Duplicity

by Jane Haseldine

  Julia is about to answer her colleague, but then stops herself. Whether Phillips actually cares or he’s fishing for information, she knows the microphone is always on.

  “Gooden, come with me.” Julia turns behind her toward the voice and sees Margie, her managing editor. Margie’s eyes are locked on the photo of Dwayne Brown’s nearly severed head, still open on Julia’s computer. Margie turns without another word and moves toward her office.

  Julia clicks out of the file. She pops the flash drive out of her computer, puts it in her pocket, and follows Margie’s fast-moving trail.

  Once the two women are inside, Margie closes her office door and shuts the blinds. Margie then removes her glasses, presses her fingers against her temples, and lets out a deep sigh of frustration.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Margie asks.

  “I needed to pick something up.”

  “There’s nothing on your desk you needed so badly you would leave the hospital to come here. I saw the pictures you were looking at. What exactly is it that you think you’re doing?”

  Julia starts to stammer, something she hasn’t done since she was seven. “I, just, um, I wanted to look through my Rossi file.”

  “You’re not writing the story, if that’s what you think is going to happen here. You’re way too close. Actually, you are the story. A big part. If you’re insistent, I can have Phillips interview you, but I’d just as soon tell him you gave me a ‘No comment’ for now.”

  “I have to say I’m surprised. I thought . . .”

  “That I’d be a piranha and corner you the second you walked in here and force you to tell me what you saw at the courthouse, right? Sometimes other things are more important. Rarely, but it happens. I’m not the heartless witch that everyone around here thinks I am. If I was, I probably wouldn’t have gotten axed in Philadelphia.”

  Julia stares back at her boss, momentarily speechless at her unexpected reaction.

  “How’s David? Not for attribution, okay?”

  “Thank you for asking,” Julia answers. “He’s out of surgery. I called the hospital a few minutes ago. There’s been no change.”

  “Keep me posted, and if you need anything, please let me know.”

  “Thank you,” Julia answers, feeling awkward over the sudden generosity. “I think the Michigan Superior Court Justice is going to declare a mistrial. If that happens, then Tarburton could claim double jeopardy and Rossi would walk.”

  Margie leans back in her chair, considering how she will play out this latest story twist.

  “We can’t let that happen. Rossi is obviously behind the courthouse bombing,” Julia insists.

  “Phillips talked directly with the police chief. Linderman told him that at this time there’s no evidence linking the bombing to Rossi. He was locked up in a holding cell when the bomb went off. There’s no way he planted it.”

  “Oh, come on, Margie. He ordered the hit. The prosecution’s star witness against Rossi was killed. I was told police believe the bomb was left in a suitcase on the courthouse stairs and was detonated just as Sammy Biggs went into the lobby. Obviously it’s linked.”

  “Phillips thought of that already. We sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the prison commissioner to view the tapes of all Rossi’s jailhouse visits. For the first time, government didn’t move at a standstill. Phillips got the tapes this morning and went through them. The only visitors Rossi had were his wife and his lawyer. There’s nothing on any of the tapes indicating Nick Rossi ordered a hit.”

  “Then there’s something else. You’re just not seeing it. Chief Justice Waters is up for reelection. If public opinion is that Rossi did it, Waters might think twice about declaring a mistrial. Little kids were killed and maimed, Margie, not to mention my husband is hanging on to life by a whisper-thin thread. The paper has a responsibility.”

  “To report the facts. Phillips will definitely cover the angle that Rossi may be at the center of the attack. It’s a logical possibility. But the criminal court hears dozens of cases every day. Phillips was told off the record there were threats of retaliation around the Laird Palmer White Supremacist trial that is going on at the same time as the Rossi case.”

  “I heard that a while back, but they were threatening to picket the courthouse, not bomb it,” Julia says, and steamrolls ahead with her point. “Phillips should get comments from people who believe Rossi ordered the hit—city officials, clergy members, regular citizens. You need to put the pressure on. And Berry should write an editorial making it clear this was a calculated and heartless act of violence that took innocent lives and Rossi is obviously responsible.”

  “What the paper does or writes, or what angle we cover going forward, is not your concern right now. I understand . . .”

  “No, you don’t,” Julia interrupts.

  “Let me finish. I understand you have a very personal and deep-seated interest in this story. But you need to walk away from it. I’m putting you on a mandatory thirty-day leave of absence from the paper, which can be extended at my discretion. During this period, I don’t want to see your face in this newsroom once. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Hold on. You need my help,” Julia says.

  “What I need, what you need, is for you to concentrate on your husband’s recovery.”

  “David would want me to do this. He would want justice, not just for himself but for all the people who were hurt and killed at Rossi’s hands.”

  “I don’t know your husband like you do, but when something tragic happens, what we thought was important before usually slips away. The only thing that matters is that you focus on David and your family. Nothing else. Your obsession with Nick Rossi isn’t healthy for you right now.”

  “It’s not an obsession. He needs to pay for what he’s done.”

  “As I said, if there is anything I can do to help you—meals delivered, dogs walked—I’m there,” Margie says, and writes her home phone number on the back of her business card. “Anything else that has to deal with the day-to-day news coverage on this case, I’m not. Now go. I’ll see you back here in thirty days and we’ll see how you’re doing.”

  “If you’re not going to investigate this any further, then I will.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do on your own time. But be careful, Julia.”

  Julia realizes the conversation is over. Her cheeks feel hot as she hurries back to her desk to collect her belongings before anyone else tries to engage her.

  She reaches for an old notebook buried deep inside her bottom desk drawer. She knows she’ll find what she needs in there. On the cover of the notebook is a business card attached with a paper clip: SALVATORE GALLO, GALLO FAMILY CLEANERS and a personal cell phone number written on the back.

  * * *

  Nick Rossi cuts a wide swath through the Marquette Maximum Security Prison dining hall as even the most hard-core White Supremacists scurry out of his way. Rossi emits a deadly aura of absolute power even in his blue prison jumpsuit, which clings to his hard-muscled frame. Rossi knows it’s just a matter of hours now and he’ll be a free man, but he didn’t rise from a poor orphan boy to head one of Detroit’s most successful criminal operations by just waiting around. He approaches a man sitting in the middle of a crowded table and leans into him. The man is short and thick with a cruel scar that looks as if someone sliced carefully on either side of his mouth to make an oversized, perpetual grin.

  “The lawyer’s still alive. He’s in the hospital,” the man with the scar tells his boss in a hushed tone. “The floor he’s on is heavily guarded. The police are all over the hospital trying to find out who planted the bomb. It’s just a matter of time before they pin it on you.”

  Rossi flexes his large hands into fists and shoots his employee an unforgiving ultimatum.

  “Screw the police officers. I want the lawyer killed. Take him out in the hospital.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Logan slips his hand inside Julia’s and together they
stare at the elevator numbers continuing to climb as they ascend to the twelfth-floor trauma surgery unit at Henry Ford Hospital. Logan’s tender act catches Julia off guard, since he had just recently let Julia hold his hand again after the incident at the lake house the past summer. Julia fights back the bittersweet emotion and squeezes Logan’s hand tightly in hers.

  The elevator is about to announce its arrival to David’s floor when Julia sweeps a sideways glance at another passenger in the crowded elevator—a woman, statuesque, with a few wisps of blond hair slipping out from a loosely wrapped, navy blue silk scarf. The woman is elegant in a pair of Jackie O giant sunglasses, her jawline strong and sleek. Julia would think the woman was nearly perfect except for an angry, red stump of flesh where her left earlobe should be. The stranger immediately caught Julia’s reporter radar when she and Logan first entered the elevator, the woman’s mouth receding into a thin line at their arrival before she turned away. Julia gives the woman a hard stare, feeling as if she has seen her before. Julia quickly changes her mind and realizes she would have remembered the woman, a contrast of beauty marred by such an unusual and nasty disfigurement.

  Mother and son exit the elevator on the twelfth floor, and Julia pulls Logan to the side, squatting down so she is looking directly at him.

  “Remember what we talked about?”

  “Daddy may look different.”

  “That’s right. And he’s probably still asleep.”

  “I’ll just hold Daddy’s hand then and stay with him for a while. You think he’ll know I’m there even if he isn’t awake?”

  “I have no doubt,” Julia answers.

  The waiting room has thinned out since the night before, as patients who were in surgery either didn’t make it or were moved to recovery rooms. Julia and Logan find a seat while they wait for Dr. Whitcomb to brief Julia before the visit. Logan fidgets nervously in the chair, half watching a reality show where undercover restaurant employees capture the appalling behavior of real waitresses and cooks.

  “Doesn’t that lady work with Daddy?” Logan asks as he points toward the hospital corridor that leads to David’s room. “Daddy took her with us to a concert on the river last summer.”

  Julia feels a wave of anger pound through her like a powerful tsunami as she sees the woman in question, Brooke Stevenson, arriving on the scene when her family is most vulnerable.

  “Hold on a second, honey,” Julia tells Logan. She gets up quickly from her seat and beats a fast path toward Brooke’s solemn retreat to the elevator. Julia catches up and taps the woman hard against her shoulder blade to get her attention.

  “Julia,” Brooke says, clearly startled. “I was just . . .”

  “Visiting my husband. I know. You were working the Nick Rossi case with him?”

  “Yes. I thought you knew.”

  “No, I didn’t. Lots of late nights. When did you two start seeing each other again? Or did you ever stop?”

  Brooke inches away from Julia until her back is sealed against the closed elevator doors.

  “It’s over between us. It has been for a while now. He probably didn’t tell you I was working the Rossi case because he didn’t want you to be upset.”

  “Don’t give yourself so much credit. My son saw you here. He knows who you are.”

  “I met Logan last summer with your other little boy.”

  “Big lapse in David’s judgment. Let me explain how things are going to go from here on out. Do not come back to this hospital. Do not try to contact my husband while he is here. And my children are off limits. I don’t want my son seeing you here again. Do we have an understanding?”

  Brooke shifts nervously from side to side and stares at the elevator numbers ticking by, willing her safe passage to arrive on her floor.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to David. I truly am.”

  The elevator doors slip open and Brooke hurries inside, nudging her way to safety until she finds a spot in the back of the pack.

  Julia tries to brush the sting of jealousy and hurt that David lied to her off her shoulders and puts on a good face for Logan.

  “Everything okay, Mom?” Logan asks.

  “Just fine.” She wraps her arm around Logan’s thin waist as her cell phone buzzes in her purse. She is keenly aware of the hospital’s no-cell-phone policy but sees Navarro’s name appear across the screen and tries to be discreet as she answers her phone.

  “Hey, Navarro. What do you got?” Julia says, her voice just above a whisper.

  Despite her efforts to be inconspicuous, an older woman clutching a pair of rosary beads one row of chairs over hits Julia with a dirty look. Julia smiles at the woman apologetically and then turns her back to continue the call.

  “How’s David?” Navarro asks.

  “I’m waiting to talk to his doctor before Logan and I see him. We’re at the hospital.”

  “Keep me posted. That kid you were asking about, Michael Cole. He’s alive but in critical condition. He’s at Henry Ford, where you are, in room 313B. Apparently, he lost a lot of blood.”

  Julia flashes back to the makeshift tourniquet she wrapped around the boy’s injured leg, her meager efforts obviously not enough.

  “You were right. The boy’s dad died at the scene. The nurse I spoke to said the kid’s mom hasn’t left the hospital since her son was admitted.”

  “Thanks for that. I’d like to stop by and see him later. I promised him I would. Is there anything new on the Rossi case? What’s the status with the mistrial?”

  “I’ve been told Judge Waters is supposed to issue her decision in half an hour.”

  Julia stares at the clock hanging on the visitor lounge wall. She feels a strange yearning, like a junkie who’s late for a fix. She reminds herself she’s no longer on the story and justice will have to march along without her chronicling it.

  “Call me please the second you hear anything,” Julia asks.

  “Will do. Russell’s about to be discharged. He’s refused to go on medical leave and is heading back to the station later this afternoon once he gets out.”

  “He’s a tough old bird,” Julia says fondly.

  Dr. Whitcomb, wearing a fresh pair of light blue scrubs, walks in Julia’s direction. She quickly ends her call with Navarro and tries to tuck her banned cell phone back in her purse before she’s caught.

  “Julia, nice to see you again, and you must be Logan,” Dr. Whitcomb says.

  Logan stands up and extends his hand to the doctor.

  “Very good manners. That’s nice of you to come to the hospital today to see your father. I’d like to speak to your mother alone for a moment if that’s all right.”

  Logan looks to Julia for direction, and she offers a smile of reassurance.

  “I brought this just in case,” Julia answers, and pulls out her iPad from her purse. “Do me a favor, just don’t put the sound on, please.”

  “You know you aren’t supposed to use a cell phone in the surgery waiting area,” Dr. Whitcomb lectures as he escorts Julia to a quiet corner. “This is a very stressful place for most people, and we try to keep disruptions at a minimum for them.”

  Julia nods, knowing she will probably break the rules again.

  “So we’ve had some good news this afternoon,” Dr. Whitcomb says.

  “I’ll definitely take that.”

  “I thought you would. David’s condition has improved somewhat. He is what we call comatose but responsive.”

  “Comatose. So he can’t talk?”

  “Correct. But his body is now reacting and responding to stimuli.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “As I said, it’s an improvement. A really good step. David is also now breathing on his own, and I started him on an antiseizure medication.”

  “I could hug you right now, but I don’t think you’d like that.”

  “You’re a good judge of character,” Dr. Whitcomb responds, and offers Julia a slight smile.

  “Do you have any idea when
he should wake up?”

  “I can’t say definitively. David has made some good strides today, though, so we will remain cautiously optimistic.”

  “Logan is chomping at the bit to see his dad. I prepared him the best I could.”

  “If a parent has a life-threatening event, it’s usually devastating to a child. We have a child-and-family counselor on staff for Logan and for you, too. If you’ll excuse me, I have another surgery in a few minutes.”

  Julia watches Dr. Whitcomb retreat through a door with a sign that reads MEDICAL PERSONNEL ONLY” and heads back to the sitting area, where Logan stares vacantly at the floor, the iPad’s darkened screen lying faceup on the seat next to him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? Your dad wouldn’t be upset if you changed your mind.”

  “He’s going to get better, right?”

  “Your dad is a fighter. And he loves you more than anything. So I have no doubt he’ll fight his hardest to come back to you and your brother.”

  Logan reaches up for his mother’s hand and Julia leads her little boy down the length of the corridor of the trauma wing to David’s room.

  “What are all the machines and tubes connected to Daddy?” Logan whispers as he hesitates outside the door.

  “Nothing scary. They’re monitoring how Daddy is feeling, checking his heart rate, blood pressure, and other important things.”

  Without a prompt, Logan pulls up a chair and slides it by David’s bedside.

  “Hi, Daddy. It’s me, Logan. I drew you a picture. That’s us, shooting hoops in front of the house. You told me playing basketball with me was one of your favorite things to do, so I thought you’d like it.”

  Logan waits for a response from his father, but none comes.

  “Can I hold Daddy’s hand?” Logan asks.

  “He’s got IVs in there, baby. So yes, but be very careful.”

  Logan gently puts his small hand on top of his father’s and leaves it there, as father and son switch roles.

  “When you get out of here, I was thinking maybe you, Mom, and Will and me could spend some time at the lake house until you feel all better. Mom and I will take care of you, and we can just hang out on the porch until you’re ready to do other stuff. Just don’t worry about anything, okay?”