The offices of the Yakima Herald-Republic were on North Fourth Street downtown, near the mall. A receptionist directed Jed to Tim Lopez’s desk near the back, where a young man was cradling a telephone receiver on his shoulder as he typed copy into a computer.
“Right… uh huh… what time will the ceremony take place today?… And the mayor will be talking about kids’ issues, right?” He gestured for Jed to take a seat. “Okay, that’s about all I need for now. Can I call you back later if I have some more questions? Great. Thanks a lot.” He hung up and looked at Jed. “Kind of a slow news day. Our lead story will be about a speech the mayor is giving at a ground-breaking ceremony for the new children’s hospital. Life in the big city, huh? What can I help you with?”
Jed sat down across from Lopez’s desk, and introduced himself. The reporter frowned when Jed mentioned Steven Vick’s name.
“Lemme get this straight. You’re one of the defense attorneys for the wife?”
“That’s right.”
“Did Shibilsky give you my name?”
“Shibilsky? Who’s that?”
“I guess he didn’t.” Lopez shook his head in disgust. “He’s the homicide detective who’s supposed to be working the case. I called him as soon as I heard about the story. I tried to tell him what I knew, but the guy just wasn’t interested. So how did you get my name?”
Jed told him about Steve’s employer. Lopez said, “Yeah, I could tell the guy was p.o.’d. I tried to call him back and apologize for hitting him with the news like that, but I couldn’t get his secretary to put the call through.”
“You said you called the homicide detective to tell him what you knew?”
“Yeah, not that it did much good. You try to be a good citizen and come forward with this stuff. Soon as I saw Steve’s picture, I mean, I knew it was something that should be followed up on. Hold on a second. Let me save my document here.” He punched a few keys, and his computer screen went blank. “Steve Vick came to talk to me about, uh, let’s see, it was a week ago, Monday. I didn’t know who he was until later, when I saw the picture we got to run in the paper. He never gave me his name.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted money for some information he had. The talk shows are making it really tough to be a reporter these days, you know? Everybody hears how they can get big money selling their story, nobody wants to talk for free anymore. Problem is, newspapers don’t have that kind of money to throw around. Half the time, I give a ten dollar bill to an informant, it comes out of my own pocket.”
“What kind of information did he have?”
“He wouldn’t give me many details, because as I said, he wanted to be paid. But when I told him I wasn’t authorized to buy stories, unless I had some idea what I was buying, he told me a little, but it was pretty vague. He said that he had uncovered evidence of a major scheme that would harm the public. Man, I thought he was a paranoid nut, to tell you the truth. We get people come in here all the time, think they know somebody who’s got the atomic bomb. But anyways, he thought it would be a huge story if we could blow this thing wide open, and publicize it before the harm reached the public. Then he and I would be hailed as heroes. I could tell he really got off on the hero angle. Well, I told him I didn’t think the public would get quite that excited about a story that hadn’t happened yet, especially if he wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Now after somebody gets hurt, that’s a different story.”
Jed looked perplexed. “So, you told him not to go public with the story until somebody got hurt?”
Lopez laughed. “Hell, no. I wouldn’t do that. No, I just told him I’d have to check with my supervisor about the cash, and get back to him. But I wasn’t very encouraging about him getting much money for the story. I also told him he might have a better chance coming forward with the story for free, if what he wanted was the public recognition. Then maybe a talk show would pick it up. I definitely told him he should reveal what he knew, especially if there was going to be harm to the public. And I warned him that if he didn’t come forward, that he could be considered an accessory to the crime. He didn’t like that, but then he thought about it and laughed. He said, ‘I can hardly be charged as an accessory if nobody knows who I am.’ “
“Then what did he do?”
“We chatted a little longer. He asked if it would help if he brought me the documents that proved what he was talking about.” Lopez shrugged. “That was one of the things that made me doubt the guy, to tell you the truth. Of course, it would help to have documents. Did this guy just fall off the turnip truck or something? If he had documents, why didn’t he bring them in the first place? At this point, I was starting to think the guy was a flake, but I told him, yeah, go get me hard copies. There was something weird about the way he said it, though. Just a second, I kept a few notes on the conversation.” Lopez swiveled in his chair and brought up a document on his computer, then scrolled down the screen. “Here it is. Yeah, when he brought up a reference to the military, that’s when I figured he was a genuine nut case…. Okay, Vick said he’d seen the production notes and the distribution schedule in the colonel’s desk drawer, but it shouldn’t be a problem to get, because he—Steve—was good friends with ‘the old softie’—meaning the colonel, I guess. Then he kind of chuckled at his own joke, know what I mean?”
“Did you talk about anything else?”
“I chatted him up some more. Don’t get me wrong, if there was a real story there, I wanted to be the one to get it. I just didn’t want to pay for it. I was trying to kind of cajole him into telling me something. I pretended to go talk to my editor about the money.”
“Pretended?”
“Yeah, the kind of money he wanted—I think he floated twenty-five thousand as a figure—the paper could never have paid. We pay five hundred to a source, we think it’s the big time. I was just stringing him along to see if he’d give me anything else. But he didn’t. I showed him out, and he said he’d call when he got the stuff, but I didn’t think any more about it. When he did call back, it took me a minute to remember who he was.”
“When did he call back?”
Lopez checked his computer screen. “Tuesday morning. That would have been the day he was killed. He told me he had the documents in his possession, and he wanted to meet. We made an appointment for Wednesday at one. He wanted to come in right away, but I was working on some other things, and frankly, thought this guy was just going to waste my time. In retrospect, I probably should have put a little more effort into getting the story out of him.”
“You mean because of the murder?”
“Hell, yeah. A guy comes in to see a reporter, says he’s got a hot story, and the next day somebody smashes a bottle over his head? That would tend to make me believe he knew something that somebody didn’t want revealed.”
“When did you hear about Steve’s death?”
“Our guy who monitors the police beat had the news Wednesday morning. When I saw the photo the paper was going to run, I knew Steven Vick wasn’t going to be keeping his one o’clock appointment with me.”
“So, what did you do?”
“As soon as I saw the guy’s picture, I called up the detective and told him everything I knew.”
“This was Detective Shibilsky?”
“Yeah. And to tell you the truth, he didn’t give a damn. He said it was a domestic quarrel, and no further information was necessary to wrap up the investigation. Now, if he was doing his job, he would have been required to keep notes of our conversations, and turn them over to whoever is defending the wife, meaning you.”
Jed smiled. “I was a public defender for a while. Believe me, those guys are very good at not doing their job. It’s hard to turn over what’s not written down. I bet he has a faulty memory about the conversation, too.”
“I hear you.”
A beep sounded on Lopez’s watch. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a packet of gum with a prescription slip attached. “Nicotine gum. I can only have one every hour. You ever try to quit smoking? It’s murder. Sorry, no pun intended.”
“After Steve was killed, you could have printed the story. That would have embarrassed the detective.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m not out to gore anybody’s ox. We get a lot of stuff from the sheriff’s office. No sense in mucking up that avenue of communication. And who knows, maybe the detective had already checked it out, found out it was nothing.” Lopez sat back, looking like he was deriving great satisfaction from his nicotine gum. “Now, if something happens tomorrow that looks suspicious, you better believe we’ll print this story in a second.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that was the one hard fact Vick would give me. Whatever it was that was going down, it was going to be set in motion tonight. According to the documents he’d gotten his hands on, the stuff was going to be moved into place Friday night. He said folks might start getting hurt as early as Saturday the fifteenth. I don’t know about you, man, but the next few days, I’m going to watch my step.”