Thirty minutes later, I returned from my little fishing expedition. I had spoken to Buddy, the assistant day manager, who had come downstairs to watch the office and answer the telephone that was ringing constantly, while the night manager was over in the other building, answering questions for the police.
Buddy, a polo-shirted young man who looked like he might just barely be out of college and whose tan attested to some long weekends at the pool or the beach, had told me that, with the exception of a short spate of car break-ins in the parking lot the year before and an occasional domestic dispute that got out of hand, they had very few problems at the apartment complex, certainly nothing of the magnitude of a murder. And yes, he said, he knew there was at least one policeman living at the towers because he had seen a marked car parked there from time to time, but no, he didn’t know the officer’s name, and no, it wouldn’t be possible for him to go through the rental records to find out.
At least, I thought to myself as I walked back over to the east building, my quotes about the complex’s safety record would be more authoritative than the other reporters’. But I really needed the name of the dead officer soon if I was going to have it in time for the paper’s final edition. I was mentally scratching my head for a way to find out, when I saw Bill Russell come back out of the east building’s glass double front doors. With Detective Noah Lansing close behind him.
Oh Lord, I thought, as my breath caught in my throat and my heart flopped around in a disgustingly erratic fashion. How, I asked myself, does he do that to me?
It’s because of your appalling lack of hormonal control.
For a pain in the head, you’re a real pain in the ass, I responded mentally. But my voice had a point.
* * * *
Ever since the first time I had seen Noah Lansing, just over three months ago, I had found myself hopelessly in lust when I was around him. He had thick, black hair and a tall, slim build that was as much a testament to terrific genes as it was to any workouts. But it was his eyes that always held my attention. They were large and an unusual dark blue that seemed to shine with their own internal light, and they carried an expression of intelligence, experience, and awareness that made me have to remind myself constantly not to stare at him. On top of all that was the intense feeling of recognition that had washed over me the first time I met him.
It was outside the Great Falls home of a Fairfax County supervisor whose wife had just been murdered, and it was Lansing’s first case since moving to the area, from his job as a police detective in Virginia Beach, to join the Fairfax County Police Department. I hadn’t known Lansing’s history then. If I had, I probably would have kept my mouth shut for once, especially considering the effect he had on me.
Later, I learned from Bill Russell that Lansing’s wife, Sarah, had been murdered several years earlier by members of a Hampton Roads area drug ring after they learned from a newspaper reporter that Lansing was an undercover cop planted in their midst. Sarah’s death had left him a devastated, guilt-ridden widower with a small son.
But I had been busy mouthing off to Bill Russell, in blissful ignorance, when Lansing first turned those blue eyes on me. Later, after Bill told me Lansing’s story, I understood that Lansing had been so irritated by my presence—and my sarcastic mouth—because he thought I was just another smart-assed woman newspaper reporter like the one who got his wife killed. At the time, all I knew was that he took an instant dislike to me for some reason, and that I was frozen to the spot with the shock of meeting those eyes. A shock from which I had yet to recover.
It hadn’t been a propitious beginning, and Lansing and I subsequently fought our way through that entire investigation. When I managed to connect the death of the supervisor’s wife to the earlier murder of Ann Kane, a U.S. Senate aide, Lansing and I finally were forced into declaring a professional cease-fire. We had realized that our cooperation was the only way to ensure that the men responsible for the women’s deaths would be exposed, something we both wanted very much to see.
Bill Russell also had taken a stab at peacemaking by telling Lansing my own history, specifically about the murder of my sister Cara two years before, a murder I nearly got killed trying to solve after the Fairfax County Police had found nothing but dead ends. It was something I seldom talked about, not liking the looks of pity that the story usually elicited, but at least it had made Lansing reassess his original opinion of me as a news voyeur who thought the often-violent stories that I covered were amusing. So our relationship was better now, both professionally and personally, and it was the latter that scared the crap out of me.
In fact, it had become increasingly clear, in the weeks since the violent resolution of the investigation into the women’s deaths, that a lot of the current tension between us was because Lansing had decided he was interested in me as well. And that presented me with several big problems, not the least of which was the conflict of interest it caused for both our jobs. I had sworn years ago, after a bad experience at my first newspaper job in Albany, Georgia, never again to go out with someone I covered. But I had been out with Lansing on his sailboat three times now, and just a week ago, he had convinced me to have dinner with him. And the kiss Lansing had given me before leaving me at my apartment door also had reminded me of my other big problem, stirring up all my long-standing misgivings about my track record with relationships.
Now there’s a sordid story, my nemesis chimed in as I watched Lansing and Bill approach.
I ignored the comment, but I couldn’t ignore its accuracy. That track record included a marriage in Tallahassee that had lasted only two years and a short string of love interests, none of whom had ever made it to the take-her-home-to-Mother stage before one or the other of us had bailed out. In the couple of years since the last such relationship, with an attorney named Chris Wiley, I had done some soul searching, and I knew the problem was as much with me as it was with any of the men involved. Eventually, I decided that I have real difficulty with control. I don’t like people who try to control me, which explains my divorce and the demise of more than one of the subsequent relationships. And I have a hard time trusting that people won’t do exactly that if I let them in.
Now, Noah Lansing was threatening all the shields I had laboriously constructed over the years, and I didn’t know which frightened me more: the idea of keeping the shields up or the prospect of finally letting them down. And I thought he must have some misgivings of his own, given the glacial pace—at least by nineties standards—of anything physical between us, our apparently mutual attraction notwithstanding.
* * * *
Lansing and Bill hadn’t even made it all the way to where the press stood before several reporters were calling out their questions again. It occurred to me that most reporters probably start out as those children in elementary school who never learn to take turns. Bill put his hands up in a time-out gesture to shut them up. Lansing was busy scanning the group until his eyes found me standing to one side on his left. His look paused just long enough to let me know he had registered my presence before he turned back to look at Bill.
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” Bill was saying, even though I had strong doubts that he really believed that about any of us, “for those of you who don’t know him, this is Detective Noah Lansing. He’ll be the lead investigator on this case, so I’ll let him do the talking.” He looked at Lansing sympathetically before turning him over to the press.
“If you’ll hold your questions for a couple of minutes,” Lansing said, “I’ll tell you what we know, and then you can ask me about anything that I haven’t addressed.” When he didn’t open the small notebook he was carrying around, I knew he wasn’t going to tell us much.
“Sadly, I can tell you that the victim of this apparent homicide was a male officer in the Fairfax County Police Department. While we do know his identity, we can’t release it to you until we can contact his family, which we already are working on. The officer appears to have been shot in the upp
er body. His body was found on the floor inside his apartment when a passing neighbor saw it through the front door, which had been left slightly ajar. You’ll notice that I said this apparently is a homicide. Although nothing is official until we complete our work here and the medical examiner can determine cause of death, there were no signs of the wound being self-inflicted. The officer’s own gun was still fastened in its holster, apparently unfired, and no other weapons have been found in the apartment. At this time, we have no suspects in the death, no motive, and no witnesses. We are interviewing neighbors in the building in hopes that one of them may have seen something helpful.”
He paused, drawing a breath. “All right, let’s have your questions.”
“How long before you can tell us who he is?” Trudy Gernrich from the Washington Post wanted to know. Out of all the other reporters there, Trudy was one of the few I considered serious competition. Like me, she didn’t miss much, and she always knew the important questions to ask when time was short.
“Soon, we hope,” Lansing told her. “Just as soon as we can reach his family.”
“But you’re certain now of who he is?” That was from Barrett Avery, an evening anchorman at Channel 3, who occasionally went out to cover big-breaking stories so he could pretend to have real news reporting credentials and who often had difficulty following the obvious.
“Yes,” Lansing said patiently. “He was still in uniform when he was shot, including his badge and name tag. There also was other identification on the body. And the officers who were first on the scene knew the victim personally.”
“Does that mean he worked out of the Mount Vernon Station?” I asked Lansing, trying to narrow the possibilities in hopes of finding out who the officer was, just in case they decided to drag their heels on identifying him.
“I’m sorry,” Lansing said, looking in my direction, “but I’m not prepared to answer that until next of kin are notified.”
It was a no-win situation for him, and his “no comment” answer effectively was a yes, I thought, satisfied at having found out what I wanted to know in spite of his refusal to answer. As soon as Lansing turned away to take someone else’s question, I moved a few steps away from the group and retrieved my cell phone from my purse. I wanted to be able to hear the other questions and answers, but I didn’t want anyone there to hear the phone call I was about to make.
I double-checked the number in the miniature address book I always carry and dialed the home number for Stan Dozier, another patrol officer stationed at Mount Vernon. I knew Stan preferred the late-night shift and worked it as often as he could because Nancy, his fiancée, was an emergency room nurse at Mount Vernon Hospital, and she worked the late shift on a permanent basis. When Stan was able to work the same hours as Nancy, it meant they could spend more of their free time together.
One of the first feature stories I had done after moving to the police beat was about the unusual number of police who marry or become seriously involved with emergency room staff, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and other cops, probably because they keep running into each other in the course of their jobs and they all keep the same kind of crazy hours. Nancy and Stan had liked the story, and Stan had been helpful a couple of times since in pointing me toward information I needed for other stories. Tonight, I expected to catch him at home, since his shift didn’t start for almost two hours. He answered on the fourth ring, his voice carrying the impatient tone of someone who has been interrupted in the middle of something important.
“Stan, it’s Sutton McPhee.”
“Hi, Sutton,” Stan replied. “Listen, I really don’t have time to talk now. They just called me to come in early tonight because they’ve got so many people over at the shooting at Belle Haven.”
“I’m over there now. Who was he, Stan?” I asked, not wanting to hold him up any longer than necessary. “I know he was a Fairfax cop and that he worked out of the Mount Vernon Station, but they’re still calling his family, so they haven’t told us his name yet. I know they’re bound to reach somebody before the night is over, but with my luck, it will be ten minutes too late for me to make the last edition. And my editor will have a stroke.”
“This won’t come back to me?” Stan asked.
“No way.”
“It was a guy named Dan Magruder. I think he was working day shift this week. He had only been at the station a few months. He used to work out of the McLean Station.”
My hand tightened convulsively on the phone while I stood there in stunned silence.
“Sutton, you there?” It was Stan, wondering if we were still connected. I managed to find my voice.
“Yeah, Stan, I’m here.”
“Did you know him?”
“I just spent the whole day riding with him for a story.”
It was Stan’s turn to stumble over a response.
“Shit, Sutton,” he said finally, “if I’d known that, I probably wouldn’t have told you. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It just caught me off guard.”
“Well, you’d better let the detectives know, if they don’t already. I imagine they’ll want to talk to you about what you and Dan did today, just in case.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, still trying to absorb what he had told me. “I guess I’d better go do that and let you get to work. Thanks, Stan.”
We hung up, and I walked back over to where Lansing and Bill were just making their way back into the building lobby, finally having exhausted the press’s supply of questions. The huddle of reporters was breaking up, too, with some wandering off to find some other poor soul to ask silly questions of, and others heading toward their cars or remote trucks to let their news desks know what was going on. I moved toward the lobby door, only to be stopped by another uniformed officer who didn’t want to let me in, having just seen me outside at the impromptu press conference.
“Detective Lansing,” I called out, leaning past the cop who stood in my way. Lansing and Bill both turned at my voice. “There’s something I need to tell you.” There must have been something in my expression or the tone of my voice that told them it was important and not just more of the usual Sutton McPhee orneriness. They walked back to where I stood in the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” Bill wanted to know. Having known me so much longer, he probably could interpret my body language better than Lansing could.
“I know the dead cop is Dan Magruder,” I told them, dropping my voice from the shout that had gotten their attention. Lansing opened his mouth, no doubt to protest that they wouldn’t confirm that. I went on before he could speak. “I thought I’d better tell you that I spent the day riding with him today.”
Bill looked at me in surprise. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised at my apparent talent for finding my way into the middle of their cases or at the fact that I had volunteered the information. Lansing didn’t say a word. He just reached out a hand and pulled me in the door, past the officer who was guarding it. He whisked me inside and over to the elevator bank so fast that I didn’t think any of the other reporters had time to notice I had gotten in to where they hadn’t been allowed to go.
* * * *
An hour later, I felt as if my brain had been picked clean. We were sitting in the living room of a vacant apartment next door to the sixth-floor unit where Dan Magruder’s body still lay. The River View Towers’s night manager had opened the unoccupied apartment for the police to use to interview people in the building, out of sight of the body, and had even located half a dozen folding chairs and a couple of card tables. I was sitting at one of the tables, flanked by Bill and Lansing, answering all their questions for at least the third time. I had been completely forthcoming with them for a change, since there was nothing about my story on Magruder that I needed to conceal. One of the other investigators, who would be helping Lansing on the case and whose name I had not registered, sat across from me and listened as well. I was just about to protest the redundancy of their questions
when my cell phone rang in my purse. The cops all looked irritated at the interruption, but I answered it anyway.
“Where the hell’s my story, McPhee?”
It was Rob Perry. The final deadline was looming over him, which meant the volume knob on his voice was gradually inching its way toward the Yell setting.
“I’ll call you right back with it, Rob, I promise,” I said, not wanting to get into a long explanation for my tardiness. “I’m talking to the cops right now. It has turned out to be more complicated than we thought.”
“Five minutes!” he ordered and hung up. I doubted Rob had ever even heard of Emily Post.
“Are we about done here?” I asked Lansing. “I’ve still got a story to call in, unless I want to die young. And I’ve told you everything that Magruder and I did, saw, and said today. There just wasn’t anything there that I could imagine someone killing him over.”
Lansing and Bill exchanged a look, and then Lansing apparently took pity on me.
“Yeah,” he said, standing up stiffly from the table. “We’re done, for now.”
The rest of us stood as well, just as another plainclothes officer came in to talk to Bill. Not realizing I was a reporter, he told Bill that he had just gotten off the phone with Dan Magruder’s parents, who would be driving down immediately from Winchester, Virginia, on the state’s western border.
“Is it okay to release his name?” Bill asked, turning to Lansing.
“Yeah, go ahead,” Lansing told him, nodding tiredly.
“I’ll walk you down, Sutton,” Bill offered.
“Okay, but I just have a couple of questions of my own for you guys. Have you found anybody in the building who saw anything?”
“No,” Lansing answered. “Just the neighbor who found him. We’re guessing that he probably was killed some time soon after he got home from his shift with you, and most people in the building were still at work at that time, so there probably weren’t a lot of people coming and going yet. And with Magruder’s apartment being at the very end of the hall, it wasn’t until the neighbor directly across from him got home that anyone noticed the body. The door was only open a little way.”
Corruption of Justice Page 3