by Rick Mofina
“Vic, I couldn’t reach a key source.”
“You’re losing your magic, kid,” Beale joked.
“Just my mind. Look, hold my psychic exclusive until tomorrow.”
“Fine, but I’ve got orders to let Fritz know.”
“Sure.”
Jason drove home, exhausted.
So exhausted he forgot to call Grace in Homicide.
Forgot all about the update she’d told him was coming.
22
Flames lashed from the big steel drum in the backyard where Axel prepared to burn trash. He pulled a brown paper bag from the items heaped near the drum and studied its contents:
Nadine’s white sneakers.
There they were. Wrapped in the morning newspapers with headlines and pictures telling every damned person in Seattle what the hell she was wearing on her feet when she grabbed the kid.
Stupid bitch.
Axel glared back at the house; he could hear the shower hissing and Nadine humming.
Humming.
All of his careful plans gone to hell and she was humming. Lost in her own fairy-tale world. Made him want to grab that two-by-four over there, march into the house, kick down that bathroom door, and—
Hold on. There’s a way out of this.
He stared at the shoes and the flames. Don’t burn them. Not yet. And the goddamned van. Common sense screamed at him to get rid of it. He would, but not just yet. He had to think. Consider the circumstances. This was not supposed to happen. He hadn’t expected this at all. She’d destroyed everything.
So leave her.
No.
Their trail was too messy. Too many loose ends he had to take care of. But how? There was no time and there was too much heat. Think it through. But he’d never seen this coming. No hint of it. Certainly not when she’d started sending him letters. That was how they’d met. She was his pen pal during his last months inside.
“I ache for the chance to start over with a new man who needs salvation, redemption, and love, like me,” she wrote.
She told him how she was alone in this world. No family. No friends. Just a single mom raising a new baby by herself after she’d fled her ex who would beat her after a few drinks. That was what she wrote.
Sure, whatever, he thought, after she’d sent him her picture.
She was a knockout. And that was no lie. Not like the desperate pigs who wrote to inmates. Nadine was the real thing. Actually, better-looking than her picture. And she had a fantastic body, which she put to good use as soon as he got out. Nonstop for three rainy days in a motel off of 1-5.
At the start, when Axel first hooked up with her, things went according to his plan. Nadine Getch was what he needed on the outside. It was good that she’d had a kid because it was exactly what he needed her for. Not for that shit about salvation and redemption. Give me a break. He’d lied about that to string her along. And not for that happy family in a little house dream she was chasing.
That was actually kinda funny.
No, Nadine was perfect for his secret, longer-term setup.
He needed a woman he could manipulate. A woman who was vulnerable and somewhat simpleminded. The fact she had a kid made his plan even better. But there was no sign of her baby when they’d first met. Come to think of it, not even a picture. He should’ve pegged that as the first clue of trouble. Because back then, whenever he’d asked Nadine about her kid, she began to cry.
“It’s a long story and it hurts so much,” she told him, explaining how she’d gotten sick from her medication, from pills she took for the injuries she’d suffered from her ex beating on her. So sick that she couldn’t take care of her baby.
She said she got a lot of good counseling and some money through a church group. The group had put her in touch with some people from a community shelter who were taking care of her baby until she got better.
“And I am getting better now that I have you,” she told him late one night a couple of weeks ago. “I still see my counselors whenever I want to, and they let me visit my baby. They tell me I’ll be able to bring him home soon. Then we’ll all be together like a family. In our new lives, like we talked about.”
The thing was, she always drove off alone to her appointments, which were at all hours. And she never wanted Axel to go with her. A few weeks back, he’d pressed her on it but she never really answered because that was when she’d returned from a session with some file folders.
And news.
“We can pick him up in a few days! Oh God, I’m so happy!”
This time she invited him to drive her to Ballard, where she directed him to park on a quiet tree-lined street. They waited as Nadine bit her nails, fidgeted, and scanned the neighborhood while eyeing a neat little two-story house several doors away.
“That’s where my baby’s been staying. I’ve been coming here almost every day to see him.”
They sat there waiting for almost an hour with Axel growing impatient.
“We’re early. Sorry, I’m anxious,” Nadine kept repeating until a woman emerged, pushing a stroller down the street. “There! We have to follow her.”
“Follow her? Why?”
“I’m sorry, this is embarrassing. I’m so excited. I messed up on the details. Keep a good distance but follow her. I forgot, we’re going to do this wherever she’s going. I thought it was at the house, sorry. Oh God, don’t lose her! Oh God, this is really going to happen!”
Axel kept the van back half a block, puzzled and growing pissed. This whole thing was nuts, he thought, turning onto a street with several small stores. This didn’t feel right.
“There! At Kim’s Corner Store! Go there! Now!”
Then it all whirled before his eyes like a movie. The baby unattended in front of the store. Nadine jumped from the van and took the kid from his stroller. The woman they’d followed shot from the store and leapt onto the hood, clawing at the wipers, screaming, “My baby!” Nadine was clutching the bawling kid and screaming back at her.
“Get off! Liar! Drive! Get her off! She’s a goddamned liar! He’s my baby and you know it! Liar! Drive! Drive!”
Axel lurched the van and they roared away, clipping people in traffic, feeling as if the world must be watching them; thinking sure to Jesus he was now implicated in some bad shit that was going to put him back in prison.
He didn’t know how, but they made it safely back to their house. He pulled the van into the garage out of sight and started working on finding an escape from the nightmare.
Before a police SWAT team showed up.
In the aftermath, the news reported that the woman, Maria Colson, was going to die. There were alerts going everywhere, the FBI was involved with every police force you could think of, there was video showing a fragment of the van, a psychic, a sketch of a woman, and evidence of Nadine’s white shoes.
It had all gone to hell.
Sooner or later they were coming for them.
Axel had to find a way out. A way to turn it around because he had big plans and he was not going back to Coyote Ridge. No way in hell would he let that happen. But he couldn’t turn Nadine in to the FBI. Not with his record. No one would believe he was innocent of anything.
He was in too deep.
He looked to the house, listening to the shower. He looked at the flames licking from the barrel. He looked at her shoes in the bag, then the other items heaped by the barrel. He glanced toward the garage, knowing he had to get rid of the van. He just needed a bit more time.
He collected everything and headed into the house.
There was one way out.
Only one.
23
Stiff from two hours of troubled sleep, Grace Garner untangled her sheets, reached for her phone, and called the hospital.
“ICU.”
“This is Grace Garner. Has there been any change in Maria Colson’s condition?”
“No change, Detective.”
“Is my partner there?”
“Detecti
ve Perelli is sleeping in the lounge. Would you like to talk to him?”
“No, thanks. Please tell him that I’ll call later.”
Grace went to her bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face while thinking of Dylan, the odds against him being alive, and how badly they needed a break in this case.
She slid on SPD jogging pants, an academy sweatshirt, tucked her hair under a Mariners ball cap, and grabbed her keys, phone, and change. Then she rode the elevator down to the lobby to get the morning papers from the boxes in front of her building.
The air felt good on her skin. The street was wet, early fog was lifting, and the boxes’ spring-loaded doors clanged as she withdrew crisp copies of the Times, the Post-Intelligencer, and the Mirror.
As the elevator ascended, she found a measure of hope in the news. The late-night confirmation of the shoe impression evidence was the top story with pictures in the Times and the P-I. It could yield a solid lead. Stepping from the elevator, she looked at the Mirror’s front page and stopped in her tracks.
What the hell?
A story about a potential key suspect in the Colson case was lined above the fold in a Mirror Exclusive, by Jason Wade.
Suspect?
The item ran with a graphic of an anonymous note over an enlarged picture of a sketch with the headline: “The Woman Who Abducted Dylan Colson?” The sketch lacked detail, identifying the suspect only as Diane M. F.
Who? What the hell was this? She didn’t have a clue about this.
She snapped through the inside pages. Nothing in the Mirror about the shoe. Nothing at all. Shaking her head, cursing aloud, she read every word of Jason’s story, then reached for her phone.
The ringing jerked Jason awake.
“This is ‘the thing’ you were working on, Wade?”
“Who’s this?”
“You promised to alert me before it ran. You gave me your word.”
“Grace?”
“This is how you keep your word, Wade? Pulling a stunt like this? I thought you were different; that maybe we could establish some sort of trust. Maybe help each other. Turns out you’re just a lying hack trying to sell papers.”
“Hey! I don’t know what you’re talking about. All right?”
“You don’t? Well, it’s all over your front page.”
He hadn’t seen any morning papers.
“Just a minute. Don’t hang up.”
He rushed down the stairs to the lower-floor apartments. He didn’t subscribe to Seattle’s newspapers because he got them in the newsroom. This morning he stole the Times, the Mirror, and the P-I from the doorsteps of his neighbors, mentally promising to replace them.
The shoe evidence was news to him.
Man.
Then he saw the Mirror’s front page and his stomach twisted.
He picked up the phone. “Grace, I didn’t write that story. I mean, it’s my story, but I don’t know what happened. I swear.”
He could hear the anger in her breathing before she hung up.
Steeped in intrigue, the story outlined his call and how he’d picked up the tipster’s envelope at the park. It left off the suspect’s last name. A black bar obscured it in the reproduction of the note. The article quoted John Chenoweth, the expert with the psychic foundation in New York, and a retired Chicago detective who’d worked with psychics, giving the piece enough balance for skepticism. Who wrote this? Where did this stuff come from? He’d never called these guys. He’d never heard of the Chicago cop. Coming to the end of the article, he found his answer in the tag: (With files from Fritz Spangler).
As soon as he arrived in the newsroom he began hunting for Spangler. You bastard, he thought.
“He’s in the morning news meeting, Jason,” Rosemary said while taking calls coming through the news department’s switch-board. “You’ve got twenty-two messages already this morning on your psychic story. Some producers with the daytime talk shows want to interview you.”
“No, they don’t. They want to use me to get to the ‘psychic’.”
“CBS News in New York just called too.”
“Look, Rosemary...” He searched in vain for other news editors. Everyone was in the meeting. The few reporters on duty were working the phones on stories. “Have you heard why, or how, we missed this story?” He held up the Seattle Times with the shoe impression article.
“That one? Oh, they caught it late.” She rummaged on her desk. “The night desk caught it on the fly for the fourth edition. Guess we missed most of the run, but we have it. See?”
She handed him a copy of the Mirror, the front page with the psychic story and the shoe evidence. The series of little stars near the date and price indicated a late-night replate to update the front page.
Spangler passed by him. “Helluva story.”
“I want to talk to you.”
Jason followed him into his office and tossed the Mirror on his boss’s desk.
“When I left, you assured me that we’d hold this story until I’d reached Chenoweth and I confirmed the information with my sources. You betrayed me and burned my sources.”
Spangler loosened his tie.
“I considered the circumstances, made a few calls, and decided we’d go with it. I wrote it.”
“You could’ve done the courtesy of calling me.”
“There was no time, and I couldn’t risk you telling your sources.”
“Jesus Christ, Fritz, either we’re on the same team here or we’re not!”
Spangler’s eyebrows rose and his face tightened as he shut the door.
“Sit down, shut up, and listen. You obtained your information while in the employ of the Seattle Mirror. The company has ownership of any material you gather. And I, as management, have the authority to determine when and how the company will make use of it. I exercised my authority, which resulted in an exclusive with your name on it.”
“But we’ve got absolutely no confirmation on that material. Zero.”
“We took it as far as we could.”
“Not as far as I wanted to go with it. The story was not developed.”
“You seem to forget an expensive news library search. The rest is up to the police. They now have a lead thanks to us.” Spangler turned to his notes from the morning story meeting. “It was the right way to go under the circumstances. The Associated Press moved a hit on our psychic tip. We’re drawing attention. Got crews from CNN, FOX, and ABC coming in—and CBS too, I see.”
Jason looked toward the newsroom and shook his head. All bull.
“Today, I want you to go to the investigators, see if they can confirm our psychic suspect. Are you listening to me?”
“Your style of journalism sucks. It’s dangerous.”
“Excuse me? Did you just say you’re resigning?”
Jason drew his hand over his reddened face.
“No.”
“Good. I have approved the library to spend a little more to go to some private data firms to continue a full-court press in the search for Diane M. Fielderson. Now, I suggest you get to work.”
Jason fumed for the rest of the morning and through lunch, which was a bowl of mushroom soup eaten at his desk. Every cop source he called couldn’t help him. Or wouldn’t. The news library made no further progress than it had the day before in attempting to confirm the existence of a Diane M. Fielderson, born in the early 1980s in the United States or Canada.
For a moment he considered calling his old man for help, now that he was working as a private investigator, but he didn’t want to get him involved. Besides, something was gnawing at him. Something he’d overlooked or had forgotten at the outset of this psychic caper.
He tried to recall what it was, as he got fresh coffee from the newsroom kitchen. Passing by the photodesk, he was on the verge of remembering when he saw a group of well-dressed people huddled around his desk, then recognized Grace Garner, with her partner, Kirk Dupree from the FBI, and a couple of other guys in suits.
“Jason Wade?”<
br />
“Yes.”
Jason’s eyes went round the group meeting ice-cold expressions, including Grace’s.
“We’d like the original note and sketch and all related original documents you cite in your article here, pertaining to Diane M. F.,” Dupree said. “We’ll also need a list of the names of all people who handled the original documents.”
“I don’t think I can give that up. You know, freedom of the—”
Dupree nodded to one of the men, who unfolded some legal papers.
“We’ve got a search warrant signed by a federal judge.”
Newsroom staff had gathered around Jason’s desk.
“I’m Fritz Spangler, Metropolitan Editor. Who are you?”
IDs were flashed, then Dupree handed Spangler the warrant. After reading it, Spangler said, “We’ve got federal privacy laws that prohibit police searches of newsrooms.”
“There are exceptions that concern the material we’re interested in,” Dupree replied as he pointed to a paragraph, “as we have reason to believe that the immediate seizure of such material is necessary to prevent the death of, or serious bodily injury to, a human being.”
“Well, we’ve published the sketch and the source’s letter.”
“Are you refusing to cooperate?” Dupree asked.
Spangler indicated his office and led Jason and the small group inside. He punched a number on his phone then put his call on speaker.
“Dixon, Niederman, and Bailey.”
“Sarah, it’s Fritz at the Mirror. Can you get Winston on the line?”
“He’s in a meeting with a client, Mr. Spangler.”
“Get him now, please. I’ve got the FBI in my office with a search warrant.”
Fifteen minutes later, after the Mirror’s legal counsel, Winston Bailey, advised Spangler to cooperate, one of the FBI agents pulled on white latex gloves and placed the documents in evidence bags.
Jason looked at Grace, who looked away, her expression cold.
“By the way, you’re going to be in tomorrow’s paper.” Spangler nodded to the newsroom.