Kill The Story

by John Luciew

Chapter 48

  I ended up at Coroner Buzz Swanson’s office, the only place I knew to go. I can’t say Buzz was happy to see me, but he wasn’t surprised either.

  “Was wonderin’ when you’d get around to me,” he said. “Been quite the run lately. Quite the chain of events.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Buzz gestured to a seat in front of his messy desk, then reached into one of its many drawers for a bottle. He raised it up, looking for my approval. “Interest you in a little hair of the dog?” the coroner said. “Looks like you could use it.”

  “Not right now. But thanks.”

  The corner’s expression soured. “You really have changed. Tryin’ to make yourself all respectable, that it? Tryin’ to play the game?” Buzz poured himself a healthy shot into an empty coffee cup.

  “Luckily, I don’t have that problem,” he continued. “My clients don’t give a damn whether I’m respectable or not. Fact, they never complain about anything.” Buzz raised his cup and smiled. “I’ll drink to your respectability,” he said, then took a long swallow.

  I felt embarrassed but didn’t know if it was for me or Buzz. “That’s not necessary,” I said. “I’m not putting on airs. God knows, I still enjoy tilting the bottle. It’s just this case. I can’t stop thinking about it. I thought, maybe you and me, we could hash it out, like the old days. Maybe it would help. There’s something there. I know it. I’m just not seeing it. Something that ties it all to Harrisburg. Has to be.”

  “Why me?” Buzz asked skeptically after another swallow of scotch. “Why not Langhorne? He’s your primary source these days, isn’t he?”

  I shifted in my seat. “I wouldn’t say that. The detective’s been helpful, true. But I wouldn’t call him my prime source. Besides, I’ve been having trouble reaching him lately.”

  “He won’t call you back, you mean.” Buzz corrected.

  “Well--”

  “Because he’s pissed that you spilled the beans to your girlfriend.”

  “I-I-I didn’t. And she’s not my girlfriend.” I halted my protest. “Wait a minute. How’d you know?”

  “Seems you’re not the only one who values my opinion,” Buzz smiled with pure satisfaction. “The detective’s been keeping me informed, just in case something about the case jogs my foggy memory. He knows I can keep my mouth shut, except when it comes to the drink.” Buzz took another swallow.

  “I didn’t leak it,” I said in my own defense. “I told Langhorne that Cassie knew about the link to Harrisburg. She’d connected three of the murders, but that’s all she knew when I left her last night.”

  I stared at Buzz. “Don’t you see? There’s another leak. You’ve got to tell Langhorne that he has a leak inside the investigation.”

  Buzz thought about it. “I tell him that, he’s gonna know I been talkin’ to you. And he’s not gonna like it. Not at this stage of the investigation. You and him will just have to work it out when he gets back. The good detective’s a little busy right now. He’s up in Buffalo. Hope he packed his rubbers and long undies. I hear they got a bit of snow up there.”

  “But you have been talking to him,” I anxiously said, leaning forward in my chair. “He called you from up there?”

  “Course he called. Seems they’ve made a discovery. Something not for public consumption.”

  “What?”

  Buzz’s face turned to stone.

  “You’ve got to tell me. I can help.”

  “Thing of it is, you probably can,” Buzz said. “But you’re gonna hafta keep your mouth shut. Not a word, got it? It won’t be your ass on the line, it’ll be mine. Something blows the case, Langhorne’s gonna be pissed. I wouldn’t put it past him to blow the whistle on me for my drinking. He’s a vindictive son of a bitch, and he don’t care who he burns. Look at his pissin’ match with the mayor.”

  “I promise, Buzz. Not a word. Let me in. Let me help. We gotta get this guy. Or-” I broke off my sentence. I didn’t want to say it out loud.

  Buzz finished my thought for me. “Or you could be next. That it?”

  I nodded.

  “So it’s more than a story this time? It’s personal.”

  I nodded again.

  “All right then,” he said. “Gotta admit, I’m not ready to see you on the slab. I’ll fill you in.”

  Buzz poured himself another drink before telling the story. When he faced me again, his glassy eyes were alive under bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

  “They found a body up there,” he said. “The driver of the plow truck. Seems he wasn’t so eager to turn over the keys, so the killer shot him.”

  “There’s been nothing on the news. How’d they keep it quiet?”

  “Another plow truck driver made the discovery overnight, when most of Buffalo was still crippled by the storm. Wasn’t too hard to keep a lid on it. The killer took lengths to hide the body, though. Buried it under a ton of salt in one of those roadside salt domes. You know, where the plow trucks go to reload?”

  I nodded.

  “Cops think the killer was counting on the body staying lost a while,” Buzz continued. “They figure they can keep it quiet for twelve, maybe twenty-four hours, before it leaks. Right now, the cops and the Feds will take any advantage they can get. They put a rush on the post. Body’s on the slab as we speak. Langhorne said he’d call with the preliminary results. ”

  “I saw they found the plow truck.”

  “It was clean. No prints. But get this.” Buzz paused for effect. “The killer had one of those mini TVs on the dash. It wasn’t the driver’s. Department of Transportation says it’s against regulations.”

  “So the killer could watch his performance,” I said.

  “On live TV,” Buzz added. “He watched himself run down that reporter on live TV. Unfuckingbelievable.”

  “What about a note?” I asked the question but already knew the answer.

  Buzz dipped his head. “That too. It was in the glove box. Message was, ‘Don’t believe the media snow job.’ It was written on a page from the Herald, dated 1980.”

  I felt ice run down my back. “He planned everything, this guy.”

  “Looks like it. Must’ve had a second vehicle waiting in the parking lot where he dumped the truck, too. Cops found another abandoned beater near the entrance to the salt dome. They figure that was his ride out there. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the next plow truck to come in for a load.”

  “But the killer would have to know how to drive one of those things and operate the plow,” I pointed out. “It’s not like hopping in a Ford.”

  Buzz shrugged. “The guy’s up on a lot of things.”

  “I’ll say. He’s a marksman, an arsonist, a butcher and now a truck driver. Quite the resume. And he’s always ten steps ahead. Maybe Langhorne’s right about it being multiple killers.”

  “We’ll see.” Buzz flipped up a hand. “We got a body now. Whoever’s doing this, they didn’t want us to have that corpse. It’s something. Damn good thing they were going through lots of salt on I-190. Damn good break for us.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  Chapter 49

  The phone rang, but Buzz didn’t answer it. Not at first. The coroner insisted upon waiting until after the second ring. It didn’t matter if it was the president calling or some mealy-mouthed telemarketer. It was just the way he was. For me, they were the longest two rings in history.

  “Swanson,” the coroner finally said. He glanced at me and nodded. It was Langhorne.

  Buzz reached for a pen and jotted notes on a yellow legal pad. He didn’t say much, however. He let Langhorne do the talking. But the meaning was pretty clear. They had found something up in Buffalo.

  I leapt from my seat and circled around Buzz’s big desk to see what he was writing. There was a round watermark on the pad from the coroner’s ever-present scotch glass, and his script was nearly illegible. I couldn’t make it out.

  Buzz hummed into the receiver. “That is inter
esting. You don’t see much of that.” Another pause. “Uh-ha. Yes,” Buzz said. “I’ll check the files and get back to you. Yes, detective. Off the record, of course.”

  Buzz replaced the receiver but didn’t speak. He was contemplating Langhorne’s information. I couldn’t wait, not one second longer.

  “What’s interesting?” I demanded.

  Buzz started, as if just remembering I was in the room. “Huh?”

  “C’mon, Buzz. What did Langhorne say?”

  “He said I should keep my mouth shut, is what he said.”

  “They found something,” I pressed. “What is it?”

  “A bullet. A lead slug. A big, heavy goddamn lead slug. There’s something--” His words trailed off.

  “What?”

  “That’s why he didn’t want us to find the body.” the coroner said. “He used some kinda rare gun. Weird ammo, too. I feel like I should know this.”

  “Tell me exactly what Langhorne said,” I said. “Exactly.”

  Buzz looked up at me. “The slug was a .455-caliber. Heavy -- 18 grams. Like from one of those old British revolvers. The kind they used in World War I. Why do I know this?”

  “A Webley?” I said. My throat was dry as sandpaper and my words came out hushed. Twenty-nine years fell away in an instant.

  Buzz stared up at me from under his droopy eyelids. “Yeah,” he said. “Like a Webley. How did you know that?”

  “I watched one of those guns kill a man, not ten feet in front of me,” I said. “I saw what one of those big bullets can do. Had a front-row seat when a man put that gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It was 1980.”

  “Stanhope,” Buzz whispered. “Clayton Stanhope.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” I said.

  “Because he’s dead,” Swanson shot back. “The case is ancient history.”

  “Not for somebody, it isn’t. For someone, it’s very fresh and very painful.”

  Buzz rose from his desk. “We can match the slug. Luckily, my predecessor kept memorabilia from all his most famous cases. The slug that went through Stanhope’s brain should be around here somewhere.”

  Buzz stepped to the white medical cabinets that occupied an entire wall of his office and began rooting through them. The coroner’s slightly shaky hands ran over jars containing organs floating in formaldehyde and bags containing old crime-scene evidence. He scavenged until he came across a small jar labeled with a white piece of medical tape that read, “C. Stanhope.”

  I could hear the lead slug rattling inside the jar as Buzz pulled it from the cabinet. The coroner held the container level with his face, then adjusted his half-glasses on his nose to inspect his discovery. Buzz shook the jar, producing another rattling sound, then smiled. “Who says my filing system is fucked up?”

  “We gotta call Langhorne,” I said. “We have to see if the slugs match.”

  “Right,” Buzz said, rattling the jar once more for good measure, then making for the phone.

  “Put him on speaker,” I said.

  “He won’t like it.”

  “He won’t care,” I said. “Not after this.”

  Langhorne answered in his usual gruff tone.

  “We have something,” Buzz announced into the speakerphone. “Another slug. A .455-caliber. We think it’ll match the one from the plow truck driver.”

  “What?” Langhorne’s voice bellowed from the little black box on Buzz’s desk. “Who’s we?”

  “I’m here, too, Dave,” I said.

  “Fucking great,” he said. “Didn’t tell your girlfriend enough the last time? Had to come back for more. That it?”

  “I told you, I didn’t tell her anything,” I shot back. “Not about the murders matching old news stories. There’s another leak.”

  “She hung our asses out to dry.” The detective’s voice raged from the speaker. “Our whole fucking case. She put it out there for everyone to see. For the killer to see what we had.”

  “I’m sorry, Dave. It wasn’t me.”

  “Swanson, who told you to play fast and loose with my case?” Langhorne focused his fury on Buzz now. “Who the fuck told you to release anything to a reporter? A goddamn reporter?”

  Buzz responded in a steady voice in hopes that reason would prevail. “This reporter may have just broken the case, detective. I think you should listen.”

  “Why should I? I can read about it in tomorrow’s Times.”

  “That won’t happen,” I promised.

  “The slug, detective,” Buzz continued. “Do you want to hear about the slug?”

  “So it’s another .455?” Langhorne repeated, his tone was finally settling down. “Where’d it come from?”

  “A dead person,” Buzz said. “It’s where I get all my trinkets.”

  “No shit,” Langhorne said. “Which dead person?”

  “A politician,” the coroner elaborated. “From 1980.”

  “Clayton Stanhope,” I added. “Former Pennsylvania state treasurer. Everybody called him Stan. It was a bit before your time here, I guess.”

  “So who killed him?” Langhorne asked.

  “He did,” Buzz put in. “Right in the middle of a fucking press conference. Tellis, here, had a front row seat.”

  “And the others?” Langhorne asked. “The murdered reporters?”

  “They were there, too,” I said. “Dykstra, Bressenhan, O’Connell and Debbie Moore’s father. All of them. Hell, O’Connell filmed the whole goddamn thing. One station even had the balls to run the footage. You can still find it on the Internet on a few of those snuff-film, dead-body sites.”

  “And you, Tellis,” Langhorne said. “What did you do?”

  What didn’t I do? I thought.

  I had been the leader of the band. I kept a steady drumbeat going about shady computer contracts with the state. Computer contracts that Stanhope controlled and that he just might have profited from.

  The digital age was dawning. There would be millions in state money for whichever technology company won the state contracts and got in on the ground floor. It just so happened, I had a source with a rival company who questioned the deal Stanhope had made with a competitor. I kept writing about it until the Feds got a whiff of the stink. Something was rotten, all right. Though looking back, I was never quite sure what it was. I never knew for sure if Stanhope was actually dirty, or whether my source was just taking me for a ride in order to get his company the deal. But it was a good story, so I kept on writing.

  Eventually, the Feds went on the warpath. They turned up the heat until a few of the company officials flipped. In exchange for some very light sentences, the officials agreed to testify against Stanhope. They sang the tune federal prosecutors and the frenzied press wanted to hear. Namely, that Stanhope demanded a quarter of a million dollars worth of kickbacks in exchange for awarding the contract.

  Stanhope claimed the whole thing was a railroad job and a travesty of justice. But the federal jury didn’t buy it. They convicted him on conspiracy and bribery charges. Suddenly, Stanhope was staring at a very long prison sentence, something like 60 years.

  Stan had other ideas. When he called his press conference a few days before his federal sentencing, everyone assumed it was to announce his resignation from public office.

  Stan ended his life instead.

  “Me?” I said, answering Langhorne. “I just wrote about it.”

  “So why am I just hearing about this now?” the detective barked.

  “Guy’s been dead for nearly thirty fucking years, that’s why,” Buzz answered.

  “You say you have the slug,” Langhorne continued. “What about the gun?”

  “No,” Buzz said. “No reason to have kept it. It was a suicide. Besides, the gun was rare. Worth a lot of money. Couple a grand, at least.”

  “Rare?” Langhorne asked.

  “A British Webley,” I said. “That’s the reason for the odd ammo in your victim. Stanhope was a collector. Even kept some of
his rarest weapons in his state office. That’s why it was so easy for him to smuggle a gun into the press conference. All he had to do was take it out of the display case in his office and slip it into his brief case.”

  “So who has the gun now?” Langhorne asked. “This guy have any family?”

  “A wife and kid,” I answered. “A boy. He wasn’t more than eight or ten at the time. They moved out of state right after the estate was settled. I have a copy of the will. I kept all my files. They’re in my basement collecting dust. Something never sat right with me about it. Stanhope went to his grave maintaining his innocence. His final plea was that the case would be reopened. That someone would look into it and clear his name. I must’ve looked at those files a hundred times. I never found anything to clear him. But I never found anything that absolutely proved he was guilty, either. No hard evidence of a bribe. Nothing in writing. And no trace of the money. Just the testimony of those turncoat company execs.”

  “We need to find that gun,” Langhorne said. “I’m going to send an officer over there right away for the slug. We’ll get it to the Feebs and see if the ballistics match. Then we gotta find whoever has that weapon. Telly, you mind checking your files?”

  “No,” I lied. “I don’t mind.”

  I couldn’t tell Langhorne or Buzz that I’d spent many years trying to forget the Clayton Stanhope story. It was my first big break, a story I had ridden to the top of the Capitol press corps. But I had ruined a man’s life in the process.

  Back then, I was young, cocky and confident. So sure of myself, so self-righteously positive of the facts. I never so much as second-guessed what I was writing. Not until I watched Clayton Stanhope blow his brains out right in front of me. Then I couldn’t stop second-guessing myself.

  When Stanhope killed himself, everyone told me it was my vindication. Stan couldn’t live with his guilt, my colleagues said. He couldn’t face a life in prison. So he shot himself, and I had won. My editors slapped me on the back. The publisher even gave me a raise

  But Stanhope’s suicide raised too many questions. Questions I couldn’t answer. Questions that nagged at me. Questions that I tried to drink away, only to end up drowning my career, ruining my marriage and driving off my only daughter.