by John Luciew
I fidgeted in my seat, then grunted a grudging “no.”
“I told him the next time he goes on Meet the Press and says someone’s shooting at him, he better make damn sure they are.” Merrin smiled. “As for us being friends, I’m polite to his face. Hell, I’m polite to everyone’s face. But I think the guy’s a flaming asshole, if you want to know the truth. After he called -- phoned me at home, I might add -- I rang the paper and told them to increase the size of the headline on your story. That’s how much pull Senator Hollister has at this paper. The next time he has a press conference, I want you in the front row, just to show him that you aren’t going anywhere.”
“Then why put me on the shelf when it comes to the Bressenhan story?” I pleaded.
“I’m not putting you on the shelf, Telly,” Merrin said. “Far from it. I’m giving you the bigger story. When the time is right, I want our paper to break the story of the killer’s plot. And Telly, I want it to be your byline at the top of that story.”
I exhaled, knowing I’d never win. Angus Merrin was too sly, too slick. And he bought the ink.
“That’s what I’ll do then,” I said. “I’ll work the larger story on the plot. But to do that, I’ll also need access to the Bressenhan investigation. That shouldn’t be a problem, me keeping tabs on what’s going on there?”
Merrin deferred to Sharps, who shook his head.
“After all Telly, you seem to have quite a good source in the detective here,” Merrin put in.
“Yeah, we sorta share information.”
“I’m quite impressed,” Merrin continued. “Sitting down here in this office, I’m insulated from the day-to-day excitement of newsgathering. It’s refreshing to be talking about real news, instead of the latest profit losses and plunging advertising forecasts.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your confidence, and I appreciate being back on the political beat.”
Then I figured as long as the publisher was so bedazzled, I might as well mention a raise. After all, Maggie would never forgive me if I passed up such a golden opportunity.
“I was just wondering…” My voice trailed off as I groped for just the right words. “Can I look forward to a corresponding enhancement of my pay package in the near future?”
Merrin furrowed his brow. “What?”
“A raise,” I said. “Will I be getting a raise?”
Merrin turned to Sharps.
“He is due,” the city editor said.
Merrin nodded. “Let’s see if we can fit something into next year’s budget.”
It wasn’t quite a promise, and no specific dollar amount had been mentioned. But it was as far as I’d gotten in a long time. There was nothing like a string of murders to prompt a publisher to open his wallet.
Chapter 29
I returned to the newsroom a reporter without a story. It was just as well. I had no desk on which to write one, anyway. But I had yet to suffer the biggest indignity of the day. That would come in the form of Brett Macy, our young, over-eager cop reporter with a buzz haircut and a sloped nose. Upon spotting me trying to get near my cordoned-off desk, Macy made a mad dash, notebook and pen in hand.
“Telly, can I get a word?” he desperately asked. “Did ya hear? I’m lead writer on the story. Sharps gave it to me.”
“Yeah, I heard.” I tilted my head to one side, attempting to look past the reporter to see what was happening with my desk. “I’m happy for you.”
“Me, too. This is a huge break. A story like this, who knows where it could take me career-wise? I mean, look at Cassie Jordan. She’s at the Times, for Christ’s sake. I could write my own ticket.”
I frowned at his empty notebook. “Don’t you think you oughta write the story first? Before you go updating your resume, I mean.”
He looked down at his empty pad. “Yeah,” he conceded. “There is that.”
“Just a minor detail, I’m sure.” I shot him a shit-eating grin. “So what are the cops tellin’ you?”
“Nuthin’.” He didn’t raise his eyes.
“What about your sources in the department?”
“This and that,” he shrugged. “You know, the usual.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know. What did they give you?”
His eyes were on the floor. “Nuthin’. Yet.”
“Oh, Christ.” I exhaled.
“That’s why I need you, Telly.” Macy’s tone was eager, almost desperate.
“I’m really not supposed to be working on this story,” I said.
Besides, I thought, whatever I did find out, I wouldn’t share with Macy. Those details would be for my larger story on the serial murders -- if I were ever permitted to write it.
“No, Telly.” Macy shook his head. “I don’t need your help with the story. I need to interview you.”
“Interview?” I hadn’t considered this but should have expected it.
“Yeah.” Macy raised his empty notebook and was poised with his pen. “You were the recipient -- of the head, I mean. You’re part of the story.”
“So I’ve been told.” I didn’t like it any better coming from Macy. And I certainly didn’t relish being on the other side of an interview. But I didn’t see that I had a choice. I couldn’t very well decline to comment to my own paper.
“All right, go ahead. But make it quick. You oughta be talkin’ to more important people than me.”
“Thanks. Okay. Here we go.” Macy rolled his head, like a boxer readying for twelve rounds. Then he shook his writing hand a couple of times, loosening it up. “What was going through you mind when you opened the box? How did you feel?”
“Thrilled,” I deadpanned. Macy scribbled it down.
“Don’t write that,” I protested. “Can’t you ask a better question? How do you think I felt? I lost my breakfast. As soon as I realized what it was, my head was in a trash can and my stomach was in my throat.”
Macy was writing furiously now. “Oh, this is good,” he muttered to himself. “This is really good.”
I realized he had gotten me. By asking such a stupid question, he had forced me to elaborate with telling facts. I didn’t relish the messier details of my reaction showing up in the morning paper, but I knew better than to protest. Anything said to a reporter with a notebook in his hand was on the record.
“So, did you recognize the, ah…” Macy faltered for a second. “The head?”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna have to get that from the cops. ID’s not confirmed.”
“Fair enough. But was it anybody close to you. A friend? A family member?”
His question hit me by surprise. What if it had been? I didn’t want to think about it. But with a crazy killer on the loose, I now had to. I knew it could happen.
“Telly?” Macy pressed again.
“Ah, no,” I said, shaking my head and trying to shake off the grim thought. “It was nobody special.”
“How did you know the box was for you?”
“Had my name on it. Return address was the Washington Post.”
“The Post?” he echoed. “What did you think was in it?”
“I didn’t know. I thought maybe it had something to do with the Hollister story.”
“So this whole thing is political?” Macy jabbed. “It has something to do with a story? Something that connects the Herald and the Post?”
Macy was getting closer to the truth than he realized. Too close for comfort, I thought. So I threw him another detail to get him off the scent. “I also thought it was steaks,” I said.
“Steaks?”
“Yeah, after I opened it, there was this mist and it was cool inside, like from dry ice. So I thought maybe steaks.”
“From the Washington Post?”
“Sounds stupid now,” I said, realizing that it would look even stupider quoted in the paper. “But never in a million years did I expect what was really in that box. Not until I jigged the package and saw his eyes.” The image flashed in my mind and I felt my stoma
ch lurch. I was still a little light-headed from Merrin’s expensive scotch, as well.
“So it was a him? A man?” Macy jumped right on my unconscious use of the pronoun.
“Yeah, but you’re gonna hafta get the rest from the cops. Interview’s over.”
“C’mon, Telly. Just a few more questions.”
But I was already walking away, looking for an empty desk where I could plant my ass.
I sat down on the far periphery of the activity, of which my desk was the epicenter. I watched for a while, then let my eyes fall closed. Gradually, the voices of the cops and lab techs and the static-laced chatter of their police radios mixed together, becoming pleasant background noise. And my mind drifted off.
* * *
“Your desk’s a fuckin’ mess, you know that?” The familiar, grumpy voice interrupted my scotch-induced daydream. I opened my eyes to see Coroner Buzz Swanson looking down at me, just as he must gaze down at countless corpses. His curious eyes were intense under caterpillar-like gray eyebrows.
“That desk of yours is a damn disgrace,” he repeated, jerking his head toward the crime scene he’d just finished surveying.
“Buzz?” I said, lifting my head and wiping the grogginess from my eyes. “What’re you doing here?”
“Got a body here, dontcha? Well, part of one, anyhow. Thought I’d come down and take a look. Besides, I wanted to make sure the Feds didn’t try to pull rank. Remains found in the county are my jurisdiction.” He trusted a thumb to his chest. “They go to my morgue. They can bring in their own pathologist to assist, but the procedure gets done at my facility.”
“Buzz, I hate to tell you, your morgue’s not much of a facility.”
Buzz’s lair was located in the basement of the county nursing home. The operating room was a cramped, unventilated space with painted cinderblock walls, instead of tile or stainless steel. Bodies were wheeled in through a rear garage bay cluttered with rusting wheelchairs and old, cobweb-covered hospital beds. Just down the hall from the morgue, an ancient, angry boiler produced smothering heat.
Buzz shrugged off my criticism. “Feds can see how the other half lives. ‘Sides, my morgue’s a damn site neater than your desk. It’s a wonder you found the head at all in that clutter.”
“It was a little hard to miss.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Just opened the box.”
“But not the head? You didn’t touch the head?”
“Figured I’d let you do the honors.”
Buzz nodded. “Good. I’m having the remains transported now. They’re moving the box and everything else, as is. I’ll sort it out over there.”
“Fine with me, and the sooner the better.” I certainly didn’t want them pulling out the contents of that box on my desk.
“There’s really not much to autopsy, and it’s pretty clear that the victim’s throat was cut,” Buzz continued. “He bled out and was decapitated immediately postmortem.”
“Yeah, clear as a bell,” I said. “First thing that came to my mind when I opened the lid, in fact.”
“It’s a helluva case, all right.” Buzz eyed me. “How is it that you’re always right in the middle when the bodies start piling up?”
I shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. Speaking of being in the middle of things, I’ll need to be kept current. Can I meet you over at the morgue?”
Buzz and I went back to the days when he was just a funeral director. Then Buzz ascended to the elected post of county coroner. In Pennsylvania, the job entailed more paperwork than actual forensic science. Buzz’s main duties involved issuing death certificates. No medical degree was required as a freelance pathologist handled the cutting. But while Buzz might not have had the necessary years of medical schooling, more often than not he could tell what had gotten the deceased in the end. Growing up in the family funeral business, he’d been around death his whole life. He was familiar with it, comfortable even. Buzz sold the funeral home to some corporate outfit in the early 1990s, but he maintained his attachment to the dead. Now each of us would have the chance to speak for the murdered victims in this case -- Buzz with his science and me with my stories. Unfortunately, the coroner could not extend me an invitation to his morgue this time around.
“It’s gonna be standing room only in there.” He spoke as if the autopsy on Irv Bressenhan’s head were some kind of bizarre box office attraction. “Like you said, Telly, the quarters are kinda cramped as is. Best you wait. We’ll talk later.”
It would have to do. “Have fun,” I said.
“Always do.” Buzz cracked a grin. “More fun than my patients, at least.”
Chapter 30
With no story to file and still no desk I could call my own, I felt untethered. So I did what I hadn’t done since I returned to work from my last suspension. I spent the afternoon in a bar.
The quiet, dark confines of the Pepper Grill were a sanctuary from the constant buzz of the newsroom. It had been a long time since I needed to escape this badly. The long day and its many horrors had finally caught up with me. Besides, I had some time to kill until Buzz finished his procedure and it was safe for a reporter to visit him. And I already had a head start on the day’s drinking, courtesy of my own publisher. I figured, what the hell?
Time went by at a languid, three-beers-an-hour pace. Something just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the bar; it was me. I felt different.
Used to be, I could slip into a bar and feel anonymous. In my out-of-the-way haunts, I wasn’t a reporter, just another drunk. Perhaps, it was what I was best at. My career never took off. My marriage didn’t last. I had never been much of a father. But by damned, I could drink. In a bar, I could slip away for good. I was just another lost soul, huddled over a glass. Or maybe all that drinking was the reason for my failures.
I called it quits early, throwing a $5 tip on the bar and making it out of there. I had work to do. I needed answers. I headed for the morgue.
* * *
The rear of the county nursing home was parked thick with cars, all late-model American-made sedans, each one over-sized and over-powered. The kind favored by law enforcement.
Judging by the number of vehicles, Buzz could have sold tickets to the show. I knew better than to go inside now. The hot hallway outside the operating room would be jammed with cops who weren’t important enough to witness the autopsy. These officers would be pissed at the slight -- more than ready to deal harshly with any nosy reporter who came sniffing around.
I bided my time in my Fiesta, watching as, one by one, large men in uniforms and others in suits and short haircuts began leaving. I waited until just a few cars remained, then made my way through the open garage bay.
I walked past the old wheelchairs and rusting hospital beds, then passed through a doorway into a basement corridor where the temperature shot up a good 50 degrees. The first door on my right led to the operating room. I peeked through the wire-mesh glass.
A morgue assistant was cleaning up, while two techs were bagging key pieces of evidence. A man in a suit and still wearing a medical mask watched over everything. I did not disturb them.
I moved on instead to Buzz’s office, located further down the hot hallway. Through a window, I saw the coroner at his desk, which was piled high with file folders. He was writing on top of a large stack of papers. The cap was off a scotch bottle and a half-full glass rested next to Buzz’s writing hand. Deeper in the office, Langhorne’s lanky body was perched on a stool near Buzz’s work table, where the coroner used modeling clay to fill in the long lost faces of skulls. Call it a hobby.
I rapped a knuckle on the door, then tried the handle. It was locked.
Langhorne glanced up. He was munching one of his ubiquitous sunflower seeds. Upon seeing me, he dropped his head, as if in exasperation. But it was just theatrics, a hardass cop’s typical ribbing of the press. He moved to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. “Not you again.”
“It ain’t the Avon lady,” I said
. “What’s the word?”
Langhorne winced like I was stupid, then jerked his head for me to enter. After I was inside, Langhorne craned his neck outside the door, swinging his head in both directions to see who else might have been in the hall. Satisfied that I hadn’t been seen or heard, he closed and locked the door.
“Shit, Tellis,” the detective whispered conspiratorially as he joined me at Buzz’s desk. “You keep showing up in my proximity, somebody’s gonna put two and two together.”
“I ain’t too wild about being here, either, but I don’t have much choice. And I’m not just talking about the story anymore, either. If this guy’s working his way through Harrisburg reporters, then yours truly is on that list.”
Langhorne dipped his head grimly. “Law enforcement shares those concerns. But officially, the case hasn’t been ruled a serial.”
“Only a matter of time, now,” Buzz said, looking up from his desk, his wily eyes peering over his half-rim glasses. “Based on what we found.”
Buzz and Langhorne exchanged a knowing glance. I was tired of being left out of the loop.
“What the hell is it?” I demanded.
Buzz lowered his head to his papers and forms -- the legal paperwork that must be filed on behalf of the deceased.
“Sit down,” Langhorne gestured to the seats arrayed in front of Buzz’s 1950s-style metal desk. We sat.
“I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this,” the detective began, glancing in either direction as if still concerned about eavesdroppers. “This is an active investigation.”
“I know what it is, but you’ll tell me anyway. I’m part of this now.”
Langhorne gave a slight nod. “Yeah, you’re in the shit, all right.”
“So what is it?”