The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “But where would he get cyanide? Myself, I don’t keep any under the bathroom sink.”

  “Actually, J.B., you may. As I recall from visiting your apartment for the party you threw after the Notre Dame game, you have a beautiful fish tank.”

  “Yeah. My whole family is into tropical fish.”

  “Check the label on your purification tablets.”

  “Cyanide?” He sounded terrified.

  “There are lots of other places to get it, as I recall. Rat poison, for example. In the past, some types of photographic supplies contained cyanide. I don’t know if they still do or not.”

  Ace sneered. “You make a pretty good case, Nell. Wanna back it up with money?”

  “I’m not a gambler, Ace.”

  “If you’re right, I’ll buy lunch at Goldman’s tomorrow.”

  “Sure. I’ll order the shrimp supreme.” Gazette staffers are in Goldman’s so often that I knew the most expensive item on the menu.

  “You’re on!” Ace said. “I’m still betting on a heart attack.”

  “You’re forgetting the fake Salvation Army officer.”

  He shook his head. “No. If I were going to poison somebody who’d been taking drugs, I’d use digitalin. Make it look like a heart attack. They’d never figure it out.”

  I looked at J.B. and raised my eyebrows. “If I drop over of a coronary, make sure Ace wasn’t in the vicinity,” I said. “He could be right.”

  Ace held a sheaf of computer printouts, and I tapped the similar batch I held. “Ready to trade?”

  I glanced through the remaining stories on the Central Station. There was one surprise. Harley Duke had led the opposition to the bond issue it required, but once the voters had okayed it in spite of him, he became a major backer. He volunteered to serve on the oversight committee, which recommended a contractor and made regular reports on the construction. He had even backed the five cost overruns which were approved during construction. Irish Svenson had opposed three of them.

  And the contractor for the project had been Balew Brothers.

  Very interesting.

  Balew Brothers had a checkered history in Grantham. I thought we should get all the background we had on them from our library. I put the request in, then Ace and I walked over to the Central Station to make Coy’s briefing on Bo’s death. My library stop had nearly made us late, and we had to dash up the stairs. It was worth the run, however, to see Ace’s face when Coy read off the medical examiner’s preliminary report.

  “Okay,” the Ass muttered into my ear. “What time do you want to go to lunch tomorrow?”

  The probable cause of death was cyanide, Coy said. And the probable method of introducing it was in a candy bar with almonds. That was logical. Any murder mystery reader knows cyanide smells like almonds. No special knowledge needed there. An almond candy bar would be perfect for the poison, and the way Bo had been stuffing down candy during the hostage situation would have told anyone that he would grab a candy bar and inhale it. I’d included his chocolate binge in my story, and I thought it had been on Channel Four, too.

  Hammond reluctantly admitted that a Grantham Mental Health Center employee—former employee would probably be more accurate at this point—had allowed Bo to have a candy bar brought in by the phony Salvation Army officer.

  He didn’t have anything to say about the source of the poison, but pointed out—as I had—that cyanide is readily available.

  I’d come in late and concentrated on what Coy and Hammond had to say. So when I stood up at the end of the briefing, I was surprised to see Mike standing at the back of the room. He’d changed from his uniform and looked terrific in khakis and a rust polo shirt. I went over to talk to him.

  “I got your message,” he said quietly.

  “I got yours,” I answered.

  “Unfortunately, I’ve already booked us for this evening, so you may have to appear in public with me. I need a chaperone.”

  “A chaperone? Where are you going?”

  “I finally thought of someone who’s very likely to know what my dad was up to shortly before his death. However—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Well, it’s a girl I used to date in high school. When I called her, she was a bit cool to the idea of meeting me. Said her husband wouldn’t like it.”

  I laughed. “Your past is catching up with you.”

  “It’s the remote past. Anyway, I finally suggested that I drop by their house—and said I’d like to introduce my girl to both of them. Think you can make it?”

  I thought about it. “I guess I can. Just who is this old girlfriend?”

  “Shelly Marcum Smith. I had a big crush on her when I was sixteen. After high school, she went to work for the city. She was my dad’s secretary for three years.”

  Chapter 13

  Mike’s idea was so elementary that I kicked myself for not thinking of it first.

  Who knows more about a man than his wife? Than his mother? Than his best friend? Than his therapist or his barber?

  His secretary, that’s who.

  I could recall telling Chuck this, when I was breaking him in on the violence beat just a couple of months earlier. I took him around the run, introduced him to Chief Jameson’s secretary, to the head clerk at the sheriff’s office, to Guy Unitas and his bookkeeper at the Amalgamated Police Brotherhood office, to the administrative assistant to the director of the Grantham area of the state police. Whatever their titles, these are the people who make those agencies function. With them on your side, the reporter’s job is a lot easier.

  “Check out the pictures on their desks,” I told Chuck. “Ask about their kids. Find out where their husbands or wives work. Know what their hobbies are, what organizations they belong to. The day will come when the television scoops you completely, and the only thing that saves your fanny is the secretary who calls to say the Channel Four news crew came by to interview her boss.”

  Of course, the Channel Four news crew is working those secretaries just as hard as the newspaper reporters are. All’s fair in love, war, and news gathering.

  But your interest in the secretaries—or in their bosses, for that matter—has to be sincere. If you don’t enjoy meeting all sorts of people, ordinary as well as powerful, the glibbest chitchat in the world won’t put news sources on your side. If you have to fake an interest in them, their jobs, and their lives, then you’re in the wrong business.

  So I was ashamed of myself for not thinking of Irish Svenson’s secretary. I knew Jameson had brought his own secretary along when he moved into the chief’s office, and I hadn’t had any idea who Irish’s secretary had been or where she worked now. However, it seemed she and Mike were old friends. Or maybe enemies. I wondered who had dropped whom—back in high school. I decided I wouldn’t get jealous of a former girlfriend from fifteen years earlier who was now married.

  What would she have to tell?

  I almost gnashed my teeth with impatience as Ace and I drove back to the Gazette office. In a few hours Mike and I might talk to someone who could really know something about the possibility that Irish Svenson had been killed. And I might get a phone call from my anonymous source. But at the moment I was stuck with Ace-the-Ass and an investigative story I felt sure wasn’t going to amount to anything.

  Another of Ace’s annoying characteristics was laziness, but that day I was delighted when he knocked off as soon as we were back at the Gazette office.

  The library had the information on Balew Brothers ready for me, and I looked it over. Around ten years earlier, Balew Brothers had been involved in a major scandal involving a state project. A couple of executives—one of them an actual Balew brother—had gone to jail. As a result, an outside investor had bought a major interest in the company. One Balew was still around, but apparently the new group had kept their noses clean. They’d even dodged a threatened bankruptcy and tri
ed to pay off the debts left behind by the old crew. I could see that their newfound honesty would have made them appealing to Honest Irish Svenson. I put the file aside to show Ace.

  I wrote a followup on Bo’s death, then took a half hour to go over current cases and working stories with J.B. and Chuck, who was to learn the nuances of the nightside cup beat. And I waited until Ruth Borah got off the phone with her son, then apologized to her for going to Jake with my request for a change in assignment. She told me I had caught her by surprise.

  “But it’s probably a good idea,” she said.

  “Thanks a lot!”

  Ruth laughed and tucked a hairpin into her slicked-back black hair. “Yeah, it’s not good form for an editor to tell a reporter she’s working too hard. But for the past year you’ve seemed to concentrate on the job almost exclusively.”

  “I guess I have. It was semideliberate.”

  “You’re too nice a person to turn into one of these tough old reporters who don’t have any personal life, Nell. It’s not good for you—and it’s also not good for the paper, in the long run. Reporters who get that involved in their beats lose objectivity, and they don’t do their jobs right.”

  She poked a pencil into the bun, giving herself the air of a businesslike geisha girl. Then she leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “One Felicia on the staff is enough.”

  Felicia Hess is the Gazette music and dance critic. She rides herd on the openings of the Grantham Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest Ballet Company, and a bunch of other arts groups. She drives Ruth crazy because she wants the presses held for her reviews. Are her reviews popular enough to be worth paying overtime to the press room? Ruth says no. She’s not convinced that our readers are waiting with bated breath to learn just what Felicia thought of the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. Felicia says yes, but she thinks Grantham’s arts crowd is the paper’s most important group of subscribers. We hold for sports scores, she whines, and arts events are as important as sports events. True, Ruth answers, but their fans aren’t as fanatic.

  It’s a controversy that will never be settled.

  By six-fifteen I was home, eating Chinese takeout, and waiting for the phone to ring. By the time Mike came by, I hoped, I would have talked to the mysterious woman who claimed to know about Irish Svenson’s “murder.”

  I waited for her call nervously—fearful that she didn’t know anything and fearful that she did. I paced the floor and wished that I had my own phone line, one with Caller ID. Martha, Brenda, and I had agreed that we’d have a minimal service for a minimal charge, so we had refused to install Call Waiting, Caller ID, and other extras. Right then, I’d have given anything to have that simple little gadget which would tell me what number the mystery woman was calling from.

  I did have one piece of luck. Brenda and Martha were both out for the evening, so I didn’t have to plead or threaten to keep them off the phone, and Rocky has his own line. Martha’s mom called again, but I brushed her off quickly.

  I did set up my tape recorder with the little microphone I stick onto the receiver if I want to tape a phone interview. I usually tell the subject I’m taping, but this time I didn’t feel that I would be required to offer that information. If—if the mystery woman called, that is, and I actually did get an interview. And if she knew something worth taping.

  So I waited. I sat in my room and tried to read, and my shrimp-fried rice grew heavier and heavier in my stomach. Then, at 7:35 p.m., the phone rang.

  “Hello?” It was the same breathy little voice, this time with a steady, dull, roar in the background. “Is this Nell Matthews?”

  “Yes.” I must have sounded as timid as she did. I didn’t want to scare her.

  “I called this afternoon . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes. You said you had information about the death of Irish Svenson. That you had reason to believe the car wreck that killed him wasn’t an accident.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Just what is this information?”

  She sighed deeply. “I called back because I’d said I would, but it’s really hard for me to tell you anything. I mean, I simply can’t appear in this.”

  “Why not? If you know something about a crime, isn’t it your responsibility to report it?”

  She gave a nervous giggle. “Sure! But it’s also my responsibility to stay alive! And if these people would kill Irish and Bo Jenkins, believe me, they wouldn’t hesitate a minute to kill me. And maybe kill someone else, too. Someone whose life really matters.”

  “Who’s that?” Long silence. I tried again. “Look, I can tell that you’re really frightened. I certainly don’t want to put your life at risk. Let me go over what I’ve deduced. First, you say Irish was doing some sort of internal investigation at the time he died—looking into some problem inside the Grantham Police Department.”

  “That’s near enough.”

  “Near enough? Was the problem outside the PD?”

  “Inside and outside.”

  “Oh.” I thought about it. Could she be referring to the kickback scheme Ace had dredged up? I decided to go on.

  “Second, you say no one inside the department knew about what Irish was investigating. That’s the reason nothing has come out about it since Jameson took over.”

  “That’s right.” Her voice became urgent. “Wait a minute!”

  I could hear faint knocks, and I realized that she had dropped the receiver. It must be hanging by its cord and bumping against the wall. I pictured a wall phone, maybe a pay phone with a metal-covered cord. Well, that was no surprise. She would be afraid I would try to trace the call. So having Caller ID wouldn’t have helped me.

  Her voice sounded in the background, faintly. I couldn’t understand most of the words, but I caught, “No! No!” I could still hear the roar. Then she was back.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t talk much longer,” she said.

  “No! Don’t hang up,” I said. “I still don’t even know your connection with the case. I’m guessing you work for the department.”

  “No.”

  “Then you worked for the ‘outside’ agency involved.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Was it a construction firm?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Look, after I talked to you this afternoon, I realized I’ll have to tell you the whole story. I’ll just have to trust you not to let anybody at the GPD know about me. Who I am, or where I am.”

  “I obviously can’t tell anybody what I don’t know. You’ve got me completely mystified. I don’t even know your name.”

  She gave a fruity laugh. “Call me Lee,” she said. “But if you let anybody over at the PD know about my calls, I might as well cash in my burial policy. And I mean anybody. Believe me, the people involved in this would surprise even you.”

  “I always do my best to protect my sources,” I said.

  “I’m trusting you to do that.” She sighed again. “Anyway, I’ve got the afternoon off tomorrow. I can meet you.”

  I almost gasped. She was being so mysterious, and now she was offering to meet me. “Sure. When and where?”

  “It’ll be late afternoon before I can get there. Say, four o’clock, in the Memorial Rose Garden?”

  “Great!” It was great, as a matter of fact. The Grantham Memorial Rose Garden is just on the other side of the Grantham State campus, not a half mile from my house. It would be thronged with college students at four o’clock. “But that’s a pretty big park. How will I know you?”

  “I saw you on television this weekend. Just sit near the fountain.”

  She hung up.

  Now where was I? I rewound the tape in my two-bit tape recorder and played it back. Lee had mentioned the “PD.” Did that mark her as a person who had hung around the cop shop for a while?

  I listened to the tape again.
Had I promised not to tell anybody in the Grantham PD about her call? And did that include Mike?

  I thought about that question and played the tape a third time. Well, I hadn’t quite promised. “Lee,” or whatever her real name was, definitely would say I shouldn’t tell Mike. But I couldn’t imagine Mike being involved in a scheme which led to his father’s death.

  I wasn’t being naive, even though I knew that the most likely killer is a member of the victim’s family. So if Irish had been murdered, Mike and his mom would be at the top of the suspect list. But I couldn’t bring myself to suspect Mike. His feelings for his father were too open, too natural. Besides, he hadn’t been in Grantham when the car wreck happened. He hadn’t been connected with the Grantham PD at that time.

  What had I learned from Lee that Mike might be interested in? Nothing, to be honest. Lee’s information was extremely nebulous.

  I decided not to mention Lee to Mike until I’d talked to her. If she showed up for our appointment Tuesday. Which she very likely wouldn’t.

  At eight-forty-three-and-a-half the doorbell buzzed, and when I peeped through the peephole, I saw Mike. I was almost ashamed of the way my internal organs jumped around. I was as infatuated as a fourteen-year-old.

  Mike came in, looking serious. We put our arms around each other and stood in the hall, holding tight for a few seconds. When I backed off far enough to see his face, he looked a little more cheerful.

  “Boring seminar?” I asked.

  “Problems in Supervision,” he said. “Tonight was The Employee with Drug or Alcohol-Related Problems.’”

  “Doesn’t sound too scintillating.”

  “Some of these guys! If they’re already supervisors, and you have to tell them that an alcoholic isn’t going to get better until he gets treatment, and it’s up to the supervisor to push the guy into treatment—if it’s affecting his job. God! If they don’t already know that—” He shook his head, then grinned. “I guess I was eager to get out of there. You ready?”

  I checked my purse to make sure I had a notebook and pencil, and double-locked the front door behind us while Mike opened the door of the pickup for me. As soon as he was inside, I began quizzing him.