and ran. She didn’t just look away, she ran away from me and across the newsroom floor, clutching the black canvass tote to her chest. Her feet saved her from the truth.
“Please, Emily. Talk to me!” I yelled after her.
Hayne’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. White-hot pain from my still-healing ribs ran across my vision and I froze. Hayne pulled me back and grabbed my arm. It didn’t budge as he dragged me into his office like a petulant child being hauled to the principal’s office.
I didn’t stop fighting until my ass hit the familiar leather cushion of the hot seat. My heart pounded against my ribs, and I put my head in my hands, running my fingers through the curly mess that had become my mourning hair.
“I know you’re grieving, but for Christ’s sake, Merci. That was his wife.”
As soon as I heard him shut the door behind me, I retorted. “She knows something, Hayne.”
“She wasn’t the one who killed him.”
“Then why not just answer the question?”
“She doesn’t have to!” Hayne pointed a knobby finger at me as he leaned against the desk in front of me. “Yes, he’s dead. Yes, you’re grieving. But you need to consume something other than Jack Daniels and get your head on straight.”
I took in a deep breath, until the electricity that danced between my shoulder blades settled and my heart reached a fairly normal pace. “I just don’t understand. Emily should want me to find out who did this. Why run?”
Hayne knelt down before me and I stared into his concerned gray eyes. “Grief manifests in different ways. You of all people should know that, Merci.”
And I did. Perhaps a little too well. Greif over my father had manifested into a mad dash to college to take over the family business without a second thought. To work for this city just like my father had all those year ago. This grief, well, I wasn’t sure what it looked like yet.
“I’ve been meaning to say thank you for writing up the article.”
“I can still sling words around when I need to.” Hayne shook his head. “Maybe you need some time. Go see those cousins in California. Go visit your mother.”
I frowned and sat up. Hayne knew how I felt about my mother. How her country club couture could stay on her side of the state line and my chaos could stay on mine – and neither the twain shall meet. Why would he mention her now?
“Don’t take me off this, Hayne. We were on to something. Our informant was going to give us names that connected City Hall to a new gang and the missing girls in the Trade Streets. We were so close.”
That was a lie. And the lie’s flavor filled my mouth—a rotten sort of lemon flavor that made me wince. It was times like these I hated being a journalist’s daughter who had the truth preached to her for her whole life, to the point that she couldn’t lie without repercussion. A compulsion that had manifested in a psychosomatic reaction to self-deception. Or at least that’s what one of my old shrinks said.
“Why shouldn’t I take you off this? We don’t want you going all Teddy on us.”
I set my jaw, pain flaring up the side of my face as I glared at my boss. This was not going to be the event that sent me off the deep end and into Sunnybrook for a mental health vacation. We both knew that.
A tingle ran down my spine as Hayne shifted under my gaze. “You can’t let him die for nothing.”
Hayne sighed as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. They always looked away. I hadn’t met a person yet who could withstand the Lanard stare.
Hayne held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not putting you on leave. But I need you to take care of yourself. I’ve already lost one staffer. I can’t lose you, too.”
I leaned back in the hot seat, the old metal squeaking out a protest. He wasn’t going to lose me too, but from the outside, I’m sure that wasn’t as evident. “I can promise you one hot meal in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Thank you.” He studied me with those tired gray eyes. “I know there was a lot you two didn’t tell me about your process, things you researched that never made copy, and I respect that. If you think that one of those stories pissed off someone enough to go after you, then you need to get after them first.”
My mind went blank for a moment, as I tried to comprehend what he’d just said. “What?”
He rose, pulling himself away from me and sat in the other chair, where Ethan usually sat while I was being read the riot act. “I have never seen anyone in my life face down danger like you do, and then do it again and again. One win on the heels of another. Its uncanny.”
For some reason, this was hard to hear. Partly, because it made me sound reckless, but mostly because I didn’t do that alone. But I was going to have to now. I didn’t have my wingman, and the loss was wincingly fresh again. I rubbed my arm keep the ghost chill of my severed limb at bay.
Hayne gave me a reassuring face. He didn’t give actual smiles, but this face was as close as he got. “If anyone can find his killer, your instincts will get you there. But you need to sleep and eat actual food, drink something that isn’t whiskey.”
But with sleep came dreams, and the dreams reminded me how badly I was failing at the only thing I was good at. I’d exhausted all possible avenues that weren’t putting an APB out on Benny, and Emily wasn’t exactly forthcoming with any information.
I took in a deep breath. Hayne was right. I needed to trust my instincts. They had gotten me this far. And if I could trust anything else in this world, I could trust my instinct to get into trouble and find the truth.
I stood up from the hot seat. “Okay, Chief.”
Hayne was slightly confused at my answer, but gestured for the door.
“Oh, and, Lanard?” Hayne called after me as he went back to his side of the desk.
“Yeah, Chief?”
“One more outburst like that, I’m putting you on the Lifestyles pages.”
I lifted the whiskey to the second man to buy me a drink that afternoon and threw the two fingers back. The first drink came with a thank you from a regular who I’d helped out with some unfair rezoning legislation, but this mysterious Romeo at the dark end of the bar was just a nice man who wanted to cut down on my tab. Poor sap. I set the empty tumbler down, still staring at the police reports.
“Whatcha working on this time, Lanard?” Bill asked as he took my tumbler and put it in the washer under the bar.
I glanced up. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
The bartender nodded and popped open a few more beers for the other patrons. He came back to lean against the bar before me. “I don’t know if I told you personally the other night, but I’m sorry about Ethan. He was a good guy. You two were a good team. He’ll be missed.”
I looked away from the work before me and kept my eyes open, drying the water gathered there. Where my gut reaction was to say “Get bent with your bar towel,” my inner voice, Ethan’s voice, was like a warm hand on my shoulder.
He was trying to be nice. And this is one of the few bars you haven’t been thrown out of.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks, Bill.�
��
He poured me another drink and set it on the bar before me. “Let me order you up a cheesesteak for dinner.”
“I’m good. But thanks.”
He nodded and moved over to another sorry soul on a stool down the way. I went back to work too.
I’d called in a few favors with the police, the tax assessor’s office, and the elementary school where Emily worked to get employment records, police reports, and anything I could to ease this nagging suspicion. Not even my obsessive truth-seeking could quiet the ache of going behind her back. I didn’t want to investigate Emily and her family like this. I’d much rather just ask her to her face, get the honest answers, feel the communication flowing between us, as easily as it did before, but the other day had shown me that neither of us was ready for the questions I needed to ask.
What was Ethan really hiding from me? Why didn’t he tell me about his brother?
Hayne had said to listen to my instincts. My instincts were telling me that if Ethan was keeping secrets, there had to be a reason. And that reason might be as dangerous as drugs or missing people. Could even be something on par with shadowy killers who appear out of nowhere.
And this brother? The one who spoke with such sound and fury? Nothing. Without a name, he didn’t exist on paper. There was no record of Ethan having a brother, and yet his voice in my head kept me awake at night, with the shattering of Ethan’s friendship.
There was definitely something strange about the Howard family, Emily’s family. Longevity for one. The establishment papers on her brother’s construction company were filed in Pennsylvania in 1970, making Levi Howard at least fifty, and he hadn’t appeared a day over thirty-five. The Howard Construction Company had been at the same location for nearly thirty years until Levi filed for a rezoning of an old warehouse to be the new front for his business ten months ago. I matched a police report to his old office location for a B&E.
What could have scared Levi into moving? Surely it was something more than a little B&E. But what? Corruption, drugs, bribes, human trafficking?
It’s not drugs until you find a crack pipe.
The Truth About Night Page 3