Murder at The Washington Tribune

by Margaret Truman

  “Hey, sweetheart,” she was told by the producer, “this story is too good to check. Run with it.”

  Before now, her father had often expressed scorn at what he considered to be the demise of responsible journalism. He’d been decidedly old school and she’d admired him for that, even though he failed, in her estimation, to take into account the realities of the situation. Times had changed; journalism had changed. Whether its evolution was good or bad seemed irrelevant to her. Technology had transformed the news business. There had long been competition to get the story, then to get it first, and the advent of the telegraph, and telephone, the radio, and now TV and the Internet had made it a race to get and spread the news in real time, preferably while it was happening—car chases, robberies caught on surveillance cameras, fires, and, of course, trials. You had to move fast or be trampled by the competition.

  She had little patience for those who labeled the media left-leaning. Right-wingers owned the nation’s media. What was more important, the decisions behind what stories to cover and how to cover them had little to do with politics. Ratings and ad revenue weren’t Democratic or Republican. You ran with what would pull in the most viewers. That simple. End of story. Case closed.

  She decided before returning to her rumpled bed that she would raise her concerns directly with her father at the first opportune moment. In the meantime, she needed sleep to be ready for what the next day would bring. Whether journalism had lost some of its honor and luster or not, she was a journalist and would do what was expected of her.

  Joe Wilcox needed sleep, too, but didn’t get much that night. He lay in bed and felt his heart race and could feel the throb of his pulse. He dozed off a few times, but each time he looked at the glow of a digital clock at bedside, time had advanced only a few minutes. He gave it up at five, quietly slipped out of bed, and showered. Dressed in his robe and slippers, he went downstairs and, despite knowing it was too early for delivery, looked down the driveway for that morning’s Tribune. He went to the foot of the stairs and listened to hear if Georgia was awake. Confident she wasn’t, he walked into the den, opened one of three closets, got down on his knees and rummaged through a series of square boxes until finding the one he wanted. He withdrew it, took it to a game table covered with green felt, switched on a lamp hanging over the table, pulled up a chair, and removed the box’s cover. Layers of white tissue paper were neatly layered on top. He removed the paper and dug down deeper, his fingers coming to rest on a manila envelope whose flap was secured with a strand of red string wrapped around a plastic button. He laid the envelope on the table, undid the string, folded back the flap, withdrew the envelope’s contents, and placed them in the harsh, direct light from above. There were yellowed newspaper clippings in which photos were embedded, and a half dozen faded snapshots of Michael as a teenager. Wilcox went to his desk, took a magnifying glass from a drawer, returned to the table, and closely examined what was in the envelope, spending more time on the pictures than the clippings. Finished, he sat back, closed his eyes, and exhaled a sustained, loud breath. He was drained; it was the first time that night he felt sleep would come easily. He cocked his head. Georgia was stirring upstairs. He reversed his procedure, returning the box to the closet, and went into the kitchen to turn on the coffee that had been set up the previous night.

  “Good morning,” Georgia said through a yawn.

  “Good morning, hon. Sleep well?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’ve never known you to be an insomniac,” she said pleasantly, pulling a package of English muffins from the refrigerator.

  “Yeah, it is new for me. Too much on my mind, I guess,” he said, sitting at the table.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “About it? What’s it?”

  “What’s keeping you awake these nights.”

  “Nothing specific, Georgia. Just a lot of pressure at work and—”

  “Joe,” she said, joining him at the table, “you’ve been under pressure at work hundreds of times and you never lost a minute’s sleep. I don’t want to probe into your personal life, but if there’s something you want to get off your chest, I’d love to hear it.”

  He forced lightness into his voice: “My personal life? Like what, confessing I’ve been having an affair?”

  “I sometimes think that,” she said. “I wondered whether the hang ups last night were from a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, come on, Georgia, that’s—”

  “Just a fleeting fancy,” she said, taking one of his hands in hers. “I know you don’t have a girlfriend on the side, Joe. I told Mimi that.”

  “Told her what?”

  “That I’d be shocked if you had an affair.”

  “Thanks for the testimonial.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Do you think Paul cheats on her?”

  “No. I mean, how would I know? Maybe he does. Maybe he’s got a harem stashed away in Georgetown. This is not a subject I really feel like getting into this morning.”

  “Case closed,” she said. “But I do know that something is bothering you. I care, that’s all. I love you.”

  It struck Joe that this was a good time to tell her about Michael, and he might have had she not gotten up from the table and exited the house to retrieve the morning paper. He went upstairs to their bedroom, dressed for the day, and returned to the kitchen.

  “Muffin?” she asked.

  “Thanks, no. I’ll grab something downtown.” He kissed her.

  “You look nice,” she said, accompanying him to the door. “All ready for your TV show.”

  “Thanks,” he said, having forgotten about the show. Had he remembered, he might have dressed differently. He hadn’t bothered to look at the paper before leaving, but heard his article mentioned on his car radio. The news reader was in the middle of the story when Wilcox’s cell phone sounded.

  “Wilcox.”

  “Joe, it’s Edith.”

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m in the car on my way downtown. What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you, Joe. Off the record, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “When?”

  “This morning?”

  “Give me an hour? Where?”

  “The Bread Line on Pennsylvania?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  SIXTEEN

  Michael LaRue had gone to dinner the previous night with another tenant of the apartment house, a pugnacious, divorced former career army man who’d sustained wounds in the first Gulf War and was on full disability. The day Michael moved in, they met and found themselves getting together now and then, playing chess or checkers, going out for an occasional inexpensive meal, and discussing world affairs, or more often arguing about them. Although Michael was neither a registered voter nor had he demonstrated an affiliation with a political party, he billed himself to Rudy and others as a born-again conservative Republican. That melded nicely with his new friend’s political philosophy but represented perhaps the only thing they shared aside from being single men who happened to live in the same building.

  Rudy, who walked with a distinct limp and who often spoke of the plate in his hip, did not like Michael’s favorite neighborhood eating spot, Tomaso’s Pizza Parlor and Restaurant. “Cheap guinea food,” he said when Michael first suggested going there for dinner, and they avoided it. But on this night, Michael insisted, and Rudy reluctantly went along, grumbling all the way.

  Mrs. Tomaso had given Michael her usual demonstrative welcome and seated the men in a booth near the front window. Michael ordered a glass of house red while Rudy, who drank heavily and consumed a number of pain pills each day, asked for Skyy vodka over ice.

  “I am sorry,” Mrs. Tomaso said, “but we do not have that.” She pointed to two small shelves behind the counter on which a few bottles of hard liquor were displayed.r />
  “What kind of a joint is this?” Rudy mumbled. He downed the vodka she brought him and ordered another. By the time their food was served, Rudy was well on his way to drunk and had become verbally abusive to the restaurant’s proprietress.

  “Shut up, Rudy,” Michael said a few times after his dinner companion had hurled insults at the woman. That caused Rudy to turn on Michael, calling him a “fairy” and a “weak-kneed fag.” Mr. Tomaso responded to the raised voices and came around the counter from where he had been preparing pizzas for a takeout order. Michael waved him off and called for a check. Rudy got up from the table unsteadily and staggered out the door, followed a minute later by Michael, who’d paid the bill and apologized profusely to the Tomasos.

  They walked back to the apartment building. When they reached the front door, Michael grabbed Rudy by the throat and rammed him against a wall. “You ever do that again and you’ll need dentures to go with that plate in your hip,” he snarled. “Those are my friends, you bastard, and nobody talks to my friends like that, especially to a woman. You understand?”

  Rudy tried to loosen Michael’s grip on his throat. Michael, his face twisted with rage, let go and stepped back. He unlocked the door, grabbed Rudy by the back of his shirt, and propelled him inside and to his apartment door. “The keys,” Michael demanded. “Give me the keys.” He physically ushered the burly ex-GI into the apartment, across the living room and into the bedroom where he threw him on the bed.

  “Sober up,” Michael said, and left.

  Now, the morning after, Michael was up early. After a vigorous hour of exercise, including lifting a set of weights he kept in a corner behind a chair, he showered, dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, and left the apartment, stopping for that morning’s edition of The Washington Tribune and reading it over a breakfast of fresh fruit, a hard roll, and coffee at a local bakery. Joe’s byline was on page one of the Metro section as it had been all week. Reading Joe’s article twice before tearing it from the paper, he carefully placed it in a small leather bag he carried over his shoulder.

  His next step was Dean & Deluca in Georgetown where he purchased small portions of hors d’oeuvres—charcuterie, smoked salmon mousse, and tapenade. The attractive middle-aged woman who served him was flirtatious, which he enjoyed, and it enhanced an already good mood.

  He took a leisurely stroll through the Watergate complex before entering its liquor store and buying a fifth of each of the shop’s own Watergate brand of Scotch and bourbon, which he found amusing, and a bottle each of a mid-priced red and white wine. Small sourdough rolls from the Watergate Bakery completed his shopping. He seldom took cabs in the city but decided to do so this morning and was back in his apartment before noon. He spent an hour arranging his purchases on a large serving platter, which he put in the refrigerator along with the white wine, and tidied up the apartment. He knew of a florist a few blocks away and went there, returning with a simple bouquet of colorful flowers in a vase purchased from the shop.

  He answered a knock on the door. It was Rudy. “Busy?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I am, Rudy.”

  “What’s with last night?” Rudy asked.

  “I don’t have time, Rudy. But I suggest you get your act together, at least if you want me as a friend.” He closed the door in his neighbor’s face and smiled. He was glad Rudy had come to ask about what had occurred the previous evening. If nothing else, he provided decent chess and checkers competition.

  After a light lunch, he practiced the guitar until two, napped until three, and passed the hour before his brother was to arrive by reading a recently published book about Islam and its emerging role in world affairs.

  The Bread Line was doing its usual frenetic business when Wilcox walked in. Vargas-Swayze had secured a table, and he joined her. She looked as though she hadn’t had much sleep; there were dark, puffy circles beneath her large, dark brown eyes. She’d applied her makeup more heavily than usual that morning, he noted, and was wearing even more jewelry than was her custom.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Hubby problems?”

  “Yup. Would you believe the bastard is trying to get me to pay him alimony?”

  Wilcox couldn’t help but chuckle. “Looks like fem lib has gotten expensive. Coffee?”

  With coffee, and cinnamon buns in front of them, he said, “What is it you want to ask me, Edith? I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I know you’re following the serial killer trail, Joe. I think you’re wrong—there’ve only been two killings, not a half-dozen—but that’s your call. I’m sure it’s selling papers. I’m operating on the theory that the murders are unrelated.”

  He started to respond, but she said, “Hear me out.”

  “Okay,” he said, and sat back in listening mode.

  “Let’s say the same guy did both murders. If so, I’m convinced that he works for the Trib.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense to me that an outside sicko would find his way into the paper and kill Kaporis there. Offing somebody in a park is easy. Pulling it off at the Trib is too hard. Why would he take the chance?”

  “Have you taken a close look at our security lately?” Wilcox asked. “It’s even worse than at the airport.”

  She came forward. “But why would he do it, Joe? If both homicides had taken place inside a news organization, I’d think differently. But there’s one at the Trib, and one in the park. No, Joe, either the murders are unrelated, or you’ve got a whackjob working at the paper.”

  Wilcox thought a moment before saying, “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say—and I’m still going with the serial killer scenario—let’s say there’s someone working at the Trib who killed both Jean Kaporis and Colleen McNamara. That squashes the personal motive. Right? You’ve been running with the theory that Jean was killed by someone who’d had a relationship with her, got rebuffed or something, and became mad enough to strangle her. But why the McNamara girl? He was rebuffed by her, too? What is he, some ugly guy with terminal bad breath? We’ve got a couple of strange-os working at the paper, but nobody fitting that description.”

  She smiled. “I interviewed everybody who was in the newsroom the night Kaporis died, and I’d say there are a couple of guys who fit that description.”

  “I hope you’re not including me,” he said.

  “Present company excepted,” she said. “You know every one of the men I interviewed, Joe. You’re a reporter. You pick up on things others wouldn’t. Give me a name or two I can zero in on.”

  It just came out. “There’s a young reporter named Hawthorne.”

  “I remember him. Nice looking young guy, personable.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion. All I know is that rumor has it that he might have been having some sort of a personal relationship with Kaporis.”

  “Anything to substantiate that rumor?”

  “I asked him point blank about it.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. He admitted he’d had coffee with her and drinks after work.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Anybody else?”

  “No. When I spoke with Kaporis’s father and stepmother, they said Kaporis had been having an affair with a married guy here in D.C.”

  “Someone from the Trib?”

  “They didn’t know what he did for a living. Name is Paul, they seem to remember her saying.”

  “Could have been somebody at the Trib,” she said. “Right?”

  “I suppose. My boss’s name is Paul. Paul Morehouse.”

  “The murdering type?”

  “No. There are a few Pauls in News. But hell, the Trib’s got twenty-five hundred employees, Edith. Could have been anybody, and not necessarily someone from the News division. There’s advertising, production, business, circulation—everyone has the same employee ID. Those other types are in and out of the newsroom all the time. What about vi
sitors to the newsroom that night? Outsiders?”

  “We’re still following up on them,” she said.

  He paid the bill and they left the bustling restaurant.

  “We still on for dinner tonight?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Seven-thirty. Where?”

  “Feel like slumming? Come on up to my neighborhood.”

  “I’d hardly call Adams Morgan slumming these days,” he said.

  “Then make it Felix, on Eighteenth, between Belmont and Columbia Roads. They serve comfort food—and I need some comfort.” She smiled. “Have a good TV show tonight. I’ll watch you.”

  He’d managed to suppress an urge to tell her about his brother’s sudden and unwelcome arrival in Washington, and his dread of going to meet him at four that afternoon. Maybe he should have seen a shrink and talked out his feelings. He felt terribly alone at that moment, like someone about to undergo cancer surgery without anyone who cared at his side. He tried to adopt a more positive attitude as he drove to his office at the Tribune. Perhaps he was overreacting and was being unfair to Michael. After all, he was his only sibling, a blood brother who’d gone through hard times and now looked to him, his brother, Joe, to help forge a new life in a new place. By the time he’d parked his car and was heading through the Tribune Building’s lobby, he’d given himself a lecture: Be positive and upbeat when you go to Michael’s apartment. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Welcome him into your life, and hear what he has to say about his ambitions and plans. Be supportive. Open your heart. Reach out. Express pleasure at seeing him after so many years.

  But when he was about to leave his office at 3:45, that positive spirit had dissolved like sugar in hot water, and he left the building with a tight jaw and knotted stomach.

  SEVENTEEN

  Wilcox had trouble finding parking on the street and circled the block a few times until a space opened up across from the address Michael had given him. It was a few minutes after four when he completed his parallel parking and shut off the engine. He sat quietly and stared at the building for a few minutes before slowly leaving the car and crossing the street. He paused at the door, drew a breath, entered the foyer, and read the names on the tenant panel on the wall. Listed next to the apartment number was the name MICHAEL LARUE. Strange, he thought as he pushed the button opposite the apartment number.