by Leigh Jones
“I thought you looked especially grouchy.”
“Seriously, I’m about to start making up quotes.” Kate raised one eyebrow and rested her pen on the paper.
“Okay, okay,” Johnson said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “But I’m not giving you anything more than the basics.”
Kate rolled her eyes and regretted it when Johnson’s lips compressed into a hard line. She never seemed to hit the right note with him. Some cops could be cajoled into talking if she pandered to their egos. Others opened up when she tried to act like she was just one of the guys. Older officers responded to the helpless female routine. Kate had learned to tailor her approach based on what would get her the most information.
She still hadn’t figured Johnson out.
“Look, I’m just trying to do my job,” she said. “Think of me as chronicling the beginning of what is sure to be a brilliant investigation in which you single-handedly track down the bad guy and make sure he gets what’s coming to him.”
Johnson narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not doing anything single-handedly. Murder investigations are about teamwork.”
“I’m on your team,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot in impatience. “I want you to catch whoever did this just as much as you do.”
“I doubt that.”
“Seriously! Every unpunished crime is a blot on the universe.”
His arched eyebrow suggested he didn’t ascribe to her theory that injustice threw the world out of balance. Kate stifled a sigh. “I’m just saying, I don’t have any interest in derailing your investigation. You don’t have to treat me like the enemy.”
Johnson’s stern gaze softened slightly. “Fair enough. But I’m still only giving you the basics until I talk to the chief.”
Kate clenched her teeth but wrote down what he told her without complaint. When follow-up questions earned her nothing more than a few more “no comments,” she opted for retreat and regroup.
“I guess that’s it then. Thanks, detective. I’ll call you later to follow up.”
Johnson just nodded. After six months, Kate had yet to persuade him to give her anything off the record or tell her anything beyond what he strictly had to. The other cops didn’t call him “Detective By the Book” for nothing. But Kate refused to give up. She sensed more than a self-serving desire to get ahead behind his devotion to the rules. Something else compelled him to stick to the rigid structure of his department’s command structure. She’d figure it out eventually, and in the process she hoped she’d discover the source of Johnson’s other anomaly: compassion.
Pushing Johnson to the back of her mind, Kate focused on the homeowner. The man definitely looked like he wanted someone to talk to. Kate walked along the crime scene tape until she was almost parallel with the house and about as far away from the crowd of onlookers as she could get.
“Excuse me, sir?” she called softly. When the man looked over at her, she smiled reassuringly. He hesitated for about five seconds before he stepped off the porch and walked toward her. When he reached the yellow barrier, he suddenly seemed to realize it might be inappropriate to appear eager to talk to someone who was obviously a reporter. He glanced at Johnson.
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to say anything,” he said.
“I understand,” Kate said soothingly. “The detective gave me all the details. I’m Kate Bennett, by the way. With the Gazette. I was just hoping you could tell me a little bit about the neighborhood.”
“I know you,” he said, his eyes lighting up with recognition. “I’ve been a subscriber ever since I moved to the island in 1987. You do good work.”
Kate beamed with her most docile and reassuring smile.
“Well, I suppose I can’t get in trouble for telling you about the neighborhood,” he said, stuffing his hands deep in his robe’s front pockets as he glanced sideways at the investigative bustle marring his front yard.
He spent the next five minutes recounting his move to the island and his search for the perfect house in excruciating detail. The neighborhood was quiet, with lots of families and professionals, he assured her. People just didn’t wake up to find bodies in their front yards.
“That must have been quite a shock,” Kate murmured sympathetically.
He didn’t need any more encouragement. Abandoning his previous reticence, he told her everything, from waking up a little later than normal to his horror at watching a woman take her last breath. Kate scribbled furiously to keep up. Her notes looked more like a timeline than a word-for-word account, but she didn’t worry about remembering the details. Those would remain burned in her memory for weeks.
When he finished, Kate deftly tucked her notebook and pen in her back pocket as she continued to murmur sympathetic platitudes. He was just saying he probably wouldn’t be any use at the office for the rest of the day when the coroner’s van pulled up. The crowd, which had started to lose interest, perked back up again and the man’s neighbors strained against the tape in an effort to catch every detail of the body’s removal. After thanking him for his help, Kate headed for the crowd, walking around the vans and the police cars to stay out of Cowel’s shots of the suddenly bustling scene.
Kate didn’t have any trouble persuading the lookie-loos to talk. A few of them said they thought they heard the shot. One, a man who lived on the other end of the street, said he thought he heard a car speeding away. But no one saw anything. As Kate wrote down names and phone numbers, the coroner started to roll his gurney toward the back of the waiting van. With the help of a well-placed sheet held up by the police officers, he’d managed to scoop up the body before anyone saw anything. Now it was all over. The crowd began to drift away.
Kate caught Cowel’s eye and they headed back to the car.
“Did Johnson give you anything good this time?” the photographer asked as he drove past the port, where two cruise ships had started to disgorge their passengers.
“Humph,” Kate grunted as she watched the white-shirted attendants scurrying around the open decks, readying the vessel for the next round of passengers.
Cowel laughed. “I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time with him. I can think of half a dozen other cops who would happily be your best police department source.”
“Ha! Where’s the fun in that? I like a challenge.”
“Oh, I know. Anyone who would take on the state’s mental health system while still in college definitely likes a challenge. Remind me again… how many awards did you win for those stories?”
Kate felt the blood rush to her cheeks along with the same mix of pride and embarrassment she always juggled when someone mentioned the investigative series that brought her to the attention of every newspaper editor in Texas. People couldn’t believe a college student managed to stumble onto one of the state’s biggest scandals in the last decade. She knew most chalked it up to luck. They had no idea she had an inside scoop and a vested interest in finding out why so many patients never recovered from their stay at Templeton Mental Hospital. Some never even came home.
“Shut up,” she muttered.
“Aww, come on kid,” Cowel said. “I’m just teasing. You’re a reporting rockstar. Own it.”
Kate mustered a weak smile. She had no interest in being a star. Her only motivation had been justice for the patients and their families. She found it, and now she had an addiction. Her need to right wrongs smoldered in her chest, pumping purpose through every fiber of her being.
“Have you heard anything more about the layoffs?” she asked Cowel as they neared the newspaper office.
“Nah. Just that Mattingly and the publisher are locked in a battle to the death over every penny in the budget.”
Kate snorted. “My money’s on Mattingly. But I still can’t believe the publisher thinks he can run this newspaper with fewer reporters.”
“Welcome to journalism in the 21st century. It’s not as glamorous as it looked when you were in college, huh?”
Kate rolled her
eyes at him as they climbed out of the car.
“What are you worried about anyway?” Cowel asked as he slung a camera over each shoulder. “Your job is probably the last one on the chopping block.”
“It’s not about my job. It’s about the newspaper’s ability to do its job. Exposing the truth and holding the powerful accountable, remember?”
Cowel guffawed and patted her on the top of the head. “We have an office pool on how long your breathless idealism will last. I’m going to extend my bet.”
Chapter 2
At 8:30 a.m. on a Monday, the Gazette’s offices echoed with an emptiness that spoke volumes about staff morale. Kate shivered as they stepped into the fluorescent-lit hallway that led from the back entrance to the newsroom. Although the publisher claimed he couldn’t afford to make payroll, he didn’t hesitate to keep the office ice cold during the oppressive summer months. How much of the budget went to energy bills? Staff members were expendable. Air conditioning was not.
Like everything else on the island, the newspaper had suffered through an inching decline since the turn of the 20th century. Circulation dropped along with the city’s population. During the last 10 years, the Gazette’s publisher had pared down staff through attrition, for the most part. He’d instituted the last round of layoffs two years ago, but another one appeared imminent.
Managing Editor Kenton Mattingly and the heads of the advertising and circulation departments had spent part of almost every day during the last three weeks haggling over the budget with Publisher Haviland Bells. Mattingly refused to say anything about the negotiations, but he’d chugged down two bottles of Maalox in the last week. That couldn’t be a good sign. He normally kept it to one.
No one came in before 9 a.m. these days.
Kate could hear the ladies in the Classifieds department chattering into their headsets, taking orders for next weekend’s garage sale ads, as she walked toward the break room. The warm, slightly burnt smell of caffeine drew her on, but the coffee in the pot was the color of strong tea, the most obvious sign no one in the newsroom had arrived yet. Sighing with frustration, Kate yanked out the filter basket, tore open two packets of Folger’s and poured out the weak brew. She had just hit the start button for a new pot when assistant editor Hunter Lewis walked around the corner.
“I hear you beat Ben to a body this morning,” he said, flashing her a grin.
Kate shrugged defensively.
“I was closer,” she said. “Cowel swung by and picked me up.”
Kate shared the cops beat with Ben Denison, the Gazette’s longtime crime reporter. Although her primary responsibility was to cover city hall, the editors wanted her to write about any crimes Ben couldn’t—or didn’t—want to cover. When she arrived in Galveston six months earlier, Ben said he was glad to have someone to share the load. The publisher had decided the paper needed more trial coverage, and Ben was running ragged trying to keep up with the daily grind of robberies and drug busts while he was holed up in the courtroom. Kate learned later he had boasted to his sources he would give her the grunt work and keep the best stories for himself. But Kate had no intention of being someone else’s lackey.
She routinely beat him to crime scenes, which left Lewis to referee more than a few turf battles. She considered Ben more competition than colleague until one day she overheard him acknowledging to Lewis that she had talent. He gradually stopped protesting when she stepped on his toes, treating her like a protege and critiquing her work instead. Kate ignored him, for the most part.
While coffee slowly filled the empty pot, Kate gave Lewis the details of the murder.
“Get me a story for the web in forty-five minutes,” he said, replacing the coffee pot with his mug in one fluid movement. While the machine chugged into his cup, he filled Kate’s mug from the pot. “And stay on Johnson until he has an ID. This is going to be a great story.”
Cradling her coffee cup in both hands, Kate hustled back to her desk to start typing. She’d worked out the first few graphs of the story in her mind on the way back to the office, so she beat Lewis’ deadline by five minutes. Ben walked into the newsroom as Kate walked out of Lewis’ office.
“How do you manage to get to crime scenes so fast?” he grumbled. “You’ve got to be sleeping with one of the cops.”
“Yeah, you should try it,” she snapped. “It just might save your career.”
He was about to respond when Delilah Peters strode in behind him.
“So, we’ve got a body in Fish Village, huh? That hasn’t happened in years,” Delilah said. “Ben hasn’t been whining about missing the story, has he?”
“Humph,” Kate muttered noncommittally. “I figured I was doing him a favor. He’s got that trial starting this week, and this story’s going to take a lot of time.”
“Yeah, right,” Delilah said with a grin. “Don’t whine, Ben. She beat you fair and square. I’m pretty sure you were busy this morning about that time anyway.”
Ben just grunted. Kate raised her coffee cup to her lips to hide a grimace. Although Ben and Delilah lived together and everyone knew it, they usually kept up a facade of professional separation at work, notwithstanding occasional references to their domestic bliss.
“So, give us the details. What did you find this morning?” Delilah asked Kate as she dumped her laptop bag on her desk.
“Unidentified body in the middle of a well-manicured front lawn. No ID. No idea how she got there.”
“Well, readers love mysteries. That should sell a few papers, at least for a week or two. Let’s hope it takes them a while to figure out who she is.”
At a few minutes before 9:30 a.m., Mattingly yanked open his office door.
“Are we meeting, or what? In case you forgot, we have a newspaper to put out.”
Delilah rolled her eyes. The managing editor’s volatility had no effect on her, although Kate suspected she was as anxious about the rumored layoffs as everyone else. It seemed unlikely the senior reporter would lose her job, but she probably made the most and was the oldest person on staff. The paper could save some money if it replaced her with someone less experienced.
“How are the budget talks going?” Delilah asked once everyone had taken a seat around the long conference table in Mattingly’s office. “Have you figured out which one of us you’re going to fire?”
“No one’s getting fired, not today anyway,” Mattingly growled. “But I don’t need layoffs as an excuse, so I suggest everyone step up their game. What do we got for today?”
Kate gave a brief sketch of the unidentified body story, which would lead the front page. Cowel slid a few printouts of his best shots from the scene over to Mattingly and assured him he had enough variety to include several more on page two. For a moment, Mattingly seemed to forget his near constant dissatisfaction and the gut-wringing budget talks. His eyes narrowed into glittery slits and his usually hard mouth curved with satisfaction.
“This is perfect. Rack sales will be off the charts. The copy desk had better make sure the headline pops. How about ‘Fresh corpse in Fish Village,’ or ‘Early morning murder stuns Fish Village.’ That one’s a little long. Oh well. We have all afternoon to figure it out.”
Delilah went next. The Park Board had a meeting that afternoon and she expected to turn in a story about a fight between two beachfront vendors laying claim to the same small stretch of umbrella and lounge chair real estate. Two weeks ago, the feud exploded into a full-fledged fist fight in front of tourists with cell phone cameras. The resulting footage made it to YouTube and Houston’s evening news, not exactly the best ad the tourism bureau could buy.
Ben had an advance story about the trial scheduled to start the next day. A woman faced an attempted murder charge for trying to run over her husband with their beat-up minivan. She claimed it was self defense. He blamed it on the Hennessy they’d been drinking all night and the number of hands she’d lost at Texas Hold’em. The district attorney half expected the man to turn on him and refuse t
o testify against the old hag, whom he still seemed unaccountably fond of.
Business reporter Jessica Linton had her Junior League profile and a story about a new plastic surgeon enticed to the University of Texas Medical Branch from a much larger hospital up north. Education reporter Krista Chambers’ story previewing that week’s school board meeting would go on page four.
“OK. One down, six more to go,” Mattingly said, his enthusiasm for the next day’s paper abruptly gone. “What do we got for the rest of the week?”
Newspapers are voracious beasts. Feeding them can be exhilarating or exhausting, depending on how much news actually happens. The presses run even on slow days, making editors ache for a ten-car pile-up or grisly murder. But some days, an elderly woman’s emotional reunion with her long-lost chihuahua is the only thing available.
While the other reporters listed their planned coverage, Kate let her mind wander back to the murder scene. Johnson had been working the case for several hours by now. Surely he had more information to share. But how could she convince him to spill the details, preferably before the afternoon press conference she’d gotten an email about just before the meeting. All the Houston TV stations would be there, which meant they would have the latest details on the six o’clock news before Kate could get them in the newspaper, or up on the web. Her head started to pound as she thought about the possibility someone might beat her to an update on the story.
She owned this story, and as soon as she could get to the police station, she planned to make sure Johnson knew it. She needed him as an ally, not an adversary.
“All right, people,” Mattingly said as the meeting wrapped up. “No slacking this week. You’d better write each story as if your job depended on it. Don’t give the publisher any excuse to tell me I’ve got dead wood I can cut from this newsroom.”
Dead wood, dead girl. The managing editor’s warning conjured up the image of the woman who had drawn her last breath just hours earlier. Her killer had gotten away, but Johnson would unravel the mystery sooner or later. Probably sooner. Kate savored the thought of watching the case unfold, knowing the killer would get what he deserved and the young girl’s family would find some peace.