Or maybe Tango was the killer?
There was no way for Jason to know.
It’s why he had a habit of taping his calls. After the line went dead, he checked his microrecorder and replayed a bit. Good. He had it. He would follow up later. It might be useless. It might be gold. He returned to polishing his story. Once he finished, he e-mailed it to the Mirror ’s web staff, who worked 24/7 in Redmond, a few miles east of Seattle.
It would be posted online within minutes.
Then he sent the morning assignment editor an e-mail with contacts and suggestions for the day side staff to follow when they got in, a few hours from now.
Leaning back in his chair, he finished the last of his potato chips, downed his Coke, and considered Tango’s tip. The nun’s murder was payback for something she did. What could that be? He ran a quick check of the Mirror ’s databases but it didn’t yield much.
His body ached for sleep and he contemplated things as he started his Falcon and headed home. Ever since the Brian Pillar fiasco, he’d embarked on a selfassigned special project. He’d been randomly mining old stories as candidates for anniversary features. Missing persons, unidentified corpses, unsolved murders and robberies.
Some went back for decades.
He’d learned the value of revisiting old files-most cops welcomed attention to their coldest cases. It often resulted in a fresh lead, a good read, and a new source. He’d also learned that it was critical to check all details of a fast-breaking crime story for links to previous cases.
But as for tonight-nothing had come up when he searched the scant details he had on the nun’s murder. Other than a few urban-life features on the Sisters of the Compassionate Heart of Mercy and their work, there was nothing that would point to anything gang related. The shelter helped down-and-out types, people from the street, some with criminal records. Maybe the link was there, he thought, heading northbound on the Aurora Avenue Bridge.
He wasn’t sure.
He found a soft-jazz station and glanced at the lights of Gas Works Park as he drove over Lake Union. He liked to come to the bridge to watch the sailboats, or the ships navigating the Ballard Locks and the Lake Washington Ship Canal on their way to the Pacific.
He looked in his rearview mirror at the twinkling lights and the skyline and his thoughts went beyond the city’s beauty to a cold, hard truth he’d learned as a crime reporter. Death was his beat and for him metro Seattle was a burial ground. Cases like the Green River killer, Bundy, the mall shooter, the firefighter’s arson, the unsolved hooker killings, the deadly heists, and the baby abduction marked its history like headstones.
And now we have a nun, slain near Yesler Terrace.
It would never stop.
It was Jason’s job to understand it, write about it, to try to make sense of it while finding the nerve to ask a grieving mother, father, husband, wife, sister, brother, daughter, son, or friend for a picture of the victim.
“ All of Seattle shares your loss. ”
Contrary to what most people thought of reporters, he hated that part of the job. It took a toll on him, too. Keeping his emotional distance from a story never, ever got easier, no matter how many tragedies he’d covered. It was always a struggle to keep from numbing himself with a few beers, because a few beers would lead to a few more.
Which would lead to…
Forget it.
He was exhausted and hungry as he came to the edge of Fremont and Wallingford, where he lived in a huge nineteenth-century house that had been carved into apartments. His one-bedroom unit was on the third floor.
He’d moved here when he was still in college and wanted to be on his own-for a lot of reasons. The big one being that he’d needed to put some distance between himself, his old man, the brewery, and the crap that had permeated their lives.
Since moving in, he hadn’t changed the place at all. He had the same two secondhand leather sofas discarded by a dentist who was closing his office. They faced each other over the same low-standing coffee table, which was covered with newspapers. At the far end of his living room, a giant poster of Jimi Hendrix, his beloved god of rock, overlooked a thirty-gallon aquarium.
Jason was hungry and grabbed his last can of baked beans.
He loathed this, the loneliest time of his day. He put a spoonful of cold beans in his mouth to kill his self-pity and sat before his tank. It cast the room in a soft blue light. His tiny tropical fish gliding among the coral, the sunken ship, the diver, and bubbles soothed him as he chewed on his thoughts.
Had he been too hard on Grace? What was up with her, anyway? She seemed to want to call a truce. He wanted her to know that he was still pissed off at her. Still wounded.
And how long was he going to sulk?
She still drove him wild. He’d never met anyone like her and he couldn’t believe she’d ended it with him. He couldn’t get her out of his system. Maybe he should try to talk to her? God knows, he was going to need all the help he could get on this homicide.
After finishing his beans, he tossed the can, brushed his teeth, went to his bedroom, undressed, then fell into bed.
Tango.
And his line on payback for something Sister Anne did. What the hell was that? Could be something to it? He had to follow up on it, maybe even take it to Grace. Proceed with caution. Maybe that was the way to approach things with this story.
And with Grace.
He couldn’t sleep. He was thirsty from the beans and went to his fridge. It was empty but for a halfeaten can of ravioli and an unopened beer. The bottle stood there as a personal test to prove that he was stronger than the temptation.
He settled for a glass of water from the tap.
See, he was not like his old man.
His father.
Cripes, he’d forgotten about his old man, getting the bar to call him when all he was doing was sitting there. Alone, staring into his glass. And that nasty cut on his hand. “ Jay, you have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here. ” Something had been eating his father, something that was going to push him off the wagon, something that compelled him to call for help.
Guilt pricked at Jason’s conscience and he glanced at the time. Why had he been called away just when his father needed him? He’d have to try him later. Man, he prayed it wasn’t too late, that his old man had been able to hang on.
Jason rubbed his hands over his face, took in a long breath, then slowly let it out before picking up the printouts of the old stories he’d retrieved on the nuns with the Compassionate Heart of Mercy. He found Sister Anne’s face in a group shot that accompanied one of the stories.
He stared at it.
She was smiling, but her eyes seemed to hold a measure of sadness.
Chapter Nine
J ason woke from a deep sleep and didn’t know why.
Then his phone rang again. He cursed and grabbed it.
“You up, Wade?”
“No, what time is it?”
Eldon Reep’s voice kick-started Jason’s brain and he braced for trouble.
“Did we have the murdered nun’s name last night, Wade?”
“It was never confirmed when I filed for our web edition-besides they usually wait to notify family.”
“Her name is Sister Florence Roy, according to everybody but the Mirror. ”
“Florence Roy?”
“That’s right, twenty-nine years old. Arrived at the order from Quebec. Our competition’s got her damn picture online already. We’ve got squat. We look stupid. I don’t like looking stupid, Wade.”
“Listen, that name can’t be right. Who confirmed it?”
“Did you even go to the scene?”
“Yes, I went to the scene. Who confirmed her name last night?”
“Neighbors, friends. Apparently, people all over this city.”
“What about the Seattle PD or the ME? They complete an autopsy?”
“Get your ass in here, now.”
“I’m on nights, I’ve hardly slept.”