My shift didn’t actually start until two the next day, but I called Ozzie that morning on the pretense of wanting to check the day’s news. I found out Clay was doing a noon live shot on the other side of town about goose overpopulation.
That gave me ample time to head over to his house. I brought along a tuna-noodle hot dish as a prop. No one answered the door when I knocked or appeared to be home when I pressed my face against a window.
An elderly neighbor, watering some mums on his porch, asked if he could help. It was his way of letting me know he had his eye on the place. That’s what neighbors do.
“I’m looking for the lady of the house,” I said.
“The guy lives alone.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure as shootin’. You should know. He works at your station.”
That was the problem with being on TV. People recognize you. Usually at inconvenient times. Ordinary folks often wish for star status, but in truth, it’s more tiresome than titillating. In retrospect, I should have worn a disguise.
“Have you ever seen this woman?” I showed him the picture of Jolene. If she was around, and if he was as nosy as he acted, I figured they’d have crossed paths.
“Can’t say I have.”
Just because Clay’s wife didn’t come to the door or hobnob with the neighbors didn’t mean she was dead. Plenty of psychopaths keep victims locked in basements or hidden in backyards—too controlled to attempt escape. Sometimes not found until eighteen years later.
Trouble surrounded me, but I’d always felt safe within the walls of Channel 3. With Clay now working down the hall, I felt vulnerable.
But I had a bigger problem than even I knew. I didn’t realize that Clay’s neighbor had told him that I’d stopped by his house, flashing a picture of a pretty woman with blond hair.
I was on to Clay, but I didn’t know Clay was on to me. Not until I walked into my office and found him sitting in my chair.
“You need to keep your nose out of my hankie,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He’d obviously rifled through my desk because he held out the picture of his wife. Then his fist crumbled it into a little ball, and when he walked past me, I got chills. The bad kind.
I vowed to keep my distance from Clay. Not talk to him. Or sit by him. If he continued to approach me, I’d accuse him of sexual harassment. Noreen was more likely to believe him a chauvinist pig than a murderer.
Sleep and food should have been higher priorities; instead I started organizing a list of all the scoops Clay had reported in the headless homicide.
He’d been first with the news that the victim had been decapitated. Then blond. Later the manicure and pedicure. And out of thin air, he’d pronounced the head and body a DNA match.
These were things only the killer would know. Unless the police leaked them. Which they’d repeatedly denied. My gut had always doubted Clay could have recruited such a well-connected source so quickly. But seeing him cozy with the police chief, I’d wavered. Now I was back to thinking I was right the first time and that Clay Burrel might give a whole new meaning to the term “dead air.”
All I needed was some evidence. Because as far as Noreen, the police, and even my own attorney felt, I was the delusional man of La Mancha obsessed with seeing murderers around every corner.