Front Page Fatality Read online

  The solemn look in his dark eyes sent such a chill through me, I actually shivered.

  “I’m not trying to scare you. But you should know what you’re getting into.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised, shoving the folder and my notebook into my bag and hooking it over my shoulder as I stood. “Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the call. I definitely owe you one.”

  “I guess that depends on how you look at it,” he said, picking up his briefcase and moving toward the door. “You get a headline, I get to sleep at night. Win-win. But remember this next time you’re bugging me about something I don’t want to tell you, huh?”

  “I’m sure I won’t,” I said as I walked through the door he held open. “But you’ll remind me.”

  The thought of an exclusive put a bounce in my step as I crossed the parking lot, already stringing my lead together in my head. Mike had his pick of reporters to meet with that morning, but he called me. Boy, was Charlie going to be pissed. The rush of warmth at the thought wasn’t even iced over by the memory of his parting words.

  Kicking the door of the car open before I’d even put it in park when I got back to work, I made a beeline for Bob’s office, stopping short and grumbling when his door was closed. Bob’s door was never closed, and this was a hell of an irritating time for it to be that way. I went to my desk to wait, figuring maybe I could get more information before I talked to him.

  My only experience with Captain Simmons at internal affairs had been pleasant enough, but it had also been a relatively minor case of an officer being arrested for drunk driving, so I wasn’t sure what kind of reception I’d get when I dialed police headquarters and asked for him.

  Voicemail. I rattled off a quick message with my deadline time and a plea for him to return my call, which I wasn’t at all sure he’d do. But I’d tried. If he didn’t call back, I could stick a “didn’t return a call seeking comment” into my story.

  I blew a raspberry at nothing in particular as I put the phone down and picked up my pen, tapping it on the desk. So many questions. And answers had been hard to come by lately. I was beginning to miss the simplicity of Barbie and Ken and the gruesome homicide trial.

  Popping halfway to my feet, I looked at Bob’s door. Open. I grabbed my folders, half-running to his office.

  “Chief? Did you get my message? Wait ’til you hear what I’ve got!”

  “I didn’t have time to check my messages this morning,” he said, his bushy brows knit together in a glare that would’ve been scary any other day. “I had a meeting. That you didn’t bother to show up for. The staff meeting is mandatory for the crime reporter, Nichelle. You know that.”

  “But I did call,” I protested. “I had an interview, and you’re going to be glad I went. I’ve got an honest-to-God exclusive. And it’s fabulous.” I took a deep breath and launched into the story. I may not have inhaled again before I finished.

  Bob leaned forward in his seat. The more I talked, the faster he nodded, and though his brow furrowed when I got to the part where “my source” warned me to be careful, he certainly didn’t look pissed anymore by the time I sat back in my chair and grinned.

  “So, what do you think? It’s great, right? And no one else will have it.”

  “Holy shit, kid. Nice work. But slow down. How much do you trust your source?”

  “Implicitly. I have a copy of the file on the missing evidence right here, and I already called internal affairs. Maybe they’ll give me confirmation.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Bob said, opening the file as soon as I handed it to him. “But this looks pretty solid. And it’s damned fabulous, all right. You’re sure no one else has it?”

  “No one,” I said. “My source assured me I was the only reporter he talked to.”

  “Then we’ll hold the web version for morning and release it when the papers hit the racks,” he said, his face wrinkling up in a grin. “I need it by three. Legal will want to check it, I’m sure.”

  I nodded and started to get to my feet.

  “One more thing,” he said.

  I stared at him blankly. What? I had solid information. It was a huge story. I eyed the Pulitzer on his wall again. Most of the time I wasn’t terribly interested in contests or awards for my work. But that one was different.

  “Nicey,” Bob spoke slowly and his expression was serious. “You’re a good reporter, but you’re young. I know the only way for you to get experience is to go get the story, but watch yourself. If you’re dealing with crooked cops, then everyone you talk to at the PD is a suspect. I want the story. It’s a great story. But you just mind how you handle yourself.”

  “There’s no reason for you to worry.” I smiled my most reassuring smile. “Really. My guy was being a little dramatic.”

  “I’m not convinced of that.” Bob gave me an age-begets-wisdom look. “There are dangerous people out there, kid. You might not want to think about the things they’re capable of doing, but they can be pretty horrible.”

  I held his gaze. He wanted the exclusive, and I didn’t want some misguided concern for me to trump that desire.

  I looked back at the Pulitzer. I knew he had won enough awards in his career to fill a good-sized closet, which was where I suspected the rest of them lived.

  “Why do you keep that on the wall in here?” I asked him, gesturing to the frame.

  “The Pulitzer?” He looked confused. “Well, because it’s the one I’m the most proud of. I think I actually did something special to earn it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that series was great,” he said softly. “There were civil rights activists who said my stories helped heal wounds that festered here for more than a century. I’m still quite proud of that.”

  “Didn’t you tell me the KKK threatened you while you worked on that series?”

  Bob’s mouth tightened into a thin line.

  “Nicey.” He sighed. “This is different.”

  “Why? Because you don’t mind putting yourself in danger, or because I’m a woman?”

  He flinched.

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “It was a different situation. The crackpots I dealt with weren’t armed public officials who stood to lose everything because of what I was writing.”

  “But they threatened your life,” I pressed. “No one has done that to me, and besides, I’ve already called internal affairs, so it’s not like my source is the only person at the PD who knows I know about this.”

  Bob was quiet for a long moment, bending his head and massaging both temples. He took a deep breath before he looked up.

  “It is one hell of a sexy lead, isn’t it? Go get it. Just be careful. And get it to me by three in case it needs shoring up.”

  I leaped out of my chair and managed to resist the impulse to pump my fist in the air. Grinning instead, I pushed Mike’s warning to the back of my mind and locked it there.

  “You’ll have it,” I said. “This is going to be huge, Bob. I can feel it.”

  “Three o’clock,” he repeated.

  “Not a second past,” I promised over my shoulder, already on my way back to my desk to see if Captain Simmons returned my call.

  Sprinting the last few steps, I grabbed the ringing phone, my breathlessness more from excitement than exertion.

  “Hi, sweetie, I’m sorry to call you at work.” My mom’s voice deflated my enthusiasm. “You didn’t call me this weekend. Is everything all right?”

  “Mom?” I hastened to cover up the disappointment in my tone. “Hey! How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Tired. But fine. You don’t sound happy to hear from me. Are you very busy today?”

  “I am, but I have a minute. I’m waiting for a call, though, so if I hang up on you, don’t take it personally.”

  “Noted,” she said with a laugh. “What are you working on? There was something yesterday about a boating accident over the weekend? I didn’t read it yet, but it looked like a sad story.”

  “It is
. The guys who died were all my age or younger. Not a fun weekend. I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday. I was at the accident scene until ridiculous-thirty on Friday night, and then back here all day Saturday, and I stayed home with Darcy and tried to relax yesterday.”

  “I see.” Her tone brightened. “Speaking of relaxing, I went to the pool for the first time in years yesterday, and guess who I bumped into?”

  “A handsome doctor who swept you off your flip flops?”

  “Not quite.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “But I did have a nice chat with Rhonda Miller.”

  “Aw, really?” It was entirely possible that I missed Kyle’s family more than I actually missed him. His parents were among the sweetest people I’d ever met. “How is she?”

  “She’s doing really well. And so is Kyle. He’s somewhere up there, actually. She said he followed his dad into law enforcement and he’s in Virginia working on a case.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said, tapping a pen on the desk and wondering how to steer the conversation away from my old boyfriend before she asked me to look him up. There were a variety of reasons why I had no interest in doing that, none of which I wanted to discuss right then. “Small world. Hey, Jenna says to tell you hello.”

  “Wow, that might be the worst segue ever,” she said. “But all right. I won’t push it. Just wanted you to know. Give Jenna my love. How is she?”

  “She’s great. Carson isn’t nursing anymore, so she had her first margaritas in two years at girls’ night Friday. Then she went with me to the accident scene at the river, which she was very excited about until we got there and she got an eyeful of why reporting isn’t always as much fun as it looks in the movies.”

  “Ah.” My mother fell silent for a minute. “I can sympathize with that. I’m happy you love your job, but I don’t think I would care to see it for myself. I read your stories and I can’t imagine how you stand dealing with that day after day and stay off medication…”

  She trailed off and when she spoke again she sounded slightly alarmed.

  “Nicey, you’re not on medication, are you?” she asked.

  “Not unless you count vitamins.” I laughed. “Contrary to popular belief, my job does not generally depress me. It’s usually pretty exciting. I have a story going out today I’m very excited about, in fact.”

  “About what?”

  “All sorts of intrigue at the police department this morning,” I said, refusing to elaborate any further. “You’ll have to read it like everyone else.”

  “I gave you life, and you won’t even tell me what you’re working on,” she lamented. She sounded so convincingly pitiful, I almost felt bad, but then she laughed and I could picture the mischief flashing in her blue eyes.

  “I love you, mom,” I said, my voice thickening slightly. Growing up the only child of an “I was an attachment parent before attachment parenting was cool” single mom made for a different dynamic. I missed her. And I lived in constant fear of her cancer returning. “Are you okay? Why are you tired?”

  “I love you, too, kid. I’m fine. You stop worrying about me. I’m a pretty tough chick. I’ve just been busy at the shop, that’s all.” She’d expanded her flower shop into a one-stop wedding boutique after she’d recovered from the mastectomy. She loved it, which I found hilarious given that my mother’s opinion of marriage echoed the regard most women hold for sandals worn over socks: almost always good for a laugh and almost never a good idea. No wonder I had issues with my love life. “Have a better week. And call your mother more often.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I hung up the phone and shoved the stray lock of hair behind my ear again before I unfastened the clip and twisted all of my hair back up into it, my thoughts still on my mom.

  The ringing phone jerked me back to the present. I picked it up and tilted my head to brace the receiver against my shoulder as I reached for a pen and paper with both hands.

  “Miss Clarke, this is Don Simmons at the Richmond PD.” A smooth, deep voice came through the line and my pulse quickened.

  “Captain! I won’t take up too much of your time today,” I said. “I’m working on a story about the missing evidence from the Southside dealer murders.”

  “So you said in your message,” Simmons said. “Do you mind if I ask you how you know about that?”

  “I do, actually.” So that’s why he’d returned my call. “I can’t reveal my source on this story. But I am wondering if you have any comment on your investigation.”

  “The situation is being investigated by internal affairs for possible officer involvement, but we don’t know anything definitive yet,” he said a little stiffly.

  Strike one.

  “Captain, I know you’re frustrated. I can imagine your job is pretty stressful, and I’m really not trying to make it worse.” If the sympathy plea had worked on Agent Starnes, it could work on anyone. “I’m just trying to do mine, that’s all.”

  Silence. I held my tongue, knowing this game well: he who speaks first loses.

  Simmons hauled in a deep breath. “I can appreciate that, ma’am, but I need you to understand this is a very sensitive matter.”

  Strike two. I had one tactic left.

  “Yes, but the taxpayers who pay your salary have a right to know what’s going on. I’m not the only person in town who thinks so, or I wouldn’t know about it in the first place.”

  More crickets. Another long breath.

  “Look, lady,” he said. “This has everybody upstairs convinced the four horsemen are on their way or some shit, pardon my French. I’m sorry—no comment.”

  A swing and a miss, and the two most dreaded words in the English language for the out. I thanked Simmons for his time and hung up, tapping the nail of my index finger on the handset. He confirmed the theft, but I wanted more than that. Though given his position, I supposed I should be thankful he’d even called back.

  I glanced at the file Mike gave me. Gavin Neal. The attorney who’d been in the evidence room on Sunday. Assuming he wasn’t busy stashing four hundred thousand dollars in drug money, maybe he’d talk to me. Lawyers were generally easier to pump for quotes than cops.

  I dialed the CA’s office and found Neal in the robot-voiced directory. And got his voicemail. Reeling off my name and phone number, I wondered if my aversion to checking messages stemmed from having to leave so many of them.

  I cradled the phone and stared at the log from the evidence locker. The longer I stared, the fuzzier the lines became, until something finally jumped out at me. Neal’s signature was scribbled hastily. So hastily, someone went back and printed his name next to the scrawl. If I were planning to make off with half a million dollars, I’d be in a hurry, too.

  I wondered if my friend DonnaJo, who was also a prosecutor, might be able to help me track down Neal before deadline. I called her cell and dispensed with the pleasantries quickly, asking if she knew him.

  “He’s one of our best attorneys, Nichelle,” she said. “A great guy, and a damn smart lawyer. Very charismatic—juries love him. I just cannot believe this rumor that he’s a crook. Anyone who knows this man knows he’s not a thief.”

  My eyebrows went up.

  “Jump to conclusions much, counselor?” Not that I hadn’t, but she seemed pretty defensive. “I think they just wanted to question him.”

  “Which would be no big deal, if he were around to question. The grapevine has it the cops went to pick him up and his wife reported him missing. He never went home after he went to the PD yesterday. I hear she’s pretty freaked. Their kid has some sort of medical condition, so Gavin never misses her calls.”

  My thoughts careened in several directions at once. Part of what I loved about covering crime were the puzzles embedded in the stories, but this one was getting more complicated than the three-dimensional Capitol Building my mom sent for my last birthday. It had frustrated me to the brink of throwing it out half-finished, and I never attempted another.

 
Now the lawyer was missing? Did a family man with a successful career really take off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in evidence and not even tell his wife? Or was the wife lying?

  Medical condition meant medical bills. And prosecuting isn’t where the big bucks are in the legal game. Sounded like a motive to me.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Hey, DonnaJo,” I said, running a finger over the evidence locker sign-in. “Do you have any idea why Neal would have been at the PD on a Sunday?”

  “I go up there sometimes, if there’s evidence I want to look at again when I’m prepping for court,” she said.

  “How long would it take you to get me a list of the cases he’s working on?” I asked. “The PD isn’t talking, and I want this for my piece today.”

  “About an hour. I have a hearing.”

  “Can you also see if there’s anyone he put in prison who’s gotten out recently?”

  “Sure. It might take a bit longer, but I’ll send you both. If you’re going to run them, they didn’t come from me, though.”

  “No worries. The courthouse fairy brought them to me.”

  I thanked her and hung up.

  Glancing toward Bob’s door, I got up to go ask if he wanted a separate piece on the attorney by way of the soda machine. I decided as I ambled along, the condensation from my Coke bottle mingling with the sweat breaking out on my hands, that my best bet was to lay out the facts for him as lightly as I could, and ask him if he thought the attorney’s disappearance warranted its own headline. Writing about a lawyer, I didn’t want to get in hot water with legal for tying him to the missing evidence if there was a reason I shouldn’t.

  I kept my eyes on the mottled brown carpet as I walked through Bob’s door, my nerves overriding my manners and making the knock more cursory than usual. Perching on the edge of my seat, I began listing the latest developments in my story before I looked at my editor, who was slumped over in his chair, barely breathing.