and ends up in a safe office, making money, starting a
family instead of rotting behind bars or in the dirt, then yes.
He has something better. I know you can’t possibly understand that, Henry. Wanting your child to not just survive but
live a life. Maybe one day you will. But you can’t right
now.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t.”
45
I woke up the next morning, pleasantly surprised that
sleep had come so easily. I think it was more due to the
complete lack of energy in every one of my muscles, the
utter exhaustion I felt, than any sort of blissful conscience.
As soon as we returned from the Linwood residence,
I’d gone straight to the Gazette to write up my story.
Amanda had given me a long, deep hug, and for the first
time since we’d started speaking again, a hug was all I
wanted.
The story was difficult to write. That so many people
had been so deceitful, purposefully putting so many lives
at risk, it was hard to fathom how any of them could have
felt they were doing the right thing. I heard over the wire
that the police had apprehended Robert and Elaine Reed
in a suburb just outside Chicago. Caroline Twomey was
in the process of being returned to her family. The police
had reopened the kidnappings of both Danny Linwood and
Michelle Oliveira. They still didn’t know who kidnapped
them, and they believed Gray Talbot had inoculated
himself from that knowledge. It was Ray Benjamin who
was the button man. And Gray had killed him to seal off
the investigation. There was a chance those families who
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held the children would never be found, never be prosecuted. We got lucky with Daniel Linwood.
The Reeds were found at a hotel outside Chicago.
They’d driven halfway across the country after fleeing
Harrisburg. The manager became suspicious when all of
the family’s credit cards were declined, and Elaine Reed
attempted to use an expired driver’s license as identification.
They claimed, like Shelly Linwood, that they were
doing it to protect their son, Patrick. That Benjamin had
threatened them, as well. And now Patrick would likely
spend most of his childhood in foster care, and his parents
would have to deal with the legal ramifications of what
they’d done.
The children’s lives would go on. But they would never
be the same.
It’s always the innocent who are forced to suffer.
Like Shelly said, maybe in a few years I would understand. When I had a family of my own, children I would
do anything to protect, maybe that kind of sacrifice would
feel justified.
But not right now.
I looked forward to seeing the paper, so when I rolled
out of bed the first thing I did was go to the front door to
get my morning delivery.
My neighbor down the hall, the lovely Ms. Berry, all
eighty nightgowned years of her, must have been thrilled
to see me standing there topless in my boxers. I waved
hello. She retreated back inside. Maybe she wasn’t so
thrilled.
I took the paper inside, laid it on the table and read.
When I was through, my emotions were mixed. I was
happy with the story, but not the outcome. All I could say
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is that Gray Talbot’s operation would be shut down, and
the man would certainly spend years behind bars.
Caroline Twomey was returned to her family. It
remained to be seen what would happen to her parents. I
assumed they were accessories, like the Linwoods. And it
was only a matter of time before the Oliveira case was
reopened, as well.
So many lives shattered by greed and fear. And I still
wasn’t quite sure who the villains were.
I took a hot shower, feeling like a year’s worth of crud
had built up, caked my skin an inch thick. I let the water
run in and out of my mouth, felt the steam coat my face.
It felt good.
When I washed up, I packed the paper, got my stuff
together and headed to the newsroom. Though the story
was a difficult one for me to write, I knew Wallace and the
crew would be thrilled. It was a huge get, the kind of story
that would not just have people talking today, but would
ripple for months if not years. It made me glad that Wallace
would be proud. Though I secretly hoped Jack would be,
too. I still resented what he’d done to himself, resented that
he might have jeopardized his legacy, but his validation
meant more to me than he likely knew.
I took the train down to Rockefeller Plaza, remembering I’d have to return the rental later that day.
The plaza was already crowded by the time I walked
over. Tourists were perched on the benches, taking pictures
of the grandness of the area. People stood outside the
shops waiting for that first door to be cracked open.
I’d never been much of a sightseer when I was younger.
Wonders never really amazed me like they did most folk.
I chalked it up to my profession, where everything had to
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sonally involved in a story, it could come back to haunt
you in more ways than you could imagine. I thought about
my last few major stories, beginning with being sought for
a murder charge a few years ago, to hunting William Henry
Roberts after that. And now, with Gray Talbot behind bars
and the lives of several families never to be the same, I
wondered if I’d mistakenly forgotten all that. If I’d gotten
too close, whether by chance or by choice.
Once this was over I wanted to step back, reevaluate my
situation. I loved my job, and that wouldn’t change until
they dragged me out of the newsroom, kicking and
screaming while I tried to beat off Security with a legal
notepad. There was room to grow. Personally and professionally. And with all the time spent chasing murderers,
liars and politicians (who managed to encompass both), it
was time to take stock.
The wall clock read 9:05 when the elevator opened on
to the newsroom floor. I expected some sort of jubilation,
maybe a pat on the back or two. I’d cracked a huge case
that would have ramifications potentially all the way to the
top. A man considered a potential front-runner for the
biggest job in the land would now be spending at least
eight years behind bars. There was something sad about
ruining a career. Ending a life. And I wondered where
Hobbs County would be today if Gray Talbot had never
thought of a boy named Daniel Linwood.
I walked to my desk looking for my colleagues, looking
out for Wallace. The pride quickly turned to fear when I
noticed all the reporters were sitting at their desks. They
were silent. Their faces ashen gray. Some were at work,
but it was perfunctory.
Evelyn Waterstone passed by. She gazed up at me for
; a moment, her mouth opening. For the first time I could
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remember, Evelyn Waterstone looked sad. She said two
words to me, “Sorry, Parker,” and walked on.
I didn’t know what to do, but something had bitten the
newsroom of the New York Gazette. I had to find out. The
only person who didn’t look like they were drowning in
their own sorrows was Frank Rourke.
There was no love lost between Frank Rourke and me.
We’d had a pretty intense falling-out over the shit bag
incident last year, and since then never really attempted to
patch things up. I never felt the need to gain his approval.
My work would accomplish that in my stead.
Rourke was yapping away on his desk phone—something about preseason football—so I walked over when he
hung up and stood over his desk, waiting to hear what he
said.
Rourke didn’t notice me at first. He just sat there
drinking coffee out of a Thermos the size of my head.
Then when he turned around and saw me standing there,
the smile disappeared. My stomach dropped when I
realized he had the same look on his face Evelyn had
minutes earlier.
“Parker,” he said. “Listen, man…I don’t know what
else to say. But I’m sorry. This sucks majorly.”
“What does?” I said. “I just got here, please, everyone
else looks like they have one foot in the grave.”
Rourke said, “Oh, man, you didn’t see it?”
“See what? Speak to me, goddamn it.”
Rourke spun around, looked at the desk across from
him. Then he stood up, went over and began rifling
through the garbage can. I wondered what the hell he was
doing, but then when I saw him take a newspaper out of
the can, that queasiness returned. He handed it to me, front
page out, and said, “Like I said, this sucks.”
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I unfolded the front page and held it up. It was a copy
of this morning’s New York Dispatch. When I read the
headline, in huge bold print, I nearly threw up.
The headline read: A Lush Life: Jack O’Donnell and
All the Booze That’s Fit to Print.
The byline was credited to Paulina Cole.
The two l’s in all were liquor bottles. Below the
headline were two pictures. And both made me sick to my
stomach.
The first picture looked to have been taken in some sort
of storage room. It was about the size of a walk-in closet,
with three rows of shelves traversing the space.
Every single space was lined, front to back, with empty
bottles. Wine. Beer. Whiskey. Bourbon. The caption below
the photo read: Jack O’Donnell Downs in One Year What
Most People Drink in a Lifetime!
The second photo, the one that made me clench the
paper into a wad in my hands, was of Jack. Lying in the
hospital. Tubes running through his veins.
I recognized the setting. It was taken after I’d brought
Jack to the hospital after he nearly choked to death on his
own vomit. Somebody had snuck into the hospital and
photographed Jack while he was unconscious and recovering from alcohol poisoning. I couldn’t imagine the kind
of black heart needed to do such a thing.
I took the paper without saying another word to Frank
and took it to my desk. There I read the entire article, every
single word. And when I was done, I crumpled it up, took
it to the incinerator on our floor and chucked it into the
darkness.
Paulina Cole had done one of the worst hatchet jobs on
Jack I’d ever read. Somehow she’d gotten one of the
porters in Jack’s building to collect the liquor bottles from
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the recycling bin every morning. Easy, since he occupied
the entire floor himself. The bottles were then brought
straight to Paulina Cole. Every single one was fingerprinted to confirm that Jack had in fact drunk them
himself. No other fingerprints were found on any of the
bottles. And there must have been several hundred in the
photograph. And he’d drunk them all himself over the
span of one year.
The article described how much alcohol must have
been absorbed by Jack’s bloodstream over that year. It
also made mention of every correction in every story that
Jack had written that same year, comparing it to his
previous work. It portrayed Jack as a man whose professional life was now ruled by one of the most aggressive
bouts of alcoholism ever seen in the newsroom, whose
work had depreciated to the point where his stories were
filled with more holes than an O. J. Simpson alibi.
Then the story took a more macro perspective, going
into great detail about how the Gazette promoted Jack as
one of the legends of New York journalism. Paulina ended
her story with the following paragraph:
“It can be said that a news institution can be judged on
one thing, and one thing only: the reputation of the men
and women who report the news. Jack O’Donnell is a man
whose reputation, built over years more through joviality
and cronyism than true journalistic integrity, has opened
a window into the true nature of this black-and-white
beast. And what an ugly, ugly creature it is.”
The next thing I knew I was going straight for Jack’s
desk. It was unoccupied. But worse than that, it was empty.
The computer was off. There were no odds and ends on
the countertop. There was nothing.
I marched to Wallace Langston’s office and threw open
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the doors. The editor-in-chief was on the phone. His face
was ashen. I knew the feeling. He motioned for me to take
a seat. I declined.
When he hung up the phone, I said, “Wallace, what the
fuck is going on? Where is Jack?”
Wallace sighed and leaned back in his chair. I knew my
anger was misplaced, but my mind was going a thousand
miles an hour in a hundred different directions. “Jack is
on leave,” he said.
“On leave? What the hell does that mean?”
“I assume you saw the story in today’s Dispatch, ” he
said.
“I just finished it.”
“Well, word came down from Harvey Hillerman
himself that Jack had two choices. An extended personal
leave to deal with his demons in a treatment center. Or the
termination of his employment with the Gazette. ” Harvey
Hillerman was the president and CEO of the Gazette. If it
came from him, it meant Jack had no way out.
“And?”
“And as of this morning, Jack O’Donnell is no longer
an employee of this newspaper.”
I felt as if a cannonball had hit me square in the
stomach. My knees went weak, and I fell into the chair
across from Wallace.
“He can’t do that,” I said. “Jack is this newspaper.”
“No, he’s not, Henry. Jack has done more for this paper
than any employee in its history. But we are not one and
the same. You’ve seen Jack over the past few months. You
know things have been going downhill. He was hospitalized just last week.”
“Yeah, and I know that damn picture is out there for
everyone to see.”
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“You need to think about Jack,” Wallace said. “The
man needs help. More than what you or I can do. If he
chooses to do it on his own, so be it. My take is that he
didn’t want to be forced into doing anything. That doesn’t
surprise me. It’s always been the way he’s worked.”
“So what now?” I said. “We just keep working like
nothing ever happened?”
“That’s impossible,” Wallace said. “Jack’s been here so
long some of his blood does run through this paper’s veins.
But we have to move on. You’ve done some amazing work
in your time here, Henry. Jack has put down his mantle for
now. And I expect you to be one of the people to take it.
To carry it with pride.”
“You don’t take that because it’s been thrown down,”
I said. “You earn it. I can’t just take Jack’s place.
Nobody can.”
“That’s true. So just do your job to the best of his ability.
Learn from his mistakes. Don’t let your problems overwhelm you. Because at the end of the day, you’re remembered for the end of your career, not the beginning. And
the saddest part of all this is a generation might only know
the Jack O’Donnell on the cover of today’s newspaper.”
I couldn’t listen to any more. I slammed the door to
Wallace’s office and left the building. Hailing a taxi, I instructed the driver to take me to Twenty-Seventh and Park.
The offices of the New York Dispatch.
I left the cab, throwing the fare at the driver, and entered
the building through the revolving door, feeling as if I
could tear the walls apart with my bare hands. A security
guard stopped me as I approached the turnstiles. He said,
“Sir, you’ll need to check in and show your ID.”
I went to the security post. Another guard sat there
looking bored. “Who are you here to see?”
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“Paulina Cole. New York Dispatch. ”
“Do you have an appointment with Ms. Cole?”
“No.”
“Does she know you’re coming?”
“No.”
The guard looked confused. “Sir, can you state your
business with Ms. Cole?”
“That’s between me and her.”
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