CHAPTER 6
Julia does the walk of shame across the newsroom, looking at no one, but she knows almost everyone is looking at her. She’s worked in the business long enough to realize that news people are a fickle bunch, oftentimes fiercely loyal when one of their own takes a hit, but also rabid guard dogs when it comes to their beat. For most reporters, the story is the one thing, the only thing, that matters, and if it gets stolen, shame on you.
Julia sinks in her cubicle, hoping to be left alone so she can knock out a summary of the morning’s opening arguments to be posted on the paper’s website. She takes the flash drive of the Rossi case out of her pocket and stares at her blank computer screen, willing a snappy lead to come to her, but is distracted by the interruption of her ringing desk phone. The caller’s name comes across the screen: Margie Kruchek. Julia bites the bullet and picks up.
“Newsroom, this is Julia Gooden.”
“Come into my office right now.”
Julia plans her strategy as she walks across the newsroom, sparser now than ever after another recent round of layoffs last month. Julia decides her best defense is to simply throw herself on the sword and tell Margie she made a mistake and it won’t happen again.
Margie, a round, middle-aged woman with a brown bob and square-shaped black glasses, sits behind her desk with her hands neatly folded in front of her. Margie has never pretended to be friendly since day one, when she got the job after being downsized at the Philadelphia Inquirer six months earlier. Julia was relieved when Margie replaced her former boss, Bob Primo, whom she detested, viewing him as a soulless viper. Julia ultimately decided to stay at the paper instead of returning to her former job at a smaller daily because of Primo’s departure. The environment in the newsroom had improved, and Julia didn’t even mind Margie’s brutally honest approach. But this time, Julia wouldn’t mind a few fake pleasantries from her new boss to soften the blow.
“I don’t know what happened with the Detroit News story this morning, but I take full responsibility for not getting it first,” Julia says.
“I made a mistake,” Margie answers in an emotionless monotone. “I let you convince me bias wouldn’t be an issue with this story.”
“But I haven’t been biased.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Margie answers, her tone now cutting. “Everyone is biased, whether they want to admit it or not. If you and your husband weren’t so worried about keeping up appearances, your ass wouldn’t have been handed to you this morning.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your husband should be biased toward you. He should have given you the witness’s name. Don’t pretend to be naive. Journalists are supposed to work their sources so they will be biased. You want your sources to confide in you, not your competition. You don’t write the story with bias, but you use whatever you’ve got to get the story, relationships included.”
“David would never give up the name. He’s too ethical to potentially risk his client’s life.”
“No one’s life is at risk.” Margie snorts in disgust. “I’m taking you off the story. Feed Patrick Conrad what you got from this morning, and he’ll take it from here.”
A flash of heat spikes up Julia’s neck, and she forces herself to stay calm.
“This is my story. I failed. I admit it. But it won’t happen again. It’s a mistake to take me off it at this point. No one in the newsroom has the connections that I do, not even close.”
Margie offers up one slow, hard blink. “Then use your connections. I’ll keep you on the story, but if anything like this happens again, you’re off.”
“Thank you, Margie. I won’t let you down.”
“I’ve been thinking more about the coverage. It would be ideal to get an exclusive interview with Rossi. I bet Tarburton would bite. What better way to say ‘my client is innocent’ than having the wife of the prosecution tell the defendant’s story about how he is wrongly accused.”
“I’ve never known a defense attorney to allow a client to speak to the press during the course of a criminal trial. After the trial is over, maybe.”
“Try anyway. See if we can get something, say, midweek. I’d love to turn the story into a big Sunday centerpiece, but we can’t afford to wait that long.”
A pit of dread begins to open in Julia’s stomach. If that’s the only way Margie is going to keep her on the Rossi case, then her chances of landing the interview are a long shot, at best.
“I’ll try.”
“You do that,” Margie says, and turns back to her computer to check for any newly filed articles.
Julia hurries out of Margie’s office and catches a glimpse of the clock above the copy desk. 12:00 PM. She calculates that it will take her about twenty minutes to get to the courthouse during the busy lunch hour.
She quickly grabs her laptop and bag and hurries out of the newsroom. Inside the parking garage, Julia checks for a phone signal. Not strong, but she wants to catch David before he gets buried in the trial again.
Julia expects to leave a voice mail message when he picks up.
“David Tanner here,” he says, sounding hurried and impatient.
“It’s Julia. I’ll make this quick. You killed it during opening statements.”
Five seconds of dead air on the other end, and Julia figures she lost the call.
“I can’t talk right now, Julia. Let’s catch up later,” David says.
“I understand. I just wanted to tell you . . .”
The phone beeps in Julia’s ear as she loses the call.
“Good luck,” she whispers to the parking garage elevator.
Julia presses the down button and the weight of her conversation with Margie starts to hit. Although she didn’t say it directly, Julia knows she is expected to work her husband for information, like some sort of sleazy con, just like her dad, who left town with Julia’s mother, a drunk, when Julia was seven, right after Ben was abducted.
Julia looks at her distorted reflection in the silvery-gray elevator doors and feels cheap and dirty over actually considering Margie’s directive to hustle her husband. She wonders if she’ll inevitably wind up like her father if she stays in journalism. Self-doubt and insecurity start to rear up inside her, and she thinks back to the first person who saw something shining and beautiful in her, something she felt died when Ben never came home.
(“I’ll be here to take care of you now,” Ben promised Julia as the two children held hands and watched their father being escorted in handcuffs out of their broken-down doublewide trailer and into a waiting police car. “We were born into a bad life, but you’re a fighter and you’re going to fight your way out of it. You’re good enough. You’re more than good enough.”)
As the elevator makes its slow cruise down to parking level two, Julia feels the sting of tears start as she recalls her brother’s words. She pulls out her parking pass and grazes her finger across the picture she’s kept since childhood, the one thing that always stayed with her, even during a stint with an aunt who didn’t want her and then as she struggled her way into adulthood. The photo is Ben’s fourth-grade picture, the same one the police used in his missing person’s flyer—a thirty-year-old case that has never been solved.
The elevator door opens and Julia tucks the memory away. She rushes over to her SUV, knowing she can’t be late to meet Logan’s bus at the courthouse. Julia pauses at her car when she notices a blackbird, sleek and shiny with tiny intense eyes that seem to be staring right at her, sitting on her driver-side rearview mirror—an unusual site, Julia thinks, as even the birds know not to return to Michigan’s frigid temperatures until the ground begins to thaw.
“Come on, buddy. Please find another spot to hang out,” Julia tells the bird. It stares at her for a beat longer, and then flies up and perches atop a cement beam above her car.
Julia jams the key into the ignition, and her car’s engine makes a sharp churning noise that sounds like a fork getting stuck in a garbage disposal. After six tries of the engine fighting to turn over, Julia pounds her fist against the steering wheel.
“Of all the damn days,” Julia mutters. Out on the street, she spends five minutes trying to catch a cab, but the only ones that pass are already occupied with fares.
David is out as an option for a ride so Julia calls the only other person who has always been there for her.
“Yeah, it’s Navarro.”
“Hey, it’s Julia. My car broke down and I can’t catch a cab to save my life. Logan’s school bus arrives at the courthouse at twelve-thirty and I promised him I’d be there. Any chance you’re headed that way?”
“I’m already at the courthouse. I’m meeting Russell in the lobby. Tell you what. I can leave him hanging for a few minutes. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come pick you up.”
“I owe you. I’m a couple blocks away from the Penobscot Building.”
“I’ll pick you up out front.”
Julia weaves through the crowded sidewalks of West Congress Street until she hooks onto Griswold. Just as she reaches the forty-seven-story skyscraper, Navarro’s unmarked Crown Victoria pulls up in front.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Julia says as she slides into the passenger seat.
Julia finally breathes out. 12:15. Plenty of time to get to the courthouse.
* * *
The sniper is patient. He has been in position on the fifth floor of the empty office building across from the courthouse for over an hour. The temperature in the room hovers just above forty degrees, but the sniper doesn’t feel it. He wears gloves cut off at the fingers, so his hands stay warm and his fingers remain agile. His trained eyes scan for the target just in case, but he knows he will be called five minutes prior to the Butcher’s arrival. He’s an American-made killer who listens to Kid Rock and used to work at the GM plant in Pontiac. He first learned patience on the assembly line where he installed front and rear bumpers, the same damn thing eight hours a day, five days a week. But in ten years he never once had a safety incident. And he is still proud of that. He doesn’t like pretty-boy criminals much, but money is money, and after being laid off, he needs it. So he brushed off the cobwebs of his early army training to find a new position. He considers himself a freelancer. And he wants to ensure that his tidy Dearborn rancher with the little garden in the back where he grows his tomatoes in the summer doesn’t slide into foreclosure after the job is done.
12:25. The sniper’s phone vibrates. He recognizes the caller—Jim Bartello, the former security guy from the MGM Grand, who hired him for Rossi. The sniper feels an electric hum going through his entire body. He knows there’s nothing like the hard-on of a good kill.
* * *
“Can’t you put your siren on? What’s happening up there? I can’t be late. Logan’s bus is going to be at the courthouse in five minutes.”
“The siren wouldn’t matter, Julia. The whole block is stopped. There’s nowhere to go around.”
Navarro radios into the dispatch unit for an update.
“There’s been a major water main break. Patrol is rerouting half of downtown to get around it,” he relays to Julia.
“I’m going to make a run for it,” Julia says, snagging just her ID, notebook, pen, and press pass from her purse and stuffing them in her coat pocket.
“In heels?” Navarro asks.
“I have no choice. See you there.”
Before Navarro can respond, Julia the runner is out of the car and buzzing down the broken sidewalks like a bullet shooting out of a chamber. She gets just two blocks away and can spot the outline of the courthouse in the near distance. A school bus pulls away from the curb, and a heavyset man in a long black coat, and what looks to Julia to be a couple of undercover police officers trailing him, ascend the courthouse steps. Julia bets the heavyset man is the prosecution’s last-minute witness, Sammy Biggs, although she doesn’t see any sign of David and figures he might already be in the lobby.
“Hold on, Gooden,” Navarro calls from behind.
Julia keeps running. As she nears the coffee shop on the corner, she is nearly rocked backward by a thunderous explosion. She feels something solid and powerful hit her in the back, and she goes down. On the sidewalk, the sounds of shattering glass, and a high-pitched keening of metal twisting against itself, play on like a macabre symphony around her.
* * *
In the abandoned building across the street from the courthouse, the sniper pulls himself off the floor and asks himself, “What the hell just happened?”