Michael was on the phone and typing a mile a minute when she walked into the newsroom. His eyes widened at the sight of her. “Are you okay?” he mouthed.
“Fine,” she mouthed back.
She sat at her desk and unloaded her backpack, setting up her laptop, taking out her notebooks and pen, and retrieving the newspaper clipping from her pocket.
LOCAL ROCK JOCK ARRESTED IN DUI DEATH was the headline in the Detroit News.
It had been a big story. Robert “Robbie” Breitweis was the morning-drive-time deejay, back in the day when big-market deejays were a big deal in a town like Detroit. According to the newspaper, he’d had the highest ratings in town. Never married but always a fixture at the hippest new bars and clubs in town.
His fall had been fast and hard. She opened the browser on her laptop and began searching for more of the original news coverage. After forty minutes, she had the hard facts. The victim, a pretty teenager, the name of the car dealership where he’d been doing the remote broadcast, quotes from witnesses who said he’d been covertly drinking all afternoon.
They gave Conley a snapshot of the crime and the sentence, but she still didn’t know much about the Buddy Bright who’d ended up in Silver Bay, Florida.
She found the name of another deejay, a woman named Kady O’Keefe, who’d worked with him at his next-to-last job at a station in Madison, Wisconsin. After another ten minutes of searching, she found a reference to a Kady O’Keefe who worked at an NPR affiliate in Columbus, Ohio.
“No chance in hell she’s working Sunday,” Conley muttered, but she made the call anyway, grateful for once for the Beacon’s landlines.
She got the expected recorded message, with the instructions that she could leave a message for a station employee by typing in the employee’s name on a touch-tone dial.
“Hi,” she said. “My name is Conley Hawkins. I’m a reporter for a newspaper in Florida, and I’m calling Kady O’Keefe to ask her about a former coworker named Robert Breitweis. It’s kind of urgent, so I’d really appreciate a callback.” She left the paper’s number and went back to work hunting for clues.
Her phone rang less than five minutes later. She snatched it up. “Silver Bay Beacon. This is Conley Hawkins.”
“I’m calling for um, Connie, something.” The woman’s voice was deep and throaty and reminded her of Stevie Nicks.
“This is Conley. Are you Kady?”
“Yes. What’s this about Robbie? Has he finally turned up somewhere? I always figured he was long dead by now.”
“Were you a close friend?” Conley asked.
“We were an item for a few months, but Robbie was an item with every woman he met back then,” she said, laughing. “He screwed anything that moved. Come to think of it, I guess you could say the same thing about me. Not anymore, of course,” she said hastily. “I’ve got grandkids, if you can believe it, so don’t quote me on the sex stuff.”
“I won’t,” Conley promised. “But you hadn’t been in touch with him in recent years?”
“Nobody that I know of has been in touch with him since he went to prison,” Kady said. “Why don’t you just come out and tell me what this is all about?”
“I’m afraid he is dead, but it only happened this morning,” Conley said.
“You’re shitting me! Where was this? Someplace in Florida? How the hell did he end up all the way down there?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Conley said. “He was working at a small local radio station here, using the name Buddy Bright. The station owner said he just showed up a few years ago, and he hired him on the spot.”
“And he didn’t think to check to see if he had a record? I mean, I think it was a big deal when he walked away from that prison detail. There were billboards with his picture on the interstate.”
“As I said, it’s a small station in a small town, and we’re a long way from Detroit. We’re, I guess you’d say, quirky.”
“You mind telling me how he died?”
Conley gave her an abbreviated account of the early-morning events.
“Wow,” Kady said. “That’s, like, mind-blowing. So are you saying he died a hero?”
“I guess I am,” Conley said. “I’m trying to put together a story on him. I know the stuff about the hit-and-run, but I’d really like to get some understanding of who he was before the accident.”
“He was your typical rock jock,” Kady said. “This was before political correctness. Cocky, sexy, full of himself. He could be a lot of fun, but he could be mean too. You never knew which Robbie you were gonna get. Although I will say he had a certain sweetness if you stayed around long enough. Hey, did he still drive a white Corvette?”
“Yeah,” Conley said. “The station owner said he treated it like it was his baby.”
“That was Robbie. I think he was driving a Vette when he hit that girl. Not the same one, obviously. And did he still dress in all black? I never said anything, but come on, calling yourself the Man in Black? How hokey was that?”
“Still dressed in black,” Conley said. “I guess that was his trademark. That and the Vette.”
“You can’t say the guy wasn’t predictable.” Kady chuckled. “But then, what man isn’t totally predictable?”
Conley thought about Skelly and how he managed to surprise her almost every time they were together. “Right,” she said for the sake of agreement. “Is there anything else you can think of to tell me about him? Like, did he have family?”
“None that he ever talked about. I think he thought his listeners were his family. That wasn’t just bullshit either. He really thought like that.”
“Well, thanks so much for talking to me about him,” Conley said. “You’ve been a big help.”
Michael had turned around in his desk and was wildly waving to get her attention.
“Can you hang on for a sec, Kady?”
“Okay.”
She put her hand over the receiver. “What’s up, Mike?”
He held up the receiver of the phone on his own desk. “This is a producer from NBC. She says she’s been trying to reach you all morning.”
“Selena Kwan?”
“Yeah. What should I tell her?”
“Tell her to hold. I’m almost done with this call.” She continued, “Hi, Kady. Anyway, I really appreciate your talking to me. If you think of anybody else who might remember Robbie, can you give them my number?”
“What about the cat?” Kady said abruptly.
“Cat?”
“Robbie loved cats. He always had one. Whatever market he’d get a job in, first thing he’d do, he told me, was go to a shelter and adopt a stray. But they always had to be black. You know, ’cuz he was the Man in Black.”
“He did have a cat,” Conley said. “In fact, don’t tell anybody, but when my friend and I went to his apartment, we found the cat, and we kind of kidnapped it because I didn’t want it to end up in a shelter. I don’t know what we’ll do with her. My family has a dog, and my friend claims he’s cat-phobic. We don’t even know the cat’s name.”
“It’s Hi-Fi,” Kady said. “He told me that one time. Every cat he ever got, it was black, and he named it Hi-Fi. Predictable, right?”
“Can you transfer that call?” Conley asked Michael.
“Sure. But, uh, I gotta give you the heads-up—I went ahead and filed a story about the shooting and everything. Because it’s such a huge story. Your name’s in it, because, like, you were there. The guy was trying to kidnap you. Grayson gave me the okay. She said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. She’d interviewed dozens of crime victims over the years, but this was the first time she’d ended up in another reporter’s notebook. Of course, it had been her idea to call in Michael, so she could hardly complain that he’d done his job.
“I’ll transfer her over.”
The phone buzzed, and she picked up the receiver. “Hi, Selena.”
“Conley! We just got a Google Alert from Silver Bay about the kidnapping and the shooting and the other thing. I’ve been trying to call your cell all day. Are you all right?”
“Just a little shaken up,” Conley said. “My phone’s temporarily out of commission.”
“Your colleague Michael? He filed some amazing photos. That one of the car with the porch roof falling down on it? And the body bag in the yard? Unbelievable.”
“That’s my grandmother’s front porch,” she said quietly. “And her front yard.”
“Oh my God. That makes it worse.”
“It doesn’t get much worse than what happened this morning,” Conley agreed.
“I hate to ask, but are you too shaken up to work? Because I’ve got a crew on the way down there. We want to do an on-camera interview with you, of course, but from that brief Michael filed earlier, I can tell there’s a lot more to this story. I mean, what? A rogue cop? And I understand he was stalking you?”
Conley felt her face flush. “Yes.”
“And the deejay, the one who got shot, trying to save your life, he was a fugitive?”
“It seems so.”
“I know I keep repeating myself, but this whole thing is so unbelievable. And coming so close on the heels of this whole Robinette story. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle of bad news down there.”
“Yeah,” Conley agreed, remembering her complaint that nothing ever happened in Silver Bay.
“It’s too late to get anything out of Atlanta now, but tomorrow I’m gonna fly into … Where’s the nearest airport?”
“Probably Pensacola,” Conley said.
“I’ll text you when I land, okay? Wait, you said your phone’s broken?”
“Call the office like you just did,” Conley said. “I’ll be here.”
“Unbelievable,” Selena said. “You’re like my shero. Can’t wait to see you again tomorrow.”
She hung up the phone.
“Well?” Michael had been unashamedly eavesdropping, but that was typical of every newsroom in which she’d ever worked.
“She’s coming down tomorrow, and they’re bringing a camera crew,” Conley said slowly.
He pounded his desktop. “I knew it. This story is your ticket out of here.”
“What?”
“You know, your ticket out. To the bigs. First, the Robinette thing, and now this? You said you were just here temporarily, right?”
“Right. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to work for the network. That’s a big leap, you know.”
“Not for you,” he said, ever loyal.
“So. What have you found out about Walter Poppell?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, man. So much. For one thing, he had a juvie record.”
“Huh. My friend Skelly played football with him back in high school. He mentioned that Poppell got kicked off the team, but he said nobody ever knew why. It was hushed up. What did he do?”
“Beat up a girl and sexually assaulted her.”
“Oh my God,” Conley whispered. Her stomach lurched, and she was afraid she’d vomit again. She swallowed hard. “How does something like that get hushed up? How did he get hired as a cop?”
“The girl’s mother reported it, and then the girl recanted,” Michael said. “He was sentenced to some kind of intervention program for a lesser charge, did some volunteer work, and his record was expunged. Juvie records are sealed in Florida anyway.”
“Then how’d you hear about the rape allegation?”
Michael grinned. “I have my sources. People in this town really didn’t like the guy. Guess that’s why he had to go to Bronson County to get a job.”
“Did you talk to Merle Goggins over there?”
“I called, then I drove over there to see him. Goggins wasn’t happy to see me, but after I pointed out that it was one of our reporters who’d been assaulted, he relented and gave me a quote.”
“What’d he say?”
Michael flipped through the pages of his notebook. “Shocked and disgusted that a former employee had betrayed the public trust. Recently discharged for dereliction of duty. Since juvenile records are sealed, he had no way of knowing about Poppell’s past. Like that.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Conley pointed out, turning back to her own story.
“Hey,” Michael said. “He said for me to tell you that he’s sorry. And I believe him. The dude’s not a friendly type, but he asked me to let him know if you need anything. At all. And that’s a direct quote. ‘Tell her anything she needs, at all, I’m here.’”