‘And…?’
‘Ridl and his co-writer went further than other reporters. They cited the same facts, but then they made big accusations.’
‘Let me tell it chronologically,’ Eddings said. ‘I sent Ridl out to Grand Point on the Tuesday the young man’s body was discovered. He was to gather facts on Tuesday, spend Wednesday chatting up local potential advertisers and be back in the newsroom with copy on Thursday morning. Thursday morning came; no story, no Ridl. He called that afternoon, saying he needed more time. We argued. I reminded him he’d been sent out to make us look, to advertisers, as though we covered the whole top of the state, clear out to Grand Point. I told him to take another day if it was so damned important, but I needed copy by Friday afternoon. Unspoken, but understood, was that I also needed a list of merchants our advertising people could contact.
‘Friday came; again no Ridl, no copy. Again, a phone call. He said the story had grown even bigger, and he was going to write it long, at least two thousand words. He said he’d dictate it to a night man. And he said he had a kid working with him, a journalism student named Laurel Jessup, and that he promised her a byline credit. I said OK.’
‘You cut Ridl a lot of slack.’
‘A talent like Ridl doesn’t come ordinarily to a basement oper-ation like Special Features; he got hidden in us. He’d been part of a team of reporters investigating a street gang. The gang was big into drugs and prostitution. One of Ridl’s sources bragged he was planning a hit on a member of a rival gang. Ridl wrestled with what he’d heard and decided he couldn’t just stand by. He tipped the target, anonymously, thinking the guy would lay low for a while. The target didn’t; he killed Ridl’s source, the source’s girlfriend and her four-year-old child. Hell broke loose, as you can imagine. Ridl became the news.’
Eddings held up the bottle. Mac shook his head. He had a long drive back to Grand Point.
The old editor rewarded himself with another two inches. ‘The big bosses could have fired him; should have fired him, as a show of journalistic responsibility. They didn’t. They were better than that. They dumped him into the anonymity of my domain, where he wrote trifling little pieces under my name that we used to fill the spaces between real news and ads. Ridl was traumatized, but he adapted. The furor died down; people became enraged by different things and quit writing to the paper, demanding that Ridl be let go.
‘Six months passed. Outwardly, Ridl appeared all right, but if you caught him in an unguarded moment you could see the pain was still there. And so I, in my infinite wisdom, seized upon the brilliant idea of sending him to Grand Point. It was an advertising mission and the story looked ordinary, a run-of-the-mill lovers’ lane tragedy. It was right up his old alley but without potential for controversy, a way to get a sniff of what he used to be so good at. Of course, I was secretly hoping he’d come back raring to get transferred back up to Metro, where he rightfully belonged.’
He reached for the bottle, shook his head and set down his glass instead. ‘There was a message waiting from our night man when I got in Monday. Ridl never called. Turns out he mailed in the story handwritten, on tablet paper. We got it on Tuesday. I tried calling his apartment. No answer. I tried tracking down the Jessup girl, found a family of that name in DeKalb. She’d fallen asleep at the wheel and been killed in a single car accident, late the same Thursday Betty Jo Dean had been found. I didn’t need to intrude upon their grief to find out about Jonah.’
‘Ridl must have learned of her death after he talked to you on Friday.’
‘And that’s why he mailed his piece. I think Jonah was in love with her, in some small, beginning way, and her death shut him down for good. He must have felt he got her killed, like he got that gang kid, the girlfriend, and the kid killed six months earlier. I never spoke to Jonah again.’
‘He quit?’
‘He vanished. His last paycheck never got cashed.’
‘He never showed up at another newspaper?’
‘I kept an eye out for years. He never surfaced again.’
‘And the article? Did it make the splash you’d hoped?’
‘Nothing beyond a few letters. I never had the heart to assign another reporter to follow up. The investigation died.’ He smiled. ‘At least, until now.’
‘I don’t know anything beyond what I’ve told you. No progress was ever made on the case.’ Suddenly he felt impatient, anxious to be gone. He didn’t want to think any more about the killer of another teenage girl getting away. He set down his glass. ‘I really should be going.’
‘Not so fast.’ Eddings poured another inch into Mac’s glass – the same stunt Mac had pulled on Farris Hobbs. ‘As a resident – hell, as mayor of the town – you’d never heard of the murders until a few days ago?’
‘Not a word. Either everyone’s forgotten…’ He let the rest of the thought dangle. No one had forgotten, not really.
‘More likely, your townspeople are afraid to talk about it?’ Eddings asked, finishing Mac’s thought. ‘And now that Betty Jo Dean has got your interest?’
‘I don’t know what I can do. The trail is cold.’ He stood up. ‘I have a long drive.’
‘You don’t want to know where Ridl is?’
Mac dropped back into his chair like cement. ‘You know?’
‘Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. An hour from here.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘I didn’t. Someone in the newsroom had a cottage up there, years ago. He was driving to town and chanced to see a short, fat guy cutting grass at their city hall. He’d grown a beard, but damned if it wasn’t Ridl. He tried to talk to him but Ridl wouldn’t shut off the mower.’
This time Mac got up, anxious for a whole different reason.
‘I’ve got just one more question,’ Eddings said at the door. ‘You really came because a waitress heard some old men laugh?’
Too much was spinning in his head. ‘No,’ Mac said. ‘I think I’m here because I keep hearing a dead girl scream.’
What he couldn’t say, because now he didn’t know, was which one.
THIRTY-THREE
He’d found a cheap motel several miles north of O’Hare Airport, because he was too agitated to do anything else, and had gone to bed with a belly full of Eddings’ Scotch and a head full of Jonah Ridl. When he awoke the next morning the Scotch was gone, but Ridl remained. And the agitation still throbbed like something wild.
The map showed the drive would take an hour, as Eddings had said. It took two, because the highways going north to Wisconsin were clogged with summer Sunday traffic – cars and trucks and SUVs towing boats filled with laughing people headed north for picnics and water skiing and shrieking good times. Not a one of them looked to be an indicted, failing restaurateur, frittering what might be his last free days away on a murder most everybody had long quit caring about.
He turned off the highway at a sign that said Nippersink and drove along roads marked with letters and numbers instead of proper names. He came to an old-fashioned, full-service gas station and pulled in. A young man was working under a truck on a lift in one of the two service bays. ‘Everybody knows Jonah,’ he said. ‘Been working for the city for forever. You a friend?’
‘An old acquaintance.’
The young man grimaced. ‘You haven’t seen him in a while?’
‘Quite a long time, actually,’ Mac lied.
‘You might want to brace yourself. Jonah’s not looking too healthy these days. Nobody knows if he’s seen a doctor. He keeps to himself – never did like talking much. One thing’s for sure: he’s lost a ton of weight, and he’s got a cough.’ The young man gave him directions that followed more roads designated with numbers and letters.