The Girl Next Door

by Brad Parks

  Still, up until now, I had never experienced Brodie as anything more than a kindly old man. I didn’t know what he looked like when wielding the paddleboard. And I guess that’s what scared me most: the unknown.

  As I entered the office, Tina had her head bowed, like she didn’t want to look at me. I was a little miffed at her for running to Brodie with this bear thing. The cardinal sins of the newspaper world, transgressions that will get you fired immediately and without further comment, are things like plagiarism and making up sources. Insubordination doesn’t come near that list. We are, after all, reporters. Lack of respect for authority is part of our job description.

  Still, I obviously had some kind of punishment coming my way or I wouldn’t have been summoned into the woodshed. Brodie gestured toward a chair in front of his desk, and I gingerly lowered myself into it. Some bit of classical music, heavy on the violins, poured from a set of small speakers next to his computer. Brodie closed his eyes and rested his tented fingers against his lips. He was either settling into deep contemplation or had fallen asleep. It was always hard to tell. He was famous for doing this—it was known as the “Brodie Think”—and it lasted as long as was needed for the old man to get his head around a situation.

  For a long minute, I sat there in dreadful silence, waiting for whatever I had coming. Somewhere during that time, I decided that, since this was opposite world, I should do the reverse of what I normally did in Brodie’s office. So whereas I ordinarily would have sat quietly, waiting for the Brodie Think to end, this time I started talking.

  “Look, before you start, let me just say I owe Tina an apology,” I said. “I know I should have just done what she asked. What happened with the bear is entirely my fault, and I accept full responsibility.”

  Brodie opened his eyes and I could immediately tell that, as usual, I had said the wrong thing.

  “Bear?” he said. “What happened with the bear?”

  I looked to Tina for help, but she shook her head.

  “Uh, never mind,” I said, now totally confused. Brodie settled back into his pondering, and I shifted in my seat. The violins had given way to something more ominous, something involving low brass. Brodie let another minute—or maybe it was a year—pass before speaking.

  “Carter, I’m very disturbed by several things I’ve heard about you,” he said. “I just received a phone call from Gary Jackman.”

  The name hit me with a jolt. What did this possibly have to do with him? The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me this conversation was not going to end well.

  “Gary has been a friend to this newsroom during difficult times,” Brodie continued. “I don’t need to tell you how much worse things could have been had he not been an ally.”

  I clenched my jaw. A friend? An ally? Why, because he hadn’t insisted on rolling a guillotine into the newsroom every time we had another round of layoffs?

  “Now,” Brodie said. “He tells me you made a scene at a funeral home yesterday. Do you care to respond to that?”

  “I … I wouldn’t call it a scene,” I said, my words foundering as usual around Brodie. “It was … We … We had a little run-in, I suppose.”

  “He said you called him a name,” Brodie said. “Is that true?”

  I scanned my memory and, oh shoot, it was. I just thought he hadn’t heard me.

  “Yes,” I said timidly.

  “What name did you call him?”

  This was getting torturous.

  “Dshbg,” I mumbled.

  “Say again?”

  “Douche bag,” I said, louder this time, and I could tell Brodie was unimpressed by my word choice. “But, in my defense, he really was being a douche bag.”

  Tina, head still bowed, actually groaned. Brodie pointed a long, thin, old-man finger at me and raised his already high voice another octave.

  “You are way out of line, young man,” he yelped. “Way out of line.”

  “Sorry. Sorry, it was just—”

  Brodie glared at me and I stopped talking.

  “He also said you were sexually harassing one of his secretaries…”

  “I didn’t harass—”

  “… and that you misrepresented yourself as not being a reporter,” Brodie said, talking over me. “Is that true?”

  “I … I was just…”

  “Is it true? Did you misrepresent yourself or not? Yes or no? Did you say you were”—he looked at some notes he had kept—“Ted from accounting?”

  Brodie was still on the other side of the desk, but if he leaned forward any further, I was going to be able to smell the Werther’s Original on his breath. Tina had raised her head just slightly to see me answer. I thought about explaining myself, telling them the reason I was skulking around Jackass is because I suspected he was a killer. But in the moment, it felt like some kind of desperately invented story—especially when I had nothing but coincidence and supposition to prove it, and when I wasn’t totally convinced myself that’s what happened.

  I was trapped.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Tina’s head sank again. Brodie leaned back, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

  “You’ve always been one of my favorite reporters, but I don’t know what’s happening with you right now,” Brodie said. “We can tolerate a lot of behavior around here, but we still have standards of professional conduct. I can’t have you running around higgledy-piggledy, treating the publisher of this newspaper with such blatant disrespect.

  “I’m afraid I have no choice,” he concluded. “As of this moment, you are suspended without pay until further notice.”

  He was the kind of man who moved quickly from one challenge to the next. There was no time to dwell on things. So he had actually already started to forget about Nancy Marino within a few days of killing her. Sure, he went to her wake, and he would go to her funeral. But he thought he had put the problem squarely behind him—with his tracks well covered—when, suddenly, that reporter showed up, snooping around.

  He didn’t like reporters, not at all. He found them disrespectful and constantly overly familiar, saying things they had no right to say, asking questions with such rash impertinence. He detested that they seemed to consider themselves his equal in some ways. What gave them the nerve to act like that? They would be nothing without the newspaper behind them. That was the only reason anyone paid them any heed. Didn’t they realize that? They fancied themselves essential components of the machine—unique and vital—when really they were just replaceable, interchangeable parts.

  He had to pretend he thought otherwise, of course. He pandered to their inflated egos, made them feel justified in their self-importance. He never let on what he really thought about them, and they never would have been able to guess how much he despised them. But even on their best days, he considered them pests.

  He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Carter Ross at first. Ross was clearly bright, which was cause for concern—dumber reporters were easier to manipulate. Then again, Ross seemed nice enough, harmless actually.

  But it’s the nice ones you have to look out for. And as soon as Ross came around, throwing about the name “Nancy Marino,” it was clear he was anything but harmless. To have a reporter like Ross asking questions about her, clearly curious about her, dredging her name up like there was something to be discovered about her. That brought a new and ominous twist to the Nancy Marino Problem.

  It was possible—not probable but possible—that Ross would be able to put everything together. It depended on just how smart he was, of course, and how dogged he would be in searching. But if he managed to talk to the right people, hear certain things from the NLRB, from the IFIW, from any of the places there might have been small shreds of evidence left behind … well, it could become an issue.

  It could not be allowed. Carter Ross was now, officially, a threat.

  CHAPTER 5

  They didn’t call security on me. I guess I wasn’t considered that much of a
threat. I was allowed to stop at my desk and collect my things, albeit under Tina’s supervision.

  Somehow the newsroom gossips already knew what had happened—I swear, one of them has Brodie’s office wired—and by the time I had collected my briefcase and was ready to depart, half of them were giving me looks generally saved for death row inmates in Texas. Tommy shot me a mournful glance, surreptitiously formed his fingers into the shape of a phone and mouthed the words “call me.” Buster Hays was shaking his head sadly. The rest of the faces were a blur of pity, concern, and confusion. I’m sure in repeated retelling on the office rumor mill, I would emerge as an idiot for having lied about my identity, as a hero for having affronted Jackass, but as a cautionary tale that no one is safe in this day and age.

  If they knew the truth—that I was being railroaded—they would undoubtedly view this spectacle differently. I would be seen as a martyr, a noble sufferer who was willing to lay his career on the line in his quest for the truth, a reporter’s reporter.

  Instead, as I made my condemned man’s walk out of the newsroom, I merely hoped I looked brave rather than pathetic.

  Tina and I rode the elevator down in silence at first, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to say to her. I never knew where, exactly, our relationship was supposed to head, but whatever the optimal direction, this was clearly a wrong turn. Her eyes stayed fixed on the numbers above the door as they ticked from two to one.

  “I tried, but I couldn’t save you,” she said quietly. “His mind was made up.”

  “How long am I gone for?”

  “He wanted six months, but I talked him down to three,” Tina said.

  “Three months!” I blurted. I had been thinking I’d be out for a week or two.

  “You’re actually lucky,” Tina said. “Jackman wanted you fired outright.”

  Of course he did. I was that pesky reporter who kept asking him questions about Nancy Marino.

  “Carter, when you come back, you can’t give them anything to use against you,” Tina said. “Jackass would use any excuse to jettison another newsroom salary.”

  “Tina,” I said, wanting to tell her some of the things I had learned about Jackman.

  Then I pulled myself back. Before she became my editor, Tina had always been my confidante. I could tell her when I was going behind another editor’s back and why I was doing it, and she supported me every time, often running interference for me. But that dynamic had changed. She kept trying to tell me, but now I finally got it: she wasn’t my friend anymore; she was my editor.

  So I just said, “Sorry about the bear thing.”

  “Oh God, that doesn’t even matter.”

  She was inching back toward the elevator, and I knew she had work to do. We would, as usual, leave a lot unspoken.

  “I’ll see you around,” I said.

  She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and scampered back on the elevator. She had a newspaper to put out. And it was a strange feeling to know I wasn’t part of that anymore, at least for the time being. I had been working for one newspaper or another since high school. Being a reporter was the only thing I’d ever done, the only thing I ever wanted to do. It was much more than an avocation for me, even more than a career. It was my identity. My friends, my family, my neighbors, every person in my life knew me as a reporter, first and foremost. I couldn’t imagine being without it for three months.

  I also couldn’t imagine being out of a paycheck for that long. With all the pay cuts and furloughs having whittled away my income, I was barely keeping up with my mortgage as it was. I could maybe afford to be out of work for three weeks but not three months.

  I was beginning to have visions of being forced out onto the street or, worse, moving back in with my parents at the age of thirty-two. It would be an indignity for me, but it would be even harder on Deadline. Mom’s allergic to cats.

  So, as a responsible pet owner, I had little choice. I had to prove to Brodie and everyone else that I was, in fact, merely being an intrepid reporter; that Jackman was a nefarious killer; and that Ted from accounting—sorry, Carter Ross—deserved to be reinstated.

  Which meant there was no time to mope. I had to make like Fred and Ginger: pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

  And heck, I wasn’t starting all over. Were this a cop drama, I would have been asked to lay my gun and my badge on the desk before I left. But you can’t very well take away the tools of a modern reporter’s trade—Internet, cell phone, devious brain—and in this case, they didn’t even bother collecting my company laptop. So I retrieved the Malibu from the parking garage, pulled it up on the street alongside the Eagle-Examiner building, and tapped into the newsroom’s wireless network.

  I soon learned Gary A. Jackman, formerly of Michigan, was now a resident of Mendham, a bucolic bedroom community tucked in the hills of Morris County. He was a registered Republican—big shock there—and lived in a home assessed at $2.27 million, which set him back $35,000 a year in property taxes alone. Not a bad little shack.

  I got the address and plugged it into my GPS, which told me it was forty-four minutes away. If I got started now, I would be at the Jackman manse just after dark, which would suit my purposes quite nicely.

  Any lawyer, detective, or courtroom junkie knows that to prove a murder, you need to establish means, motive, and opportunity. In this case, I felt good about motive—Jackman wanted to erase an impediment to a business deal. Opportunity was clearly there as well—he would have been able to look up her route and lie there in wait for her.

  Now I just needed to see if he had the means—a black SUV with a large grille plate, perhaps one with a suspicious dent in it. Finding a vehicle fitting that description parked in Jackman’s driveway would be as good as finding the murder weapon.

  * * *

  With the setting sun disappearing behind the Watchung Mountains—we call them mountains because it sounds better than the Watchung Inclines, which is what they really are—I drove west toward Mendham, arriving just as the world was switching from daytime running lights to real headlights.

  I made the turn on Jackman’s road, then found the number for his house in stainless steel digits, bolted to a brick pillar on one side of the driveway. There was a matching brick pillar on the other side, and in the middle was a gate made to look like wrought iron, the kind with tops just pointy enough to reinforce the idea that the inhabitants would prefer you not just pop in for a visit. There was also a call box on the left side of the driveway for deliverymen, plumbers, and other members of the servant class.

  The entire front of the property was shrouded by a line of tall shrubs. Beyond them was a front yard filled with trees. So it was a little tough to make out much of Jackman’s house from the road. But it appeared to be your basic McMansion, a boxy monstrosity erected sometime during the go-go nineties and meant to look like some postmodern mash-up of Victorian and contemporary. I could already imagine what the interior looked like, with rooms that were a little too spacious to ever be cozy and at least one bathtub that could seat six adults comfortably.

  I drove past twice at cruising speed but couldn’t make out much. Privacy had obviously been a selling point for the Jackman family. There was only going to be one way I could get a full look at Jackman’s fleet of cars, and that was to creep up to his house and peek into his garage. Under New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice 2C:18–3—a statute that deals with trespassing, and therefore a part of the law not unknown to an enterprising reporter such as myself—the act of peering into a dwelling place for the purpose of invading the occupant’s privacy is explicitly defined as a fourth-degree crime, which can land you in county jail for up to eighteen months.

  But only if you get caught.

  So I killed a little more time driving around, gawking at the big houses owned by the wealthy capitalists, the inventive entrepreneurs, and, of course, the members of the lucky sperm club. Not that I have a problem with any of them. Some reporters hold a grudge against the
well-to-do—primarily because we are not and will never be one of them—but the fact is the good ol’ You Ess of A needs rich people, too. The more the better, frankly.

  When it was sufficiently dark, I parked perhaps a quarter of a mile away and took off toward Jackman’s place on foot. As I reached the driveway, I spied something I hadn’t noticed while rolling along at twenty-five miles per hour: a small security camera bolted to the top of one of the brick pillars. It had a wire coming out the back that appeared to feed down into the ground.

  I have a general theory about security cameras. The ones that you can see—that are made obvious for the whole world—are most likely fakes. Those wires led to nothing more threatening than a few hungry earthworms. It’s the ones you can’t see that are real. So I spent a minute or two scanning the trees and other possible hiding places, but there were no lenses looking back at me.

  So I proceeded, albeit with caution. The shrubbery along the edge of the property was basically impenetrable to a person of my size, leaving me no choice but to vault over the faux wrought-iron fence, which I did with all the agility of a sake-stoked sumo wrestler. I landed heavily and felt a jolt in my knees—dress shoes not being known for their shock absorption—but determined that I was otherwise unscathed.

  Before heading toward the house, I took one last look at the surveillance camera, inspecting the back side for telltale signs of authenticity, like blinking LED lights or the soft whirring of a motor. But there was none of that. It was a fake for sure.

  So I moved ahead, quickly walking along the side of the Jackman driveway, trying to stay in the shadow of the trees. I wasn’t exactly dressed in commando clothes—unless there’s some unknown elite military unit that prefers khakis and white button-down shirts—so I felt a little exposed as I neared the house. Anyone who happened to be glancing down at the driveway would easily make me. But, really, how often do people look outside of their suburban McMansions? That’s the whole point of them. They’re fortresses of solitude, insulating the owner from the intrusions of the world at large.