If the press put those strands together, Heller might end up in a homicide investigation.
How could Tile prevent that?
An idea occurred to him: What if there were a crime in the vicinity that was so sensational that stories about the mugging would be buried in the press?
Tile liked the idea. But what kind of crime? He’d then laughed to himself.
Buried...
So he and Von created the Gravedigger. Von snatched a random victim and hid her in a drainage tunnel, leaving a puzzle as to her whereabouts. They had no intention of letting her die and, if the police hadn’t figured out the clue, Tile would have made an anonymous call reporting her location. The plan worked perfectly. For several days, the media was consumed with the idea of unraveling the Gravedigger’s puzzle. The story dominated the headlines, and the death of the West Virginia woman was hardly reported.
Tile thought they were home free. But then Morgan’s boyfriend — Josh Marcus, a coal-company manager — decided to play fucking detective. He was probably suspicious: Why was his girlfriend mugged around midnight, behind a restaurant at which she hadn’t eaten, miles from her motel?
Typically, at the motels and hotels Heller stayed at, Tile would spread thousands around the staff to downplay the governor’s presence, citing “security concerns.”
But apparently he’d failed to dispense alms to everyone.
Marcus learned from some employee that the night she’d died she’d been in the bar talking to Heller. He’d called the governor’s mansion asking if he could meet with the man himself. Probably Marcus didn’t suspect Heller at that point but legitimately hoped that he could provide some information about her plans that night. No one called Marcus back, and when he learned the governor was in Garner for fundraisers, he drove up there to get answers to his questions. He met with Tile, who sensed that by now, yes, he was a risk.
He’d had to die too.
Von staged the fatal car accident on Route 29. Once again, since the reporting about his death might lead someone to make the connection to his girlfriend Elly’s, and to the fact that the governor was present at both times, the Gravedigger struck again, this time kidnapping Jasper Coyle.
Sure enough the second abduction consumed the media, even more than the first incident; the Gravedigger was now a serial kidnapper — junk food for the media. Marcus’s car accident story, as well as the coverage about the governor’s fundraiser, went to the bottom of the news pile.
But then Edward Fitzhugh showed up. The reporter had actually managed to find out about Tile’s presence at Coyle’s kidnapping, where he’d been acting as lookout for Von. Tile had checked out the old journalist. A Pulitzer winner, the man was known to be a dogged investigative reporter. With some persistence, he could probably connect the dots: Heller’s presence in the towns where Elly Morgan and Josh Marcus had died, and Tile, with a connection to the governor, being at one of the kidnappings.
Now the journalist was gone, his files destroyed.
Crisis averted.
Heller was staring out the window. “I didn’t want any of this to happen. I didn’t want anybody to die. You do know that, Peter, don’t you?”
“I do, John. But—”
The governor held up a hand. “No, no, you don’t have to worry. It’s over with. I promise. No more women.”
“It has to be,” Tile said.
The governor nodded. “I’m done. What are the next steps?”
“Me? I’ll make some anonymous calls that the Gravedigger has been seen on the West Coast and the story’ll go away. And you? We’ve got a rally tonight. Start working on your speech.”
18
Dottie Wyandotte stared at her computer screen until she could sit no longer.
She had to rise and, working up her courage, she walked into Fitz’s office. It smelled of tobacco — not smoke, just the tobacco. Whiskey too.
She opened desk drawers. Found a pack of cigarettes and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
You drink whiskey?
Does it have wheat in it?...
She replaced them and flipped through some of his notebooks. Set these back on the desk too. In the corner of his office was an old typewriter. She’d never used one. Dottie walked to it now. She hit several keys. The o worked and the m but not the e; she believed he’d told her that that letter was the most used in the English language. She looked at the armatures. Some of the letters, at the end, were clogged with ink from striking the ribbon year after year. Maybe she’d go on eBay and buy one. It would make a nice objet d’art in her tiny apartment.
Dottie walked back to Gerry Bradford’s office. He looked up. Dottie reflected that he was a younger version of her banker father.
“I’m not writing the piece.”
“The animal influencers?” He was frowning.
“There’s another story I want to do.”
“What is it?”
“I see it as a memorial to Fitz. An homage, you could say.”
He hesitated; she knew he would.
“Well, corporate really wants it. And they want it right away.”
“Give it to somebody else.”
“They want you. You’re the best writer on the team.”
Bradford glanced at his phone, as if debating calling corporate for their okay. Or to ask for help. Then his eyes returned, taking in the four studs in her right cheek. They represented the four corners of the earth — to which she intended to travel someday. She’d never told anyone this.
She said nothing but just stared.
Bradford sighed. “We’ll go with the Fitz story.”
V
July 22
19
For the past week, Dottie Wyandotte had played real reporter.
Pounding the pavement — and learning she wasn’t in as good physical shape as she’d thought. Up stairs, down stairs, walking next to contacts as they strode quickly or, in one case, jogged along the sidewalk.
She talked to sources Fitz had spoken with, to sources he had intended to speak with, to sources whose identity she dug up on her own. Dottie found herself out of shape in this area too; her Northwestern J-School skills were rusty. Those talents weren’t really necessary when your piece is about teenage makeup choices or the best keto diet recipes for beef. (And you don’t need to ferret out sources when they come to you, in droves, kissing ass and hoping for free publicity.)
Soon she hit her stride.
Taking dictation was tough for her, but she was a whiz at hitting “record” on her iPhone app. And, back in the office, Dottie proved equally talented at plugging in yet another program to transcribe the words of the various interviewees.
Now, at last, she was writing the Fitz story itself, following the journalistic rule of the inverted pyramid. A story should start with the most important facts in the lede.
She smiled to herself remembering a journalism professor at Northwestern: “The first paragraph of a news story leads, as in being the first. But it’s spelled ‘l-e-d-e.’ Why? To avoid confusion with the word ‘lead,’ pronounced ‘l-e-d.’ In the old days, my days, the molten metal was used to set type for the printing presses.”
After the lede, the paragraphs appeared in descending order of importance, down to the “cut-off ’graphs,” those containing material that was perhaps interesting but unnecessary.