“Okay, give me a number,” Jordain said as he reached for his notebook. He wrote the number down and read it back. Jordain was dyslexic. It hardly affected him now that he was an adult, but he was bad at retaining numbers in his head, and sometimes he reversed them when he wrote them down. Reading them back alleviated that problem.
The learning disability had been embarrassing in grade school, made reading tougher for him than for most kids, and kept him from excelling at spelling bees, but otherwise he hardly ever thought about it. However, it had made him listen harder and be more observant. He noticed sights and heard nuances other people missed. Even other detectives missed. Even the best ones.
“Well, this is one sorry mess,” Jordain said as he snapped the phone shut.
“What?”
“Looks like a missing-persons case just erupted into a murder investigation, with a dash of fetish thrown in for good measure.”
“Who called it in?”
“That might just be the best part.”
Jordain took the last piece of sushi from his plate, dipped it in the soy sauce, spread the wasabi on it, looked at it and finally put it back down in the middle of his plate. He laid the chopsticks beside the fish. “Betsy Young.”
“The crime reporter at the Times?”
“We know and love any other Betsy Young?”
“What does she have?”
“Death-scene photos of the victim. Came in her mail this morning.”
“And the fetish?”
“Little twist that’s a new one for me. The photos came with a lock of the victim’s hair. And there’s one other thing.” Jordain took a long drink of his green tea, which by now was cold.
“Which was?”
“The body has the number 1 written on the soles of his feet.”
“Number 1?”
Jordain nodded. “Yeah, and you know what I’m worried about?”
“You bet. If there’s a number 1, there’s bound to be a number 2.”
Six
“You can ask her anything you want, but this is our story,” Harry Hastings said. “I want that to be clear. We want to keep our lead and ensure exclusivity. So in exchange for cooperating with you, we want first dibs on anything you find.” He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack. Even though the Times was a smoke-free workplace, sometimes he broke the rules. No one had ever complained. Especially not when they were in his office.
“Is that clear?” he asked the two detectives.
Jordain eyed the stocky man. Even though they were ostensibly on the same side, the Times editor was on the offensive. Jordain wouldn’t respond. He’d leave that to Perez. They were in good-cop/bad-cop mode.
“Crystal,” Perez said with a little more attitude than he felt.
The two detectives were seated at the round table in the middle of the managing editor’s office. Opposite them, Betsy Young drank from a can of diet soda. So far she hadn’t said a word. Her boss was done laying out the ground rules, which neither detective had any intention of adhering to.
“Why you?” Jordain asked Betsy. He’d worked with her twice before, and while he never expected a reporter to make his job easier, Betsy had been so desperate to get her story that she’d come close to compromising both cases.
“I don’t know what you mean, Detective,” she said. Although she was technically answering Jordain, she was looking at Perez.
Jordain knew exactly what the reporter was doing but ignored it. He didn’t care what kind of game she was going to play. He and Perez would handle her, but inwardly he sighed-why couldn’t it ever be easy?
“Why, of all the reporters at the Times…why, of all the reporters in the city at any paper, do you think you are the one whose name was on that envelope?” Perez asked, taking over.
She smiled wryly. “Why not me? I’ve covered some of the most important crime stories in the city.”
Jordain cut in. “Do you know, or have you ever known, Philip Maur? Had any dealing with his firm? Anyone at his firm? Did you write the story about him being missing?”
He was watching her eyes, but again she was avoiding his and looking instead at the photograph. Behind his desk, Hastings bristled but didn’t say whatever he was thinking. Jordain knew that the managing editor had been around long enough to know that, while not pleasant, this line of questioning was par for the course. The police had to find out if the reporter was in any way involved.
“Betsy, please. The more you resist the less time you get to work on the story. Do you have any connection to Maur?”
“No,” she said curtly.
After a half-dozen more questions that led nowhere, Jordain looked at Hastings. “We’re going to need to see the story before you run it.”
“We’re not going to run our stories by you, Detective.”
“I think that you’re going to have to. We need to keep some details out of the paper. Leverage, you understand. Why don’t you just make this easy? We have a murder to solve, Hastings. You don’t really want to hinder our investigation, do you?”
Hastings weighed this. He hated to give in but was also anxious to get Betsy back to work. She had a story to file. “Why don’t we decide here and now what you want us to keep out of the story.”
Betsy was gripping a pencil so tightly that her knuckles were white. “I really don’t like the idea of withholding any part of this story, Harry.”
“Neither do I. Let’s hear them out, though. Detective, what do you want us to keep out of the story?”
Jordain and Perez examined the photographs.
“You can run this one,” Jordain pushed the shot of the cadaver’s foot forward. “But not these.”
His gaze moved to the plastic bag with the hair clippings.
“And let’s keep out any mention of the hair-” Perez started.
“No.” It was out of Betsy’s mouth before the detective had even finished his sentence. “No. The photos make sense-besides, we can’t run the nude shots. But the hair is too important. Why did the killer send the cuttings? What does it mean? Is it symbolic of something? It’s disturbing and perverse.”
Jordain stood up. Perez followed his lead, and they gathered up all the materials, putting each item into an evidence bag. When the two of them were done, Jordain directed his comments to Hastings.
“I don’t want this to be a battle. I’m asking you not to force me to throw the department’s weight around.”
Hastings lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out the smoke. “We don’t want that, either, Detective.”
“Fine. I’m glad to hear it. So I won’t be reading anything in the paper about this lock of hair?”
“No. You won’t. And, in exchange, we expect to hear any information that you have before any other papers.”
Jordain frowned at him. He wasn’t going to bargain. And he wasn’t going to give in. He didn’t have to offer the paper anything and he was tired of the adversarial attitude. He’d encountered it in New Orleans and now here. “I am not going to make promises. We’ll do our best to keep you informed. That’s as far as I’ll go. There are fingerprints all over the photos.” He looked at Betsy. “Are your fingerprints on file?”
She nodded and tried to stare him down. It didn’t work.
He and Perez were done. They started for the door, but Perez stopped and looked back at Hastings. “Because of the number 1 on the victim’s feet, there’s a strong possibility there is going to be a second victim. We’re going to send someone over to talk to your mail room guys about how to sort through the mail for the next week or so. And you, too, Betsy.”
Jordain and Perez walked out of the newsroom without talking. They were quiet on the elevator. You never know who’s listening. You keep silent until you are alone, out of earshot. Especially when you’re in the offices of the New York Times.