The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “It seems to be the legals. Property transfers,” I said. “A lot of the county records come straight to our files. You know, that stuff we run twice a week in agate—in itty, bitty type.”

  “I never read it.”

  “I don’t often. But old-timers tell me you can get some great news tips that way. The land transfers tell you who’s moving, and the lawsuits filed tell you who hasn’t been paying their bills. But it’s not my beat.”

  I scrolled down through the list until the highlighted name of “Guy Unitas” came up. “I see that Guy was sued by First National in August,” I said. “I guess that’s the last item for this year. I’ll try last year.”

  The previous year had around twenty items with Guy’s name, because the APB had renegotiated its contract that year. The elected officers actually handled the negotiations, but Guy was quoted about statistics.

  Guy’s name also showed up in the legals that year. He had sold a house. We went on to the previous year, the year before I moved to Grantham.

  That year the stories had included the routine stuff—Christmas project and fishing derby—but another story had run on the APB’s new offices. A cutline accompanied the story, but our library system doesn’t display pictures.

  “‘New APB offices,’” I read. “‘Guy Unitas, steward of the Grantham Amalgamated Police Brotherhood, and Merri Blakely, office manager, pose in the new APB offices at 4415 Grant Street. The APB will hold an open house at the new facilities from two p.m. until six p.m. Sunday.’”

  The cutline seemed to ring a bell. “Merri Blakely,” I said, “that name seems familiar.”

  “Coy’s wife,” Mike answered. “That was before they split. Guy and his wife separated around then, too. Everybody wondered if there was a connection.”

  “Was there?”

  “Not that I ever heard. Mom might know.”

  We continued this process for five more years, taking an average of ten minutes a year. Guy’s wife had divorced him three years earlier, the legals said. I’d already known that. But he hadn’t been arrested or mixed up in a scandal or even been on the guest list for the mayor’s annual whoop-de-do. He’d really stayed out of the newspapers most of the time.

  “Of course, these years were after the time when Guy had worked as PIO for the Grantham PD,” I said. “He left before our library went on computer. His previous life will be back there in the morgue room. The old stuff is in manila folders. Frankly, it would take us all night to look it up, and I’m not sure I’d find everything.”

  “It’s nearly ten,” Mike said. “We’d better knock it off. I’ll try Shelly tomorrow.”

  “I’m disappointed,” I said. I hit the ESCAPE key repeatedly, until the library access system closed down. “We found out very little about Guy Unitas personally. He’s apparently had some financial problems—since the bank sued him. I could go to the courthouse and look up the details. And he sold his house. And he moved into a new office. Big deal.”

  “Let’s go,” Mike said. He ripped the printouts off the printer and began to fold them into a giant accordion shape.

  I didn’t know what we’d thought we’d find, but this was a letdown. I felt completely confused. I realized that for the past two days I’d been mixed up in three different plots—two mysteries and a romance. No wonder my head was spinning.

  I shoved the romance aside and thought about the mysteries. First, Mike and I had been investigating his father’s death, with its tenuous link to Bo Jenkins’s murder. Second, Ace had involved me in the investigation into the alleged payoff to Irish Svenson over the renovations which turned the old Central High School building into the Grantham PD headquarters.

  I gasped. “I forgot!”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Well, back around dinnertime, I had something I considered talking to you about. Then I found this stuff Lee must have written in my notebook, and that pushed the whole thing out of my mind.”

  “What was it?”

  I hesitated. I hated to lay the evidence of his father’s chicanery on Mike right at that moment. How would he react to the news that Irish Svenson was accused of being a crook? I wished I could forget Ace’s big scoop, that Mike and I could concentrate on Lee and her apparent knowledge of his father’s murder.

  “It’s a different topic entirely,” I said.

  Mike was frowning at me. I realized that he looked tired, too. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  I decided the whole subject was too complex to discuss standing over a printer in the Gazette library. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll photocopy the deal I wanted you to see. We can take it with us.”

  I went back into the newsroom, to the desk Ace had been using, but the IRS form wasn’t in any of the drawers. It wasn’t on the tray on the corner of the desk, and it wasn’t simply lying out on top. It wasn’t there.

  “Hell’s bells!” I said. “I’ll just have to tell you about it.”

  “Let’s go,” Mike said impatiently.

  I led Mike toward the back stairs, my usual route to an exit, and we agreed that I’d follow him to his house. We were halfway down the stairs when I realized that I’d forgotten to check out with security. I turned around.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll call security and tell them you’re leaving with me. I’ll be right out.”

  The night security guard answered on the third ring, and I wasn’t more than two minutes behind Mike when I went through the back door. From the raised entry, I could look across the alley and see the entire ground level of the parking garage. During the hour we’d been in the building, a dozen campers and vans had parked in the row nearest the building. As usual, Redneck Hal’s emerald green van was first in line. Beyond, the lower floor of the garage held only a few cars.

  Mike had just reached the driver’s side of his pickup. He was leaning down, looking closely at the door handle. I assumed he was trying to find the right slot for the key, since my car was casting a heavy shadow on the truck’s door.

  But whatever he was doing, he had his back to the man in black who was creeping up behind him with a club.

  “Mike! Behind you!”

  I hadn’t known I could scream so loudly. I ran down the steps, screaming and shrieking. “Help! Murder! Call the cops!” I don’t know what I was yelling. But I was loud.

  I ran across the alley, straight toward Hal’s van. I beat on the side and kicked the back door. “Hal! Bring your gun!” And I ran on, between the parked trucks, toward Mike, still screeching. I have a faint memory of swinging my purse around my head by its strap.

  After I plunged through the line of parked trucks and vans, I had a clear view of Mike’s truck, but he and the figure in black were still in the shadow of my car. Then Mike fell at my feet, and the black figure jumped out of the darkness toward me. I was knocked flat, ass over teakettle, and the attacker ran over the top of me. By the time Hal came running up, with several of the other circulation guys behind him, I was on my knees, crawling toward Mike.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Hal croaked.

  “Where’d that guy go?” I yelled.

  The roar of a motor answered me, and a white van came roaring toward us.

  “There he is!” I jumped up, and this time I know for a fact I did wave my purse around my head. I know that because it caught on the side mirror of the white van and the resulting yank threw me off my feet and into the grill of Mike’s pickup.

  I whacked up against that grill, then I slid down it limply, like Wiley Coyote sliding down a cliff after the Roadrunner had done him in one more time. After I reached a sitting position, I fell over sideways.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Chapter 20

  I lay there several minutes, trying to get my lungs reinflated. I can’t say I gasped for breath. I couldn’t even begin to gasp. The breath had been completely knocked
out of me.

  Then Mike’s face was close to mine. Blood was running down the side of his head, but he was on his feet—or his knees—and I clutched his hand.

  Mike yelled, “Call the paramedics!” Then he said softly, “Don’t try to talk.”

  About that time I did get a gasp of air in. I didn’t waste it trying to talk. I just tried to pump up my lungs. And with every breath I took in, my ribs hurt worse.

  The ribs were the reason I wound up staying in the hospital overnight. Mike, on the other hand, got two stitches and went home. I have a confused memory that Mickey showed up at the hospital and that Wilda ran in with no makeup and her hair standing on end just as Mike was saying he was going to spend the night sitting outside my room as a guard.

  The next morning, when I shook off the painkiller they had given me and woke up, I caught a glimpse of one of O’Sullivan Security’s brown uniforms outside, so I concluded that Mickey had furnished the guard, rather than Mike taking the duty. I hoped they’d give me a discount.

  Mickey came in with the aide who brought my breakfast and gave me the first report. Mike hadn’t been seriously hurt, or so he’d told Mickey and his mom, because my yell made him duck, and the club wielded by the dark figure had struck a glancing blow.

  Mickey grinned. “He’s fine,” he said. “He got a couple of stitches merely to save his looks.”

  “A scar might improve Mike’s looks. He’s the rugged type.”

  “Yeah, tough looking, like his dad.” Mickey shook his finger at me. “Not so tough inside.”

  He told me the dark figure had gotten clean away in the white van—I was certain it was the one that had chased Lee and me, but I didn’t stop to explain all that to Mickey.

  “Mike said that when you rousted all those rough-looking guys out of their vans and campers,” Mickey said, “the attacker lost interest in him real quick. Mike hadn’t realized there were people around. I guess the guy in the white van hadn’t either.”

  “Several of the circulation contractors usually sleep in their trucks until the presses roll,” I said. “I was mighty glad they were there.”

  Mickey patted my hand. “If the doctors let you out, my guy will take you home,” he said. “Don’t try to drive today.”

  A few minutes after Mickey left, a knock sounded, and a burly brown-shirted guard put his head through the door. “Guy out here says he’s brought you some clothes,” he said.

  “It’s me!” Rocky was outside. He came in waggling his eyebrows. “Would that big, husky bodyguard like to search me? I’d love it.”

  “Not funny, Rocky.”

  “I know, sweetie. Hey, you don’t look so bad.” He held a zipper bag in one hand and some clothes on a hanger in the other. “Martha picked out an outfit for you and packed up your makeup and some undies. She was going to send pajamas and a robe, but you don’t seem to own any.” He wagged his eyebrows again.

  “I’m a T-shirt sleeper,” I said. “And I tossed my robe in the dirty clothes. Thanks for the stuff. I hope I’ll be out of here this morning.”

  “Well, I stopped at Ken’s Gun Shop and brought you a present,” Rocky said. He pulled a small paper sack from the pocket of his jacket. “Two narrow escapes in one day is two too many. You’ve got to have protection.”

  “Rocky, I’m not interested in carrying a gun,” I said. “Unless you really know how to use it, having a gun is more dangerous than not having a gun. And I don’t have time to waste going to classes and keeping up target practice. If I had a gun, it would probably be stolen, or some mugger would take it away from me and shoot me with it.”

  “I quite agree. Guns are dangerous. So that’s not what I bought you.” He reached inside the sack and pulled out a piece of cardboard with something mounted on it. “Pepper spray!”

  He’d bought me a key chain with a small canister of pepper spray attached.

  “And I want you to carry this in your hand every time you walk out to your car,” he said firmly.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I didn’t know where my purse was, but Rocky found it on a shelf in the minuscule closet. The strap was broken, but he tied a knot in it. He added the pepper spray to the car and door keys on my key chain, then insisted on reading the directions out loud while I practiced until I knew how to squirt it.

  “Let us spray,” he said. “Listen, kid, take care of yourself. I need all the friends I can get. Can’t spare a one.” He patted my cheek and left.

  I was feeling fairly good. My ribs were still sore, which made deep breathing a problem, but I’d been awake long enough the night before to understand that the X rays didn’t indicate that anything was broken. The nurse told me my doctor, Dr. Beatrice Deering, would be there soon, and she expected her to dismiss me. They’d kept me to watch for signs of internal injuries, but I was hoping the doctor wouldn’t think I had any, since I wasn’t vomiting or having abdominal pain. I was turning black and blue under the hospital gown, but I was also itching to get out of there. I washed my face and combed at my hair and put on my clean underpants. I was mentally ready for Dr. Bea to show up and tell me to leave.

  But when the door opened, Mike stalked in. One look and I knew it wasn’t a friendly visit.

  He was holding the morning edition of the Gazette in his left hand. He punched at it with his right finger.

  “What is this?” His voice was like ice. “How did this get in here? What are you trying to do to me?”

  He handed me the newspaper. At the top of page one was a picture of the two of us. We both looked awful in the harsh flash the photographer had used in the dim garage. I glanced at the photo credit line. Bear. He must have been in the building and have run out to shoot the photo almost immediately, because it had obviously been taken before the ambulance had arrived. I was still looking limp, and Mike was kneeling beside me, supporting my shoulders. Blood was running down the side of his head. Hal was standing behind Mike with a pistol in his hand.

  “What is the deal?” Mike said angrily.

  “It’s a lousy picture,” I said, “but I guess Bear was lucky to get any kind of shot at all. I hope Hal has a concealed weapons permit for that pistol he keeps in his van.”

  “Not the picture! The story!”

  Beside the picture there was a story about the attack on us—you can’t keep something quiet when it happens in a newspaper’s parking lot—but that wasn’t the story Mike had tapped with his finger.

  He’d pointed to the story below it. EVIDENCE ROOM EYED AS SOURCE OF POISON, the headline read.

  I gasped, then grabbed at my ribs.

  “How could you put that in?” He was almost raving.

  I leaned back, holding my side. “I didn’t. Oh, that hurts.”

  Mike ignored my pain. “I guess I should have known you were a reporter first and a girlfriend second. Obviously, getting a scoop is more important to you than I am. I let that stuff Hammond told me slip, and there it is in print. Do you realize I could be fired?”

  I picked up the paper and read the lead. “I didn’t write this,” I said.

  “It has your byline!”

  He paced up and down, muttering, while I read the article.

  After I finished, I dropped the paper on the bed. “I wrote part of it,” I said. “The part about the uniform being found in your trash. But I didn’t put the part in about the poison coming from the evidence room.”

  Mike started talking again, but I didn’t listen. I was thinking furiously. How had the information about the source of the poison gotten into my article? I’d suggested that J.B. check on the source if he saw Hammond. Had he found out and added it?

  No. I discarded that idea. My story had already been written and okayed by Jake before J.B. came to work. If J.B. had found anything out, he would have written it as a new story. If Jake and Ruth wanted to combine the stories, they would have done it, true, but they wo
uld have given the two of us a joint byline.

  I knew Jake had read my story before he left for his meeting in Oklahoma City. Normally, he would mark it with his initials to indicate to Ruth that he’d already read it. Yet the story had been changed from the one I had written and, presumably, from the one Jake had read. Had Ruth and Jake approved this? I couldn’t believe it.

  Of course, anybody familiar with the Gazette’s editorial department computers could have gotten into the story and changed it. Since it had already been marked with Jake’s initials, Ruth wouldn’t have questioned it. As far as I knew, nobody had ever tampered with a story between the time the ME checked it and the time it went in the paper. But it was possible.

  When reporters work together, it’s impossible to keep them from knowing each other’s computer access codes. In fact, all three of the Gazette’s police reporters do their routine work from a common file. J.B. and Chuck both could look over anything I’d written and left in the violence files. So could either of the city editors, or any of the copy editors for that matter. The editors had a master list of codes, and sometimes they needed to access the reporters’ files. I once went off for a weekend and simply forgot to send a copy of an important story to the city file. Ruth realized it wasn’t there, retrieved it from my file, and saved me from a heap of trouble.

  Yes, at least at the Gazette, the police reporters all messed around in each other’s files. And, since we’d been working on this Irish Svenson project, Ace-the-Ass Anderson had been admitted to the circle.

  That thought made me gasp a second time, and once more I grabbed my ribs and groaned. Mike was still raving on about his stupid career, and suddenly I felt very impatient with him.

  “Mike! I didn’t put that stuff about the cyanide in there!”

  “Then why does it have your byline? Do the Gazette’s standards of accuracy not extend to the identity of the reporters who wrote the stories?”

  “I don’t know what happened! I’ll have to ask the editors.”

  He started to talk again, but I’d had enough. My train of thought had convinced me Ace had overheard my tip to J.B., then checked it out with one of his usually reliable sources and changed my story. But I didn’t want to tell Mike that until I’d done some checking. I didn’t want to talk about it at all.