Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Page 12

  “Yes?”

  “I appreciate your support.”

  Down the hall, I stopped at PJ’s closed bedroom door. I heard muffled conversation and turned the doorknob slowly, so as to open the door as quietly as possible.

  “Thanks for taking my call—is she available?” I heard him ask. PJ sat cross-legged on his childhood twin bed, his back to me. “She’s not? Could you tell her that PJ Armstrong called, please?”

  “PJ!” My words were sharp and loud. Startled PJ jumped, and snapped his cell phone case closed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “God, can we do something other than be afraid?” His words were as angry and sharp as mine.

  I stepped back. This was the second time in as many minutes my own family said they were not going to be passive victims in this situation. The situation I created when I created Rhys Chapman. The situation I created when I sat down next to Charlie on that flight to Seattle.

  “You weren’t calling her, were you?” I asked, as if not speaking Charlie’s name made the situation less real.

  PJ rolled his eyes. “No. I was calling my advisor at school. If I’m going to quit MIT, I need to turn in some withdrawal stuff.”

  “OK. I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

  We were silent for a moment. PJ spoke again.

  “You know, Detective Birger said we can’t lure her into a situation to harm her. He didn’t say we couldn’t talk about the situation to anybody.”

  “To whom?”

  “The Journal-Gazette.”

  “And what would that accomplish?”

  “We would know where she was. A story to the paper might bring her into the open, and then the police could grab her. Think about it—would you want somebody saying in print that so-and-so is my stalker?”

  “We can’t do name her—she’s not been proven guilty.”

  “But couldn’t we say that police have identified a suspect? Without using any names? She’d be pissed enough she’d come out into the open and then the police could grab her.”

  Our eyes locked.

  What could happen? I thought. Kay’s hospital room is under police guard. The house is under surveillance and I’ll have a restraining order by this afternoon.

  “Dad, if we don’t do something it’s just going to get worse. We have to take the reins.”

  I nodded. “OK.”

  Chapter 21 Addison

  “I hate Thursdays,” I muttered to myself as I slid my key into the back door at the Journal-Gazette. The winter sun hadn’t begun to come over the horizon and last night’s dip in temperatures left deadly patches of black ice on the parking lot where shallow puddles had been. I’d nearly fallen twice before getting to the door.

  I arrived early, hoping I could get out of the office and drive to Columbus. I needed to talk to Rick Starrett’s statehouse staff and continue to dig into Rowan Starrett’s mysterious life, now that I’d gotten confirmation he really wasn’t dead.

  But first I had to get through today.

  Thursdays were hell, plain and simple. In addition to finishing today’s live pages—pages one, two and three—it also meant the inside pages for both Friday and Saturday’s papers were due. Saturday’s paper deadlined at midnight Friday, rather than Saturday at ten thirty in the morning, in order to give the pressroom staff the weekend off.

  Dennis had the morning off so he could work an ungodly long day Friday to put together Saturday’s live pages. In better times, we could count on an extra copy editor to take on the responsibility of the live pages while I worked with staff on their stories. Thanks to furloughs and cutbacks, those responsibilities came to me like a giant line of falling dominoes.

  I passed through the empty pressroom, stopping long enough to take in the pungent odors of old ink and fresh newsprint. From there, I walked into the adjacent employee break room, pausing to pour coffee into a chipped white mug, its interior ringed brown and black from lack of regular cleaning.

  Peggy, the sour-faced bookkeeper, was beside the coffee machine, stirring powdered creamer into her cup. If she was here early, it could only mean one thing.

  “It’s the end of the quarter, Addison,” she said in greeting. “I’ll need your expense reports by three.”

  Fuck, I thought. Instead of answering, I kept on walking, gulping down coffee and nodding without looking at her. I’ll never get out of here this afternoon to get to Columbus.

  Upstairs in the newsroom, the lights were already on. Elizabeth Day was finishing a bagel at her desk. She licked cream cheese off her finger and pointed at my office.

  “You got company,” she said.

  “Shit. This day is getting off to a great start,” I answered, throwing open my office door.

  “Well, thanks! Good morning to you too!” Marcus was leaning against my desk. His son, PJ, was sitting in one of my office’s faded wingback chairs.

  “You know I’m kidding,” I said hugging him. “What are you doing here? Is Kay OK?”

  “They say she’s going to make it. She’s still pretty doped up, but they say she’s improving every day. We’ve also got some movement in the investigation.”

  “Good. We haven’t had an update on the case for a couple days. Are you willing to sit down and give Graham some time this morning?”

  “Sure, on one condition. Can you give PJ an internship?”

  I looked over at the kid, who’d come dressed in a white Oxford shirt, dress pants and a blue tie. He looked at me hopefully.

  “I thought you were going to MIT,” I said.

  “I quit. I didn’t like it,” he answered.

  “He wants to be a journalist.” Marcus’s tone was a cross between pride and sarcasm. “I thought it might be a good way to let him see how this business works.”

  “Or at least beat it out of him,” I teased. “OK. I’m desperate for help, so here’s what we’ll do—first, there will be no pay. This is strictly a learning experience. Second, you need to know right off the bat that in this newsroom, we are loud, we are profane and we are politically incorrect on a massive scale. If that in any way offends you, this isn’t the place for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I am desperate for help, but I do not tolerate incompetence. You fuck up and I throw you out, I don’t care who your dad is. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I need somebody who can type more than four words a minute and who can take direction. I also need someone who can slap a noun up against a verb accurately. There’s a lot to do every morning and, while the staff here can give you some directions, I can’t take the time to hold your goddamned hand while it gets done. You need to be a self-starter who can find out answers for yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The kid swallowed hard.

  “You show me you can do those things and there’s a good chance I might give you the chance for your very own byline.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How long can I count on you?”

  PJ shrugged. “Until I can get into another college. I can work whatever hours you need me.”

  “Sounds good. Marcus, if you’ll take him out there and set him up, I’m sure Elizabeth can find some typing for him to do. When Graham gets here, we’ll sit down and talk about where the case is.”

  Marcus nodded. “There have been a lot of things happening. I need to talk to you about it.”

  “I’ve got to get this paper going first,” I said. “Let me get past deadline and then we’ll talk.”

  A little more than an hour later, I had page three, the state and local news page, nearly complete and two of four stories edited and lay out on the front page. I’d left a six-column space across the top of page one for the story Graham would give me from his interview with Marcus. My main art was a photo of a Salvation Army bell-ringer in front of the entrance to Hawks, Jubilant Falls’ remaining downtown department store, followed by Elizabeth’s story on how donations for the holidays were down and need was skyrocketing. Graham
had a short story and photo on a jack-knifed semi on the highway that tied up traffic for a couple hours last night. The final space would be filled with a wire story, probably on the continuing economic slide.

  Dennis’s comment from yesterday echoed in my mind: “Jane down in advertising was telling me there’s rumors of more furloughs next quarter...” I hope that ends up being untrue, I thought. I can spare more staff absences off like I can lose an arm.

  As I got into the rhythm of putting pages together, though, my mind kept returning to the Starrett brothers. Why would Rowan want to fake his death? If he still owed some creep money, why not go to the feds and ask for protection? Who did he owe money to, the Mob? And why would Rick go along with the whole scheme of faking Rowan’s death? What’s the deal with keeping up the fallacy that they were two years apart in age, when they were really twins? Why keep that thing going through high school and college? Could it have been for the scholarship money? Rowan was a talented enough hockey player that even if he was found to be ineligible and forced out of college, he could have been drafted into the NHL.

  The cost of the whole deal to Rick’s marriage was obvious—it’s a wonder his philandering didn’t come out during his political campaign. There was something else behind all this. Something the Starrett boys wanted to keep hidden. I just had to figure out what it was, if I ever got half a chance.

  A soft ding on the computer indicated a story was ready for editing. I looked up from my computer screen to see Graham and Marcus standing beside me.

  “Your story?” I asked, pointing at the screen.

  Graham nodded. A quick click on my mouse and the story popped up on the screen.

  By Graham Kinnon

  J-G Staff writer

  Jubilant police confirmed they have identified a suspect in the shooting of local businesswoman Kay James Henning, although they are not releasing the name.

  According to Jubilant Falls Assistant Police Chief Gary McGinnis, police believe the shooting is connected to a fan of Journal-Gazette reporter Marcus Henning, who is the author of the mystery novel, Death on Deadline.

  Kay Henning is Marcus Henning’s wife; they have been married for 18 years and have three children.

  While McGinnis would not release the suspect’s identity, Marcus Henning told the Journal-Gazette the suspect is female and he encountered her during his book tour last year.

  Kay Henning continues to recover at the Jubilant Falls Community Hospital after suffering a gunshot wound that caused severe internal injuries. She was listed in serious but stable condition Thursday morning.

  The next couple paragraphs built on previous stories—her kidnapping, and how police had found her in a cheesy motel and how she’d been traced through the location of her Blackberry.

  I made occasional changes to Graham’s spelling and grammar as I went. The next paragraph—Department of Justice statistics on stalking and the number of men who were victims of stalking—stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “So they say you’re being stalked? So when were you going to tell me this?” I asked.

  Marcus nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, that was what I wanted to talk to you about. All those phone calls I’d get—the police believe they were from the stalker. I’m filing to get a motion for a temporary restraining order this morning after we’re done here.”

  “I don’t like to comment on my staff’s appearances, but I would have never suspected some crazed female wanted you bad enough to try to kill your wife,” I answered.

  Marcus, with his bowed legs, his thin, graying hair and rumpled clothing, smiled a crooked smile. “I’m no Richard Gere, that’s for sure,” he said.

  “Marcus is being stalked?” Elizabeth Day looked up from her desk. “I can’t get a date if I paid somebody and the only married man in the newsroom has a stalker?”

  Graham hid a smile behind his hand. PJ, insulated with headphones, thank God, didn’t hear the comment and sat huddled over a corner computer, typing.

  “At least somebody thinks he’s hot.” I looked up at the clock, which was fast approaching ten o’clock—half an hour before press time. “I’m getting close on deadline—good work you guys.”

  “I’ll head down to the courthouse to meet my lawyer who is filing this restraining order. I want to drop by to see Kay, then I’ll be back,” Marcus said.

  “Good. On top of all the things I’ve got to worry about, apparently I now need to worry about staff safety. We’ll sit down with Watt and see how he wants to handle this,” I said, dismissing them with a wave of my hand.

  Quickly, I brought up page one, typed a headline, Novel Suspect: Fan Sought In Henning Shooting across the top. With a few more clicks, I placed Graham’s story on the front page. For good measure, I added headshots of both Marcus and Kay. Another click and I printed out two proofs of the page and handed them to Graham and Elizabeth to read.

  Page two would be quick and easy. I placed the remainders of the stories that didn’t fit on page one, called jumps, along with any short news items that fit. Bigger spaces got filled with more wire copy. While that page was also proofed, I had time for one cigarette.

  I stepped into my office, shut the door and, as I lit my cigarette, threw open the window. Staring out over the employee parking lot, I ticked off what was ahead of me: in between reports, finishing the advance pages and letting my boss know some nut case woman wanted to come into my newsroom with a gun, there was no way I was going to get to Columbus to dig into anything on Rick Starrett’s life.

  My desk phone began to ring as I took the last puff of my cigarette and tossed it out the window.

  “McIntyre,” I answered.

  “It’s Dad. I thought you were coming by after work yesterday,” he barked.

  “Sorry. I forgot.” I slapped my forehead.

  “Just as well. I got some information on those phone numbers for you.”

  “I don’t know if I can make it by today, Dad. I’ve got a bunch on my plate right now—what’s Saturday morning look like?”

  “Whenever you get here. Those numbers—they are connected to several pre-paid phones—burners—like I thought, but whoever used them was stupid enough to use them in the same area of Columbus. They all pinged off the same set of cell phone towers.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes—your old Dad still has some friends in high places. These calls came from a three-block radius near North High Street in Columbus.”

  “Near the statehouse?”

  “No, further north, an area north of the Ohio State campus and south of the suburb of Clintonville, called Old North Columbus,” Dad said. “More importantly, a lot of these calls were made about the same time each morning, between eight and eight-thirty.”

  “Like over his morning coffee?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And if he’s like most single men, he’s not cooking his own breakfast.”

  Until his knees went bad, Dad spent each morning with a table of retired cops and court employees at a downtown Jubilant Falls’ restaurant called Aunt Bea’s, sucking down copious amounts of weapons grade coffee and talking over old times. The conversation often drifted to local politics and became loud and boisterous—the waitresses jokingly called the group, which filled two tables, the Council for Weird Affairs but kept the coffee and the donuts coming.

  “I’m betting these calls were made from behind his daily copy of the Columbus Dispatch and from wherever he got his eggs over easy,” Dad continued.

  Graham poked his head in my office door, holding the proofs of pages one and two in his hand.

  “I’ve got the corrections made,” he said. “The press room is ready for them, if you want to take one final look and send the pages.”

  I nodded at Graham as I turned back to the phone.

  “So, Dad,” I said. “Wanna go out for breakfast Saturday morning?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 22 Kay

  Slowly, my eyes opened. Four nurses sat a
round the nursing station outside my doorway, with the one bright light over their heads.

  At night, when the lights went down, the only bright light was the one above the nurses station where nurses watched the patient monitors we were all connected to and the cleaning staff came through to mop the floors and empty the trash cans of the medical waste.

  The red letters of the digital clock told me it was early Thursday, nearly two in the morning. Thursday? The last thing I remembered clearly was walking down the bike path Sunday night.

  After a day or two, even through the haze of my pain medication, I could tell the rhythm of the day by the people who floated in and out: doctors to check my wounds, technicians to draw my blood, nurses to change my bandages and administer medication, those folks came mostly during the day. I watched cafeteria workers carry trays of solid food past my door three times a day. Family—my precious, precious children and Marcus—came early in the morning, later in the afternoon and briefly after dinner.

  Two men— police officers, it looked like— stood outside my door. Near the ICU unit door, a cleaning woman, in scrubs and a greenish hairnet, mopped the floor.

  My left hand wasn’t encased in tubes and surgical tape. I reached below my blanket to tenderly touch my incision covered with gauze and tape. I’d been filleted like a fish: the incision ran from just below my breastbone to just above my navel, and then hooked right along my ribs where the bullet went in. Vaguely, I remembered what the doctor told me my injuries were: I’d turned away as I was shot; the bullet entered my side, nicked my stomach and intestines, then destroyed my spleen.

  A wave of pain rolled through me and I moaned as I felt the staples beneath the gauze that held my incision together.

  One of the cops spoke to an older, stocky nurse behind the counter: “I need a smoke break. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ve got to take a whiz,” the other one said. “I think she’ll be OK. I’ll be back in a minute, too.”