Officer Lemansky sniffed. He shuffled his feet.
"Fucking parasites," he said. "Madeleine deserved better than seeing her family's name dragged through the mud." He looked at me. "Alvarez was a good cop and a good husband. If
it wasn't for people like you he'd still be remembered that way."
I had my opening.
"I don't work for the Dispatch. I'm not interested in smear campaigns and ruining families to sell papers. If you don't talk to me, another reporter will get the story. You've read the
Gazette. So you can talk to me right here, right now, or I can't promise what tomorrow's headline will be in the Dispatch.
But I can promise you what the headline will be in the
Gazette. "
Lemansky was searching my eyes for the truth. Whether he could trust me. I knew he could.
He nodded. "I give you something, it came from an anonymous source. I get quoted, or you do anything to go back on what you just said, I don't care if the papers start claiming we're fucking aliens from Mars, you'll get a mouthful of broken teeth before you ever get another story."
I said, "You have my word."
He looked around. I thought about Curt. Knew the cops just wanted to make sure the right thing was done.
"Forensics is saying they found a note scrawled up on the roof, below the ledge they think the shooter rested the gun on.
They're analyzing it, but they say he wrote in block using a
Sharpie so it's pretty much useless. They're sifting through about a ton of loose gravel up there, could take days to find anything else."
"The note," I said, speaking softly, half to calm the cop and half to slow down my heart. "What did it say?"
The cop looked around again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
"Some lab rat passed copies around, asked if anyone had ever heard of someone talking like this before. I didn't know, but…" He licked his lips. His eyes danced around, like somebody was about to leap from the morning shadows.
He handed it to me.
"Get out of here," he said. "And remember what you said."
I nodded, took the paper and walked off.
I waited until I'd gone about three blocks and was out of the line of sight from the building. Then I opened my hand.
It was a simple piece of paper on which was written a single sentence. And if Lemansky was correct, besides a murdered girl, this was all the killer left behind.
I read the sentence. Felt my breath catch in my throat.
Right then I knew why Officer Lemansky was scared. I knew what my angle was. A chill of fear ran up my spine, similar to the one I felt last year when I was accused of murder.
And I knew that Athena Paradis wouldn't be the last victim.
5
I was sitting in Wallace Langston's office as he read a printout of the article. My palms were coated with sweat and my eyelids felt like they were being dragged down with two-ton weights. Evelyn had posted the text of my article at 4:22 a.m., holding it up just to confirm my source.
When I told her the quote the killer had left at the scene, she paused.
"Why do I recognize that line?" she asked.
I took a breath before answering. "Because I wrote it."
The slip of paper Officer Lemansky gave me had one simple sentence on it. It read:
The only difference between the innocent and the guilty is that the guilty are the only ones who believe in their cause.
I had written that line several weeks after being cleared of the murder of John Fredrickson. When I was on the run, when the whole world saw me as a murderer, other than Amanda I was the only one who knew and believed in the truth. The article was in response to those who'd been so quick to pass judgment, including the Gazette' s own Paulina Cole. I was happy to hear when she left for the Dispatch. I couldn't imagine going to work every day, sitting next to someone who printed such vileness without knowing the truth.
When the world assumed I was guilty, they looked at me as a degenerate, someone to whom committing murder was justified.
And now a killer had taken my words, used them to support whatever twisted reasoning goes through the mind of someone willing to steal an innocent life.
The killer knew he was guilty. Only he didn't care. He had a cause. Causes don't simply end. Murderers don't simply lose interest. There were more victims out there.
"This came out well," Wallace said, mainly to fill the silence. We both knew the copy wasn't great, but contained all confirmed and pertinent facts and was as good as could be expected from a reporter running on Red Bull and a deadline.
He put the papers down on top of a copy of the morning edition of the Dispatch. Wallace had it delivered every day, though I couldn't remember him ever reading it.
The headline read, HEIRESS WHACKED: Police Search
For Sex Symbol Shooter. It was actually one of their more subtle headlines.
"I give them ten points for alliteration," I said. "'Search For
Sex Symbol Shooter.' Almost poetic."
"Take off several thousand for subtlety," another voiced chimed in. I turned around.
Jack O'Donnell walked into the room, half a dozen newspapers under his arm. He looked well rested, energized.
"Least someone around here caught forty winks," I said.
"I think I caught forty winks total my first five years on the job, don't complain to me about sleep." He took the papers from under his arm, and I recognized the running heads of what looked like the morning edition of every major paper in the metropolitan area, as well as a few nationals. He tossed them on Wallace's desk one at a time, giving us a chance to read each headline.
I wasn't aware newspaper fonts could run that big.
"You have no idea how much it cost us to dump our page one and get the Paradis story in there," Wallace said. "None of them report anything substantial. That'll come tomorrow.
With any luck we'll sell enough papers today to make up for the printing and shipping delays."
"Even in death Athena breaks the bank," Jack said. "You know some asshole found a highball glass from last night that still has Athena Paradis's lipstick on it? Bidding on eBay is up to ten grand. I'm thinking of joining the fray, resell the glass during the trial and retire."
"This case will never go to trial," I said, a sick feeling in my stomach.
"And why not?" asked Wallace.
"Fools with a cause don't go quietly. They don't put their hands behind their back, and they don't care about their
Miranda rights. This guy's in it until the end."
"Let's hope you're wrong," Wallace replied. "Right now all we can do is our job. So let's talk."
Jack flicked my ear as he walked by. "What, no iPod today?"
I sighed, played along.
"I usually take it off when I get to the office."
"Hard to concentrate when listening to Bee-yonk, right?"
I didn't correct him, frankly would have felt like an idiot telling him the correct pronunciation was Beyonce. A few months ago, I made the careless mistake of going to the bathroom and leaving my iPod on my desk. The mistake wasn't leaving it out in the open, but trusting someone like
Jack to act like an adult. By the time I got back to my desk,
Jack had scrolled through my entire playlist and taken votes from the entire newsroom as to which artists I should delete from the hard drive permanently. The results were tabulated, and for a week after that he would ask for the player to see if
I'd complied. Finally I removed the offending songs, just to shut him up. According to Jack, any music created after 1986 should never be heard through my (or any other) speakers again. He said if not for the Dylan and Springsteen, he would have thrown the entire thing in the garbage.
"Henry," Jack said, his voice now without any condescension. "If you don't think this case will go to trial you're an idiot. Someone's getting prosecuted, even if it takes a few cases to get the right suspect. Costas Paradis's private jet is on its way to the city as we speak, and I can promise that he's bringing hellfire and brimstone and a savings account large enough to be a continent unto itself. Whether it's Shawn