The eyes of her attacker stared into hers.
He held her there long enough for her to recognize him and exhume long-buried pain. Then a knife blade glinted at her throat.
“Scream and you’ll die,” he said. “Understand?”
She nodded and he loosened his hold over her mouth.
“You know why I’m here.”
She knew.
“It’s gone,” she swallowed. “I told you, it’s gone.”
“You’re lying! Where is it?”
His grip tightened until she whimpered. The blade scraped over her skin, breaking it. Blood webbed down her neck, tears filled her eyes, and she said, “We can never erase the sins of our past.”
His anger burned.
“No,” he said, “but we can pay for them.”
Her eyes widened suddenly as the blade sliced deep across her throat. Her hands tried to stem the blood.
“I forgive you,” she whispered.
He let her collapse gently to the floor as if she were his dance partner. He watched her struggle for something in her pocket. A rosary. Her blood-stained fingers squeezed it. He watched for several moments until Sister Anne’s face emptied of life. Then he returned to her bedroom and resumed shuffling through her personal papers and photographs.
Stopping at a recent snapshot of a boy. Searching the kid’s eyes and face, the man studied it long and hard until he almost smiled. He now had the link to the thing that belonged to him.
All he had to do was claim it before time ran out.
Chapter Two
S omething was going on around Yesler Terrace.
Jason Wade, the lone reporter working the night cop desk at The Seattle Mirror, concentrated on the bank of radios scanning the major emergency frequencies for the city. Amid the traffic of nonstop chatter, he caught a telltale hint of emotion in a dispatcher’s voice.
But the call was drowned out by police-coded cross-talk from unrelated transmissions. Jason cursed under his breath and locked on to the channel. Maybe he could pick it up again. He tried, but it was futile.
Sounded like some sort of activity in the Central District. East Precinct. But what?
One minute passed, then another. He heard nothing more. His call to the duty desk at the precinct went to voice mail. Instinct told him to keep the channel locked because he couldn’t risk missing a single story these days.
Not on this shift.
On this shift, getting beat on a story would get him fired. He wrapped up a seventy-five-word metro brief on a stabbing near the university-a petty drug deal gone bad. The victim would live.
He finished his cold clubhouse sandwich from the cafeteria and surveyed the deserted newsroom. Most of the night copy crew had left after putting the first edition to bed. The editorial assistant was upstairs delivering papers to the executive offices. The last deskers on duty to handle any more late edition replates were in a far corner, marking time, discussing sports scores and a crossword puzzle.
Several floors below, the Mirror ’s German-made presses were rolling off tomorrow’s first edition, making the building hum. Sitting there, alone with the police radios, Jason took stock of his desk and his life. Here it was, amid the empty take-out containers, the stale junk food, the old news releases, old story files, used-up notebooks, and the front-page exclusives he’d broken for the Mirror.
He was a crime reporter at a major metropolitan daily.
It was all he’d ever wanted to be.
And now, it was all hanging by a thread.
In the two years since he’d won his staff job through the Mirror ’s internship competition, he’d led the paper’s coverage on many of its biggest crime stories, “with Pulitzer-caliber reporting,” his former editors had written in his file. Sure, his way of nailing a story wasn’t always smooth because he took things to the edge. And he faced some “difficult personal circumstances.” But his passion eclipsed that of most staff veterans. And while he was still considered a rookie, there was talk of accelerating his junior reporter status to intermediate.
So how did it come to this?
How did he come to be an outcast on the most hated shift at the paper-the overnight cop beat? The answer was buried in the crap on his desk, in the letters from the lawyers with words that still burned him.
“…possible proof of malice…erroneous reports implying guilt…statements were untrue…defamatory action… ”
Anguish and anger twisted in his gut.
Stop this and forget about it. It’s over, man, just leave it alone.
He cranked up the scanners and left his desk, thinking about other things. The Mirror was a few blocks north of downtown, at Harrison and 4th. The newsroom was on the seventh floor; its far wall was made of floor-to-ceiling glass that looked to the west. Watching the running lights of the boats cutting across Elliott Bay, he told himself for the millionth time that the thing with Brian Pillar never should’ve happened.
It was two months ago.
Pillar had been lost and had stopped his van to ask for directions from the two women standing on a corner. At that time, the Seattle police were conducting an undercover prostitution sting. Jason had helped arrange ride-along access for Cassie Appleton, a new general assignment reporter, and Joe Freel, a photographer for the Mirror. Cassie was doing a profile of the neighborhood’s outrage over a chronic hooker problem and increased crime.
It was Cassie’s story, Eldon Reep, the metro editor, told Jason. Other than getting her a ride-along, Cassie did not need Jason’s help.
Fine, but things took a twist when Brian Pillar was arrested for solicitation, along with ten other johns in the sweep. The Mirror had exclusive news photos of “hookers” leaning into their vehicles, and pictures of the accused men being handcuffed, arrested, and taken to jail.
Brian Pillar was a school principal.
“They just took him away! His wife’s a paraplegic, or something. They’ve got three daughters,” Cassie was breathless over the phone. “He should know better. I’m going to nail him by making him the lead in my feature.”
Jason cautioned her. Jumping to conclusions at the outset of a sting could be risky.
“Cassie, you’ve got to be careful with these stories; sometimes guys are arrested but are never charged, for whatever reason. You should wait until you have it confirmed,” he said.
“He’s so guilty -you should’ve seen his face. I don’t know this police stuff, Jason. Besides, the cops trust you. Can you help me confirm the charges? I called Eldon and he wants to run the story tomorrow on page one as hard news instead of a feature next week! I need help, now!”
“I’m not touching it. It’s all yours. Good luck.”
“Jason, listen,” she dropped her voice. “I need your help. Eldon’s afraid that the Times and P-I might get wind of the school principal’s arrest and steal my story. He told me to tell you to help me. Please. I need this now.”
Jason hated how this was being handled. First he was nudged from a crime story, then he was told to help-and by a reporter, not an editor. It spelled trouble. But after considering his situation, he made a snap decision, then made some calls. He confirmed that nine of the ten men were charged.
The one man not charged was Brian Pillar, the principal, he told Cassie.
“Turns out the guy was on his way to pick up some part for his wife’s wheelchair and really was lost. The others were local street types, known to police, that sort of thing. Guess that takes your story down a peg,” he said.
“Damn. Are you sure? Because the suburban school principal is exactly what I need to make my story stronger.” She was frantic. “I’ll talk to Eldon.”
Don’t let the facts get in the way, Jason joked to no one. Seriously, with its drama diminished, Cassie’s story would surely go deep inside the paper, he’d reasoned. But his jaw dropped the next morning as Brian Pillar’s face stared back at him from a front page story that featured him prominently as a “suspected John,” along with the other men who were arrested.