Murder at The Washington Tribune

by Margaret Truman

  The last of their wine was poured, and dessert menus were placed in front of them.

  “The steak was wonderful,” Wilcox said. “How was your stuffed shrimp?”

  “Excellent,” Georgia said. She shook her head, a smile on her face.

  “So, what’s that about?” he asked.

  “You, Joe. Here you are receiving letters from a serial killer and you’re in the best mood I’ve seen you in months. Maybe years.”

  “One letter,” he said. “But why is that strange? I’ve been looking for a major story for years, something I can get my teeth in and call my own. I’ve got that with this one, Georgia, and I’m happy about it.”

  “I’m seeing a new side of my husband, and I thought I knew every one of them. You’re obviously enjoying the notoriety, and that’s different. You’ve always been critical of writers who succumb to the media spotlight.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Paul told me to assure you that he wouldn’t let any of this go to my head.”

  “I don’t care if it does—go to your head,” she said. “Just as long as the happiness lasts.”

  He said nothing.

  “Will it?” she asked. “Last?”

  “I think so,” he replied. “When I suggested we go out for dinner tonight, you asked whether we were celebrating something.”

  “Are we?”

  “Possibly. I got a call today from a publisher in New York. They want to discuss my doing a book about the serial killer and my role as his conduit. The editor, a nice gal, said she’d even come down to Washington to talk to me about it.”

  She reached across the table and grasped his hands. “Joe, that’s wonderful. You’ve always said you’d like to write a book but didn’t have anything worthwhile to write about. Now you do.”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched—I can’t believe I used that cliché; it’s one of your favorites—but I don’t want to jump the gun. I mean, I don’t have a book deal yet, and it will all depend, I’m sure, how this thing with the killer plays out, whether he’ll continue to contact me and whether I’ll play some role in bringing him to justice. We’ll just have to wait and see about that. But if things go right, I’d say we really will have something to celebrate.”

  “Have you told Roberta?”

  “No, and I’d just as soon keep it between us until there’s something more concrete. Deal?”

  “Deal!” She squeezed his hands. “But promise me one thing.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Promise me that you’ll do everything possible to keep this away from us, from the family. I don’t need a serial killer arriving at the door like—”

  “Like Michael?”

  “I didn’t want to say it.”

  “But you thought it. Interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “That you link the serial killer and Michael in your mind.”

  “I didn’t do that, Joe. It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that it’s perfectly natural to have done it. After all, he has killed in the past, a young woman, and was judged to be insane. Now, he shows up in Washington, and two young women are strangled to death since his arrival.”

  “Please, Joe, don’t. You don’t really think that Michael could be the murderer.” She paused. “Do you?”

  “Of course not. Just letting my creative juices run wild. Maybe there’s a novel in me after all. Make a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?”

  She picked up the dessert menu. “Nothing for me,” she said. “Just coffee, decaf.”

  Joe waved the waiter over. “One rice pudding,” he said, “two decaf coffees, and two spoons.” As the waiter turned to leave, Joe added, “And two cognacs, please. We’re celebrating.”

  “Dinner was superb,” Roberta told Michael. He’d set a small, folding table in the living room, and had included a vase of fresh flowers and two candles. The chardonnay bottle was empty.

  “Let me help you clean up,” she said, reaching for her plate and silverware.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “Guests are forbidden from cleaning up anything when in my home. Go make yourself at home. I’ll just be a jiffy. Coffee is ready to go, and I have a lovely lemon flan for dessert, provided you aren’t watching your waistline. From what I can see, you have no need of that.”

  She left the table and sat at his desk. He’d put a Joe Pass CD on the compact stereo unit during dinner.

  “Joe Pass,” she called to him.

  “Yes, my idol,” he said from the kitchen.

  “He’s wonderful.”

  “The best.”

  Her eyes went to the manuscript.

  “I’ve never gotten into jazz,” she said as she picked up the first page and started to read. “Not my generation’s thing.”

  “I understand,” he said from the kitchen. “Coffee’s almost made. Just be a minute.”

  “Take your time,” she said, reading the second page. She didn’t realize he’d come up behind until she felt his weight against the back of her chair. “Oh,” she said. You startled me.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean to do that,” he said. “I see you’re reading my literary output.”

  “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I’m flattered that you’d even be interested.”

  “The flan was like floating,” she said twenty minutes later. “Everything was.” She glanced at her watch. “I’d better think about leaving.”

  “Oh, not so soon,” he said. “I haven’t played for you.”

  “That’s right,” she said, “and you promised. Will you? I have time for a song or two.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She sat at the desk as he pulled up a chair next to the amplifier, turned it on along with the guitar, and spent a few minutes tuning the strings to his liking, and adjusting the volume. “Anything special you’d like to hear?”

  She shook her head. “Whatever you choose.”

  He opened the fake book, hunched over the guitar as though trying to incorporate his body into its very frame, examined the music for a moment, and started playing. Roberta didn’t recognize the tune; a bossa nova, “Wave.” She focused on Michael as he moved through the changes to the song, totally absorbed in what he was doing, in a different place, his body subtly moving with the rhythm he’d established. She found herself moving, too, but her thoughts weren’t exclusively on the music. She kept thinking about the pages of his novel she’d read. Not what they said, but the way the pages looked. It was almost as though she’d seen them before. Was her mind playing tricks? Why would they look so familiar? Silly. She forced her attention to what Michael was doing as he finished the song.

  “Bravo!” she said, applauding.

  “Thank you,” he said, bowing from his sitting position. “Another?”

  She consulted her watch again. “I have time,” she said, “but only one more.”

  As he hunted through the book for a different selection, she again looked at the pages on the desk. What is it? she wondered.

  I’ve seen this before. She considered taking a page, but was at a loss as to how she’d explain it to him. He struck a series of inviting introductory chords before launching into another tune she didn’t know, “You Go to My Head.” The rich chords and lovely melody drew her in and she forgot about the pages.

  He’d reached the bridge of the song when a loud, incessant knocking at his door caused him to stop playing and to look angrily across the room. The knocking got louder; it was now a banging with something other than knuckles.

  “Damn it!” he growled, putting down the guitar. He opened the door. “What the hell do you want?” he shouted at Rudy, whose cane was poised to deliver another blow.

  “I gotta talk to you,” Rudy said loudly, his words slurred.

  “Get away,” Michael commanded.

  Rudy poked his head into the apartment and saw Roberta. He tried to push past Michael, but was held in check
by the bigger man. “I told you to get away,” Michael said, his threatening tone underlining what he was saying. He shoved Rudy away from the door and slammed it in his face, which prompted more rapping with the cane, and muttered curses.

  Michael walked away from the door and stood a few feet from Roberta, who’d stood and grabbed her purse from where she’d left it on a small table. His rage was palpable. His body shook, and his face was twisted with fury.

  “I am so sorry,” he managed in a quavering voice.

  “Who was that?” Roberta asked.

  “A neighbor. A neighbor from hell. A drunk. How dare he intrude on our lovely evening together?”

  “I’m just sorry you’re so upset,” she said. “I loved tonight. Everything was perfect, the meal, the conversation, and your performance. Thank you, Michael, for playing for me. You’re even better than Joe Pass.”

  “You’re very kind,” he said. “You drove?”

  “Yes. I parked right up the street.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ll—”

  “I insist. With this madman running around killing beautiful young women, I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to my only niece, nor would your mother and father.”

  As they exited the building, Rudy was there leaning against a tree. He took a few wobbly steps toward Michael and Roberta. As he did, Michael grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and threw him to the ground. He landed hard, causing Roberta to wince and to turn away. Michael stood over him. He placed his foot on Rudy’s chest. “You drunken bum. You’ll never bother me or my guests again.”

  Roberta and Michael walked to her car. The tension in Michael’s body was transmitted to her through the hand he’d placed on her arm.

  “I’m so sorry you have to put up with someone like that,” she said. “You never know what your neighbors will be like until you move in.”

  “He’s scum, that’s all,” Michael said, attempting to control the tremor in his voice and his rapid, shallow breathing. “I might have made a mistake when I was young—a very big mistake—but people like him make me look like a saint.”

  She wasn’t sure she agreed with his thesis, but didn’t express her reservation. Instead, she said, “Thank you again, Michael, for a lovely time. I’d like to do it again soon.”

  “Any time you say.”

  He placed his hands on her upper arms, looked into her eyes, and planted kisses on her cheeks, one on each, then a second.

  “Good night,” she said as she climbed into the car, started it, looked back at him, and drove away.

  It wasn’t until she was home and preparing for bed that it came to her, one possible reason for thinking she’d recognized the pages of his manuscript. They looked as though they’d been typed on the same typewriter as the note from the serial killer to her father. She rummaged through a pile of newspapers until coming up with the edition in which the letter had been reproduced as part of the article.

  “Wow” was what she said. And to herself: Oh, wow!

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Vargas-Swayze was happy to work late that night. Not so for Dungey. He’d pulled a hamstring during a basketball game and had asked for time off, but was pressed into an extra shift because the full moon seemed to bring out the homicidal urges of some. For her, working an extra shift would keep her mind off the divorce and the nasty turn it had taken. For both, the overtime pay was welcome.

  A woman stabbed her boyfriend to death after she found he’d been seeing their voluptuous female neighbor. A sixteen-year-old boy had been beaten to death by a gang whose members coveted his jacket and sneakers. While these incidents occurred in the city’s less affluent neighborhoods, the evening’s homicides weren’t restricted to those areas. A German industrialist, in Washington on company business, was mugged and shot to death not far from the State Department in relatively upscale Foggy Bottom. So much for diplomacy on the streets. And another man had been found bleeding to death in Franklin Park, the scene of Colleen McNamara’s murder not many nights before. He died en route to the hospital without having identified his assailant.

  “How’s your leg?” Vargas-Swayze asked Dungey as they left the building at three in the morning and headed for his car.

  “Hurts,” he replied with a crooked grin. “They say you’re supposed to play through the pain, but that’s BS. I hurt, I don’t play.”

  She laughed. “Did you want to play in the NBA when you were a little kid?” she asked.

  “Nah. I wanted to be a major-league baseball player, but it wasn’t for me. I’m built more for basketball. Want something to eat?”

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  She told him over platters of eggs and bacon at the Diner, her favorite haunt in Adams Morgan, the latest details of her ongoing financial hassle with Peter Swayze.

  “The guy is slime,” Dungey said as they pulled up in front of her apartment building. “You’re a lot better off without him.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said. “I’m more aware of it every day. By the way, you never said what you thought of our visit with LaRue.”

  “I was wrong about him I guess,” he said. “I don’t get the same bad vibes I did the first time around. You?”

  “He seems okay. When are you going to run an ID on him?”

  “Maybe I’ll get around to it if I work twenty-four seven. See you tomorrow.”

  “Today. It’s today.”

  “Yeah, it is, isn’t? Good night, Edith.”

  “Good night.”

  She’d almost reached the front door to the building and was fishing in her purse for her keys when a honking horn caused her to turn. Dungey had switched on the lights in the car and was waving for her to rejoin him. She leaned in the open window on the passenger side. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “This,” he said, handing her a computer printout of details, pointing to the section dealing with the DOA from Franklin Park.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “The address,” he said.

  She squinted in the dim light. “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “This Rudolph Grau lived at the same address as our French friend.”

  “He had to live somewhere,” she said.

  “I know. Just thought it was interesting.”

  “We’ll be back there later to canvas the building.”

  “Right. Well, anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning.”

  “It was, Wade. Grab some sleep. See you in a few hours.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When they got home from the restaurant, Joe and Georgia Wilcox, one hunger sated, made love, an infrequent event of late. Both slept soundly. Joe was first up, feeling refreshed. After showering and dressing in his favorite gray suit for a TV interview later in the day, he donned an apron and made scrambled eggs and toast, another infrequent event, and had it ready and piping hot when Georgia appeared in a freshly pressed robe.

  “Still celebrating?” she asked playfully.

  “Right you are,” he replied, “but not about the book. I thought I’d forgotten how to do it—and don’t give me that ‘it’s like falling off a bicycle’ routine.”

  “You haven’t forgotten a thing,” she said. “Not even your bicycle. What’s up today?”

  “The same. I’ve got to come up with a new slant for the series.”

  “I wish they’d catch him.”

  “So do I, but not too soon.”

  “Joe!”

  “I didn’t mean it the way it sounds, Georgia. I hope they catch the guy before he kills anyone else. At the same time, I’d like to be able to play out the story a while longer. Morehouse sure as hell would like that.”

  He finished breakfast, kissed her, and said, “We should do it again soon.”

  “I’m here,” she answered, walking him to the door. “You look great.”

  “Thanks. Be sure to watch.”

  “I will. I’ll tape
it and run it over and over.”

  He drove his usual route into the District, but instead of going to the Tribune Building, he drove to Michael’s apartment house. He parked a block away and called his brother’s number. The machine answered. He hung up without leaving a message, got out of the car, and went to the door. The duplicate keys Michael had provided allowed him to enter the building and the apartment. Maggie meowed as she came from the kitchen where she’d been eating from her bowl, and rubbed against his leg. He bent and ruffled the fur behind the cat’s ears, went to the desk, pulled a piece of blank paper from where it was neatly stored in a drawer, inserted it in the typewriter, and began to type. Ten minutes later, and after assuring himself that everything was as it had been when he entered, he bade Maggie a farewell, locked the apartment behind him, and emerged from the building. An older woman, pulling a collapsible shopping cart, came up the walkway. She stopped, blocking his way. “Terrible, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Hello,” he said and tried to go around her.

  “Poor man, being killed like that.”

  His first thought was Michael.