“Seriously, man”-Duncan takes a few hesitant steps toward me-“you need something to drink? Something to eat?”
“My dad died last week.”
“What?”
“He killed himself. Took a gun and shot his brains out.”
Duncan sits down on the chair facing me. “What are you talking about?”
“My old man. I barely knew him. Never saw him. Never talked to him. In fact, I don’t even remember the last time I talked to him. Actually, wait, I do remember. It was right after I got back to the States. I was out of money. I called him and asked him for more. And do you know what he basically told me? To fuck off.”
Duncan says nothing.
“And now my sister, she … she fucking kills herself, less than a week after our old man kills himself. What do you think makes it happen?”
When Duncan speaks, his voice is soft. “What do you mean?”
“People killing themselves. It’s some chemical imbalance in the head, right? Like, there’s medication whose side effects make people suicidal. So it’s like a trigger, or switch, or something. It gets turned on, you just, what, want to kill yourself? Or, fuck, kill your family and then yourself?”
Duncan doesn’t speak.
I ask, “What time is it?”
Duncan slips his phone from his pocket to check the time. “Nearly five thirty.”
I rise to my feet. “I should head back to bed. I need to be at the store by nine.”
Duncan rises to his feet, too. He watches me walk past him. “Maybe you shouldn’t go in,” he says.
“I need to go in.”
“But after everything that’s just happened? I mean … it’s messed up, man. Take some time off. Just …”
I turn back to him. “Just what?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Mourn or something.”
I nod at the TV. “Thanks for letting me know about that. I appreciate it.”
Before Duncan can say anything else, I turn and head back to my bedroom, walking in sort of a daze, not thinking about anything in particular. When I reach my door and open it, I don’t even bother flipping on the light. I just walk in, and the darkness swallows me whole.
part two
twelve
“Are you sure you want to read this?”
Without a word, Ashley held out her hand.
Tom threw a cautious look to Eric, who was leaning against the window just like he was yesterday-in fact, the entire tableau was the same, with Tom behind his desk and Ashley in the chair-then handed Ashley the sheet of paper.
Ashley placed the sheet on her side of the desk, afraid that if she held it in her hands, it would be apparent to the two men (and herself) just how much she was shaking. She leaned forward to read the article, skipping over the distasteful headline-ADA DOA-and diving into the meat.
The room was quiet for a full minute, the only sounds that of the busy newsroom just outside the office. Finally Ashley handed the sheet back to Tom, leaned back in her chair, and said, “When is this going live?”
Tom glanced at his watch. “Should be online now. We’ll have a more detailed version for the front page when we go to press.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Pete Tass.”
“The headline is disrespectful.”
Tom released a slow breath, no doubt having prepared himself for this critique. “I know. Ashley, I’m sorry, but you know what it is we do here, how we run things.”
“We have to sell newspapers, right?”
Silence again.
Ashley said, “So what’s missing?”
“What do you mean?”
She motioned at the sheet of paper that summarized her friend’s death. “There’s nothing new there, not from the police statement. Supposedly she shot and killed her family, then went up to the roof and jumped.”
Eric chimed in: “Supposedly?”
“You don’t think it’s weird?” she asked him. “A woman in her position, who has had all the success she has, just decides to kill her husband and two sons-all of whom she loved dearly-and then kill herself right before the biggest trial of her career was scheduled to begin?”
Tom said, “Ashley, what are you trying to infer here? That Timothy Carrozza somehow set this all up to look like a murder-suicide? Even if that were possible-and not, I should add, completely insane-it wouldn’t stop his trial. It might delay it a bit, but it wouldn’t stop it. In fact, if anything, it would make more sense for him to go after the witness.”
She started to dispute this, reminding them that the witness still hadn’t yet been identified, telling them about the death threat, but stopped herself before she could even open her mouth. Maybe she was overthinking things. Stepping out on limbs that were way too flimsy. Tom was right-even if Carrozza had pulled off such an impressive feat, what would be his end game? The trial would continue. He would most likely get prosecuted. Case closed.
“I just had lunch with her yesterday, Tom. I’ve known her since college. She’s not the kind of person to do that.”
“Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we like to think we do. It’s sad, but it’s true. What happened to your friend, it’s awful, but it is what it is. Now, like I told you earlier, you don’t have to be here today if you don’t want to. Nobody will think any less of you.”
Leaving was the last thing she wanted to do. Even earlier this morning, when she had gotten the phone call from Tom, she told him she would be in. But she didn’t want to be in this room any longer, that was for sure. Not with these two, who, just yesterday, said without saying that her job was on the line if she didn’t reach out to her friend on the paper’s behalf.
She thanked them and stepped out into the newsroom, ignoring the glances if there were any. She headed for her desk, then made a detour at the last second.
Jeff was in his cubicle. He was on the phone, leaning back in his chair, squeezing his stress ball. He looked up at her, stared for a moment, then said, “Hey, can I call you right back?” before cradling the phone. He rose to his feet, smoothing out the wrinkles in his pants. “Ashley, I’m so sorry about your friend. I can’t even imagine-”
She shook him off. “You want to make it up to me? I need your help.”
• • •
“A death threat? I never heard anything about that.”
“They were keeping it low key. Melissa didn’t want there to be a big fuss.”
“So, what, you think Carrozza had her taken out?”
They were in the stairwell, just the two of them, their voices soft and hushed.
“I don’t know,” Ashley admitted. “Probably not. But, Jeff, I’m telling you, this isn’t something she would do. I know her.”
“Look,” he said, crossing his arms, leaning back against the wall, “I know it’s tough to accept when shit like this happens, but everybody has secrets, stuff their families and even their best friends don’t know about.”
“So you haven’t heard anything else?”
He shook his head. “My focus was on the trial. This right here, this isn’t my beat.”
“But don’t you have contacts?”
“I know some cops, sure, but-”
“Call them.”
He sighed. “Ashley-”
“You always talk about being a real journalist. A real journalist doesn’t always accept the story given to him, right? He tracks down all the facts until he knows, one hundred percent, that the truth is the truth.”
He smiled. “Where did you get that bullshit?”
“I just thought it up.”
Withdrawing his cell phone from his pocket, he said, “You’re lucky I think you’re cute.”
“Thanks. I’ll be sure to tell your wife that next time I see her.”
Jeff dialed a number, placed the phone to his ear, and said, “Morgan, it’s Jeff Heller from the Post. Remember that favor you owe me?”