“This is Steven Pace at the Chronicle. Could I have the medical examiner’s office?”
The city operator who answered the call was singularly impertinent. “You can dial that number direct,” she said.
“If I had the direct number, I would dial it,” Pace replied. “Perhaps, if you’ll connect me, the medical examiner will give me his number.”
The city operator cut him off.
“Damn it!” Pace swore as he redialed. This time he got through.
“Can you tell me what your call is in reference to?” one of the ME’s secretaries asked.
“It’s about an autopsy today on a man named Justin Smith,” Pace said.
“Oh, yes, we’ve had other calls about that,” the secretary said. “I’m afraid Dr. Jackson isn’t answering questions. You’ll have to go through the public-information.”
“I’m not asking for information,” Pace said. “I’m calling to give Dr. Jackson some information pertinent to his investigation.”
“You’re not calling in reference to the results of the autopsy?”
“No. I think I already said that.”
“Your name?”
The reporter left his name and phone number. The secretary said she would see that Dr. Jackson got the message.
And Pace sat back to wait.
The last three weeks had been the most bizarre in his life, he thought, from the highest highs to some pretty deep lows. People already were noticing his byline on stories that had nothing to do with airplanes and Glenn Brennan’s name on Sexton stories, even though the two had switched assignments only two days earlier.
Kathy had called him at home the previous evening. She sounded upset for him, and he tried to be philosophical. They talked all around what was on Steve’s mind, and when he finally asked whether she was coming back, he didn’t think he handled it well.
“Kath, I screwed this up,” he told her. “The one thing I’ve been able to hold onto for the last few days is the hope we can put what we had back together again. It knocked me down hard when I came home and found you’d been there to get your things.”
She didn’t say anything for what seemed an eternity. When she finally gave him an answer, it was less than he’d hoped for but more than he’d feared.
“I don’t know that we have a future, Steve,” she said. “I’m still trying to sort that out, to sort out how I feel.”
“I didn’t think you had any doubts,” he said.
“There was a time when I didn’t. But when you sent Sissy and me away… well, Sissy I could understand. You can’t leave a kid alone in a situation like that, and her mother was panicky. But me? Why me? That was demeaning. To me, it read like a message that you think you have to take care of me. You don’t. I’ve been making my own decisions for a long time and making them rather well, and I resent you ordering me around.”
“I didn’t intend to order you to do anything, although looking back on it, I can see how you’d interpret it that way at the time. I didn’t give you much opportunity for discussion. Would it help to say I’m deeply and abidingly sorry?”
“Sure, it helps, but it doesn’t solve anything. I’m afraid chivalry is a part of your character, and while it’s very romantic and decent of you, it’s misguided when I’m involved. You can say you’re sorry. You can promise it won’t happen again. But if it’s part of your thirty-nine-year-old nature, you might be beyond changing. Besides, I have no right to try to change you. You are who you are, a good and special person. I don’t have a right to tell you to be a different person for me.”
“Would it help if I try to change—not because you want me to, but because I want to? If I was trying because I wanted to, you could kick my butt if you noticed backsliding.”
She laughed lightly; the sound thrilled him. Too soon she was serious again. “Do you think you could keep that promise?”
“I’m willing to try.”
She asked for more time, and he gave it to her willingly. To refuse would be to lose her, and any alternative was better than that.
He was thinking about all that when Clay Helm called, a few minutes before Pace had to leave the office to cover a press conference at the Republican National Committee. He told the Virginia cop he was in a hurry.
“What I have will be worth your time,” Helm said. “I’ve got news. You interested?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Pace said.
“Okay. We’ve got this forensic technologist in our lab, a real bulldog when it comes to staying with a case as long as there’s hope for a solution. We told her to let the Antravanian thing be, that the file was open but it wasn’t front-burner, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“She was so intrigued by the case that she started putting in her own time—lunch hours, a little time after work, that sort of thing. She went over that hulk inch by inch, and yesterday she found a paint sample from the driver’s side of the car that didn’t match the paint samples taken from other areas on the body. There were similar elements, but they weren’t the same.”
“What are you getting at, Clay?”
“The inconsistent sample is a possible match for a Ford blue.”
Pace felt his pulse jump. “A Ford blue applied to late-model vans, by any chance?”
“Among other models, yes.”
“And this leaves us where?”
“Well, our tech says she could make a definite match if she had a paint sample from the van in question.”
“We don’t have the van in question.”
“No, we don’t. But if you should see the van again, I’d suggest getting paint
from the damaged area.”
“Can I bring you the moon and the stars while I’m at it?”
“No, I wouldn’t have any place to keep them.”
Pace had just put the phone down when it rang again. It was Dr. Emil Jackson, the District of Columbia medical examiner.
“This is highly unusual,” the doctor said.
“It’s a highly unusual situation,” Pace replied. “Have you performed the autopsy on Justin Smith yet?”
“No, I’m about to begin.”
“Doctor, would you check carefully for signs of violence? I think—”
“Now see here, young man,” Jackson interrupted. “The District of Columbia police don’t suspect anything but natural causes, and I take my lead from them.”
“I know what the police suspect,” Pace insisted. “And I know why they suspect it, but they don’t have some of the information I do. Mr. Smith was a reporter for The New York Times. He was working on a dangerous story. I think somebody killed him.”
“And you haven’t told this to the police?” Jackson sounded incredulous.
“I just found out Justin’s dead,” Pace replied. “I plan to go to the police today.”
“There isn’t any outward sign of violence,” Jackson said.
“But you and I both know there are ways of killing people to make it look natural.”
“Mr. Pace, you’ve been reading too many detective thrillers.”
“You could be right, Doctor,” the reporter said. “But please keep an open mind.”
Jackson didn’t promise anything. But an hour later, with Justin Smith’s body lying on the cold metal autopsy table, the medical examiner took special care to preserve a generous blood sample… just in case.
The next shocker of the day was waiting for Pace when he returned from the press conference at the Republican National Committee. It was a message from Sexton’s vice-president for public affairs, Whitney Warner. He returned the call.
“Steve, God, it’s good to hear from you,” she said.
“It’s—”