Song of Suzies

by Dave Balcom

  “Okay, Sara,” Sandy said cheerfully as she put her down, “scoot yourself upstairs, get into your pajamas and brush your teeth. I’ll be up in a minute. Now, scoot!”

  With a giggle, Sara scampered towards the stairs. Sandy turned to me, put her arms around my neck and planted a very warm, lingering kiss on my lips. “I’ll be back down in a minute. Can you mix up some salad dressing? Salads are in the fridge. And there’s a bottle of Chianti that should be breathing...”

  With that she headed for the stairs. As she left the kitchen I could hear her, “I’ll be a few minutes...”

  I looked around as Hans padded into the kitchen, his tail wagging. I reached down to scratch an ear, and wondered about Max Hennessey and how he could have turned his back on this kind of life.

  64

  I was slow to get out of the bed the next morning, but lying there thinking about what had happened the day before, and all that could happen today had me up and moving in short order.

  I was just ready to leave when Sandy, carrying Jeremy and herding Sara, entered the kitchen. “Hi, big guy,” I said to Jeremy as I kissed his baby-soft face. He was learning to return kisses, so I received an extra-wet smooch replete with sound effects. As Sandy lowered him into his highchair, I pulled Sara up in my arms and felt her sleep-warmth and smelled her freshly washed face as I kissed her cheek. “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Morning, Daddy. Are you going to Buffalo again today?”

  “No, honey. I’ll be home for your supper tonight.”

  That seemed to please her, but she became distracted as her mother poured milk in her cereal. I placed her in her chair, and she turned earnest attention to the food.

  I gave her head a gentle ruffle, and kissed Sandy as I headed for the door. “Wait a minute, buster,” she said with a smile in her voice. “You don’t get off that easy this morning.”

  I turned, dropped my briefcase and pulled her into my arms for a long, lingering, passionate kiss and embrace.

  “That’s more like it,” she murmured in my ear. “Come home to us safe and sound, you hear?”

  I gave her waist a squeeze in response, picked up my case and headed out the door. I hadn’t quite got out of the garage when Sandy came flying down the short stairs from the kitchen, waving her arms for me to stop.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Agent Reynolds. She asked me to stop you if I could.”

  I put the car in Park and walked back inside the house. “Yes?” I said into the phone.

  “Jim, I’m glad I caught you before you got to the paper this morning.”

  “What’s up?”

  “We need to talk about some ground rules, and we need to have time to debrief you effectively. We were hoping you’d stay home today...”

  “Impossible if you want me to come close to the confidentiality level you’re hoping for.”

  “Why?”

  “My staff will start playing a hundred questions if I call in today, and, believe me, you don’t want that. I’d be willing to bet my city editor already knows I was out of town until eight last night.”

  “How could...?”

  “His aunt lives across the street,” I deadpanned.

  “Oh.” She thought quietly for a moment, and then bounced back, “When can you give us your undivided?”

  “About ten.”

  “Really?”

  “It won’t inspire curiosity if I’m on the phone for an extended period of time after deadline. Why don’t you let me call you when I’m ready?”

  She didn’t answer right away, so I prodded, “Marcia, you don’t really think that I don’t want to talk and hear about this, do you?”

  That seemed to unlock her thinking, “No, of course not. She rattled off a phone number, and I pulled out a pen and wrote it on the palm of my hand while I balanced the phone on my shoulder. I read it back to her, and she said, “Right” just as I heard her disconnect.

  I looked at the phone and wondered, not for the first or last time, if all police officers were as lacking in telephone etiquette.

  “She’s excited,” Sandy said from where she was feeding some kind of goop into a very interested little boy.

  I nodded. “She is; I just don’t know why.”

  “I guess you’ll find out later this morning, right?”

  I gave my watch a quick check, “And I’d better get movin’.”

  When I walked into the back of the newsroom, I could see that I was late to the party. Mary was at the Universal Desk, and I could see Fritz and Jay were both standing around her. There was no sign of Randy, and then I remembered that he had been scheduled off.

  I hustled into my office and shed my coat, grabbed my coffee cup and headed for the desk, but as I walked up, Jay and Fritz headed off to their tasks.

  “Mornin’ Mary,” I tried to sound chipper. “Sorry I forgot you were flying solo this morning...”

  “No problem,” she said without taking her eyes off her computer screen. “The updated budget is on the printer; we just finished picking the art for today, and I’ve got the state, national and world pages queued up. You want to do first or second reads?”

  I’m sure my eyebrows arched a bit, and then I realized that this was a big day in a young desk editor’s life – she was playing the role of city editor and the managing editor had been tardy. She had seen a chance to take charge and she’d taken it. I was impressed.

  “I’ll do what you want me to do. If you want to lay out pages, I’ll do the first reads... that would actually work better for me, as I have a ten o’clock phone appointment that could take me out of the picture until after press time.”

  She flashed me a bright smile. “I’ll finish the inside pages while you copy edit.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  She waved her can of Coke at me, “Never touch the stuff, yuck!”

  I smiled and wondered not for the first time what the world was coming to if editors didn’t drink coffee, and headed for the break room by way of the printer where I grabbed the budgets. I put one on each desk and into the publisher’s box as I made my way to the coffee and back.

  I reviewed the budget and saw that it contained an update on the Suzanne investigation. The slug was simply, “Officer sheds light on editor attack.”

  I slid into my chair at the desk and fired up my computer. I saw the story with Cindy Shaul’s initials in the slug line. I opened it and had read only the first few paragraphs when I turned back to the budget printout. “Mary?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Where are you planning to run the attack story?”

  “Oh!”

  I waited.

  “There’s a printout in your basket by your office. I had it ready for you as soon as you arrived, I know the policy...”

  “Relax,” I said in a reassuring tone. “I’m assuming this is the story about the guys who tried to beat me up, and I’m sure you remembered that any story that names anyone who works at the paper must be previewed by me. And, I’m just as sure this story will be up to our standards, I just wondered how you thought it should be played.”

  “I am planning on running it in the single column on the left side of the lead art with a micro-mug of Deke Hardy embedded in the copy. Oh, and I was planning on using the five-column approach to the page, so it would be running in the wider column measure...”

  I was appreciative of her approach and said so; then I turned my attention to the story. In it, Hardy told investigators that he had no previous knowledge of any attempt to harm me, but that he had seen the two attackers at his home the evening before the incident.

  Officers had then investigated further, and found that Hardy’s father, Jake Hardy, owner and president of Lake City Steel Works, was reportedly out of town on business and unavailable for questioning.

  Cindy had been very enterprising and the story then went on to tell that the two assailants had long violent histories relating to labor disputes in the
steel industry. A U.S. Department of Labor source described the men as “anti-union muscle,” that had been repeatedly investigated and even charged in cases of assault on union officials and other workers in the steel industry.

  An unnamed spokesman for Lake City Steel refused to explain where Mr. Hardy’s business had taken him, but Cindy’s reporting had found that the company’s jet had left the airport on Saturday morning on a flight plan to Pittsburgh, but that the aircraft had changed destinations in flight, and had diverted to Chicago.

  In Chicago a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration had told Cindy that the plane had re-fueled and departed shortly after landing, and the destination had been Los Angeles. No other details were available.

  When I left the desk a bit after nine, I went to Doug’s office, just to check in and fill him in on my encounter with Max Hennessey.

  He listened raptly to my brief recap, and then a wide smile spread across his face. “No shit? You got to interview a murder suspect?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way up until then, “I guess I did, but I don’t think he’s going to be a suspect much longer.”

  The grin evaporated from his face. “Why not?”

  “I think the Feds will have him eliminated from suspicion before today’s out. I think they’ll find that he’s otherwise accounted for in at least two of the murders.”

  He was speechless as he processed that idea, and his eyes seemed to be dancing around his desk, as if something he needed to be able to comprehend was lost there.

  “Did you see Cindy’s police story on the budget for Page One?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” the smile was back. “Mary put a printout in my basket. I’d say Deke blew the whistle on his old man and that Jake is on the lam!”

  I could see how he relished that thought, but my reaction was to be concerned that the impression might be unfair until the old man had a chance to talk.

  “Fuck him,” Doug said with no apology. “He didn’t give you any consideration with his rumors and lies trying to damage your reputation, and I’ll bet he was behind that attack no matter how much money he spends trying to hide from blame...” He was sputtering at this point.

  I was embarrassed for him and that made me laugh a bit, a nervous laugh, but it was enough to stop him cold. “Listen, Jim. I feel like this paper, the people here; yes, even the news people, are part of an extended family... you fuck with the family, and you find me.

  “I hope this town never sees that sonovabitch ever again. I hope his business is sold. I don’t even care if the Japanese buy it. I just don’t want to have to look at that prick again. I’m not sure I could stop from punching him in the nose.”

  That outburst turned my chuckle into a full fledged laugh. I couldn’t help it; the image of this prim, proper businessman busting a knuckle on my account was just too funny.

  He sat silently as I got my laughter under control. Finally he looked up at me again, “Okay, tough guy. I’m sure the thought of me in a dustup is pretty amusing, but I’ve had my moments....”

  “You need to keep using your brains, Boss. The physical stuff sounds tough, but I’d bet on your smarts before I would your jab or your hook.”

  He gave that a moment’s reflection, “My smarts say it’s time you call Agent Reynolds. Let me know how that comes out, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  65

  “So you don’t think he did any of these?” Marcia concluded after I’d shared my impressions from Wednesday.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Could he have knowledge and be working with a partner?”

  That took me off stride. I hadn’t considered such a thing. “Could he?”

  “It’s been known to happen,” she answered

  “What do the white coat guys in D.C. think?”

  “They think like you do, that he isn’t involved.”

  “I never said I didn’t think he was involved.”

  “But you...”

  “I think he’s the target.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the facts, Agent. He marries a high school track star whose complete name is Jennifer Sue Crawley. She’s the daughter of a wealthy family in Southern California, and she falls for a Navy cop who wants to be a civilian cop.

  “She puts her whole life into a marriage that he never thought was more than a shack job. He no sooner gets into college and he starts playing around. He graduates, he takes a cop job in one of the most remote places in California, and she goes along.

  “I’m thinking she’s completely committed to him and their marriage, and then he starts playing around there, too.

  “It’s got to be very hard to keep an extramarital affair secret in a place that has more coyotes than people, and she is home all day stewing.

  “I don’t think it’s too much of a transference stretch to see her acting out by killing high school track stars named Sue. In her warped mind, she might think she’s protecting them from sharing her fate.”

  I could hear Marcia’s pen scratching, and I took a swallow of coffee.

  “So she goes back to the coast and kills a girl because she’s mad at him?”

  “I don’t know. She’s nuts, so anything might make sense to her. But then the divorce comes, and the timing changes.

  “They’re both living out there, and she’s reading the paper about Sue Nichols... Say she doesn’t know he’s out of town interviewing for a Cincinnati job. Let’s say she has planned it out perfectly to make him the prime suspect...”

  “I get it,” she said. “Maybe the Greene girl was a practice run?”

  “I don’t think so. I think she snapped, but, hell, I don’t know. I just think she has to be a suspect more than Max.”

  Reynolds’ voice changed, got more official. “So she kills the Nichols girl, but Max’s alibi is air tight; so then he moves to Cincinnati, and she sets him up again. She has to be stalking him, you know? Seeing where he lives, reading the paper. She learns about the Tischman girl.

  “So, why didn’t Max get to be a person of interest in that case?”

  “I’m going to mark that one up to her. She must have thought it was perfect, but the police didn’t turn him up and she didn’t prod the local editor to keep the story alive. There are so many missing kids in this country.”

  “Twenty-three hundred in the greater Cincinnati area in nineteen eighty alone,” Reynolds interjected. “So, when he moved to Lake City, she had more experience, and didn’t just trust to detective work.

  “That’s why she wrote you the letters, called you, threatened your family...”

  “That’s my guess...”

  Her voice changed again, “So, now here’s what I know and you can’t report, Mr. Stanton. You are now considered a material witness. I can, and if you force me, I will have you incarcerated for the duration of this investigation, but if I have your oath that you’ll not print any word of this investigation until an arrest is made, I will accept that.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you serious?”

  “Like a heart attack.”

  “So what have you got on Jennifer Sue Crawley-Hennessey?”

  “I’m waiting on your promise, Mr. Stanton. As you must know, this call is being recorded.”

  “I can’t think of a meaningful story I could write at this moment without risking a career-ending libel judgment.”

  “I’m waiting on your oath; in a complete sentence if you don’t mind.”

  I was silent as I composed my thoughts. “I, Jim Stanton, under duress, do solemnly swear to treat all information I have or may receive regarding the investigation into this series of abductions and possible murders until a full and complete solution is in hand.”

  I paused to compose another thought.

  “I swear this oath in the understanding that I will be privy to all aspects of this investigation and I will have a full twenty-four hours of exclusivity in which to finally publish what I know to be true. The
re, that’s my oath.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s about the best you can do, but for the record, your ‘understanding’ as you put it, is not based on any promises you’ve been made, is that correct?”

  “It is.”

  “Good, now that that’s over, here’s what we know: Jennifer is now the Vice President of Sales for The Crawley Company, Inc. of Riverside, California.

  “She joined her father’s firm after the divorce. The company is a wholesale distribution firm servicing the technology industries. Her father is an engineer, and he and his brothers formed the company after he was awarded a patent for a coupling he invented that allows two pieces of fiber optics to be joined end to end without loss of digital integrity,” she said as if reading from company literature.

  “She started in the business office, but soon went into sales, and flourished. The company has grown beyond anyone’s expectations, and it is rumored that it’ll hold it’s IPO in the next few years.

  “Her last known address is twenty-three thirty-seven Palisades Parkway, Riverside, but she hasn’t been seen there in nearly two months.

  “The company will only say that she’s on an extended sabbatical, and insists all communications be sent to her home or business address.”

  “She’s gone missing?”

  “No, a house keeper we approached as she left work was interviewed over a cup of coffee by an agent from the L.A. bureau. She said the woman had always been gone a lot, for extended periods. She said the last time she’d been home in Riverside for any extended time had been in the summer of eighty-three, and that she’s been gone more than at home since then.”

  “Can you track credit cards, bank records? Anything to learn about her activities?”

  “Mr. Stanton, I can’t believe you’d ask such a question. You think the FBI can just walk into her bank and review all of her records without a court order?”

  “No ma’am,” I answered contritely, looking at the clock and seeing it was just noon. “But I’ll bet the banks are just opening about now in Riverside. Do your agents have the subpoena in hand?”