He finished breakfast, kissed her, and said, “We should do it again soon.”
“I’m here,” she answered, walking him to the door. “You look great.”
“Thanks. Be sure to watch.”
“I will. I’ll tape it and run it over and over.”
He drove his usual route into the District, but instead of going to the Tribune Building, he drove to Michael’s apartment house. He parked a block away and called his brother’s number. The machine answered. He hung up without leaving a message, got out of the car, and went to the door. The duplicate keys Michael had provided allowed him to enter the building and the apartment. Maggie meowed as she came from the kitchen where she’d been eating from her bowl, and rubbed against his leg. He bent and ruffled the fur behind the cat’s ears, went to the desk, pulled a piece of blank paper from where it was neatly stored in a drawer, inserted it in the typewriter, and began to type. Ten minutes later, and after assuring himself that everything was as it had been when he entered, he bade Maggie a farewell, locked the apartment behind him, and emerged from the building. An older woman, pulling a collapsible shopping cart, came up the walkway. She stopped, blocking his way. “Terrible, isn’t it?” she said.
“Hello,” he said and tried to go around her.
“Poor man, being killed like that.”
His first thought was Michael.
“Who was killed?” he asked.
“Mr. Grau, from One-E. Do you live here?”
“No, ma’am.”
“He had a drinking problem, you know, but one can’t be harsh in judging him, with his war injuries protecting us and the country. Poor man. He was in such pain and—”
“Excuse me,” Wilcox said, using the grass to circumvent her and walk quickly to his car to drive off.
Not long after he left, Edith and Dungey arrived to go through the motions of questioning others in the building about the deceased’s habits, known enemies, close friends, and whether anyone heard or knew anything about the killing. Knocks on Michael LaRue’s door went unanswered. Talks with residents revealed that Rudy Grau was a hard drinker, a difficult man at times, but considering the wounds he incurred defending the country—and that he always walked with a cane—“Why didn’t he use it to ward off his attacker?”—and that he always helped the other tenants of the building with heavy grocery bags and the like—and that he sometimes went out to dinner with Mr. LaRue, the nice gentleman in 1C—but little else. The interviews completed, the detectives returned to the park where they sought someone who might provide information or have seen something to help in the investigation. A wasted exercise, one of hundreds they’d walked through in the course of their careers.
Morehouse called an editorial meeting soon after Wilcox arrived at the Trib. Lacking anything new on the killer, it was decided not to try and force another article on the subject, which was fine with Wilcox. He had other stories to write that day, including an article about the previous night’s spate of murders; the media appearance would take time, too.
He called MPD’s public affairs office to get a quote about the most recent killings in the District, dutifully took down what the officer said, which was not much, and began to work on the piece, which was not much, either. Once he had the details written, he would attempt to contact family members of the victims in the hope they would give him some quotable comments, the more anguished the better. It wasn’t long ago that the tabloid and TV practice of wringing quotes from grieving relatives of murder victims was anathema to him. He ran through imaginary dialogues.“What are you feeling at this moment?” “Oh, I’m just tickled to death that my son and husband were killed during the holdup.” “How did you feel . . . ?” But readers liked hearing about others’ pain. That’s what his chosen life’s work had come to, and it was either get with the program or take early retirement.
The last report he reviewed was on the knifing of one Mr. Rudolph Grau, found barely alive in Franklin Park, who’d expired in the rear of an ambulance between the park and the hospital. According to MPD, no immediate family members were known to exist, nor had the wielder of the knife been identified.
Wait a minute, Wilcox mused. Franklin Park. Two murders there within days of each other. He tried to recall other homicides in that particular park and came up empty. The victim’s name was Grau. Rudolph Grau. The shopping cart lady at Michael’s apartment building asked whether he knew that a resident named Grau had been killed. The inquisitive neighbor he’d bumped into at the apartment building during his second visit there said his name was Rudy. And there was Grau’s address on the police report—Michael’s address.
What kind of coincidences are these?
He put aside his jumbled thoughts about the Grau stabbing long enough to make calls to the homes of the other murder victims from last night. With any luck, he’d reach people willing to talk on the phone.
The mother of the teen slaughtered over a pair of sneakers and a jacket was so inconsolable that Wilcox could barely make out what she said, but he did decipher that her son was a good boy who never hurt anyone, and that if they weren’t forced to live in such a lousy neighborhood he would be alive today. No argument from Wilcox.
The sister of the man knifed to death over his alleged fling with the buxom neighbor said in a calm, steady voice that her brother was a fine, God-fearing man who suffered from a weakness of the flesh—didn’t everyone?—and did he deserve to die for his indiscretion?—and he was now in the hands of the good Lord, who would make the final judgment and forgive him his sins and—”
A spokesman for the Washington office of the German conglomerate referred Wilcox to its Munich headquarters. “Danke,” Wilcox said, the only German word he knew, and decided to not bother making the overseas call.
He ate lunch in the employee cafeteria, caught up on two months’ worth of expense accounts, was interviewed for three minutes on the local CNN channel, and headed home. He left the highway and wended his way into his subdivision. He’d lived there for so long that he seldom took note of what was going on, people walking their dogs or trimming shrubbery, or the stages of bloom on trees and bushes. But this day his antenna was up, and he took in his surroundings as though there for the first time, a potential homebuyer scouting the neighborhood.
He turned onto his street and drove slowly, eyes glancing right and left. He passed a Verizon repair truck parked six houses from his; someone must be having phone trouble he reasoned—hopefully not the whole block.
He slowly crossed the street’s center line, pulling up in front of his curbside mailbox so that it was within his arm’s reach from the driver’s side. The mailman had flipped up the red metal flag. That it remained up meant that Georgia hadn’t fetched the mail, which was what he’d hoped. She seldom did, seeming to never remember that it would be there, and it was his habit to grab it before pulling into the driveway. He pulled a clutch of mail from the box, almost allowing some catalogues and magazines to slip from his hand and fall to the ground. Another look around preceded his next move, which was to remove the letter he’d written at Michael’s apartment from his inside jacket pocket and slip it in with the day’s mail. It didn’t matter that his fingerprints would be on it. Of course they would be. He’d handled it along with the other mail.
“Hey, anybody home?” he yelled on his way to the kitchen where he dropped the mail on the countertop in the same spot he always did.
“What are you doing home so early?” Georgia asked as she came from the basement where she’d been folding laundry.
“I finished up early,” he said, hugging her. “Nice to be home at a decent hour for a change.”
She returned to the basement to complete her chore. He hung his jacket over the back of a chair, stripped off his tie, poured a small Scotch, and took it to the patio. It was a lovely day, warm but not uncomfortable. He drew a deep breath, sipped from his drink, sat at the table and extended his legs in front of him. She joined him a few minutes later.
�
��Drink?” he asked.
“Too early, thanks. What’s new? You were great on TV.”
“Thanks. I felt comfortable. Not much new at the paper. We decided that since there’s nothing new, we’d skip tomorrow’s edition.”
“Good,” she said. “Have you heard from Michael?”
“No. Robbie?”
“Not today.”
She turned in her chair and saw through the window the pile of mail on the kitchen counter. “Mailman bring anything interesting?” she asked.
“I didn’t look.”
She fetched the mail, brought it to the patio table, and started going through it. A home-decorating catalogue caught her attention, and she browsed it, pointing out items that appealed to her, including a set of vivid red silk sheets and pillowcases. “Like it?” she asked.
“Very sexy. We should have had them on the bed last night.”
“Our old sheets did just fine, don’t you think?”
He laughed. “Sorry, but I wasn’t thinking about the sheets last night.”
She squeezed his hand and continued perusing the catalogue. Finished, she went back to seeing what other mail was there. Joe watched out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s this?” she said, pulling the sheet of paper, sans envelope, from the pile and unfolding it.
“What is it?” he asked. “Some contractor drop off a flyer? That’s against the law.”
She handed it to him without a word. Her face went ashen, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
He pulled half-glasses from his shirt pocket and read. “Jesus,” he said. “He must have put it in our mailbox himself.”
“Call the police,” she said.
“Right. I’ll call Edith. This is hitting too close to home.”
Before placing the call, he made a copy of the letter on their fax machine that doubled as a photocopier and slipped it under other papers on the desk in the library.
Georgia stayed on the patio, her fist pressed against her lips. When he returned, she asked, “Did you reach her?”
“On her cell. She and her partner are heading here now.”
“I hate this, Joe.”
“I know, I know, but it’ll be okay. I’ll ask the police to provide security. If they won’t, we’ll hire our own. Don’t worry, Georgia, we’ll be fine.” He patted her hand to reassure, knowing it wouldn’t.
Vargas-Swayze and Dungey arrived forty-five minutes later and Wilcox handed them the letter.
“He’s ratcheting it up now, isn’t he?” Vargas-Swayze said, her reaction raising Georgia’s already elevated anxiety level.
“You listed in the phone book?” Dungey asked.
“No,” Wilcox replied. “We’ve been unlisted for years. Too many nuts out there read something you write and decide to challenge you up close and personal. But it’s not tough to find out where anybody lives. I’ve done it plenty of times chasing down stories.”
“Can we have police protection?” Georgia asked.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Vargas-Swayze said. “Did you notice any strangers in the neighborhood today, Georgia?”
“No. I’ve been in the house all day. Those hedges out front block the view of the street. I can’t even see the mailbox from here.”
“I wonder why he didn’t mail it,” Dungey mused, “like the last one.”
“He’s delivering a message beyond what he wrote, Joe,” Vargas-Swayze said. “He’s making a point that he knows where you live.”
“What I find interesting,” Wilcox said, “is that the first letter didn’t attack me personally. This one does. He’s angry that my articles paint what he calls a ‘warped picture’ of him. Warped picture! What other view can you have?”
“But he isn’t cutting off contact with you. He says he’ll be in touch again, maybe by phone. This line here: ‘We should discuss my feelings, Joe. Perhaps I’ll call and we can have a long chat about that and other things.’ ”
“He called me Mr. Wilcox in the first letter,” Wilcox said. “Now it’s Joe.”
“Looks like the same typewriter,” Dungey said, holding the letter by its corner and slipping it into a plastic sleeve he’d carried from the car.
“How about some coffee, hon,” Wilcox suggested to Georgia.
“Not for us,” Vargas-Swayze said. “We have to get back.”
Wilcox walked them to their car.
“Did you talk to Georgia about a tap on your home phone?” Vargas-Swayze asked.
“No, but go ahead and do it. Do you think you can arrange for some sort of security here at the house?” he asked.
“At least for a few days.”
“A suggestion?”
“What?”
“Keep the fact that my phones are tapped and that there’ll be security here under wraps. I don’t want to scare him away. Keeping a channel open between him and me might lull him into making a dumb move.”
“Makes for a good story, huh?” Dungey said as he opened the driver’s door.
Wilcox frowned at him. “Meaning?” he said.
“Nothing.”
Wilcox turned to Vargas-Swayze. “Thanks for coming personally. Georgia’s really upset over this. Knowing some of your people are around will make all the difference.”
“Mind a suggestion from me?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Don’t take this guy lightly, Joe. His tone in the letter is angry.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. Thanks again.”
He watched them pull away and thought of Dungey’s comment about it making for a good story. Had the detective sensed something? Did he know something? Impossible. Edith had said a few times before that her partner was a downbeat, cynical sort of person. Typical cop, Wilcox thought as he returned to the house, wondering whether he should tell Georgia about the murder of Michael’s neighbor. He decided not to. He’d follow up on that tomorrow and see how things fell.
“I’d better call Paul and tell him there’s something new to report,” Wilcox told his wife.
His editor wasn’t at home, but he reached him on his cell phone. Blaring rock and roll music in the background made it difficult for Wilcox to hear, and he wasn’t sure Morehouse would hear, either, but he spoke loudly and filled him in.
“Can you put something together for tomorrow?” Morehouse shouted.
“I’d rather wait a day,” Wilcox responded. “Georgia is upset over the letter. I’d just like to spend the rest of the evening with her.”
“Come on, Joe, give me something. She’ll go to sleep at some point, right?”
Wilcox hesitated, then: “I’ll come up with something.”
“Good man.”
“What’s that music? Where are you, Paul?”
“See you in the A.M.,” Morehouse said, and signed off.
Joe and Georgia ordered Chinese food that evening. The deliveryman’s ringing of the doorbell caused Georgia to shudder; she uttered an involuntary moan. After dinner, they settled in the den and aimlessly watched television, including one of that season’s stupid reality shows.
“I feel like we’re in a reality show,” she commented when he changed the channel to public television. It was broadcasting a chapter of a British crime series. “Please, Joe, no murder mysteries tonight.”
He forced a laugh and found a silly sitcom where the laughs were also forced—on a recorded track. Georgia’s patience ran out after a few minutes and she again tried to reach Roberta, first her apartment, then her mobile phone.
“She must have turned off her cell,” she said. “No answer on either phone. I left messages.”
“She’s probably doing some recording. She’ll call back. We’ll catch her on the news at eleven. Sit and relax. I’ll turn off the TV and we’ll put on some music.”
Georgia fell asleep in her chair. After a while, Joe gently woke her and urged her to go to bed.
“Are you coming?” she asked sleepily.
“I’ll be up in a bit.” He
kissed her. “Sleep tight. This will all be over soon.”
He went to bed three hours later after writing a story about the second killer letter, and e-mailing it to the paper.
“I can’t tell you how upset I am.”
Michael and Roberta Wilcox sat side by side in his apartment.
“It wasn’t as though I really liked the man. He was abrasive, especially when he drank, which was most of the time. You experienced his drunkenness yourself. But there was something I respected about him. I believe I might have been his only friend.”
“It must have been a shock,” Roberta said, “to hear that someone you knew well had been stabbed. How did you find out?”
“When I came home from job interviews I had today, there was a card on my door from the police. I called them immediately, of course, not having a clue as to why they wanted to speak with me. I’d already been interviewed twice about the murder of the young woman at the Tribune.”
“They interviewed you?” she said. She held a glass of wine that she hadn’t touched. “Why?”
“I’d made a delivery to the newspaper the night she was killed. I was working for an office supply company at the time. Someone in the newsroom needed what I had right away, so I was sent directly to the paper. The police, I’m sure, interviewed everyone who’d been there that night. At least I hope they did. They wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t. I expected the same detectives I’d spoken with earlier to show up this evening, but a different team arrived, very nice, very polite. I told them what I knew about Rudy, that I hadn’t seen him all night, and was here practicing my guitar. They took my statement and left.” He rolled his eyes and drank. “I’m evidently the poster boy for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I didn’t know you’d been at the Tribune the night Jean Kaporis was killed,” she said.
He sighed deeply. “I believe I’ll have a second glass of wine. It’s been that sort of day, one surprise after another, including your call and being here. You haven’t touched yours, my dear. The vintage not to your liking?”
Murder at The Washington Tribune: A Capital Crimes Mystery Page 25