The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix)

by JoAnna Carl

  I regard myself as liberated. I wasn’t ashamed of sleeping with Mike, and I didn’t care if my friends, my father, or even my Aunt Billie knew about it. But I didn’t want it on the front page of the Grantham Gazette. It wasn’t public business. I gnashed my teeth. Getting involved in a murder sure can complicate your personal life.

  I looked up from that morning’s Gazette and stared across the newsroom, contemplating my situation. And, unexpectedly, something caught my attention.

  Ed Brown was moving along the newsroom wall. He was clutching his clipboard and looking over his shoulder suspiciously. Furtively.

  Most of the newsroom desks are in pods, with the people who are assigned to the various areas seated near each other. Within the pods each reporter’s space is set off by partitions. Eye-level moveable walls surround the pods, and short tweed-covered barriers keep each reporter’s junk from infringing on other reporters’ desks. Good fences make good neighbors, or something like that.

  The layout means reporters have to stand up if they want to look across the room. They have to look over the tops of these two-foot-high partitions between the desks and these eye-level walls surrounding their pods.

  Editors have no such barriers. The editors who work on local copy work at a pod of four desks. In a tribute to newspaper tradition, this is known as “the rim.” That’s because old-time editors worked at a circular table—a table shaped like the letter C and named the “rim.” The city editor sat at a central place known as “the slot.”

  I think this layout allowed the copy boys, back in the days when they had copy boys, to walk into the middle and take copy from each editor. The advent of computers did away with this arrangement, just as it did away with copy boys. Now the four of us who work the rim—city editor, assistant city editor, and two copy eds—sit at regular desks, each with a visual display terminal.

  The city editor and the assistant city editor supervise reporters. The two copy editors do nothing but read the stories, checking for spelling, punctuation, correct information, complete information, and smooth writing. Then we send the copy on to the city editor and her assistants.

  We don’t have walls around us. And no partitions separate one desk from another. This lets us talk among ourselves easily, because the editorial team has to work together all evening. And we’re not cut off from the newsroom, because the reporters are supposed to approach us with questions and comments.

  This layout meant I happened to be the only person in the newsroom right at that moment who could see Ed Brown moving furtively along the west wall, the one that’s lined with off-white filing cabinets. He was going from cabinet to cabinet, checking the labels on each drawer. Every now and then he’d pull a drawer open and look inside.

  I decided he was continuing the search I’d interrupted Sunday afternoon.

  I watched him for a few minutes before I caught on. If the drawer had a label on it, he read the label and went on. If it didn’t, he opened the drawer to see what was inside.

  What was he looking for? I couldn’t imagine.

  The drawers belonged to the reporters. Storage space in the reporters’ desks is limited. Since a VDT is mounted on one side of each desk, most reporters have only two drawers, one deep and one shallow. So reporters use filing cabinets for extra storage. The city council reporter has several, I’m sure, all full of old council agendas and reports on various city programs and functions. My pal Mitzi Johns, who covers the health beat, has two drawers—one and a half of them full of data on health and hospitals and the remaining half drawer filled with instant coffee, instant soup, instant cocoa, and plastic silverware—emergency rations for the nights she works late. I have two drawers myself, left over from my days as a crime reporter. They’re stuffed with crime stats, old law enforcement personnel lists, and other junk. They give me a guilt attack every time I glance at them, because I ought to throw out most of what’s in there.

  So what was Ed Brown doing? Taking some kind of inventory? If the filing cabinets weren’t in use, was he going to take them away? Or was he going to declare a house-cleaning day and demand that we all straighten them out before the excess paper made the newsroom so heavy it sank down into the floor below and crushed the display-ad department?

  Sunday I’d been too startled to ask him what he was doing. I’d let him ask all the questions. But today I wasn’t alone in the building. And I wanted to know what Ed was up to.

  He was drawing near a bank of files used by Ruth Borah. Ruth, who wasn’t at work yet, keeps extra boxes of Kleenex in her drawer. I decided I needed a box of Kleenex. My nose definitely felt as if it was about to start running like mad.

  I got up and walked over to Ruth’s drawer, about six feet down from Ed and his clipboard. “Hi, Mr. Brown,” I said brightly. “You’re not going to commandeer our filing cabinets for the ad department, are you?” I smiled in a friendly way.

  “No!” Ed looked panicky. “It’s just—I’m looking—Ms. Gilroy—” Then he pursed his lips tightly. He clutched his clipboard to his chest. “Never mind,” he said.

  He turned and walked away, his shoulders drooping like a helium balloon a week after the birthday party.

  What had all that been about?

  I went back to my desk. Ruth came in, and we talked a few minutes. She wanted to know about all the excitement I’d had on my days off. But Ruth’s pretty businesslike. Soon she set me to work reading local copy.

  I admit I read Mitzi’s health department story with half a mind. I was still thinking about Ed Brown. Had he been looking for any files Martina had kept?

  At one a.m. this morning Bob Johnson, drunk, had been raving about how many people had disliked Martina. Ed Brown had headed his list. She knew something about him, Bob had said. He’d had no idea what, but he suspected something illegal.

  But I thought I knew. It had to do with the fight outside the gay bar. And Ed’s arrest.

  Had Martina been threatening Ed with that old news story? But surely the Gazette bosses knew about that. It had been printed in the Gazette, after all. Of course, E.J. Brown wasn’t the name we all knew Ed by. Maybe Martina was the only person who had figured it out.

  But the police had cleared her desk out the night she was murdered. And I was sure they’d searched her house. If she’d had anything like that in hard copy, the police had it now.

  And, I realized, I had her hidden computer files. So much had happened during the past couple of days that I hadn’t remembered to tell Mike or Jim Hammond about them.

  I might be the only person who knew about those files.

  I faced the VDT screen and typed in Martina’s code. “Sports” and “Car.”

  The screen came up perfectly blank.

  The list of stories I’d linked to Martina was gone.

  Maybe I’d typed the commands in wrong. I typed “sports” and “car” without the capitals, though in theory that doesn’t make any difference.

  The screen was still blank.

  Chapter 24

  Martina’s file had disappeared from the Gazette’s computer system.

  The thought gave me the willies. Logically, I had known that Martina was killed by somebody on the Gazette staff. But the thought of that person roaming around in the computer system—I shuddered.

  Then I quickly checked the “Mary” “Nll” file. Yes, the items I’d copied from “Sports” “Car” were still there. And I knew I had the printouts at home. But that didn’t make me feel less scared.

  I called Jim Hammond and told him what I’d found. He asked for copies, so I copied Martina’s file to disk, then gave each item the printout command and went to the printout room to collect the articles as they came out of the printer. Just as it had the day before, the lonely room made me nervous. The computer terminals, printers, storage cabinets, with thick electronic cables tangled between them—the equipment made me feel trapped.

  So I jumped when the door behind me opened. Once again it was only J.J. Jones. I relaxed. He’d sa
ved me from Ed Brown’s tirade on Sunday.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, young lady,” he said. “Accordin’ to the morning paper and the office grapevine, you had a pretty excitin’ day yesterday.”

  I nodded and remembered to go into my Bob-Johnson-is-a-bad-guy act.

  “I’m so glad they arrested that Bob Johnson,” I said. “The man is a menace!”

  “Then he was the one who shot at you?”

  “He must have been! We know for sure he was the one who kidnapped my roommate and dragged her around town in the middle of the night. Surely we don’t have two crazy killers at the Gazette!”

  J.J. laughed. “That would seem to be statistically unlikely.” He ripped printouts from a printer I knew was used for advertising proofs. “Do the police know why Mr. Johnson did these threatenin’ things?”

  “If they do, they’re not telling me. Apparently he tried to kill me—twice—and I’d sure like to know why.”

  “In your position, I would certainly concur with that sentiment,” he said. Then he gathered up his printouts and moved in my direction. “May I help you, Miss Matthews?”

  I shook my head, but unfortunately the printer picked that precise moment to jump its tracks. It stopped shoving the paper out and began to print line after line in the same space, one on top of the other.

  “Darn!” I said.

  J.J. Jones came over to my side. “It does that sometimes,” he said, “particularly if you’re catching the printout and folding it sheet by sheet, the way you were.”

  “How do you stop it?”

  He punched a button and the printer stopped moving. Then he ripped off my printout—it happened to be the one about assisted suicide—and handed it to me. I stood there like a dummy because I don’t know anything about the printer. Nor do I care. As long as machines—be they computers, cars, or can openers—obey my commands, I don’t care how they work. The problem comes when they don’t work.

  J.J. Jones opened the back of the printer and readjusted the tracked paper on its brackets. Then he closed the printer and punched buttons again. The printer resumed its work.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’ve got a big printin’ job,” he said.

  “Just some old files,” I said.

  “You’ll have to send that one story over, I ’magine.” He smiled broadly. “Well, I hope all your personal excitement is over, Miss Nell. And as I came through the newsroom, I saw Arnie Ashe is back at work.”

  Arnie was back? Why? When? I grabbed up the printouts and rushed out into the newsroom. Arnie was sitting at Martina’s desk.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I called in, and Ruth told me she and Jake want me to learn the copy desk.”

  “Oh!” I thought about it. “That’s a good idea.”

  “I’ve done mostly desk work for the past five years,” Arnie said. “I know the A.P. style book pretty well, but you’ll have to help me with the local names and addresses.”

  “Sure. The ones I know.”

  Ruth Borah had been talking on the phone. Now she put her hand over the receiver and looked at me. “Nell, will you show Arnie the routine? I’ve got to take care of one of my kids. I don’t know who told me motherhood and a career can mix, but I shouldn’t have believed them.”

  I moved my chair around by Arnie’s desk and wrote out a little cheat sheet with the names of the desk files on it. Reporters send their stories to “proof.” Copy editors read them, then send them to the proper city desk file. It’s not a real tricky system. Stories about Grantham go in “City.” Death notices, police reports, and other things that run every day go to “Must.” Locally written stories about happenings outside Grantham go into “State.” Business-page stories go in “Busns.” The wire editors have a set of files for state, national, and international news, but copy editors don’t mess with those, unless we’re caught up and simply want some reading matter.

  After the local stories are edited, they go to page builders. This is another set of editors who worry more about layout and headline size than they do about exactly what each story says. Ruth tells them what she wants “played,” or emphasized, and they do the actual design, then “build” the pages on a giant computer, subject to her approval.

  “Sports and Lifestyles read their own copy,” I told Arnie. “It’s really a simple-minded system.”

  “I think I can manage it,” he said. “Where’s the dictionary?”

  Of course, the reporters are supposed to run a spell-check program on every story before we see it, but no mechanical program can take the place of an English-speaking and reading editor with a dictionary at his or her elbow. I was glad to see that Arnie knew that.

  Each copy editor is provided with a dictionary and an Associated Press Stylebook. I showed him the rack of additional reference books we share, pointing out the local items he might not be familiar with, such as our lists of Grantham organizations and of the membership of the county medical association.

  He and I had agreed that morning that we wouldn’t spread the word about our relationship until matters were more settled. But I did feel I could say a few personal words.

  “Welcome aboard,” I said. “I hope the desk was what you wanted.”

  Arnie smiled sardonically. “It’s the bosses’ idea,” he said. “Or maybe Jim Hammond’s. I don’t think they want me out roaming the city unsupervised.”

  I went back to my own desk. His last words had made my stomach knot up. I knew he was right. Arnie was still under suspicion.

  As long as Martina’s murder was unsolved, Arnie would never be free of suspicion. And an arrest in Martina’s death wouldn’t put him in the clear. He might have to go back to Michigan, face the gruff-voiced former Sheriff Ronald Vanderkolk and a jury of Jessamine folks. For a minute I felt something very close to despair. I’d found my father, but he might be snatched away before we could get acquainted.

  Then my phone rang, and I looked at the switchboard. Kimmie was on telephone duty, and Mike was in the reception area, leaning on the little rail. “Mike’s here,” Kimmie said.

  “Be right there.” I gathered up the printouts and the disk on which I’d saved the stories from Martina’s files, then went up to the front.

  “Everything going all right?” Mike asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if this stuff will be any help.”

  “I’ll take it over to Jim.” Mike leaned closer. “I don’t suppose that Dan Smith has been around.”

  “The boyfriend? I haven’t seen him.”

  “Neither has Jim.”

  “Of course, Dan has clients all over the state. He could be anywhere, making calls. You’d better ask Ed Brown. He deals with Dan more often than anybody in the newsroom does. He could ask him to call.”

  Mike shook his head. “We don’t want to alert Smith. But if he shows up, give Jim a call. Okay?”

  I went back to my desk, mystified. Dan Smith was a traveling salesman. If he was out of touch, so what? He was supposed to be on the road, not sitting around a telephone. Though I would have expected him to carry a cell phone or a pager.

  I opened the Proof file and actually earned my salary for at least an hour. I read three stories from the violence beat—a house fire, an armed robbery, and a smash and grab. Then I read about the mental health board, the out-of-town kick-off speaker for the Grantham Library Association’s fundraiser, and the county commissioner’s meeting.

  Stories I hadn’t read were disappearing from the Copy file, and twice I saw Arnie consult the staff phone list and call some reporter to check on something. So between the two of us, we were moving the copy right along. Ruth, who had long since settled her teenage problem at home, was handing stories on to Layout, and the whole system seemed to be working efficiently.

  I should have known it wouldn’t last.

  The first sign of trouble was the reappearance of Ed Brown. He bustled in with his usual officious air, and dragging behi
nd him was a tall guy with funny hair. Dan Smith.

  Ed looked like a Volkswagen towing a two-ton truck on a slack rope. When he stopped, I thought Dan was going to whack right into him in a short of human fender-bender.

  They had come up the back stairway, and they stopped right in the middle of the newsroom. Ed gestured widely, then spoke demandingly. “Where?”

  “Over there on the west wall.”

  Ed headed for the west side of the newsroom, the one he’d been examining earlier when I asked him what he was doing. He walked along the filing cabinets, tapping each with a pen.

  “This is a disgrace,” he said. “I’m going to speak to Jake Edwards about this. There’s no organization at all.”

  “It was somewhere toward the other end,” Dan said.

  I was staring at them, and I realized that several other people were, too. Ruth was looking quizzical, Arnie was frowning slightly, and one reporter had stood up and was looking over the top of her cubicle, frankly curious.

  Dan and Ed didn’t seem to notice their audience. They moved along the wall to the other end of the rank of file cabinets, and began to work back. Ed was still tapping each with his pen.

  “Marie,” he said. “Who in the world is Marie? Doesn’t she have a surname? Then Ted Johannson. At least that one’s got a name on it. Then Ruth Borah. That’s all right. Harry Carter!” He tapped the pen so hard it almost flew out of his hand. “Harry Carter quit two years ago!” He yanked the drawer open. “And here’s a whole drawer full of old city council agendas. I’ll bet no one even knows they’re here!”

  At that Ruth stood up, jabbed her pencil into her bun, and grasped her pica pole as if it were a sword. She walked toward the two men. “Ed, just what is the problem?”

  “It’s these drawers! How do you know whose drawer is whose?”

  “I don’t know whose is whose, Ed. And, frankly, I don’t care. As long as the reporters have the storage they need, they can organize it any way they want. But why does this concern you?”

  Ed’s mouth snapped shut. I thought I could hear his teeth click together.