“I don’t know what happened with the Detroit News story this morning, but I take full responsibility for not getting it first,” Julia says.
“I made a mistake,” Margie answers in an emotionless monotone. “I let you convince me bias wouldn’t be an issue with this story.”
“But I haven’t been biased.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Margie answers, her tone now cutting. “Everyone is biased, whether they want to admit it or not. If you and your husband weren’t so worried about keeping up appearances, your ass wouldn’t have been handed to you this morning.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your husband should be biased toward you. He should have given you the witness’s name. Don’t pretend to be naive. Journalists are supposed to work their sources so they will be biased. You want your sources to confide in you, not your competition. You don’t write the story with bias, but you use whatever you’ve got to get the story, relationships included.”
“David would never give up the name. He’s too ethical to potentially risk his client’s life.”
“No one’s life is at risk.” Margie snorts in disgust. “I’m taking you off the story. Feed Patrick Conrad what you got from this morning, and he’ll take it from here.”
A flash of heat spikes up Julia’s neck, and she forces herself to stay calm.
“This is my story. I failed. I admit it. But it won’t happen again. It’s a mistake to take me off it at this point. No one in the newsroom has the connections that I do, not even close.”
Margie offers up one slow, hard blink. “Then use your connections. I’ll keep you on the story, but if anything like this happens again, you’re off.”
“Thank you, Margie. I won’t let you down.”
“I’ve been thinking more about the coverage. It would be ideal to get an exclusive interview with Rossi. I bet Tarburton would bite. What better way to say ‘my client is innocent’ than having the wife of the prosecution tell the defendant’s story about how he is wrongly accused.”
“I’ve never known a defense attorney to allow a client to speak to the press during the course of a criminal trial. After the trial is over, maybe.”
“Try anyway. See if we can get something, say, midweek. I’d love to turn the story into a big Sunday centerpiece, but we can’t afford to wait that long.”
A pit of dread begins to open in Julia’s stomach. If that’s the only way Margie is going to keep her on the Rossi case, then her chances of landing the interview are a long shot, at best.
“I’ll try.”
“You do that,” Margie says, and turns back to her computer to check for any newly filed articles.
Julia hurries out of Margie’s office and catches a glimpse of the clock above the copy desk. 12:00 PM. She calculates that it will take her about twenty minutes to get to the courthouse during the busy lunch hour.
She quickly grabs her laptop and bag and hurries out of the newsroom. Inside the parking garage, Julia checks for a phone signal. Not strong, but she wants to catch David before he gets buried in the trial again.
Julia expects to leave a voice mail message when he picks up.
“David Tanner here,” he says, sounding hurried and impatient.
“It’s Julia. I’ll make this quick. You killed it during opening statements.”
Five seconds of dead air on the other end, and Julia figures she lost the call.
“I can’t talk right now, Julia. Let’s catch up later,” David says.
“I understand. I just wanted to tell you . . .”
The phone beeps in Julia’s ear as she loses the call.
“Good luck,” she whispers to the parking garage elevator.
Julia presses the down button and the weight of her conversation with Margie starts to hit. Although she didn’t say it directly, Julia knows she is expected to work her husband for information, like some sort of sleazy con, just like her dad, who left town with Julia’s mother, a drunk, when Julia was seven, right after Ben was abducted.
Julia looks at her distorted reflection in the silvery-gray elevator doors and feels cheap and dirty over actually considering Margie’s directive to hustle her husband. She wonders if she’ll inevitably wind up like her father if she stays in journalism. Self-doubt and insecurity start to rear up inside her, and she thinks back to the first person who saw something shining and beautiful in her, something she felt died when Ben never came home.
(“I’ll be here to take care of you now,” Ben promised Julia as the two children held hands and watched their father being escorted in handcuffs out of their broken-down doublewide trailer and into a waiting police car. “We were born into a bad life, but you’re a fighter and you’re going to fight your way out of it. You’re good enough. You’re more than good enough.”)
As the elevator makes its slow cruise down to parking level two, Julia feels the sting of tears start as she recalls her brother’s words. She pulls out her parking pass and grazes her finger across the picture she’s kept since childhood, the one thing that always stayed with her, even during a stint with an aunt who didn’t want her and then as she struggled her way into adulthood. The photo is Ben’s fourth-grade picture, the same one the police used in his missing person’s flyer—a thirty-year-old case that has never been solved.
The elevator door opens and Julia tucks the memory away. She rushes over to her SUV, knowing she can’t be late to meet Logan’s bus at the courthouse. Julia pauses at her car when she notices a blackbird, sleek and shiny with tiny intense eyes that seem to be staring right at her, sitting on her driver-side rearview mirror—an unusual site, Julia thinks, as even the birds know not to return to Michigan’s frigid temperatures until the ground begins to thaw.
“Come on, buddy. Please find another spot to hang out,” Julia tells the bird. It stares at her for a beat longer, and then flies up and perches atop a cement beam above her car.
Julia jams the key into the ignition, and her car’s engine makes a sharp churning noise that sounds like a fork getting stuck in a garbage disposal. After six tries of the engine fighting to turn over, Julia pounds her fist against the steering wheel.
“Of all the damn days,” Julia mutters. Out on the street, she spends five minutes trying to catch a cab, but the only ones that pass are already occupied with fares.
David is out as an option for a ride so Julia calls the only other person who has always been there for her.
“Yeah, it’s Navarro.”
“Hey, it’s Julia. My car broke down and I can’t catch a cab to save my life. Logan’s school bus arrives at the courthouse at twelve-thirty and I promised him I’d be there. Any chance you’re headed that way?”
“I’m already at the courthouse. I’m meeting Russell in the lobby. Tell you what. I can leave him hanging for a few minutes. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come pick you up.”
“I owe you. I’m a couple blocks away from the Penobscot Building.”
“I’ll pick you up out front.”
Julia weaves through the crowded sidewalks of West Congress Street until she hooks onto Griswold. Just as she reaches the forty-seven-story skyscraper, Navarro’s unmarked Crown Victoria pulls up in front.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Julia says as she slides into the passenger seat.
Julia finally breathes out. 12:15. Plenty of time to get to the courthouse.
* * *
The sniper is patient. He has been in position on the fifth floor of the empty office building across from the courthouse for over an hour. The temperature in the room hovers just above forty degrees, but the sniper doesn’t feel it. He wears gloves cut off at the fingers, so his hands stay warm and his fingers remain agile. His trained eyes scan for the target just in case, but he knows he will be called five minutes prior to the Butcher’s arrival. He’s an American-made killer who listens to Kid Rock and used to work at the GM plant in Pontiac. He first learned patience on the assembly line where he installed front and rear bumpers, th
e same damn thing eight hours a day, five days a week. But in ten years he never once had a safety incident. And he is still proud of that. He doesn’t like pretty-boy criminals much, but money is money, and after being laid off, he needs it. So he brushed off the cobwebs of his early army training to find a new position. He considers himself a freelancer. And he wants to ensure that his tidy Dearborn rancher with the little garden in the back where he grows his tomatoes in the summer doesn’t slide into foreclosure after the job is done.
12:25. The sniper’s phone vibrates. He recognizes the caller—Jim Bartello, the former security guy from the MGM Grand, who hired him for Rossi. The sniper feels an electric hum going through his entire body. He knows there’s nothing like the hard-on of a good kill.
* * *
“Can’t you put your siren on? What’s happening up there? I can’t be late. Logan’s bus is going to be at the courthouse in five minutes.”
“The siren wouldn’t matter, Julia. The whole block is stopped. There’s nowhere to go around.”
Navarro radios into the dispatch unit for an update.
“There’s been a major water main break. Patrol is rerouting half of downtown to get around it,” he relays to Julia.
“I’m going to make a run for it,” Julia says, snagging just her ID, notebook, pen, and press pass from her purse and stuffing them in her coat pocket.
“In heels?” Navarro asks.
“I have no choice. See you there.”
Before Navarro can respond, Julia the runner is out of the car and buzzing down the broken sidewalks like a bullet shooting out of a chamber. She gets just two blocks away and can spot the outline of the courthouse in the near distance. A school bus pulls away from the curb, and a heavyset man in a long black coat, and what looks to Julia to be a couple of undercover police officers trailing him, ascend the courthouse steps. Julia bets the heavyset man is the prosecution’s last-minute witness, Sammy Biggs, although she doesn’t see any sign of David and figures he might already be in the lobby.
“Hold on, Gooden,” Navarro calls from behind.
Julia keeps running. As she nears the coffee shop on the corner, she is nearly rocked backward by a thunderous explosion. She feels something solid and powerful hit her in the back, and she goes down. On the sidewalk, the sounds of shattering glass, and a high-pitched keening of metal twisting against itself, play on like a macabre symphony around her.
* * *
In the abandoned building across the street from the courthouse, the sniper pulls himself off the floor and asks himself, “What the hell just happened?”
CHAPTER 7
A searing pain shoots up the side of Julia’s skull from hitting the ground jaw-first after the massive blast. She opens her eyes to a sliver of gray sky and a barbed wire tattoo. She tries to get up and move the 220 pounds off her when she brushes against something warm and sticky. She quickly seizes back her arm when she realizes she is touching the remains of a man’s severed hand. The thumb and index finger have been blown away, and the base of the hand is now just a stump of exposed tendon, raw flesh, and jutting bone. A gold band speckled with blood remains on the hand’s ring finger.
The shrill peal of police sirens in the distance slices through the immediate eerie quiet after the blast. A second later, the yells and screams begin, as pandemonium ensues for the living and the dying beg for help.
“Julia, are you all right?” Navarro asks.
“Get off me!” Julia screams. “I’m not hurt. I have to find David and Logan.”
“That had to be a bomb. Hurry and stand up before we get trampled.”
Navarro jumps to his feet and pulls Julia with him as an oncoming wall of terrified people begin to flee from the scene of confusion, some pushing and shoving down the narrow sidewalk in their direction as pure survival mode kicks in. Navarro grabs Julia’s arm and thrusts her into the entryway of a coffee shop away from the wave of people trying to escape.
“Stay here until the scene is secure,” Navarro shouts, and sprints in the direction of the blast.
Julia feels as if she is outside her body, her world normal just one minute ago before the sonic boom. The ice-cold hand of fear begins to squeeze the life out of Julia as she follows Navarro, forcing her way against the tide, the air thick with an overpowering odor of acrid smoke, burned plastic, and something that smells like the spent remains of fireworks. As Julia moves forward, she takes in the devastation amidst the ruins. A plume of gray and white smoke rises in front of the courthouse entryway, and the exterior of the first three stories of the building has been completely shorn away. About two dozen bodies lie scattered on the ground, a few Good Samaritans hover over them as they wait for the first responders to arrive. Above them, a swirl of papers dances in a circle, then falls like confetti on top of the victims.
Julia begins to run, the courthouse just across the street from her now. She is so close, fueled by nothing but the primal instinct to protect her own. But what she sees in front of her path forces her to stop. A child, a boy, maybe Logan’s age, is spilled on the ground with half of his left leg blown off. A foot away from the boy is a man, probably his father. Shards of misshapen metal and what look like ball bearings are embedded in the man’s chest and torso. The lifeless body looks up at the sky almost peacefully without blinking. Julia knows the man is probably already dead and rushes to the side of the little boy. She feels for a pulse, which is thready at best.
“Hold on,” Julia pleads. “Help! We have a child over here, and he needs immediate medical attention.”
Julia’s voice is drowned out in the melee. Not knowing what else to do, Julia strips off the belt from her white trench coat and wraps it around the boy’s leg as a makeshift tourniquet.
The boy’s pale blue eyes flutter open. They look glazed at first but then focus in on the strange woman standing above him.
“Where’s my dad?” he whispers.
Julia shudders and grabs the child’s hand.
“I’m not sure,” she lies. “The police are going to be here soon to help you find him. Can you tell me your name?”
“Michael Cole.”
The little boy trembles against the frigid pavement. Julia closes the boy’s thin vinyl Detroit Tigers coat around his chest, as if that would somehow help him.
“I’m Julia. I need you to hold on until help gets here. Can you do that for me?”
“My leg hurts really bad. Can you please find my daddy for me?” the boy begs softly.
A choice has to be made. Julia’s eyes dart back to the courthouse, where she searches for any sign of Logan or David. The lobby, now obvious to Julia as the place where the bomb was detonated, has been reduced to a dark, gaping hole. A man in a blue business suit emerges from it, running full tilt as he carries what looks like a small body in his arms.
Julia’s choice is made for her. A caravan of first responders rush to the scene, including an ambulance that screeches up to the curb across the street. Julia yells louder than she ever has in her life as a paramedic exits the vehicle.
“Over here! Please,” Julia cries. “A little boy is badly hurt.”
Julia feels a tiny sense of relief as the paramedic hustles in their direction.
“Listen, Michael. You’re going to be all right. Someone is here to help you.”
Michael holds on to Julia’s hand, his weak grip tightening.
“Can you stay with me?” he asks.
The request stabs Julia through her heart.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I promise I’ll come back and check on you later, though.”
Julia keeps hold of the boy’s small hand until the paramedic takes over.
“His name is Michael Cole. Please take care of him.”
Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances line the front of the courthouse, the first responders assembling rapidly to the crisis. Julia searches the sea of quickly moving faces and the immobile victims who are being moved onto stretchers and wheelchairs while others still lie pr
one on the ground. Julia recognizes the battalion chief of the third district emergency crew team and latches her hand around his wrist.
“Brian, please help me! My husband and son are somewhere here and I have to find them. David is six feet tall with light blond hair. He may have been in the lobby waiting for a witness at the time of the explosion. My son Logan is eight. He has black hair and brown eyes. He’s here with his class field trip. He is such a good boy,” Julia cries.
The battalion chief, Brian Callahan, looks at Julia for a hard second and then back at the scene unfolding around him. “We just got here, Julia. You stay put and I’ll have one of my guys tell you if we find them.”
“No. You need to look for them right now. David is the assistant district attorney. I think whoever did this was trying to take out his witness.”
Callahan listens to Julia with half an ear, most of his attention drawn to trying to lead and assemble the madness in front of him.
“I promise, we’ll look for them.”
Callahan pushes inside the courthouse. The scene is still fresh and mobile, and no yellow police tape has cordoned off the area yet. Julia weaves through the exploded cement bits of sidewalk and edges toward the entrance.
On the other side of the now-shattered glass doors, Julia looks in the distance and sees Detective Russell, unconscious and bleeding badly from a deep, open gash to his head. A paramedic and Navarro load him carefully onto a stretcher.
“Oh God, Russell,” Julia cries.
Navarro looks up at Julia, rage and worry etched across his face over his downed partner.
“I told you to stay back,” Navarro yells. “Get out of here. The building isn’t safe.”
Duplicity Page 6