Front Page Fatality Read online

  7.

  In a heartbeat

  “Bob!” I knocked over the wastebasket and pushed a tape dispenser and a bottle of white-out off the desk dragging Bob’s heft from the chair, which crashed into the wall when I kicked at the casters under it to get it out of the way.

  Once he was on his back on the floor, I knelt and popped his cheek with my palm, rapid-fire style.

  “Bob!” I shouted, my nose inches from his. My hand left a red mark on his otherwise bloodless skin.

  He didn’t move, his breathing still shallow.

  “Help!” I turned my head in the general direction of the door I couldn’t really see from behind the desk.

  “HEY!” I bellowed in my best press conference voice. “In Bob’s office. Someone help! We need an ambulance!” Damn. Mid-morning on a Monday was not the best time to find newsroom staff in the office.

  “Nichelle?” Shelby’s voice came from near the doorway.

  “Shelby, thank God.” I’d have been glad to see Adolf Hitler himself right then if he knew how to call the paramedics. “Over here, behind the desk.

  “Call 9-1-1. Then go get someone who can help with CPR, just in case he stops breathing.” I barked the orders automatically, having been through this more than once when my mom was weak from her chemo.

  For the first time ever, Shelby didn’t argue with me or offer a smartass retort. She gaped at Bob for a split second and then snatched up the phone, giving the operator the building’s address before she sprinted out into the newsroom.

  She returned shortly, hauling Eunice behind her.

  “Christ on a cracker, what’s going on in here?” Eunice’s golden brown eyes widened as they studied Bob, and she laid a hand on my shoulder. “Shelby said you needed help with CPR, but he’s breathing.”

  “I just want to make sure it stays that way,” I said, stroking Bob’s hand and meeting Eunice’s gaze as she gripped the edge of Bob’s desk and eased herself onto the floor next to his legs. “His pulse is thready. His breathing is getting worse. Shelby called an ambulance. This looks like a cardiac something-or-other. Or maybe a stroke.”

  I pinched my eyes shut, praying for the heart attack. People survived them every day. A stroke…well, what that might do to my quick-witted editor was too horrible to contemplate.

  “Don’t you worry, sugar. The Good Lord don’t want Bob up there giving Him orders. It’ll be just fine.” Eunice reached out and patted my knee as I laid my fingers over Bob’s carotid artery and stared at my Timex.

  “Hang on, chief,” I whispered. “The cavalry’s on its way.”

  Just then, shouting from the newsroom heralded the paramedics’ arrival. They brought a small gang of onlookers from our floor, comprised of section editors and copy desk folks. Most of the people in the building continued about their Monday with no idea that our resident journalistic legend needed medical attention, sprawled on carpet that still stank faintly of cigarettes from the days when chain-smoking and reporting went together like champagne and strawberries.

  I took two steps backward, willing away the pricking in the backs of my eyes that meant tears were coming.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said, my nails digging into my palm. “He’ll be just fine.” A couple of deep breaths dispelled the waterworks.

  Shelby whimpered, and I looked around to thank her for her help and found her burying her face in the managing editor’s shirtfront, sniffling as he patted her back.

  “Are you all right, sugar?” Eunice asked me, watching the medics lift our boss onto a gurney.

  “He was slumped in the chair when I came in.” I cleared my throat. “I got him onto the floor so his airway would be less constricted.”

  “Great land of plenty.” She folded her arms over her soft chest and shook her head. “I just saw him at the meeting. He was fine.”

  “Obviously not,” I said. “But he will be. He has to be.”

  The medics started for the door.

  “What do you think?” I asked the one closest to me.

  “Looks like a heart attack. I can’t say anything for sure, though,” she said, not looking up from her watch on Bob’s heart rate and oxygen level. “We’re taking him to St. Vincent’s. Has anyone called his family?”

  “He doesn’t really have one,” Eunice said. “His wife’s been gone three years now, and he doesn’t have any children.”

  Both medics nodded as they rolled Bob, still unconscious, through the onlookers.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He did, too, have a family. Just like me, the Telegraph was his family. And I’d be damned if he was going to wake up in the hospital alone. I stepped toward the door and Eunice put a hand on my back.

  “You going to watch after him, sugar?”

  I turned slightly and smiled, blinking at the threatening tears again.

  “We’re his family.” I said simply.

  She wrapped my left hand in her arthritis-twisted fingers and nodded. “You’re damned right we are. Give him our love when he comes to. And let me know if you need me to do anything.”

  I packed up my things and turned into the hospital parking lot less than ten minutes later.

  I had grown up without a father or a grandfather, and I’d always thought I didn’t need either in my life. Then I came to Richmond with no job and no friends, and Bob hired me. After his wife died, he found himself as orphaned and out of place as I sometimes still felt. That kinship, coupled with our fondness for each other, had forged a bond as strong as one shared by any blood relatives. Sure, he gave me hell about deadlines and scoops, but that was his job. I knew he liked me, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for him.

  I left the car at the curb, tow away zone signs be damned, and rushed through the sliding glass doors, accosting the first white coat I saw.

  “You have to check in with the front desk before you can see him,” the doctor said, raising an eyebrow in the direction of the fingers I’d curled around his arm. I ignored the look, but thanked him over my shoulder as I bolted for the desk.

  I tried my best to be patient with the harried clerk, but it seemed to take hours before she glanced in my direction, and when she finally did, she flashed a halfhearted smile that looked out of place on her perky face. “I’ll be right with you.”

  I fidgeted as I waited, my thoughts running to the weeks I’d spent at Parkland Memorial with my mom. But she was fine now. Making bridal dreams come true every day. Bob would be back to glaring at my tardiness soon enough. I refused to entertain another option.

  By the time the clerk began typing information into the computer for the fifth person who’d walked up after me, I was over polite waiting. Glancing around at a roomful of people who were caught up in their own problems and paying me absolutely no mind, I edged to the end of the long counter and slid a black clipboard off the edge of it, then turned toward the doors to the treatment area.

  Bob shared a theory with me once that clipboards are the most commanding of office supplies, instantly lending an air of authority to anyone carrying them.

  “I hope you’re right, chief,” I muttered, flattening myself against the wall outside the secured double doors.

  When a tiny redheaded woman carrying a sleepy toddler came out, I slipped inside. Straightening my shoulders and ramrodding my spine, I kept my eyes on the clipboard and walked to the back edge of the nurse’s station. A dozen or so women and men in scrubs milled about, talking. Hanging near the corner, mostly out of sight, I scanned the whiteboard of patients’ last names, doctors, and room numbers. Jeffers, no doctor name, room twelve.

  White-knuckling the clipboard, I strode down the hallway, not making eye contact with anyone. And it worked. Either Bob was right about the power of the clipboard, or everyone was too busy to notice me, but I rounded the corner into his room without so much as an eyelash batted in my direction.

  Once inside, I stopped so suddenly I teetered forward on my stilettos. Bob looked frail, half-reclined in the narrow be
d, a myriad of tubes and wires tethering him to four different machines. So much like my mom had after her mastectomy, it knocked the wind out of me.

  I pulled in a long breath and looked closer. The heart monitor’s beeping was reassuringly steady, and Bob’s chest rose and fell in a much deeper, more even pattern than it had before.

  I stepped to the side of the bed, grasping his big hand in both of mine, and Bob opened his eyes.

  “Nicey?” He blinked and looked around, the confusion obvious on his face. But that face was symmetrical, his words clear. “What the hell?”

  “They think it was a heart attack,” I pasted a smile on my face and tried my best to sound breezy, thanking God silently for the lack of stroke markers. “We tried to tell the paramedics that we give you those every day around deadline, but they insisted you come see a doctor.”

  Bob laughed and then winced.

  “Shit. That hurts. No more wisecracks,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” I saluted and clicked my heels together and he smiled.

  “A heart attack, huh?” Bob surveyed the equipment in the room. “Well, hell. You want to fill me in?”

  “I went to tell you about my latest hot scoop and found you passed out in your office,” I said. “I pulled you out of the chair, screamed for help, the paramedics came. And here we are.”

  “Thanks, kid.” Bob half-smiled at me. “I owe you one.”

  “Eh. Just keep ignoring my tardiness so I can keep up with my workouts, and we’ll call it even.”

  “Done.” His color was coming back, at least a little. The monitor kept up its steady rhythm, and I smiled.

  “Speaking of tardiness, my story’s going to be late if I don’t start typing soon,” I said. “What time is it?”

  Bob pointed to the clock on the wall before he read it to me. “When the big hand is on the six and the little one is just past the one like that, it’s one-thirty. You find out anything from the internal affairs guy?”

  I poked my tongue out at him.

  “Smartass comments mean you must be feeling better.” I planted myself in a chair in the corner where I could keep an eye on him before I reached for my laptop. “Internal affairs was less than forthcoming. Lucky for me, I have a girlfriend at the CA’s office. Guess what? That prosecutor who signed in to the evidence locker yesterday didn’t go home last night.”

  Bob grunted. When I looked at him, his brows were knitted together over his closed eyes.

  “Really?” He sounded a little less tired. One of the machines next to the bed beeped, and I jumped.

  “Don’t go getting too excited about that, chief.” I smiled. “I wouldn’t want to have to cut you out of the loop.”

  Bob smiled, his eyes still closed. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I was ever out of the loop,” he said. “I am the loop.”

  “Truer words may have never been spoken.” I opened a blank document. “And we’re glad to still have you around.”

  “I’m too stubborn to die,” Bob said, and his tone was so genial that I burst out laughing.

  “I stand corrected,” I said. “I think that might be the truest thing ever said.”

  “Get back to work.” He tried his hardest to sound gruff. “Your copy isn’t going to write itself, is it?”

  “No, but I’m going to write it from this lovely little beige room where I can keep an eye on you,” I said. “I’m not leaving until I talk to a doctor.”

  “You don’t have to stay here,” Bob began, and I raised a palm in his direction.

  “Don’t even try it, chief. Have laptop and Blackberry, will travel. Eunice and everyone else send their love.”

  He eyeballed me for a long minute and then seemed to give in, muttering something about overreacting as he closed his eyes.

  I turned my attention back to the blinking cursor on my screen and decided for myself to mention the missing CA in my evidence piece, and try to get more information before I devoted a whole story to his whereabouts. If I watched the wording, I probably wouldn’t get an ass-chewing from legal. As far as I knew, I was the only reporter in town who knew the evidence was gone, and I might be the only one who knew the lawyer was gone, too.

  I grabbed my Blackberry and checked my email. The courthouse fairy had landed, and though the recent parole rosters didn’t show any of Neal’s bad guys, he did have a murder case scheduled to open Wednesday. It was just a simple domestic dispute gone very wrong, but the weapon was probably in the evidence room, assuming they’d found it.

  The question became, then, was the trial the reason for his presence at police headquarters on Sunday, or was it a good excuse?

  “Hell if I know,” I mumbled, thinking about what Mike said about the department’s halo. “But I’m going to find out.”

  Bob began to snore softly as I started to type.

  A search for suspects turned inward Monday for Richmond police after more than $600,000 in cash and street-valued narcotics disappeared from police headquarters over the weekend.

  Documents show the last of the evidence in question was cataloged Friday afternoon. Monday morning, it was nowhere to be found, a confidential police department source said.

  Also missing on Monday was Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Gavin Neal, who, with a murder trial scheduled to open Wednesday, was one of the last people to sign into the police evidence locker. An official who asked to remain unnamed said Neal was being sought for questioning about the theft.

  I stopped there and picked up my Blackberry again. As soon as I was outside, I dialed the PD and launched into a preemptive apology when I heard Aaron’s voice. “I’m working on a story about the missing evidence in the drug dealer murders, and I have an unnamed source. It just occurred to me the internal affairs guys probably think it’s you.”

  He chuckled. “Why yes, as a matter of fact they did. I’m not sure why they give two shits. The report is public information. I guess they figure they could have kept it out of the news if no one had tipped you off, since this wouldn’t make the list of routine report subjects you people request. They’re pissed about someone telling you. They checked the records on every phone line I have readily accessible, but they seemed satisfied when they saw I hadn’t talked to you since Saturday.”

  I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and was surprised to find a young, good-looking guy with cocoa skin and serious brown eyes staring at me from a bench on the other side of the sidewalk. He didn’t look familiar. I smiled at him.

  He didn’t return the smile, just kept staring.

  I shifted my attention back to my phone call and repeated the apology.

  “Good luck with that mess you’re working on today,” Aaron replied. “And don’t worry about IAD. I can handle them, especially when I didn’t actually tell you anything they don’t want you to know. Though I’m dying to know who did. I’ve started a list.”

  “Police department sources.” I clicked my tongue. “I know you understand. That’s why you’re my favorite detective.”

  “And here I thought it was my boyish grin.”

  “Well, that goes without saying.” I laughed. “Hey, speaking of ‘us people,’ has anyone else asked you about the missing prosecutor today? And what can you tell me about him?”

  “How the hell do you know about that? I’m beginning to suspect I’m not as great an information gateway as I thought.” Aaron made a tsk-tsk noise, but he didn’t sound even a little bothered. “They want to question him. His wife says he’s disappeared. Missing persons is on it. That’s all I got. And no, Charlie doesn’t have it. Or at least, if she does, she didn’t get it from me. But apparently you people have other ways into this place, so take it for what it’s worth.”

  I looked back at the bench across from me as I thanked him and hung up, but the kid was gone. Shrugging off my curiosity, I dug my keys out of my pocket and walked down the short brick path to my car, which was still ticketless. Thank Heaven for small favors.

  I parked it in the ER l
ot and hurried back inside, the sharp sound of my heels on the tile increasing in tempo when I saw Bob’s door closed.

  I had been booted from enough hospital rooms to know that meant the doctor had arrived, which meant my computer was captive for however long it took to examine my boss. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  “How is he?” I blurted, righting myself when the door swung open.

  “He’s going to be fine.” The soft brown eyes behind the doctor’s wire-rimmed glasses were just as kind as her smile. “I’m Doctor Schaefer. And you’re…?”

  “His daughter,” I smiled, feeling no remorse about the lie. I knew she wouldn’t talk to me if I wasn’t family, and I was pretty sure I’d find myself tossed back out to the waiting room.

  Dr. Schaefer didn’t look much older than me, if she was older at all. About a head shorter and a little softer, she had a tidy chestnut bob and wore a pretty batik skirt and a violet top beneath her lab coat.

  She flipped a page in Bob’s chart. “I didn’t see a mention of the family being here.”

  I kept the smile in place and offered a little shrug, holding her gaze until she returned the smile and let the page fall back into place. She shook my free hand and told me Bob had indeed had a heart attack, but a fairly mild one.

  “He should make a full recovery,” she said. “We’ll keep him until tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday, but then he’ll be able to go home and ease back into his regular routine. We have a few more tests yet to determine the exact cause of his episode and how to treat it best, but I’m confident he’ll be fine.”

  “Is OD’ing on burgers and hot wings an actual diagnosis?” I grinned, her reassurance the happiest thing I’d heard in weeks. “I don’t think he eats at home—well, since his wife died.”

  “I see,” she nodded. “So, your mother was the cook in the family?”

  “My—” damn. I flinched. Not visibly, I hoped. “My stepmother. Yes, she was.”