by Brad Parks
Then, after traveling over the Occuquan River, through Prince William County and past Quantico, it was onto what the rest of the state referred to as “the real Virginia.” It’s no accident that you don’t reach the Virginia Welcome Center until you’ve been in the state for more than forty miles. Whoever built it there knew what they were doing.
The Virginia Welcome Center was, at minimum, how far south the associates of Red Dot Enterprises went.
Then the mission became: find the straw buyer. They always set up the rendezvous ahead of time, having found the buyer on Craigslist and given him the usual instructions. But nothing ever felt routine about it. They rotated which area they used, so they were never going to the same place twice. And it was always a bit of a trick finding the buyer’s car in a busy parking lot, even when they knew the make and model.
Next came the wait for the buyer to do his end, which was usually a nice excuse to grab a meal and relax, albeit not for long. Then it was time to swipe the guns and begin the trip back north.
The drive back was what really took forever, especially the way they did it. They kept it exactly five miles above the speed limit, so even when traffic was moving, they still weren’t making great time. They didn’t dare use E-ZPass. Each tollbooth cost ten minutes or more-and if there is anything more frustrating than waiting around just to pay some highway authority money, it hasn’t been invented yet. They took frequent breaks and drank a lot of caffeine lest they nod off or get into an accident while distracted.
The whole goal was not to be noticed in any way, which-on one of the busiest roads in America-wasn’t terribly hard. You just had to be smart about it: drive a bland car, something solid and domestic, without tinted windows or a tricked-out exhaust; wear the kind of clothes that can be bought at an outlet mall, something like Old Navy or Van Heusen; act like every other road-weary traveler at the rest stops; and make sure the trunk stays shut.
There are people who say I-95 is one of the most boring roads in America, and they’re right. But for Red Dot Enterprises, boring was good.
A boring trip was a successful one.
CHAPTER 4
I’ve never been pregnant-just not my thing-but I’ve entered the phase of life where enough of my friends have borne fruit to know how they agonize over how they’ll handle the Big News. Oh, eventually they’ll do the mass Facebook blast. But there are some people who need to know first, and there’s a certain order in which they must be informed: her parents, his parents, the best girlfriend, and so on. The hope is that no one high on the list slips up and tells someone who’s lower on the list, like Aunt Kathy, who then blabs it to everyone else and ruins the precious surprise.
Being a reporter with a big scoop can feel like being pregnant. Eventually, you’re going to tell everyone; in truth, you’re dying to tell everyone. Still, you need to be careful about how you dole out your information. You have to play fair with the various parties involved and give them time to properly digest your surprise. But you also have to be discreet lest some other media outlet gets wind of it and blows your big scoop. And until you do the equivalent of the big Facebook blast-in our case, putting it online and in the newspaper-you’re constantly worried about that damn Aunt Kathy.
So I had to move cautiously, do things in the right order, and hope for the best.
My first phone call was to Hakeem Rogers, the Newark Police Department’s public disinformation officer. Or at least that’s what I called him. I have no doubt what he called me was much worse. We were friendly on rare occasions-basically, the occasions when I wrote something he felt reflected well on his department-but otherwise we’re a bit like a small dog and a big raccoon. We fight constantly, scratching, clawing, and squalling the whole time, though no one ever seems to win.
I dialed the number and was just starting to talk to one of his underlings when I heard Rogers shout, “Is that that”-unrepeatable word, one suggesting an incestuous relationship-“Ross? Put that”-another something unrepeatable, this time suggesting homosexuality-“on my line.”
My call was transferred straight into: “You got a lot of nerve calling me after what I read in the paper this morning. I’ve got every media outlet in New York on my ass because of that crap.”
I stifled the urge to reply, Why, Detective, since when did you learn to read? Instead I said: “Crap?”
“Some blowhard minister grandstands for the cameras-talking out his big, black ass the whole time-and you guys run with it like it’s real news. Since when did one person making totally unverified statements become something you print? I used to have respect for you, but you guys have totally gone in the toilet.”
This was, perhaps, the fundamental reason Detective Rogers and I didn’t get along: we each had pronounced opinions about how the other handled his professional responsibilities. Rogers thought it was my job to make the Newark Police Department look good to the outside world. I thought it was his job to provide information, not pass judgment on what we did with it.
“Newark Police: blowhard minister talks out his black ass,” I said. “Can I use that as a headline? That was on the record, right?”
“Stop being a dick for once. You know damn well it’s not.”
“Well, I got news for you, Detective, that blowhard minister might actually be right.”
“What the hell you talking about?”
I relished what I had to say next: “The Eagle-Examiner has acquired autopsy photos of Darius Kipps that indicate he was tied to a chair shortly before his death-”
“You what?” he tried to interrupt.
“-and I’d like to know how that information fits into the Newark Police Department’s finding that Detective Kipps died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” I finished.
For the next five minutes, he peppered me with questions about how I got these photos, what they showed, and what we intended to do with them. For as much as I didn’t like Rogers-and for as much as we might be at cross-purposes on a story like this-I still had to give him and his bosses every opportunity to comment intelligently on this news, perhaps even to contradict it, before we published it. Playing fair can be a real pain that way.
When I finished, Rogers stayed quiet. I thought I heard him grip the phone tighter. He had been around long enough to know a reporter had just lobbed him a stink bomb-and that he better be careful with it.
“Well, I’d like to remind you that ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound’ was a preliminary finding,” he said. “I’ll have to call you back.”
Then he hung up. He didn’t even lob one last swear word or insult at me, so I knew I had him reeling. And that was fun.
But the fun didn’t stop there. My next call was to Ben Hilfiker, the AG’s spokesman. I went to his cell phone first, which he answered by saying, “Come on, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Isn’t there a law that says you’re not allowed to start bugging me until after lunch?”
“Actually, I’ve got something new to bug you with. So I think that resets the clock,” I said, then filled him in on the photos.
“Wow, Carter. Look at you, all grown up, with the big excloo,” he said, shortening the word “exclusive,” as journalists sometimes did.
“You think this is going to make your boss take a swing at this?”
“I don’t know. It still depends on how hard the wind is blowing,” Hilfiker said. “Why don’t you e-mail me those pics and I’ll get back to you.”
My final call was to the spokesman at the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, who was a nice guy-for a political hack. I went through the same rigmarole, asking to interview both the prosecutor and the medical examiner. At the end, I received the same response from him as I had from Rogers: a somewhat worried, “Let me call you back.”
I guess that’s one way having a scoop is unlike being pregnant: not everyone is thrilled to hear your news.
* * *
The final person who needed to be advised of the latest-and be given ample chance to react-was Mim
i Kipps. But since this fell into the category of Things You Don’t Do Over the Phone, I knew it would require another visit to the Rutledge Avenue duplex.
I grabbed an umbrella, because a gray morning looked like it was going to turn into a rainy afternoon, and made my way across the street to the parking garage. About halfway there, on the sidewalk, I passed Buster Hays, who was wearing the usual menagerie of wrinkles and stains that he called a wardrobe. He topped it off with a trench coat. With all due respect to the long and honorable history of the trench-coated foreign correspondent, Buster might be the last reporter in the world who still wears one.
I can’t pretend, walking along in my charcoal gray peacoat, that I was living at the zenith of fashion. I was probably closer to the nadir. But at least my coat was younger than the interns we had running around the office. I’m not sure I could say the same about Buster’s.
“Hey, Ivy, you got my Good Neighbors done yet?” he asked.
Good Neighbors? Good grief. I had forgotten.
“Didn’t you read the paper this morning? Things have kind of blown up with the Kipps thing. As a matter of fact, I was hoping you could do me a favor and-”
He immediately cut me off: “Forget it. No Good Neighbors, no IA.”
“You know, I could go to Tina, tell her you’re holding out on me, and she’ll make you give it up.”
It was a bluff-there is honor among thieves when it comes to ratting out fellow reporters to editors-and he knew it.
“Go ahead. Run off to your little girlfriend. By the time you get back, I’ll have forgotten I ever knew anyone at Newark IA. I’ll probably have forgotten I know you.”
“Come on, Buster, can’t you just give it to me?” I said, aware that I was now whining. “I’m working on a breaking story here. It led the paper today and it’ll probably lead the paper tomorrow. Brodie’s got a big ol’ boner for this thing, and I need to-”
“And then come tomorrow morning when you still haven’t done my Good Neighbors, what leverage do I got? I got Nuttin’ Honey.”
Only Buster would still be referencing a commercial for a cereal that had probably been out of production for twenty-five years. He was just standing there, not quite grinning at me, knowing he had me between a rock and a Good Neighbors. So I gave up.
“You’re a bad man, Buster.”
“I do what I need to do in order to survive in this cruel world,” he said, strolling onward. As he rounded the corner toward the front entrance, he started whistling.
There was no way that in the midst of chasing a scoop of this magnitude, I was going to have time to dig up a story about how Mrs. Doreen Robertson of Bedminster had been so moved by the suffering of the children on her safari trip to Zanzibar that she had convinced her bridge club friends to give money to Tanzanian malaria relief.
But I knew someone who did.
After crossing the street, I surfed through my received calls until I reached a 315 number. As I walked through the garage toward my car, I dialed my new favorite intern, Geoff “Ruthie” Ginsburg.
“This is Geoff,” he answered.
“Geoff!” I said, feigning as much enthusiasm as I could. “How you doing, pal? It’s Carter Ross!”
“Oh, hey! I’m so glad you called! You wouldn’t believe it, but every single pregnancy test has come back negative.”
“Every. Single. One?” I said, now trying for incredulity. Good thing I took a drama class at Amherst. True, I only took it to meet cute girls. But I paid attention. A little.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I need to go to the drugstore and get some more. I’m starting to run low on food coloring, too. You were right, that stuff wasn’t easy to find. I went to three stores before I-”
“Yeah, yeah, Geoff, that’s great, now I…” I tried to interrupt. But Ruthie had been hard at work and wanted to get full credit for it-the interns often act like they’re still in school, still being graded, and don’t want to settle for that B plus. So he kept yammering:
“… found the exact stuff we needed-they have it in Bernardsville, by the way-but it comes in these small bottles. I’ve been squirting it in pretty liberally because I wanted to make sure the tests were accurate. I didn’t want any false negatives. You were right about having people flush their own toilets, by the way. Some of them are a little hesitant about it. The first guy looked at me like I was out of my-”
“Geoff, this is really amazing and you’ve done great w-”
“-mind, but most of them have been really into it. This one lady even had me do it again just because she liked the flushing part so much. It cost me another pregnancy test, but I figured no one would mind too much. I’m going to be expensing all this-”
That was going to be a sight on an expense report: “24 First Response pregnancy tests … $375.58.” I’m glad it was going on his, not mine.
“-stuff. And I figure the paper won’t mind when they see the article we’re going to get out of this. You should hear some of these people’s stories. They’ve been on a waiting list ten, fifteen years to get into these town houses. And now to have them be defective? Can you just-”
“Yeah, Geoff, slow down, big guy. I got something you need to-”
“-imagine what that feels like? And then-this is maybe a sidebar-but I talked to some guys out on the street in front of the town houses and-”
“Geoff!” I said. “That’s all great. And we’ll-”
“But let me just tell you about what these corner boys told me. According to these kids-”
“Okay, okay, take it easy, Geoff,” I said. “I’m sure it’s great, and later you can tell me all about the corner boys. But for right now, we have a bit of an emergency situation and I need your help.”
“Oh!” he said eagerly. “What is it?”
“I need you to do a Good Neighbors feature.”
There was a brief but deliberate silence, followed by: “That … that’s an emergency?”
“I’ll explain later. But for right now, I need that Good Neighbors and I need it quickly. This afternoon if possible. Tomorrow morning at the absolute latest. You know what they’re looking for with a Good Neighbors?”
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I spent the entire first month of my internship doing nothing else.”
“Terrific! So you’re pro. Give me a shout when you’re done.”
“O-okay,” he said. “But I really want to tell you about these corner boys and-”
“Yeah, we’ll talk later, okay? I gotta run.”
I hung up before I could hear his dejected response. I really felt bad for the kid. But in the endless war that is putting out a daily newspaper, there are always going to be casualties. And I’m afraid Ruthie Ginsburg needed to be tallied among today’s body count.
* * *
A light drizzle was falling as I pulled out of the parking garage. Right around the time I passed the seamless border between Newark and East Orange, it had turned into a steady rain. My windshield wipers could keep up, but the sky was so dark I’m not sure I could say the same for my headlights.
I spent the drive giving my brain its first real chance to grind on the big picture: the why, who, and what of a murder. Why would someone want Darius Kipps dead? Who would profit from it? What would they gain?
They were the kind of questions a good detective like Kipps had probably asked himself a thousand times on a hundred different cases. But for as much as I tried to spin a variety of theories, I had neither the information nor the imagination to make any kind of brilliant deductions. By the time I arrived at the Kipps residence, I was no closer to anything resembling an answer. So I focused on the small task at hand-getting a comment from Mimi Kipps for my story-and left the rest for later.
There were no family members milling outside the house on a day like this. I could see light pouring out of those curtainless second-floor windows, so I suspected someone was home. I parked on the opposite side of the street, folded my printouts and tucked them in an inside pocket of my p
eacoat, where they wouldn’t get wet, then grabbed my umbrella, doing the awkward open-the-umbrella-while-getting-out-of-the-car move. As I walked up the front walkway with my head down, I could feel the chill and the damp trying to work their way in through my coat.
The porch had an awning so I shook out the umbrella, then dropped it to the side. I rang the doorbell and waited.
No one answered. I rang again. Was she in the shower again? Feeding the baby? Maybe I should have called first.
I pressed the bell again, impatient and cold, holding it for a second, listening hard to make sure it was working. And, yes, I could hear a chime. But no Mimi.
Still standing on her front stoop, I pulled out my phone and dialed her cell number. Maybe she was out at the grocery store and left the lights on. She answered on the first ring with, “Please go away.”
“Mimi? It’s Carter Ross.”
“I know. And I know you’re standing on my porch right now. But I have nothing to say to you.”
“I … I’m confused. Did you not like the story today?”
“The story was fine, but I need you to leave.”
“Can I … can I come back later?”
“No.”
“Can we talk on the phone later?”
“No.”
“Uh,” I said, at an unusual loss for words. I had been rehearsing parts of my conversation with Mimi on the drive out, and this was not in any of the versions that had played out in my head. “Mimi, am I missing something here? Yesterday I spent a few hours at your home in the morning. Then I came back in the afternoon. You seemed very keen to have me working on this and now you’re freezing me out? What gives?”