Murder at The Washington Tribune: A Capital Crimes Mystery

by Margaret Truman

  She pulled it back. “Peter,” she said, “are you actually suggesting that we drop the divorce and get back together?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  It crossed her mind that now that he was out of work, he might be looking for her to support him until he found another job. But she didn’t express that callous thought. Instead, she said, “That’s out of the question. It didn’t work, Peter. We both know that. We’re better off not being with each other.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I thought you were serious about the woman you were seeing,” she said.

  “There wasn’t anything there,” he said. “It was purely physical.”

  On whose part? she wondered.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked. “Anyone you’re serious about?”

  “No, I—I really don’t think that’s any of your concern.”

  “Then you aren’t even willing to give it a try?” he said. “Even for a period of time, say a few months?”

  She shook her head. “Afraid not, Peter.”

  This time, her hand touched his. “It’s just better this way,” she said, withdrawing her hand and checking her watch. “Look,” she said, “I have to be up early, and I have a very busy day ahead of me. I’m glad we talked, Peter. I don’t mind staying in touch, but—”

  “I talked to my lawyer today,” he said, motioning for the waiter.

  “I meant to ask about that. When are the papers coming through? It’s been forever since we settled on the terms of the divorce and—”

  “We have to talk about that,” he said.

  “Talk about what?”

  “The terms. My attorney feels they should be changed in light of my current financial situation.”

  “Your current financial situation?” It came out in a burst of incredulity.

  “I don’t have a job. The market is tight, especially in this economic climate. My unemployment benefits will run out. Besides, my attorney says that because you have a steady job and no one to support besides yourself, it’s only fair that you contribute money to me—or, at least, not expect me to pay alimony to someone like you who has a good job and obviously doesn’t need the money.”

  “Your attorney is a scumbag!” she said, loud enough to cause the waiter, who’d brought the check, to frown and quickly walk away.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, trying for her hand again, but it had joined the other one on her lap.

  “This is why you got me to come here tonight, to try and get me to agree to change the terms of the divorce?”

  “Keep your voice down,” he whispered.

  “I’ll talk as loud as I please, damn it,” she said. “Is this why you dressed up like some down-and-out bum? I was wrong. You’re a scumbag, Peter, you and your goddamn attorney. You tell him he’s a tacaño. For your information, and in case your mother wonders, that’s Spanish for ‘blood-sucking leech.’ And you, Peter are—”

  “You don’t have to make a scene,” he said. “And don’t say bad things about my mother.”

  She had a fleeting, satisfying vision of pulling out her Glock and shooting him in the head. She glanced at the check and said, “The total is sixteen dollars and forty-five cents, Peter. Twenty percent is three-twenty-five. Don’t stiff the guy. Unlike you, he makes an honest living.”

  It took her a few hours to unwind at home, aided by a glass of dark Jamaican rum and Tito Puente on the stereo. Her anger eventually dissipated enough so that she was able to get into bed and to fall asleep. One of her final thoughts before drifting off was that if there had ever been any doubts about ending the marriage to Peter Swayze, tonight put them to their final rest. The last thing she remembered before blacking out was chuckling.

  “He sounds like a real jerk,” Dungey said.

  “He’s a type, that’s all. I almost shot him in the bar.”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, it did cross my mind. Did you win your game last night?”

  “We lost, but not by much.”

  “Where to next?”

  “Lunch. I’m hungry. How about a slice?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Wilcox’s interview with Colleen McNamara’s mother and sister didn’t produce much in the way of material for the next article, although he did lead the sister into saying that Colleen had expressed fears of walking alone at night in downtown D.C.

  “Did she ever discuss the murder that happened at the Tribune, my paper?” he asked.

  “Yes, she did,” replied the sister. “She said she’d been at the newspaper a few times and thought security wasn’t good. In fact, she told her boss at the station that they should make their security better.”

  “Interesting,” Wilcox said. “What about men she was seeing? Did she talk about them with you?”

  “There was only Philip. They met right after she came here. There was no one else in her life.”

  The mother, who’d been mostly silent, chimed in. “She never should have been out walking alone with killers loose on the streets.”

  Wilcox noted the comment in his pad.

  “And why didn’t Philip walk her home?” the mother added in a low voice. “I never have trusted him.”

  “Mom, please,” the sister said. To Wilcox: “Anything else?”

  “No. You’ve been generous with your time at what must be a very painful moment. I appreciate it.”

  “I hope he rots in hell.”

  “Who?” Wilcox asked.

  “The serial killer.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Wilcox said.

  Colleen’s fiancé was arriving at the apartment as Wilcox went down the steps to the sidewalk.

  “Sorry I couldn’t be here,” Connor said.

  “That’s okay,” Wilcox said. “They’re nice ladies.”

  Philip nodded. Wilcox thanked him for his cooperation, and said he’d be back in touch if anything new developed.

  Rick Jillian and Kathleen Lansden were waiting for him in the newsroom when he returned to the Trib.

  “How did you do getting quotes from single women?” he asked Jillian.

  “Great,” he replied, laying a computer printout in front of Wilcox. “I got seven good quotes, names, et cetera. One of ’em gave me her phone number.”

  Kathleen laughed. “You must not look like the serial killer type.”

  “I guess not,” Jillian said. “Hey, check out this one.” He pointed to one of the quotes. “She’s a stripper in that club, Archibald’s, on K Street. I figured a serial killer might hang out in a place like that, so I popped in and talked to one of the girls.”

  “For research purposes only,” Kathleen said, rolling her eyes.

  “That’s right,” Jillian said. “Read what this stripper—her name is Coco—said.”

  Wilcox read the quote: “ ‘Most of the men who come in here are nice guys, businessmen, tourists, decent guys. But sometimes there’s a creep, you know, a weirdo who looks like a serial killer.’ ”

  “Serial killers don’t usually look like creeps,” Wilcox said.

  “I know,” Jillian said, “but I thought it was worth a shot.”

  Wilcox nodded as he read the rest of the quotes. “Good job,” he said.

  “I struck out,” Kathleen said. “Every escort service I talked to refused to give the names of the women who work there. Can’t blame them, I guess.”

  “Did you specifically ask about Mary Jane Pruit?” Wilcox asked.

  “Sure. One guy who works at the Starlight agency—he ended up asking whether I’d be interested in working for him—he seemed surprised when I mentioned her name. It’s in my notes.”

  Wilcox was pleased that Kathleen had been unable to ascertain whether Kaporis’s roommate worked as a paid escort. It was an avenue he wasn’t interested in following, and he hoped Morehouse would drop it. It was more than just his discomfort with the scenario. His boss seemed unreasonably anxious to pursue avenues other than those involving Trib employees. As hardnosed as Mor
ehouse could be about generating news stories that resonated with the public, he seemed to be leaning even more these days toward tabloid journalism.

  Wilcox spent the next three hours writing his follow-up article for the next day’s paper, ending it with the quote from Colleen McNamara’s mother: “I hope he (the serial killer) rots in hell!” Morehouse had cleared front-page space, and Wilcox wrote to fill the length that had been set aside. He worked uninterrupted until nine, when he sent the finished piece to Morehouse over the internal computer network, and ten minutes later went to his boss’s office.

  “Nice,” Morehouse said. “But where’s the history slant I suggested?”

  “I didn’t have time, Paul. I have Rick and Kathleen working on it for the next piece.”

  “Okay. It’s good to see you back among the living. I was getting worried about you.”

  “I never left it,” Wilcox said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Oh, by the way, Joe. Hawthorne came in this afternoon. He said you had lunch together at the press club.”

  “Right.”

  “He says you’ve got a bug up your rear end about him.”

  “Me? Why would he say that?”

  “Ask him. If he’s right, get rid of it. I don’t need discord.”

  “Sure, Paul.”

  “Good work, Joe. I see why I hired you twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty-three,” Wilcox corrected.

  He’d packed up things to bring home with him and had taken a few steps in the direction of the elevators when his ringing phone stopped him. It might be Georgia or Roberta, he reasoned, and picked up.

  “Joe Wilcox here,” he said.

  “Hello, Joe,” the male caller said.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t think so, but I would love to get together—for old time’s sake.”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Michael, Joe.”

  “Michael?”

  “Your brother, Michael. I don’t blame you for being shocked, Joe. It’s been a very long time.”

  “Where are you calling from, Michael?”

  “My apartment here in Washington.”

  “Washington? You’re here?”

  “Yes. I thought we might have a drink together. My treat.”

  “Now? I can’t. I—”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I, ah—I’ll call you. Let me have your number.”

  “I hope you won’t disappoint me, Joe, after all these years,” Michael said after giving Wilcox his phone number. “I won’t be here during the day, but I expect to be home by five.”

  “I have dinner plans tomorrow night,” Wilcox said.

  “I understand, Joe, I truly do. But let’s not allow too much time to pass. After all, we are family.”

  “I’ll call,” Wilcox said.

  “I know you will, Joe. You always were responsible, a man of his word. I look forward to hearing from you. Good night, Joe. Best to your lovely wife and daughter.”

  TWELVE

  Michael LaRue did as he often did at the end of a workday. He drove to the apartment house in which he lived on Connecticut Avenue NW, found a parking space on the street, and walked two blocks to a small, Italian storefront pizzeria and restaurant on a side street, where he’d become a regular since moving to the neighborhood five months earlier. The mom of the mom-and-pop operation greeted him as he came through the door. Her husband, a bulky man wearing whites, and sporting a long, drooping handlebar moustache, tossed a greeting from behind the counter where he slathered a piecrust with tomato sauce, and sprinkled mozzarella cheese and slices of pepperoni over it.

  “Ah, Mrs. Tomaso,” LaRue said, kissing her on both cheeks. “You’re looking lovely this evening.”

  “Go on,” she said. “There was a time when I was beautiful, back in Italy. Too many years ago to remember.”

  “You’re like fine wine,” he said, “getting better with age.”

  “Come, sit,” she said, leading him to what had become his regular table, a small one with two green vinyl-covered chairs beneath a fading mural of an Italian seaside town, identity unknown.

  “Vino?” she asked.

  “Yes, a glass of house red. And some breadsticks, if you don’t mind.”

  Breadsticks and wine in front of him, he opened that day’s Washington Tribune to the Metro section and read Joe Wilcox’s article—for the second time. When Mrs. Tomaso reappeared to take his order, she noticed what he was reading and said, “Animals! Serial killers! No such thing ever happen in Italia. Only here in America. Washington is the worst. Murders every night, two, three, sometimes four.”

  His laugh came out soft and comforting, as it was meant to be. “This is a lovely city,” he said, “no worse than others.”

  “In the daytime maybe,” she said. Then, she leaned closer to him. “At night, everything changes. Am I right?”

  “I suppose it does,” he said, folding the newspaper and setting it on the green linoleum floor next to his chair. “Do you know what I’ve always thought?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I’ve always thought that if you’re looking for a serial killer, you should first look at those men who drive the ice cream trucks through neighborhoods.”

  “Why?”

  “They have to spend all day listening to those dreadful tunes that play, over and over—’London Bridges Falling Down,’ ‘Happy Birthday’—.” He sang: “With a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give the dog a bone, this old man came rolling home.”

  A schoolgirl giggle came from her.

  “Even I would become a serial killer if I had to listen to that all day, every day,” he said, waving off the menu she held. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Of course you are,” she said, “and I stand here talking too much.”

  “And I sit here singing silly songs,” he said. “Lasagna?”

  “Joey made it fresh today.”

  He smiled at her calling her sixty-year-old overweight husband “Joey.” The name might have fit forty years ago when he was a swarthy young Italian stud seducing his bride-to-be, but those days were long gone, for both of them.

  “Lasagna it will be,” he said, “and a simple green salad with your wonderful house dressing.”

  “Garlic bread?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “You see a young lady tonight, huh?”

  “You never know,” he replied with a mischievous grin.

  Besides that day’s newspaper, he’d brought a book with him, which he read while eating. He finished his meal with a cup of cappuccino, paid in cash, kissed Mrs. Tomaso on both cheeks, bade her husband a pleasant night, and went to his apartment on the ground floor of an elegant, six-story brick building that had once been someone’s stately home.

  His apartment was at the rear of the building; windows in the small bedroom overlooked a compact brick patio and a garden that needed tending. There was an old-fashioned look to the apartment; it was slightly tattered and in need of fresh paint, but impressively neat. The furniture was nondescript but useful, function trumping form. A corner of the living room, with windows facing the street that ran along the side of the building, was devoted to a work area consisting of a hollow core door supported by two short, putty-colored metal file cabinets, a large cork bulletin board, and a small folding table providing an additional work surface. A portable electric typewriter sat on the desk, along with a desk calendar, pens, pencils, and scissors in matching coffee cups, a telephone, halogen desk lamp, and a stack of books neatly piled with the larger ones on the bottom, creating a pyramid. The room’s white walls were virtually void of art or photographs, with the exception of three replicas of old theater posters displayed side-by-side, but not benefiting from having been hung with care. A relatively new TV set and VCR sat on a cabinet on which its previous owner had painted what passed for an oriental design in reds and yellows. Next to it an electric guitar leaned against a small amplifier.

  Maggie,
a Maine coon cat that LaRue had adopted from the local SPCA shortly after moving in, greeted him the moment he stepped through the door. Michael LaRue liked dogs and cats, and might have opted for a dog, were he not away from the apartment so often, working double shifts at the office supply company for the overtime. He’d changed out of his deliveryman’s uniform before leaving work, placing it in his employee locker, and put on a tight black T-shirt that followed the contours of his sculpted torso, and jeans that enhanced his lower half. After checking the cat’s food and litter, he went to the bedroom where he stripped off his clothing, slipped into a pair of gym shorts, and inserted a workout video into the VCR. At the end of the half-hour video, he showered away the sweat, changed back into what he’d worn home, and stood before the bulletin board that was covered with articles carefully clipped from The Washington Tribune. They all carried Joe Wilcox’s byline.

  He sat at the desk, turned on the lamp, and withdrew a thick folder from one of the file cabinet drawers. Although he’d already read everything in the folder dozens of times, he began reading each piece of paper as though never having seen it before. There were photographs, too, many of them old and faded, others much newer. Some were shots he’d taken recently with a small, inexpensive digital camera; others had been snipped from local newspapers and magazines.

  He dwelled on what was in the file folder and on the bulletin board, his mood vacillating from pleasurable memories to profound sadness, and anger, too. Maggie had climbed up on to the back of his chair and draped herself over his shoulders and around his neck, which the cat often did, much to Michael’s satisfaction. He had no concept of the passage of time until the cat suddenly leapt to the floor, her front claws digging into his neck. He touched the skin and examined his fingertips to see whether she’d drawn blood. She hadn’t. “You devil,” he said playfully, shaking his finger at her.

  He looked at his watch. It was time to do what he’d decided he would do that night. He picked up the phone and dialed Joe Wilcox’s direct line at The Washington Tribune.