The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “What?”

  “This crime I was forced into. I’ve got to make it right, but I can’t risk jail time. I’ll have to have immunity.”

  “The guy I called should be able to help.”

  “If you say so,” she answered. She still sounded dubious.

  “We’ll have to have some help from law enforcement eventually,” I said. “Reporters are limited in what we can do. As a policeman, he has access to all sorts of information that I haven’t. Test results, state crime lab reports. Stuff we’ll need.”

  I heard a soft sort of swishing noise. It might have been the door. Could the “out of order” sign have failed to keep others out?

  “Lee? Did someone come in?”

  There was no answer. I buttoned a button and plunged out of the stall. “Lee!”

  She wasn’t there.

  And neither was my raincoat. I was alone in the tiny restroom, alone with Lee’s plastic raincoat and hood.

  I didn’t stop to wash my hands, but I did grab my shoes. When I rushed out into the tiny hall, Rocky said Lee hadn’t gone out the front. So I dashed out the back, into the alley.

  I ran to the street, only two doors away, and looked up and down. No figure in a tan trench coat was moving among the sodden pedestrians.

  I was still standing there, looking back and forth stupidly, when a black pickup pulled in the alley. The driver’s side window went down smoothly. “What are you doing out here in the rain?” Mike said.

  “Hell’s bells!” I said. “Mike, she ran off. She was right here, and now she’s gone. She’s disappeared! I had her, and I let her get away!”

  Chapter 17

  “Get in,” Mike said. “We’ll look for her.”

  We cruised the Campus Corner, looking for a woman in high heels and a trench coat. My clean trench coat.

  “She may have used a cup towel for a scarf,” I said. “I don’t know if any were gone from the stack Rocky gave me.”

  “What color?”

  “White. All the towels were white.”

  But Lee had disappeared. Melted into the air. Or maybe she had been melted by the rain and was running down the gutter. Or maybe the guy in the white van got her.

  There were dozens of shops on the Campus Corner, and Lee could dodge in and out of them at will. The neighborhood was a rabbit warren of nooks, crannies, back doors, loading docks, alleys, bike paths, odd-shaped parking lots, and narrow passages between buildings. After twenty minutes, we gave up.

  Mike took me back to the Blue Flamingo to pick up my socks, purse, and notebook. I took Lee’s plastic raincoat, too. I might have to use it.

  “Maybe she’ll mail my raincoat back,” I told Mike and Rocky. “And maybe she’ll put her return address on the package. Ha. Ha.”

  Neither of them laughed. Mike drove me home, since that’s where my car was, and I directed him to Rocky’s slot in back of the house. I sat there, wavering. Should I invite him in? Did I want him to come in? What if I asked, and he refused?

  We’d parted on cold terms the night before. Yet the minute I needed help, I hadn’t hesitated. I’d called Mike. And he’d come. Where did that leave us?

  I was still in my quandary when Mike spoke. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Yes.” What was coming? Were we going to renew our quarrel? “Ask away.”

  “Now that I know you’re definitely a natural redhead—” He hesitated, but he didn’t go into how he knew. “I’ve been wondering. How do you keep your eyelashes from washing off in the rain?”

  The question struck me funny. “The same way I keep them from washing off in the shower,” I said.

  Mike cocked his head sideways and gave me the full eye contact, the look that had done me in when he gave it to me Saturday night at The Fifth Precinct. My innards twitched and quivered, just as they had that night, when I’d gone home with him and jumped in his bed. Or onto his couch.

  “And just how does that eyelash preservation method work?” he said.

  “Dye,” I answered. “Once a month I get my hair cut and highlighted and my eyelashes and eyebrows dyed.”

  He leaned toward me and traced my left eyebrow with his forefinger. “Very natural.” The kiss that followed seemed very natural, too. It was one of his gentle kisses. Just a hint of tongue.

  I kissed him back—once, but I pulled away before he could move in for the killer kiss, the one that would completely shatter my resolve. I clapped my hands together slowly three times. “Excellently done, Mike. Just the merest reference—the natural redhead bit—to make me remember how much fun we can have if we take our clothes off. And how long did it take you to think up that move with the eyebrow?”

  Mike’s chin became grim. “That particular move was strictly improvised,” he said. He leaned back against his door. “Did it work?”

  “What was it supposed to accomplish?”

  “To remind you we still like each other.”

  “Then I guess it worked,” I said. “I’m obviously very attracted to you. Physically. You know exactly the right way to turn my hormones on. But I’m afraid you turn my brain off. It scares me.”

  He reached for my hand. “Listen, I’m not the guy you need to be scared of. Judging from the tale of you and this Lee running through the park, you’re very likely in danger from somebody who has designs on a lot more than your hormones.”

  “Maybe so. But right now I’m in danger of freezing to death. I’ve got to get some dry clothes.”

  Mike opened his door. “Okay. But I hope you’re asking me in. Because we need to talk about what to do next.” That settled one question. He was coming in.

  Rocky would be at work until midnight, of course, and Brenda doesn’t leave the day-care center until six o’clock, but Martha was up in her room, tucked in under an afghan, reading. Mike waited in the living room while I went upstairs and dried myself from the skin out. When I came down in jeans, a sweater, and tennis shoes, he stood up. I went past him, into the kitchen.

  “Rocky’s not here to run the cappuccino machine,” I said. “So how about some instant coffee?”

  “Sure. If we can talk while the water boils.”

  I put the kettle on and got down the coffee and two mugs. “Okay. And my first question is, ‘Are you in trouble over that Salvation Army uniform?’”

  “Because it was found in my trash? No. Thanks to Marceline, Jim Hammond has no reason to believe I put it there myself. I also think he gives me credit for being smart enough to hide incriminating evidence in a garbage bag before I ditch it.”

  “Do I need to come forward to give you an alibi for the time when Bo was killed?”

  Mike grinned. “I don’t know if you could. You slept pretty good there for a while. I could have gone out.”

  “I know you were there from eleven-thirty until way after midnight, which means you didn’t grow your hair several inches longer, dye it black, and check into the Salvation Army shelter. The guy at the shelter said the imposter arrived around midnight.”

  “True. Anyway, Hammond seems satisfied with Marceline as a witness. I don’t think I’ll have to drag you into it. To be honest, he’s so excited about finding out where the cyanide probably came from—”

  My hair must have stood up on end, or I must have gasped or something, because Mike stopped in midsentence. Anyway, there was a pregnant pause while he figured out that I hadn’t known that particular bit of information—which would be of extreme interest to the readers of the Grantham Gazette and which he had just blabbed.

  I was deducing like mad. First, he’d confirmed that the poison which killed Bo Jenkins was definitely cyanide. The last I’d heard, Jim Hammond was calling it “probable.” Second, Jim Hammond had figured out where the murderer got it.

  “Hammond didn’t tell you.” Mike made it a statement. “And I just blew it.”
r />   “I’ve been out of the office for a couple of hours,” I said. “He may have told J.B. But just where did the cyanide come from?”

  “I think I’d better shut up.”

  “Aw, come on, Mike. I protect my sources.”

  Mike shook his head. “You know enough to figure it out. I admit I gave him a pointer. Suggested that he check a guess. Turned out I was right.”

  I scowled at the jar of instant coffee. Mike had given him a pointer. Something Mike knew, and I probably knew, but which Hammond hadn’t known. Well, Mike and I had believed a cop might be involved. I didn’t think Hammond had known that. So, where would a cop get cyanide?

  “The evidence room!” I yelped it out. “There was cyanide missing from the evidence room.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Mike said. “Let’s talk about you and this Lee. Who is she?”

  I let him change the subject. My sketchy knowledge of Lee, gathered in three quick conversations, didn’t take long to detail. “So, you see, I have absolutely nothing to go on,” I told him. The kettle shrieked, and I poured hot water into our cups. “She kept promising to tell me things, but she never did.”

  “She told you a few things. Have you got anything to write on? I’d like to make some notes.”

  Mike carried our coffee to the kitchen table while I brought a yellow legal pad and a couple of ballpoints from upstairs. Then he took my statement—went over each of the conversations I’d had with Lee, making me repeat each of them in as much detail as I could remember, and we listened to the tape of our second talk.

  Then he wrote a new heading. “Deductions.”

  “First,” Mike said. “She must have come to Grantham today from out of town.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she said ‘had the afternoon off.’ But she didn’t offer to meet you until four o’clock.”

  “So she had to drive several hours to get here.”

  He nodded. “We’ll get a road map and draw a two-hundred-mile circle around Grantham. That would be the longest possible distance she could cover, I think.”

  “She could cover that if she’s a fast driver, and if she left right at noon. But that radius would cover several good-sized cities. Including Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Dallas, and Fort Worth.”

  “Right. It’s not much to go on.” He sipped his coffee. “Second, Lee has obviously lived in Grantham in the past. The Memorial Rose Garden is a well-known landmark to us Granthamites, but it’s not famous. And it’s nowhere near the interstate highways. If I were going to meet someone in a city I’m not very familiar with—Dallas, for example—I’d suggest the first MacDonald’s on I-35 south of Denton. Something simple like that. I wouldn’t think of a spot that involved driving clear across town on city streets.”

  “Very logical. Besides, she knew the Blue Flamingo has a rather scandalous reputation. She said, ‘We can’t go in there!’ And she referred to the Grantham Police Department as ‘GPD.’”

  “Well, most cities call the police department ‘the PD.’ But she said specifically she hadn’t been a city employee?”

  “Uh-huh. But she said the big case involved fraud.”

  “Sounds like a construction contract. Or some kind of a big purchasing deal.”

  Mike was getting awfully close to Ace’s big expose on his dad. Should I tell him about that? What was happening to Honest Nell, the reporter who never lied?

  I sipped my coffee and agonized. How could I tell him? My boss had told me to work with Ace. I really couldn’t go off on my own, without warning Jake and Ace.

  Besides, I didn’t yet know what Ace’s tip was about. After we found that out, Ace and I would figure out if there was any evidence to back it up.

  If there was any evidence. The next step, normally, would be to talk to the accused person, get his side. Since the accused person, Irish Svenson, was dead, we’d have to talk to Wilda Svenson, and to Mike, to get that side of the story.

  I hoped the whole thing would peter out before that point. I pushed Ace’s big expose out of my mind and listened to Mike.

  “We also know this Lee reads the Grantham Gazette,” he was saying.

  “How do we know that?”

  “Because she knew who you are, Nell.”

  “I think she’d seen me on television during the coverage of the hostage situation.”

  “Yes, but she said something about your byline.”

  “Oh.” I sipped coffee and thought along the lines Mike had suggested. “I just thought of something else. The Scamovan!”

  “The what?”

  “The Scamovan. When Lee saw the white van, she said, ‘Oh, no, it’s the Scamovan!’ Or something close to that. I didn’t have time to ask her to explain.”

  Mike shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  We both sipped coffee, then Mike put his mug down and stared into its depths as if it would tell him his future. “You saw this Lee,” he said. “Do you think she could be the woman my mom believes had an affair with my dad?”

  I stared into my own cup. Neither of us wanted to discuss this subject.

  “That was my first thought, after I heard your mother say there had been someone,” I said. “But, Mike, when I met her, she just didn’t seem like the type to go out with someone else’s husband. She’s not a flashy, sexy type. She’s kind of little girlish.”

  “Sounds like just the cure for a middle-aged crisis.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened to your dad?”

  “God, Nell! What does a son know about his father? Very little, I’m finding out. I always thought my dad was real puritanical. He didn’t have any patience with guys who ran around on their wives. It was well-known in the department. If you were fooling around, you’d better not brag about it in the locker room, because if it got back to the chief, you were in trouble. And he said some pretty stiff things to me when Annie and I moved in together. She had to tell him she was the one who didn’t want to get married before he’d let up.” He sounded more and more exasperated. “He didn’t go out and booze it up with the guys. He and my mom did things together. They acted as if they liked each other!”

  “He didn’t want to leave her, Mike! Your mom said he didn’t leave at all until she pressed him. Then he didn’t move in with this woman. Remember? He’d been staying at Mickey’s house. Your folks were talking, trying to work things out. I think he cared for your mother very deeply.”

  “Mutual affection and respect.”

  It was the same phrase Mike had used when he talked to his mother the night before. The two of them had laughed then, but now he said it grimly.

  “What’s the story on ‘mutual affection and respect’?” I said. “You said that to your mother last night.”

  “Just a family joke.” Mike’s face relaxed. “When I was sixteen and fell madly in love for the first time—”

  “With Shelly?”

  “I don’t even remember. I was a typical high school jock, full of sixteen-year-old testosterone and male chauvinism and sure that nothing bad could ever happen to the great and wonderful me. Scaring my parents into fits. Hot to lose my virginity.”

  “Sixteen? There wasn’t a jock in my high school who would have admitted he was still a virgin at sixteen.”

  “Maybe not admitted it. Jocks lie a lot. Then sixteen years later, they have to apologize. Anyway, my mom gave me one of those mother-son talks, and she ended up by saying that the whole basis for relationships between men and women should be ‘mutual affection and respect.’ It struck me funny, since I was a smartass kid.”

  “The phrase does sound a little prim.”

  “After that, everybody I dated—well, whoever the girl was, I always told my mom we had a lot of ‘mutual affection and respect.’ It got to be a joke between us.

  “Of course, I got a rather differen
t lecture from my dad.”

  “From your puritanical dad? Let me guess. Did it involve stories about shotguns?”

  “I was the one who brought up shotguns. ‘Fathers today no longer own shotguns, old man.’ Something like that. When you’re sixteen, you know all about everything. Including birth control.”

  “I had some friends who thought they knew it all.”

  “Yeah. But they all felt bullet-proof until it was too late. And I felt that way, too, though I had more dumb luck than they did. Anyway, my dad made some reply using the word ‘responsibility.’ I countered with some sneering remark about being ‘on the hook for eighteen years,’ and my dad came real close to losing his temper. His face turned red and his eyes flashed blue, and he said, ‘Eighteen years is just a beginning. If there’s a kid, you’re talking about the rest of your life. How would you feel if I sent your mom a few bucks every month and never paid you any other attention? How would you feel if I cut you off on your eighteenth birthday? Like it or not, you’re going to be my son for the rest of your goddamn life!’ And he got up and walked out.”

  And that’s when I tried to get up and walk out. Mike’s story had caught me by surprise, stabbing me through a chink in my well-armored psyche. I had to get out of there.

  Unfortunately, because of the layout of the tiny dinette, I had to climb over Mike to leave. My sudden decision to leave caught him by surprise, and I was too choked up to say anything, such as, “Excuse me.” So when I jumped up and tried to go behind him, he tried to stand up. He scooted his chair back and effectively pinned me against the kitchen window. We jockeyed around, and the two of us wound up all tangled together, entwined with each other and an old-fashioned kitchen chair.

  And Mike saw what I’d been trying to hide. I was crying.

  “What did I say?” His voice was amazed. I couldn’t answer, but it didn’t seem to matter. He put his arms around me, and I bawled like a baby. The flannel shirt he was wearing got as damp as the windbreaker he had hung up by the back door.

  I was crying about my own father, of course. I was crying about living the first eight years of my life with parents who quarreled all the time, with every quarrel ending with my father shouting, “You made me marry you! I didn’t want to!” I was twelve before I figured that one out. I was crying about a father I never saw again after my mother died, who didn’t bother to send a few bucks every month, and who wasn’t around to kick me out on my eighteenth birthday. I was crying about a father who merely disappeared from my life—silently, with no explanation.