to ask anyone. I knew Loverne had been killed by the same
sick son of a bitch who’d killed Athena Paradis, Joe Mauser
and Jeffrey Lourdes. Another public figure. Another public
execution.
I called Amanda first.
“Jesus, Henry,” she said, picking up on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way back from the airport. I should be in the
city in twenty minutes.”
“Are you okay?”
How could I answer that?
“I’m fine,” I said.
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“You don’t sound fine. Talk to me.”
“I have to go right to the Gazette. They’re going to want
to know what the hell is going on.”
“Babe, I want to see you, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, this time my voice barely masking the
irritation, then hating myself for talking to her like that. “I
don’t know when I’ll be home, but I’ll talk to you then. I found
a lot in New Mexico. I think I have a line on who the killer
is. Or thinks he is.”
“Well, I have to work late, but if you need anything please
let me know. Hen, I’m so sorry about this. I know how close
you were to that family.”
It took a moment to gather myself.
“Henry, you there?”
“Yeah…listen, I’ll call you when I know more. I might
need one of those cyanide pills they give to soldiers in case
they’re captured.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m kidding.”
“Call me when you know more. Talk to Jack, I’m sure he
can help. I’ll see you at home. I love you.”
I paused for a moment, letting those words sink in.
“I love you, too.”
As soon as I hung up I called Jack’s private line. There was
no answer. I cursed and left a brief message.
“Jack, it’s Henry. Listen, I have something you need to
hear. I know why the killer is using that gun. Call me as
soon as you get this. I’ll need your help before I go into
the buzz saw.”
As my cab veered toward the Grand Central Parkway, the
sun began to dip below the clouds, turning New York a beautiful dark blue. I could feel sweat dripping down my neck.
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Putting Loverne’s murder aside, I had new information that
would be vital to the reporting on this story. I just hoped it
would be heard through all the noise.
The fare was thirty-five bucks. I tossed two twenties at the
driver and raced into the Gazette office. There were two other
days I’d felt this kind of queasy apprehension about going to
work. My first day in the office, where I met Wallace and
Paulina and nearly offered to polish Jack O’Donnell’s shoes.
My first day back on the job after running for my life from
Joe Mauser and the assassin Shelton Barnes. And now today.
I entered the silent lobby, heard my shoes clacking on the
marble floor. The security guard nodded hello and went back
to reading his newspaper. From his polite demeanor, I guessed
he hadn’t read Paulina’s article.
I swiped my pass and went to the Metro floor. The doors
opened, and standing right there was Evelyn Waterstone.
Short, cold, mean—I couldn’t tell if her reaction to my
presence was based on general surliness or was simply her
normal countenance.
“Parker,” she said.
“Hey, Evelyn,” I replied.
“Nice reporting on the ballistics story with Jack.”
“Thanks,” I stammered, trying to remember the last time
Evelyn had offered a pleasantry.
“Hope you’re still around tomorrow,” she added, before
walking away.
As I threaded my way toward my desk, I noticed that every
reporter, stringer and editor had stopped what they were doing
to watch me. I couldn’t look them in the eye.
Once again, I was the story.
I barely had time to sit down when Wallace was standing
over my desk. His eyes were tinged with red and the indents
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on his nose meant he’d stayed at the office overnight without
removing his glasses. His hair was askew, tie loosened, like
a school kid roughed up by the classroom bully. He pressed
his lips together and said, “Come with me.”
I felt eyes boring into my back as we walked to the elevator.
I didn’t have to ask where we were going. Wallace pressed
the button, then shoved his hands back into his pockets. Then
he looked at me.
“That was good work you did for Jack,” he said.
“I think there’s much more to these murders than the bal listic report,” I said. “I’ve been in New Mexico, I—”
“Later,” Wallace said. The doors opened. “Let’s go.”
My stomach surged upward with the motion of the elevator. I wondered if the feeling in my gut was what prisoners felt like before their execution. We got off on the
eighteenth floor. I’d heard about the eighteenth floor, but had
never been there. Unless you were nominated for a Pulitzer
or were about to have the rug pulled out from your career, you
never came up here. And I sure as hell wasn’t up for a Pulitzer.
The digital counter stopped at 18. The doors opened.
Everything looked newer up here; the wood paneling dark
and freshly polished, the newspapers in the waiting area
folded, and even the receptionist looked like she spent a little
more time at the gym than those on the Metro floor. She
guarded a narrow hallway with one set of double doors at the
end. The office of Harvey Hillerman, chairman and CEO of
the New York Gazette.
Wallace nodded at the receptionist.
“You can go right in,” she said.
“Thanks, Gloria.” Gloria went back to typing.
The doors swung open as we approached. Harvey Hiller-man was standing in front of us, holding the door open, an
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unlit cigar in his mouth. The end was sopping wet and looked
like a gangrenous limb that could detach at any moment.
His sleeves were a little too long for his wrists. His jacket
seemed to billow out. On the wall was a framed portrait of
Hillerman standing next to Bill Clinton, Hillerman’s pants
just a bit too baggy, as if the clothes he wore belonged to a
larger man.
Harvey Hillerman’s office was startlingly clear of any sort
of clutter. Lining his walls were several dozen framed page
ones from various Gazette editions. I scanned the headlines
while Harvey and Wallace exchanged awkward pleasantries.
April 4, 1996. Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber,
is arrested at his remote cabin in Montana after his brother,
David, notifies authorities.
February 5, 1997. O.J. Simpson is found liable in civil
court for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and
Ronald Goldman and ordered to pay $33,500,000 in damages.
August 18, 1998. During Grand Jury testimony, President
Bill Clinton admits to an “inappropriate” relationship with
July 17, 1999. John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife are
killed after the plane Kennedy was flying crashes into the
Atlantic Ocean.
December 14, 2000. Democratic Presidential nominee Al
Gore concedes the presidential election to George W. Bush,
over a month after election day.
September 12, 2001. The day after terrorists killed nearly
three thousand Americans.
March 3, 2002. The launch of Operation Anaconda, the
first large-scale battle during the United States’ war in Afghanistan since the Battle of Tora Bora in December, 2001.
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March 13, 2003. Elizabeth Smart is found alive nine months
after being kidnapped by two Morman fundamentalists.
December 14, 2003. United States military forces capture
Saddam Hussein.
December 27, 2004. An earthquake measuring between
9.1-9.3 on the Richter scale occurs in the Indian Ocean, triggering massive tsunamis over South and Southeast Asia
killing over 180,000 people.
“Murder, calamity and scandal,” Hillerman said. “They’re
usually the first things people look at.” My eyes leapt from
the frames to the chairman.
Harvey Hillerman was a tall man, gray neatly-coiffed
hair, with round tortoiseshell eyeglasses and a Montblanc
sticking out of his shirt pocket. His desk was covered with
shiny things: trophies, awards, metallic pens and things
encased in glass.
He motioned to the framed editions. “Each of those represents the bestselling newspaper of that calendar year.” He
gazed at them for a moment, reflective, then motioned to the
oversize chairs positioned at forty-five-degree angles in front
of his desk. “Wally, Henry, please sit,” he said. We both did so.
“Sir,” I said, “before you say anything can I just say
things didn’t happen the way the Dispatch said they did.
Paulina, she—”
“That’s enough, Parker,” Hillerman said. “Mind if I ask
where you’ve been the last few days?”
“New Mexico, sir.”
“New Mexico!” Hillerman exclaimed. “What in the bloody
hell were you doing in New Mexico, vacationing?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I was following the lead Jack and I touched
on in today’s paper. The gun angle. It goes deeper—”
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185
“Did you know about this trip to New Mexico?” Hillerman
asked Wallace.
“O’Donnell made me aware of it last night,” he said,
looking at his shoes.
Hillerman squinted his eyes as he stared at me. I didn’t
know whether to stare back or let the visual beatdown continue.
“So, Parker,” Hillerman finally said. His voice wasn’t reprimanding, it was…interested. “Tell us what you found in
New Mexico.”
I did a double take.
“Sir?”
“You went there for a reason. I’m hoping you didn’t come
up empty-handed.”
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “I was able to identify
the murder weapon as a Winchester rifle, model 1873. That
model is extremely rare, considering Winchester discontinued the gun a hundred years ago. There are barely a few
dozen still in working condition.”
Hillerman’s eyes widened.
“I figured the gun had to have been stolen from either a
private collection or a museum. Had a gun with that value
been stolen from a collector, they would have filed the requisite insurance claims. There are less than twenty museums
in North America with records of a Winchester 1873. Every
museum still had the Winchester in their possession, except
for one.”
“Let me guess. It was in New Mexico,” Hillerman said.
“That’s right.”
“And did you find this museum?”
“Yes, sir, I did. The Museum of Outlaws and Lawmen in
Fort Sumner.”
“And?” Hillerman said.
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Jason Pinter
“After getting railroaded at first by the manager, he eventually confessed that the model they were currently displaying was
a replica, that the real one had been stolen several years back.
They couldn’t afford the insurance or security measures and
couldn’t risk losing tourist dollars by simply closing the exhibit.”
“So the weapon this man has been using was stolen from
a New Mexico museum and then brought to New York where
it’s killed four people,” Hillerman said. “That’s an awful long
schlep, just to use a certain gun.”
“Not for this killer. He stole that gun for a reason,” I said.
“And why is that?”
“Because the gun he stole used to belong to Billy the Kid.”
Hillerman sat back in his chair. The cigar was still hanging
from his mouth, but he seemed to have forgotten about it.
“What you’re saying is, this killer is using Billy the Kid’s
old gun—as in the Billy the Kid—shoot-’em-up Billy the
Kid—to kill people in New York City.”
“Not just random people. He’s got a motive, a pattern.
The killer has some sort of connection to either the gun
itself or the Kid.”
Hillerman cocked his head and looked at Wallace. The
editor-in-chief hadn’t said a word in minutes. Wallace was
between a rock and a hard place: attempting to keep control
of his paper while having to account for his reporter being
eviscerated in articles by their biggest competitor.
“Wallace,” Hillerman said. “What do you think?”
Wallace seemed to come to life. “We’ve already gotten
three calls from Louis Carruthers’s office about Jack’s ballistics article. Apparently they knew about the similarities
and were hoping to withhold information until further notice.”
“But you’re saying Henry beat them to the punch.”
“That’s right.”
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“And this new information, the possible link between the
killer and the Kid, what have you heard on that?”
“Complete silence from the NYPD,” Wallace said. “And
they haven’t been silent about anything.”
“Which likely means they weren’t aware of it,” Hillerman
added.
“That’s right.”
Hillerman again leaned back in his chair, gnawed on the
end of his stogie, then threw the soggy mess into a trash can.
“Here’s what we do.” His voice was angry, passionate. My
heart was beating faster, my resolve growing stronger. “We
report the living hell out of this story. Henry,” he said, “I want
you to chase this down like a goddamn shark smelling blood. I
want you to get Lou Carruthers’s office on the line and get the
NYPD’s cooperation. Since you seem to have scooped them on
this, they’ll give you a big wet one in return for the intel. I want
copy for tomorrow’s national edition about both the stolen Winchester and link to Billy the Kid. Just imply there might be a relationship, I don’t want anyone jumping to conclusions, but we
need your museum manager to go on the record. You got me?”
“Absolutely,�
� I said.
“Right. Parker, get yourself home and clean up. You look
like you just got mugged in the Gobi desert or something. Hell
of a fucking job, Henry.”
“What about Paulina Cole’s story?” I asked.
“Fuck Cole,” Hillerman said. “Good, honest, unbiased reporting beats out tabloid bullshit any day of the week. You
give our readers something new about this case the Dispatch
doesn’t have, Paulina can pen hatchet jobs until her cooch
defrosts, we’ll sell more newspapers. Now get to work.”
Wallace and I were out the door before he could fish out
another cigar.
29
I got out of the subway and walked toward my apartment.
The last hour had been a whirlwind of debriefing, notes jotted
down with the penmanship of someone born without opposable thumbs, and the sketches for what I knew would be
a terrific and stunning article.
Jack filled me in on David Loverne’s murder, which was
nearly unbearable to listen to. I had to distance myself, look at
the situation objectively, try not to think that the murdered man
we were discussing had once hugged me, shook my hand, even
told me he expected great things from me. Had things turned
out differently, the man might have been my father-in-law.
I tried not to think about how it would leave Mya without
a father.
I tried not to think about Paulina’s article, written before
Loverne’s death. The two had to be related. I was still stunned
by the audacity and hatred steaming from Paulina’s article, but
Wallace assured me that I would face no repercussions from
Gazette management, and if need be they would defend me,
publicly. I declined. They’d done enough of that already. After
the debriefings, Wallace and I met with the Gazette’ s legal
team to draft a response for any reporters looking for a quote.
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The letter was brief. It said that Paulina’s story was careless
and inflammatory, and any more attempts by this allegedly
balanced news organization to libel without facts would be
met with legal reprimands from the Gazette, and moral reprimands from readers who wouldn’t tolerate muckraking.
That part was BS. Readers loved muckraking and, as much
as it pained us, we knew Paulina’s article would sell newspapers.
The details of David Loverne’s murder were gruesome in
both their brutality and efficiency.
After Paulina’s story ran in the Dispatch, in which she
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