Front Page Fatality Read online

  “I hear that.” Aaron laughed. “We’ve been busy down here lately, too. Too many bad guys out there. I saw your piece on the conviction in the Barbie and Ken case this morning. Such a sad story.”

  I murmured agreement as the mention of the capital murder trial I’d spent the whole week chronicling called up unwanted impressions of the poster-sized, high-resolution crime scene photos the prosecutor left on display for the jury the entire day before.

  It had been nearly two years since budget cuts (and a little finagling on my part—trial stories were bigger and often juicier than initial crime reports) had added the courthouse to my list of responsibilities as the crime reporter. It meant insane hours, but I didn’t mind, considering almost a third of our news staff had been laid off and I still had a job.

  I’d dreamed of being a journalist ever since I could remember. It paired my love of writing with the ability to do good in the world. I hadn’t yet developed the intestinal fortitude covering the Richmond PD often required, though, and the trials were worse.

  Aaron promised I’d have my interview with him in time to make the first Metro deadline.

  Lacking anything pressing to do, I called Jenna back to see if she had her heart set on anything special for our dinner date. I was in the mood for Mexican food. And a margarita. That damned trial had made for a long week.

  “Nicey!” Jenna practically shouted the nickname I’d reserved for those closest to me since preschool, when a playmate’s speech impediment had dubbed me “nee-see” and my mom had turned it into an endearment.

  “Anything good going on in the news today?” My friend’s tone came down a few decibels.

  “There’s seldom anything good in the news I write,” I said. “But I think I might have something interesting. And Grant Parker is working on a great story about the women’s basketball coach at U of R.”

  “Oh, yeah? And how is Virginia’s hottest sportswriter this morning?”

  I laughed. “He seemed all right. And you’re still, you know, married.”

  “Married. Not blind,” she said. “Speaking of my darling husband, I told Chad not to wait up, so we have no curfew. Have I told you how glad I am the baby isn’t nursing anymore?”

  “Just now, or the other fifteen times I’ve heard that this week?”

  “Only fifteen? And I thought I was excited about this.”

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘thrilled,’” I said. “Possibly even ‘euphoric.’”

  She laughed again. “Euphoric. Yes. Has a nice, festive ring to it. Anyway, what do you feel like doing tonight?”

  “Margaritas?” I knew Jenna was more interested in libations than food that particular day. “I want Mexican if that’s okay with you.”

  It was. I returned the phone to its cradle after promising to meet her at six-thirty, and went to tell Bob to save me a little space for my drug dealer story. Even he hadn’t escaped the cost-cutting, inheriting the metro editor’s job duties when she’d quit the year before.

  His door was open, as usual, but I tapped the doorframe before I walked in anyway.

  “Hey, chief,” I said, sticking my head around the corner. “Got a minute?”

  “Just one.” He turned from his monitor to face me, tucking a pen under the tuft of thinning salt-and-pepper hair that peeked over the top of his left ear. “Anything on your dead guy yet?”

  I took the same high-backed orange armchair I’d occupied at the morning meeting. Bob’s office décor was heavy on Virginia Tech’s sacred maroon and orange, his walls cluttered with a hodgepodge of framed copies of his favorite Telegraph photos and our best front pages. I flipped my file open.

  “I think I have something coming from the PD this afternoon.” My roaming eyes lingered on Bob’s Pulitzer, centered on the far wall in an impressive bronze frame, before I focused on him. “Or, I know I have something. I’m waiting to see how good it’s going to be. I’m going to headquarters this afternoon to talk to the detective who’s working on this morning’s murder. Both murder scenes had hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs and cash left behind.”

  He raised his thick white eyebrows. “They think there’s a vigilante on Southside?”

  “Maybe. That’s kind of what I’m thinking, but Aaron hasn’t said much. They’re waiting for ballistics to come back on the second bullet before they assume it was the same shooter.”

  “Sounds like you have at least a promise of a decent story there.”

  “We’ll see. A vigilante is definitely sexier than a broke addict looking for a fix. I might only have a short write-up on the murder tonight, depending on when they get the ballistics results, but we’ll have it in there tomorrow. And I’ll have more if anything comes of it.”

  “Sounds good, kid.”

  I would’ve bristled at the last word from anyone else, but I knew he meant it affectionately, and the feeling was mutual. I didn’t make it all the way to my feet before he picked up the newspaper on his desk and spoke again.

  “You know, you really have turned into quite a reporter since the first time you walked in here, hugging your little college portfolio, afraid I wouldn’t give you a job,” he said, his voice a little softer than I was used to hearing it. “I wasn’t at all sure you could handle both cops and courts when you came in here begging, either—”

  “Hey! I can be accused of doing a lot of things for a story, but I have never begged,” I objected.

  Bob grinned. “Beg, wheedle; ‘bench, beach.’ Call it what you will, I know wheedling when I hear it—I was married for almost thirty years. My point is, I made a good call. Both times.” He thumped my final report on the Barbie and Ken double homicide case, which was destined to become an over-dramatized TV movie. “We sold more newspapers this week than we have in any single week since the end of the ’08 election. And what’s good for the bean counters is good for the news department nowadays. Good job.”

  Well, hot damn. To say Bob wasn’t terribly forthcoming with compliments would be like saying John Edwards was a little unfaithful to his wife. The journalism equivalent of a decorated war hero, my editor expected excellence from his staff and rarely commented on anything that wasn’t a shortfall. My week suddenly seemed less taxing.

  Upside down pictures of the victims smiled at me from the newspaper on Bob’s desk. It was the sort of story that wasn’t much fun to write, but everyone wanted to read—the essence of my love/hate relationship with covering crime. The cops and courts beat was among the best places to begin building a career, though, and I told myself that reporting on crime kept people aware of their safety, and what was going on around them, which was a good thing. It made the parts of the job I found less than fun easier to take, especially with stories like that one.

  All the elements that drove producers (I’d counted five at the courthouse the day before) to stalk heartbroken couples who’d just buried their children were there: a crime of passion perpetrated against beautiful people, a lopsided college love triangle, and a conviction that left the last man standing facing Virginia’s electric chair, probably before his thirtieth birthday.

  The TV folks, ever fond of their graphics-friendly catchphrases, had dubbed the case “the Barbie and Ken murder” in homage to the victims’ perfect, flaxen-haired good looks. I had twenty bucks in the courthouse pool those words would appear somewhere in the movie title.

  The usual sandpapery scratch returned to Bob’s voice as he dropped the paper and smiled at me. “Go get your dead dealer story. And then go have a good weekend. Treat yourself to a new one of those crazy puzzles of yours, or a pair of shoes. I believe you’ve earned it this week.”

  Still glowing with pride twenty minutes later, I fit my back against the trunk of an ancient oak tree at a tiny, hidden park on the banks of the James River. It was my preferred place to ponder a story, write, or just sit and think when I had the chance. The water whispering over the rocks and the postcard-perfect downtown skyline were still enough to make me wonder
if being on the east coast would ever stop feeling like a vacation to me.

  Vacation. The word roused unexpected images from my memory: the beauty of roadside seas of bluebonnets in the spring, succumbing in the summer to flat, oppressive heat that browned the landscape and shimmered off the streets in visible waves by noon. My last trip to Dallas had been more of a vacation than a visit home.

  It’s probably nice to know where home is, even if you can’t go there again, I thought. I supposed my cute little stone craftsman in the Fan—the historic neighborhood named for the way its tree-lined streets fan out from downtown Richmond like the paper and lace creations that once aided Virginia ladies with everything from cooling to courting—was as good a place as any to feel like I didn’t belong. But I wished there was someplace I did.

  The rootless feeling was unsettling. I shook my head as though I could clear it like an etch-a-sketch and shifted my thoughts back to the comforting familiarity of the dead dealer and the detective I was interviewing in a couple of hours.

  Home or not, I would’ve been on the first plane back to Texas if I had any idea what that particular dead guy was about to get me into. But that’s the thing about dead people: they can’t warn you to keep your nose out of things that are going to put your ass in danger.

  2.

  Pieces of the puzzle

  “Have a seat.” Aaron cleared a stack of paper off a black plastic chair in his cluttered closet of an office. An ever-changing collection of maps, photos, and notes made it impossible to guess the color of the walls, and the small metal desk was buried under piles of manila case file folders. Judging by the detectives’ offices, Richmond was a downright dangerous place to live.

  His gray upholstered chair rocked backward as he settled into it and looked at me expectantly, the genial manner that made him the department’s king of confessions evident in the smile that lit his round face. Aaron’s charm was his central talent. He had a real gift for getting people to talk to him, and was nearly as good at keeping his own hand close. Often, reporters left his office with little or nothing, and felt like they’d somehow been done a favor. Not me. Usually, anyway. Aaron and I had a nice little groove where he tried to bullshit me, I called him on it, and then we bantered until I talked him out of some actual information.

  “Who is our unfortunate friend who was shot in the head?” I asked.

  Aaron flipped a page on a legal pad. “Darryl Anthony Wright, African-American male, age twenty-five. Formerly a resident of cellblock seven at Cold Springs.”

  I jotted that down and pulled the police report on the Noah Smith murder from my bag.

  “Are you guys looking for some kind of Charles Bronson wannabe?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and chuckled. When he looked up, his hand slid down his face so his fingers rested over his lips and muffled the first part of his answer.

  “Not pulling any punches today, I see. But I think so.” His hand dropped to the desk and he shook his head. “I can’t say anything for sure without ballistics.”

  “When is the report supposed to be back?” I smiled as I scrawled his words into my notes. That was easier than I thought.

  It took about thirty-five seconds to figure out why.

  Ignoring my question, Aaron cocked his head to one side and grinned. “This whole damned thing is about to turn into a giant pain in my ass, isn’t it?”

  I arched an eyebrow. His Detective Adorable routine was usually reserved for the TV crews. I waited, eyebrow up, for him to go on.

  “In a lot of ways, a vigilante is going to be harder to prosecute than just another dealer or a junkie.” He widened the baby blues just enough to smooth out the lines that were really the only evidence he was pushing fifty. “The public tends to sympathize with vigilantes. I don’t suppose you want to keep that part out of the newspaper for me, do you?”

  I felt my mouth drop open, and the other eyebrow shot up. “You’ve got to be kidding. I talked to my editor about this before I left the office. He’d fire me. Between what I have here,” I brandished the report, “and what I heard on the scanner, our copyeditor-cum-aspiring-cops-reporter could figure this one out. I can’t sit on it, Aaron. Not unless you’re offering me something pretty damned amazing in return.”

  “What would it take?” He sounded like he meant it.

  I sat back in my chair and studied him. Aaron’s people skills had contributed to the soft edges on his average frame, making him the obvious choice for department spokesman and thereby trapping him behind a desk in a building with too many Krispy Kreme boxes for too many years. His face looked as puppy-doggish as it ever did, but my inner Lois Lane was hopping up and down, hollering there was something else in play that I didn’t see. Why on Earth would he care so much about keeping something that, in the grand scheme, was pretty insignificant to him, out of print?

  “Are you serious?”

  “Don’t I look serious? When you get past the dashingly, heartbreakingly handsome, that is?”

  I snorted and shook my head. “How could I have missed it?”

  I felt my fingers wind into my hair as I focused on the roof of my house on the aerial map behind his head. A vigilante was a sexier story angle, but not having it didn’t preclude me from writing about the murder. And if it turned out the killer was on some sort of Death Wish trip, I’d get it at the trial anyway. Letting my hand fall back to my lap, I met Aaron’s eyes and nodded.

  “All right, detective. I don’t know why you care, but I can keep the word ‘vigilante’ out for now. It’s going to cost you, though. One all-access pass, to be used at my discretion, on the story of my choice. No arguments, no negotiations, nothing held back.”

  He rested his chin on his left fist and twisted his mouth to the side.

  “That it?” Aaron was rarely sarcastic, and it sounded funny in his cheerful tenor.

  “No.”

  His eyes widened. “I was kidding!”

  He wanted this. And badly. And I didn’t like not understanding why.

  “I’m not. All access. Story of my choice. To be determined later. And someday, you’re going to tell me why you made this deal with me.”

  “Done. Anything else you need today?”

  “Just the report on this morning’s murder. I’ll leave out the vigilante hoopla, but I have to have something. Bob knows I’m here. Speaking of, how are you going to get around the TV guys?”

  Aaron grinned. “Not worried about it. You and Charlie are the only ones who’ve even asked about the other guy so far. There’s a new girl at Channel Ten. Green as a March inchworm. And Kessler over at RVA…” he rolled his eyes and I laughed.

  “If the report wasn’t on his makeup mirror, he didn’t look at it for more than ten seconds,” I said. “But what’d you tell Charlie?”

  Charlotte Lewis at Channel Four was my biggest competition, usually one step ahead of or behind me on any given story. If she was going with the vigilante, Aaron would just have to get over it.

  “Hey, if I can handle you, I can handle Charlie.” He laughed. “She left about an hour ago. She didn’t ask for nearly as much as you did, but she did make me swear on my grandmama’s grave I’d call her if you were running it. So you just made my afternoon a bit more pleasant. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. When can I have my report?”

  “It’s waiting on forensics, but I asked Jerry to bring it in with him. He won’t be too much longer.”

  He didn’t get the words out before the door flew open and a disarmingly handsome detective who looked like he was good at hiding from those Krispy Kreme boxes in the gym rushed in. His sheer mass made the small space feel crowded.

  “Jerry,” Aaron said, “this is Nichelle Clarke from the Telegraph. Nichelle, this is Jerry Davis, the detective working on this morning’s shooting.”

  I smiled, extending my hand and shaking his firmly. “Nice to meet you, Jerry.”

  “Nichelle.” Jerry nodded, o
ffering Aaron a folder full of papers and photos. He shot a sidelong glance at me, then focused on Aaron, who was reading something he’d pulled from the file.

  An eight-by-ten glossy from the scene lay on top of the stack in the open folder. Darryl Wright, lifeless eyes staring at nothing, was sprawled across his sofa in a relaxed pose that mimicked the first dead dealer. Part of Darryl’s baseball cap was gone; the shot had come from the front and blown the hat and its contents across the lamp on the table next to the sofa and the wall behind it. I swallowed a curse, averting my eyes.

  “Ballistics worked fast today. Same gun.” Aaron dropped the report over the photo and tapped it with his pen, raising his eyes to mine. “So, yes, Nichelle, we can’t say for certain that it’s the same shooter, but it’s looking that way. Jerry can answer some questions for you.”

  Jerry folded his big frame into the other chair and rested his elbows on his knees, facing me.

  “How does that change your investigation?” I asked, pen poised over my notepad. I prided myself on the fact that I’d never once been accused of misquoting anyone, especially since my inexplicable disdain for gadgets extended to tape recorders (and pretty much everything else with a battery that wasn’t my laptop or my Blackberry). I’d invented my own form of shorthand after I’d gotten frustrated trying to learn the real thing, but the accuracy of my notes would’ve made them admissible in court.

  “Well, we can combine resources on the cases since we’re likely not looking for two different killers,” he said. “The more heads you’ve got looking at it, the better.”

  “And what are you looking for? You have any working theories?” I asked.

  Jerry glanced at Aaron and Aaron shot me a warning glare I pretended to ignore.

  “We’re not ruling anything out yet. We have officers canvassing the neighborhood, and we’re waiting for all the relevant information to come in before we construct likely scenarios.”