I got up from my chair, walked over to the door to close it, then stepped behind his desk to give Bill a completely unprofessional kiss on the top of his head.
“I’ll be careful,” I told him. “I don’t want to become another Peter Morris. But you’re right about one thing. I can’t let it go, either. I guess it is some kind of personal challenge match. I can’t rest as long as some asshole thinks he’s gotten away with it. And I don’t think Ann Kane can rest until people know she was an innocent victim, not some nympho who liked her guys in pairs.”
It was a pretty honest self-analysis. I had been stubborn all my life, but with my sister’s murder, a new factor had entered the equation of my personality. When Cara was killed, I had been unable to rest or think about much of anything else until I had found the bastards responsible and had laid her death publicly at their door. Once they were arrested, however, and Rob had decided to move me to the police beat, I also found myself equally unable to let it go when some other innocent met an undeserved end.
Once again Bill shook his head, knowing nothing he could say was going to change my mind or my determination. I told him good-bye and went out to my car, where I called Lansing’s office. He was out, no doubt trying to figure out who Peter Morris’s mystery woman could have been. I wanted to go back to see Maggie Padgett, too, but I knew I had better put in an appearance at the paper first. Rob Perry needed to be let in on a few things.
* * * *
“McPhee,” Rob said, when I walked into the newsroom, “how nice of you to grace us with your presence.” His voice carried clearly across the mostly empty room, where there was little going on as yet.
As a morning paper, the News has evening deadlines, a whole series of them that begins at 7:00 P.M. with the deadline for the most distant of the several zoned editions we publish. That means that the afternoons are the busy time as reporters come in from their various beats to file their stories for the next day’s paper. It also means that the mornings usually are much quieter. There is only a handful of editors who work in the mornings and early afternoons. Because they regularly work until 11:00 P.M. or midnight, the majority of the editing staff doesn’t come in until mid-afternoon. Rob, however, often puts in much longer days, as much as fifteen or sixteen hours much of the time. With his daughters grown and married, and his last ex-wife long since moved away, there isn’t much else to distract him.
Besides, he had told me once over drinks, it finally became clear to him after his third divorce that what all his ex-wives had said was true: He’s married to the newspaper. So why not spend all his time there?
“I had nothing better to do on Monday morning,” I responded to his dig. “I figured I could be bored here as well as anywhere.”
“Well, I can fix that,” he answered. “Snyder wants your teen gunslinger piece for the magazine a week from Sunday, so you need to get it finished and into the system before the end of the day.”
So much for going to see Maggie Padgett today. Elaine Snyder is the Sunday-magazine editor, a tall, willowy, green-eyed redhead, and a terror. The magazine is her personal fiefdom, and not just anyone is good enough to be allowed in. Once a reporter who isn’t on the magazine’s regular staff gets Elaine to agree to accept a story, they had better not come up subsequently with excuses about why the copy is late or not up to Elaine’s standards. She doesn’t believe in second chances. Fortunately, I was almost finished with my piece anyhow.
“I’ll get it in,” I reassured Rob.
“And while you’re here,” he went on before I could turn to go to my desk, “I think it’s time you and Hale filled me in on what’s going on with the two of you. If John Aldritch is going to start yanking everybody’s chains, I probably need to know what you’re doing so I can either defend you or throw you to the wolves. Hale said he would be back from the board meeting after lunch, so I want you both in my office as soon as he gets in.”
I gave Rob a grim smile and a Nazi salute and went over to my desk to get busy on the magazine piece. I still had a couple of people to reach for quotes before I could finish a draft good enough to submit to Elaine.
At 1:30, as I was polishing the next-to-last page of my story. Ken arrived. I looked up as I heard Rob call his name, and Ken flashed me a triumphant smile and a thumbs up across the newsroom. I took that to mean his baiting of Hub Taylor had had promising results. Ken stopped at Rob’s desk, they exchanged a few words, and Rob stood up and motioned for me to follow them into his office. In some ways, the grilling that ensued was much more draining than anything I had suffered at Noah Lansing’s hands. When Rob heard who we were after, he knew the repercussions for the paper could be of major magnitude—in either direction. He wasn’t taking any chances that we were in over our heads.
‘Okay,” Rob said, when we had given him the initial synopsis of what we thought had gone on, “take me through it again, step-by-step. Don’t leave anything out, and I mean anything.” He did. So we didn’t.
When I got to the part about my parking-lot run-in, both he and Ken looked alarmed and asked simultaneously, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was late at night, it was the weekend, my head hurt, and it was only a threat.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Ken asked, still looking worried.
“If the guy had wanted to kill me then and there, I couldn’t have done a damned thing about it,” I said, still not happy about how vulnerable I had been.
“Nevertheless,” Rob said, “I want the two of you physically together on this as much as possible from now on. I don’t want either of you taking unnecessary chances. Forget your regular beat stuff. I’ll find someone to cover anything we can’t ignore. I want you on this like buzzards on road-kill. If Ed Lloyd and Hub Taylor did this thing, we’re going to nail their asses to the side of the Capitol for everybody to see.”
Rob’s disdain for politicians in general knew few bounds and went back to his days of covering Alabama and Southern politics for the Associated Press. He always said he was much more likely to be surprised that a politician wasn’t a sleazeball than that one was. He loved nothing better than getting another one’s tail in the wringer in as public a way as possible, and yet he didn’t let his personal bias make him any less adamant about having the facts to support what he believed. His reporters knew better than to try to get supposition into his pages. That was why Maggie Padgett, who kept nudging the back of my mind, was so important to this story.
“Okay, so what else can you tell me?” Rob said, returning to his interrogation.
“Well, I had an interesting morning with Hub Taylor,” Ken said, grinning.
“Yeah?”
“I started out the morning by stopping him just as he was walking into the meeting room and saying very quietly that I had heard the police apparently had reason to think he was somehow involved in Ann Kane’s death. He just looked at me for a second, and I could see the sweat starting on his upper lip. He spent the whole rest of the morning on the dais, wiping his face repeatedly and giving me these nervous looks. He was clearly not himself. He was fidgety and distracted, and the other supervisors had to keep repeating their questions and comments to him. When the meeting adjourned, he was out of the room like a shot. He didn’t stop to talk to anybody or shake a single hand, and just brushed off anybody who tried to talk to him. So I decided to see what he did.”
“Which was?” I asked, crossing my fingers that Ken had managed to throw Taylor into a panic.
“First, he went over to a bank of pay phones down the hall and made a call. He kept looking over his shoulder like he was afraid someone would overhear, which I guess explains why he didn’t call from his office. I hung back down by the meeting room where people were still gathered so he wouldn’t think I was watching him, but as soon as he hung up the phone and started out of the building, I followed him. In fact, I followed him all the way into the District until he lucked into a parking space in the block before the Senate office buildings. So
I just double-parked and watched him go up the block and inside. Three guesses who he was going to see in there in such a hurry.”
“Ed Lloyd,” I answered, a statement, not a question.
“Makes sense to me,” Ken replied.
“I don’t suppose you might have seen them come out together?” Rob asked hopefully.
“No,” Ken said. “For the first time in the history of the D.C. Police Department, a cop came up and made all the double-parked drivers move along. I went around the block a couple of times, but Taylor’s car was still there. I decided I couldn’t accomplish anything more by waiting for him to come out. Clearly, they were talking in Lloyd’s office, so I gave up and came back here to report in. But there’s no doubt in my mind that he went running straight to Lloyd over what I said to him about Ann Kane. I think he’s barely hanging on, which has to have Lloyd worried.”
Rob sat back in his swivel chair and thought for a while. He began taking us back through our stories again, following the connections, confirming in his own mind what we knew for certain and what we thought.
“Sounds to me like we still have a way to go before we can do anything with this,” he said finally. “What do you two plan to do next?”
“I think we had better go back to see Maggie Padgett tomorrow,” I told him. “Maybe Ken will have more luck convincing her to talk than I did.”
“Good idea,” Ken agreed, nodding thoughtfully and obviously considering what strategy to take with Maggie.
“Okay,” Rob said, “get finished with anything else you’re doing—Sutton, your magazine piece, and Ken, if you’ve got anything that has to be finished today—and then go see this woman. I think she’s the only concrete thing you’ve got. If you can’t get her to talk to you, you don’t have the story.”
We all three stood, knowing the conversation was done and we were getting closer to deadline. Rob came around the desk as Ken and I moved toward the door, and put a hand on my arm.
“Sutton,” he said, in a rare moment of letting his feelings show by using my first name, “be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Now, Rob,” I said, reaching up and squeezing his hand, “you’re starting to sound like the police, and you know that would be a fate worse than death for you.”
He snorted a laugh and followed me out into the newsroom, to his patiently blinking computer full of stories that all needed his attention at once.
* * * *
At three o’clock, my phone rang. For a minute I considered not answering it, knowing I had to get my magazine piece finished. But I thought better of it, never knowing what kind of news might be on the other end. I picked up the receiver.
“Sutton McPhee.”
“McPhee, it’s Noah Lansing.”
“Detective Lansing,” I said, surprised. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I decided to let you in on something,” he said neutrally.
Okay, I thought, I’ll drop the sarcasm for the sake of curiosity.
“I’m listening.”
“I got the search warrant for Morris’s records,” he said.
“Congratulations.”
“Yeah, it took some convincing, but we finally got the judge to agree.”
I waited for the other shoe.
“You still there?” Lansing asked.
“Still here.”
There was another pause. I could tell he was leading up to something and was having some trouble spitting it out.
“Go ahead,” I said finally, “I promise not to bite your head off.”
“Is there anything else I should know about what Morris told you before I start going through the patient files?”
Lansing asking me for help instead of giving me orders? That was a novel experience. All sorts of answers popped into my head, but I bit my tongue and gave him a civil one.
“As a matter of fact, you might want to expand your search a little and check for a file on Hub Taylor,” I told him. “I think you’ll find one, and it might tell you what blood type he has.”
“What?” Lansing asked, obviously surprised by my answer.
“Call it a hunch,” I told him. “If his records are there, I’d be willing to put money on his blood type being O-positive.”
“Jesus Christ!” he said, realizing just where my thoughts were going.
“It’s really logical when you think about it,” I went on. “Who else is closer to Lloyd? Who would be most likely to be invited to join him?”
“You got anything other than a hunch to base this idea on?” Lansing asked.
“Just some odds and ends that aren’t adding up,” I said, thinking about the things Taylor’s secretary and his neighbor had said. “But I really think you ought to at least check it out while you’ve got access to the files. Now there’s just one thing, Detective.”
“What?”
“Not that you owe me any thanks for steering you in the right direction, but after you’ve checked, I want to know what you found out.”
“I’ll think about it. This is a police investigation, you know.”
“Lansing, listen to me,” I said, getting irritated. “I’ve been ahead of you guys all along on this thing, and you know it. So if you want to find out any more about what I know, I expect some consideration here. It’s the way the world works, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve noticed all right,” he responded, not sounding particularly happy either. “Okay, I’ll let you know what I can—if you’re right.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Happy hunting.”
We both hung up. I sat back for a moment, crossing my fingers that my guess about Taylor’s blood type would pan out. I was hoping that if I could get Noah Lansing talking about anything to do with the case, there might still be a chance of establishing some sort of long-term communication with him. Otherwise, my future covering the Fairfax County police could become a chronic battle.
* * * *
I finished my magazine piece just as the first deadline was arriving. I sent it to Rob’s queue, yelled across to him that it was there, heard him yell back that he would read it when he was off deadline, and went over to make plans with Ken.
“Are you about done?” I asked.
“Yeah, just finishing up a couple of other things,” he said, hanging up the phone in mid-dial.
“So how do you want to handle tomorrow? I’d like to get over to the Hill and corner Maggie Padgett again.”
“I agree. Why don’t I just pick you up here at…” He thought for a moment. “Say eleven, and we’ll drive over there together. Rob did make me promise to hold your hand and watch your back, you know.”
“Okay, eleven o’clock, out front,” I agreed. “Oh, and Ken?”
“Yeah?”
“Blow it out your ear!”
I walked away to the sound of his laughter.
Twenty-four
At 8:00 P.M., I had just started my ski-machine routine when my phone rang. I long ago had decided not to interrupt my exercises for much of anything, so I let the answering machine get it while I listened.
“Heyya, McPhee,” a male voice said. “It’s Sy Berkowitz.”
Oh great, I thought, what does that prick want?
“Now that I’ve had someone check tomorrow’s lineup and I know you aren’t in it, just thought I’d let you know I have it on good authority that if you don’t have a blockbuster piece about Janet Taylor in tomorrow’s paper, then by Wednesday, the story will be mine. So get your notes together, babe, and prepare to hand them over.”
Like hell, I thought as he hung up. That bastard! He had some nerve. I would quit before I would let him have any story—or any notes—of mine.
I realized that in my anger, I had speeded up my pace on the ski machine. I kept it there, knowing that if I didn’t work off my fury at Sy before going to bed, I would be up half the night, stewing. I hadn’t gotten another ten minutes into my workout, however, when the doorbell rang.
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Now who the hell could be at my door at this time of night, I thought, stopping the machine and grabbing the hand towel I had put on the bed. Wiping my face, I went into the living room and over to the door, where I looked out through the eyepiece and thought I must be seeing things. Noah Lansing stood in the hallway outside, looking back in my direction.
I opened the door, groaning inwardly at what I must look—and smell—like.
“May I come in?” he asked abruptly. “We need to talk.”
Wordlessly, I stepped back and held the door open. Lansing walked in, stopped in the middle of the living room, and looked around.
“Nice view,” he said lamely, his back to me as if he suddenly realized he wasn’t completely comfortable.
“Have a seat,” I said, watching him from the foyer. “Would you like something to drink? Beer? Wine? Iced tea?”
Lansing turned to face me.
“Frankly,” he said, “I could use a beer.”
“Guinness okay?”
He actually looked surprised.
“You keep Guinness?”
“I don’t just keep it,” I told him. “I drink it.”
“Amazing,” he said. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who would drink the stuff. Actually, a Guinness would be great.”
I nodded and ducked into the kitchen, giving myself some one-of-the-guys points, and took a bottle of the thick, smoky Irish stout out of the refrigerator and a cold mug out of the freezer. Back in the living room, I put both down on the coffee table next to where Lansing still stood, and I sat down in one the two burgundy tub chairs opposite the sofa. Finally, Lansing sat, too.
He took a minute to pour the Guinness, then looked up.
“Thanks,” he said, holding the mug out in a toast and then drinking.
“So what’s up, Detective?” I asked, stumped by what could have brought him to the enemy’s camp.
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