by Dana Perry
“What money?”
“She’d suddenly started spending a lot of money on stuff for herself. I couldn’t figure out where this money she had was coming from.”
Aha. The money from illegal payoffs. Did Sanders have any suspicions about that? Probably not. Maybe with someone else he might have. But, like everyone else, he would never believe something like that was possible with the daughter of an NYPD icon like Mike Walsh.
“She traded in her car for a fancier new one,” Sanders said. “She bought a lot of expensive clothes and jewelry. I found out she even put a down payment on a condo. I couldn’t understand it. She’d never had that kind of money before.”
“Do you think she might have been getting the money from her father?” I asked, playing dumb about my own knowledge of her financial dealings.
“Not likely. She never took money from her father before. She always made a big deal about wanting to live on her own, not as a member of the Walsh family. That was very important to her. Besides, she seemed really angry at her father. I don’t think they’d even spoken in a long time.”
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Deputy Commissioner Walsh?”
“Yes. I heard he could be… well, somewhat officious.”
“That’s a nice way to put it. Walsh is a real piece of work. Ice-cold, no emotion. At least none that I ever saw. He knew who I was and that I was seeing his daughter, but he never acted friendly or asked me questions about myself or anything. I thought at first that he didn’t like me. But then I discovered he’s like that with everyone. I don’t think he likes many people. Except maybe himself.”
I nodded. I might not know much about what was going on in Maura Walsh’s life at the end, but I sure had a pretty good take on her father. Everyone seemed pretty much in agreement on him. The guy was a prick.
“It sounds like she was going through a lot of stuff at the end,” I said. “Anything else you remember?”
“Just the trips.”
“Trips?”
“She used her off days to go on a bunch of trips before we broke up. All to the same place. She went upstate to this town called Saginaw Lake, a couple of hours north of here. It turned out she and her family used to spend summers up there when she was growing up. I figured that it was just some kind of nostalgia, but she got really weird when I asked her about it. Then someone told me she had a lot of bad memories from that place. Apparently, her brother died there one summer.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, when she was a teenager and her brother was much younger. Some kind of an accident. The whole thing was so traumatic that the family sold the house and never went back until she started going recently. I figured she’d explain to me what was so fascinating for her up there whenever she was ready to do it. But then…”
Sanders teared up now. I felt bad for putting him through this. He seemed like a nice guy. I wondered why Maura Walsh would walk away from a relationship with a man like him.
“The last time I saw her I told her I loved her,” he said. “I told her I wanted to help her with whatever troubles she was going through. She said I couldn’t help her. She said no one could help her. But I told her I’d always be there for her, no matter what. All she had to do was ask. I truly believed that Maura and I belonged together, that she would come back to me at some point later. Except there was no later…”
Charlie Sanders began to cry now.
I tried to comfort him the best I could, but he was still in tears when I left.
Sometimes being a newspaper reporter isn’t such a fun job.
Thirteen
There was a message from Sam Rawlings on my voicemail at the Tribune. It was the latest in a series of messages from Rawlings. He’d been sending them since we met that afternoon at his restaurant. I’d listened to them all, but never called him back. Not yet anyway.
I told myself it was because I was too busy working on the story. But I also realized I was avoiding him. Yes, I found him interesting and… well, okay, attractive too. But I just wasn’t emotionally prepared to go down that route with any man again right now.
Now, when I got back to the office after my meeting with Sanders, I found that Sam had left me another message. The messages all asked me to call him and left a number. I was still trying to decide whether or not to do that when my phone rang. It was Rawlings.
“Ah, the elusive Jessie Tucker,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Did you get my message?”
“Actually, I got five of them.”
“Too many?”
“It might have been a bit of overkill.”
“I’m persistent.”
“If by persistent you mean acting like a stalker…”
“You got something against stalkers?”
“They’re okay – from a distance.”
“But you wouldn’t want to date one, huh?”
“No, it makes breaking up so hard to do.”
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. If a woman felt like laughing, she could probably do a lot worse than Sam Rawlings, but timing is everything when it comes to dating, at least for me. And Rawlings’ timing was awful.
“How about we meet up for lunch?” he asked.
“I’ve already eaten.”
“Then maybe a drink later? Or dinner?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If you go out with me, Jessie, I promise to stop calling you. Now that sounds like a fair deal, doesn’t it?”
He laughed again.
“Sam, you seem like a really nice guy—”
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“That doesn’t sound good. There’s a ‘but’ coming now, right?”
“Well, yes. The thing is I’m in a weird place right now with my life. I’ve got a lot of things going on. For whatever it’s worth, I do think you’re an interesting guy. I enjoyed talking with you. And I appreciate all the effort you’ve put into this. But I’m just not interested at the moment. OK?”
“You’re sure you won’t change your mind?”
“Maybe another time.”
“So there is hope…”
“Listen, I gotta get back to work.”
I told myself after I hung up with Rawlings that I’d done the right thing. The last thing I needed was a romantic relationship in my life right now. I was already on emotional overload and I just couldn’t deal with anything more. I told myself that Sam Rawlings might be a charming, attractive guy, but there were lots of charming, attractive guys in the world. I told myself that I really didn’t mind being alone.
I almost convinced myself of all that too.
Almost.
Fourteen
“Have you heard anything about me?” Lorraine Molinski asked.
“Like what?”
“Like that I’m on my way out at the Tribune?”
“Um… no.”
“You’re telling me the truth, Jessie?”
“Absolutely.”
I had this conversation with Lorraine every few weeks or so. That’s about how often she became convinced the Tribune was about to fire her. Some of the reporters in the newsroom thought she was just being paranoid. I thought others deliberately spread the rumor to fuel her paranoia. If that was true, it really had worked. Lorraine Molinski was a walking bundle of nerves and insecurity.
“You’re sure Norman hasn’t been bad-mouthing me to the higher-ups? I mean, he’s been here a long time. He probably thinks he should have my job. I’ll bet he’s out to get me. I’ll bet Norman Isaacs is bad-mouthing me every chance he gets.”
“Norman never bad-mouths anyone,” I said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“What about Danny then?”
“Danny Knowlton bad-mouths everyone. Not just you. You’re being a little bit paranoid.”
“I am not paranoid,” she insisted.
“What do you call it then?”
“I just think there’s a lot of people
around me here that are out to get me.”
“Uh, that’s the definition of paranoia, Lorraine.”
She smiled now. “Thanks, Jessie. I know you’re the one person here I can always count on.”
I assured her that was true. In any case, I had a reason for being so nice to Lorraine Molinski. I needed her on my side right now.
“I want to go to Saginaw Lake,” I told her then.
“What’s Saginaw Lake?”
“A small town in upstate New York.”
“Why?”
“I think there could be an angle to the Maura Walsh story there.”
I’d done some checking on the Walsh family and Saginaw Lake after my conversation with Charlie Sanders. On a summer day in 2009, seven-year-old Patrick Walsh – Deputy Commissioner Walsh’s son and Maura’s brother – had died in a shooting accident. The Walsh boy had apparently somehow found his father’s service revolver in the house, began playing with it and the gun went off, killing him with a fatal shot to the head. Like Charlie Sanders had said, the Walsh family – which had been a familiar sight in Saginaw Lake during the summer months until then – left town afterward and sold the house they owned there. They never returned to Saginaw again, as far as anyone knew.
And yet Maura Walsh had made multiple trips there in the weeks leading up to her murder. Why?
Charlie Sanders didn’t know and neither did I, but I figured that any answers I might find would be up in Saginaw Lake.
I told Lorraine now about the little seven-year-old Walsh boy’s tragic death back then.
“What does that have to do with Maura Walsh’s murder?”
“Nothing. But I think it would make a great human-interest story. ‘Tragedy strikes the Walsh family twice.’ First they lose their little boy in a tragic shooting, now their daughter is dead too. I go up there and tell the story in detail of that death, then I segue into the family having to deal with this second tragedy now. I think it would really tug at people’s heartstrings, Lorraine.”
“Have you talked to Norman about going to this Saginaw Lake place?”
This is where it got tricky. For me to go to Saginaw Lake, I’d need to rent a car to drive up there, stay in a hotel for at least one night and bill the Tribune for whatever other expenses I incurred along the way. It wasn’t a long trip, but it was still an out-of-town trip. And Norman Isaacs was the person who usually had to approve any out-of-town trip for a reporter.
The problem was Norman Isaacs was one of the cheapest editors you’d ever meet. Maybe that’s why he’d lasted so long in his job. He always kept the paper’s expenses down to a bare minimum. Getting Norman Isaacs to approve a trip out of town for a story was like pulling teeth.
And Danny Knowlton wasn’t much better. He was so ambitious for Norman Isaacs’ job that he didn’t want to do anything Isaacs could use against him with the top brass to show he was too young and too reckless and too irresponsible to take over the job. So Danny wound up being as tight with spending money on trips by reporters as Isaacs was.
I figured I had a better shot at working Lorraine on this one.
“Why do I have to go to Norman?” I said to her. “After all, you’re the managing editor.”
“I know, but—”
I stood up and sighed. “Of course, if you don’t have the authority to approve a road trip for one of your reporters…”
“Who says I don’t have the authority?”
“No one. Well, I mean it was just a rumor I heard. Probably nothing to it…”
“If I want to send a reporter out of town, I’ll do it. I don’t need to talk to Norman or Danny or any other goddarned person here! You tell that to everyone, okay?”
“I sure will.”
Lorraine signed the forms approving my rental car, hotel and expenses. I felt a little badly afterward about pushing the buttons of her paranoia like that. But not that badly.
Next, I went back to Danny Knowlton and told him what I was going to do.
“But if you go out of town, you won’t have time to file the piece for Sunday’s paper, like we talked about,” he said.
“I want to hold off a bit longer before I write it.”
“Jessie, I’ve already penciled it in for the Sunday lead feature!”
“Even if I didn’t take this trip upstate, I wouldn’t be able to have it done in time for that, Danny.”
“C’mon, Jessie, you know how to meet deadlines, just send me what you have.”
“Look.” I searched for some excuse. “I’ve… um… I’ve been having some health issues. They’ve slowed me down a lot on this. Like you warned me about, the attack affected me more than I wanted to admit. Both physically and emotionally. I’m not walking so good, I’ve got a lot of aches and pains and I’ve been having trouble sleeping too. Just give me a few more days on the story, Danny.”
He sighed. I hated to play the victim card like that, but it did work most of the time.
“Okay,” he said. “I know we owe you that. I’ll go with something else on Sunday – and we’ll push your piece back until the following week.”
I mean, I knew I should tell Danny – and Lorraine and Norman and everyone else at the Tribune too – about everything I’d found out on Maura Walsh being a dirty cop. But for some reason I wasn’t ready to do that yet – maybe because I harbored some kind of faint hope that I’d come across a wholesome explanation for her actions if I kept looking at her life.
“Make sure you give me the story as soon as you get back from this trip you’re taking, Jessie.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
When I got back to my desk, I made some calls trying to get more information on the Maura Walsh story. I’d done the interview with Charlie Sanders, but I still wanted to talk to Dominic Bennato, the mob guy who owned the escort service and the strip club where she’d been that last night. Plus, the private investigator Frank Walosin who’d been looking into her activities for some reason.
I found a telephone number for the company Bennato ran – or at least was listed as chief executive officer for – and called it. I told the woman who answered I was a reporter for the Tribune and we were doing a story that might involve one of his business enterprises. She said she would pass the message on to him, and he would call me if he wanted to respond. I didn’t get the feeling from the way she said it that was very likely.
After that, I called Walosin again. I still wanted to get some idea of what the private investigator had come up with about Maura Walsh. But there was no answer there. The phone just kept ringing. Probably out on some top-secret stakeout. Why didn’t this guy have voicemail?
I’d have to try again when I got back from my trip upstate.
I shut off my computer and went home to pack.
Fifteen
It was warm in Saginaw Lake, but not as bad as it had been in New York City. Less humidity or whatever it was that made the hot weather so uncomfortable. Probably because Saginaw Lake was near a… well, near a lake. That must be one of the reasons people lived in a small town like this.
The first thing I did when I got there was to meet with Dale Palumbo, the Saginaw Lake Police Chief.
I brought him some coffee from a Starbucks down the street as an inducement to talk to me. Not exactly original thinking, I know. But, since bringing a cop coffee was one of my tried and true traditions for getting police cooperation in New York City, I figured it might work just as well here.
Palumbo liked the coffee, except it turned out I needn’t have bought it. He was happy to talk to me. I guess they didn’t get a lot of big shot New York City reporters coming to Saginaw Lake, and he seemed to enjoy the unexpected media attention.
Palumbo was younger than I expected, early thirties. It was only a six-man police force in Saginaw, so I guess you could get promoted quickly. He had blond curly hair; was good-looking in a sort of pretty boy way; and had a picture of his wife and family face-out on his desk, just in case I had any ideas about mistaking his friendlines
s for anything more.
I told him how I was there to find out more about the death of seven-year-old Patrick Walsh when the well-known family had a summer home in the town.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m doing a story on the Walsh family.”
“But why now?”
“Well, because his sister just died in New York City where she was a police officer. I thought it would be a good human-interest angle to talk about the tragedy involving her brother too.”
“That was her? Maura?”
He looked shocked. More shocked than I would have expected.
“I heard about a woman police officer being killed there. But I never really paid a lot of attention to the details of who it was. Otherwise, I would have recognized her name right away.”
“Were you involved in the investigation into the death of her little brother when it happened, Chief Palumbo?”
“No, not me. I was barely out of high school. My father was the police chief here back then.”
Ah, I thought to myself, that might help explain how Dale Palumbo had risen to the rank of police chief so fast.
“So why would you have recognized her name so quickly if you’d heard it?” I asked him.
“From when she was here.”
“Back then when she was a teenager?”
“No, it was about six months ago. She returned to Saginaw Lake. Sat right in that chair where you’re sitting now and asked me a lot of the same kind of questions as you. She wanted to know more about her brother’s death.”
“Did she tell you why she was so interested after all this time?”
“No, we never got around to that. She just asked me if she could go through the police files on her brother’s death. I was happy to cooperate with her. I mean, she was a member of the family and all. Plus, of course, I knew she was a New York City police officer now and that her father was a big shot in the NYPD. So I showed her what we had.”