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SEATTLE (Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012) — By the time Lindy was asleep in a hospital room, Mac was an hour away from his six a.m.-shift. He thought about calling in sick, but instead he took a shower, dressed in his khakis, button-down shirt, and headed down to the Seattle Examiner.
Two middle-aged women glanced covertly at him and decided to wait for the next elevator from the parking lot. As Mac rode up to the newsroom alone, he thought about offering to show them his tattoos. It happened about twice a week. He shrugged it off, refusing to admit how much it bugged him.
He checked the fax machine as he made his way to his desk. Nothing new there. He looked around the corner toward his desk, where the night cop reporter was just finishing up. The desk had a scanner, although modern technology had rendered it almost useless, a cell phone, a telephone with the message light blinking, a computer with messages taped all over it, and papers piled haphazardly everywhere. It pissed him off that Seth couldn’t tidy up the desk when he was done, but when he had said something Seth Conte had looked at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. And surveying the newsroom, Mac guessed he might not see anything wrong with a desk piled high with paper. At least Seth had the sense to wash and store his coffee cup instead of letting it set out like half the reporters.
The city editor looked up, saw him, and gestured with her head. He obediently dumped his backpack at his desk and pulled up a chair next to her desk.
“What’s up?”
Janet Andrews was a tall, broad-shouldered woman in her late 30s who didn’t care if she looked her age or not. She had light brown hair streaked with gray that she wore in a style she referred to as “barely combed”, pulled back some days, down others. Today, her hair kind of looked like both, Mac decided, pulled back, but falling out of the rubber band. She raked her hand through her bangs which left them sticking up oddly. It was not a good sign. Mac read his boss’s state of mind by the disarray of her hair. It didn’t get this bad usually until deadline, and the day had barely started.
“Somebody tried to kill a cop last night,” she said.
“Who?”
“Justin Donnelly. It’s your story. Get going.”
It still amazed Mac that he was indeed a cop reporter. Most of the guys at Johnnie’s, for instance, had no clue and less interest in what Mac did for a living. If asked, Johnnie would have shrugged, and said “a little of this, a little of that.” Mac’s friends knew he did something down at the newspaper; he’d gone to college after all.
His closest friends knew he was a cop reporter for the Seattle Examiner, something that made them laugh. “Talk about having knowledge of your subject,” Shorty said once. “Don’t it feel weird?”
Mac had shrugged. “They didn’t have a sports job open.”
He’d been covering cops for two years now. Sports jobs had opened up, and he hadn’t bothered to go talk to the editor about them. He liked the cop beat — its adrenaline rushes, the street talk, the cynicism. He felt comfortable there.
He didn’t much like cops, but every job had its drawbacks.
“Do we know anything?” he asked.
Janet shook her head. “Not much. Went down sometime last night. Conte picked up some stuff, we can run a short piece in the bulldog if we have to, but I want more than that. Especially by morning.”
“Online breathing down our necks?”
“Some. But it isn’t on the competition’s site yet. Haven’t heard it on television yet either.”
Mac nodded. The newspaper axiom, get it right, get it first was more problematic now than when it had first been said — whenever that was. “OK, I’m on it,” he said.
Janet nodded, turned back to her computer. “Damn machines,” she muttered. Mac got out, relieved that her harried air appeared to be related to something beside him.
He decided to go down to the police station rather than start the calls. You could pick up stuff better that way.
The PIO, public information officer, was brief. “We don’t know much,” he said, sliding a press release across his desk. “Detective Justin Donnelly was shot at home last night. He is in stable but critical condition at Swedish.”
Mac glanced at the press release. If the occupational hazard of being a cop reporter was to start writing like a cop talked — the reverse was worse: cops trying to write like they thought reporters wrote.
“He going to be okay?”
The PIO shrugged. “He’s in a coma. Vitals are good. But the damn bullet actually pierced his skull. Had to go in and get it.”
Mac winced. He had some gunshot scars, himself. One left a crease just above his ear. But thank God no one had to go digging around in his brain to get it out.
“Where did it happen?”
The PIO gestured to the press release. “For God’s sake, Mac, it’s all in there.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “Come on, Pete, you say it happened at his residence. What the heck does that mean? He was outside picking up his newspaper? Someone broke in? Give me some detail, man.”
Pete sighed. “The detectives aren’t saying much, even to me,” he admitted. “It’s pretty tight. The grapevine isn’t even buzzing. All I know is that it happened about 8 p.m. last night. He was at his dining table. Someone shot him from his balcony, through the glass doors. I can’t picture it — Donnelly lived on the third floor. I guess someone could get up there. Anyway, Rodriguez is handling the investigation. You want more, go see him.”
“Thanks Pete,” Mac said, getting up and leaving. He sauntered through the halls of the station. He nodded to a cop he knew, who only frowned in return. A second cop scowled at him. Mac didn’t show anything outwardly. He tested the waters with two other cops. No one was in a friendly mood this morning, he thought. In general, because an officer is down, or at me?
Rodriguez was at his desk. He looked up, saw Mac headed his direction and frowned. He stood up to face Mac.
It was consistent, Mac thought, amused.
“Who the hell let you in here?” he demanded.
“Come on, Nick, I’m in here all the time.” Mac plunged into his topic. “I’m sorry to hear about Donnelly. What can you tell me? We don’t have this kind of thing in Seattle very often do we?”
“I thought you two didn’t get along,” Nick Rodriguez said, resting a hip on his desk.
“We don’t. Don’t mean I want to see the guy shot.” Mac was indignant. “Was he working on any case?”
Rodriguez studied Mac for a moment, saying nothing. Mac met his eyes. What the fuck is going on? He didn’t look away.
Rodriguez looked down at his desk, tapped his pencil for a moment. “The PIO has all we’re releasing at this time,” he said stiffly. “So get out and let me work.”
“Sure.”
Mac got back in his 4-Runner and drove out to the hospital, picked up their report on Donnelly’s status. He checked the fire department for their run records. On the cell phone, he called the PIO back for a bio on Donnelly. The secretary said she’d fax it over to the newspaper.
Mac looked at his watch, 11 a.m. Time enough to grab a bite to eat and check out Donnelly’s apartment complex. He stopped at Wan Luc’s and ordered his usual rice bowl with chicken. Used the chopsticks. “Almost as good as me,” said the owner, as he took away Mac’s bowl, just as he did every time Mac came in.
Donnelly’s apartment complex was on First Hill. Mac drove by. Yellow police tape looped across the front yard. Uniformed officers were standing about. A couple were patiently picking up every stray bit under the balcony three stories up.
Mac found a place to park, walked back to the complex. Two other reporters were there, and one television station truck. He nodded to them. They all knew each other. Small town, really.
Mac showed his press pass to the officer on the sidewalk. “Anybody finding anything?”
The officer shook his head. “No, but I wouldn’t tell you if we were,” he said good-naturedly.
Mac laughed. “Great.” He wandered down the sidewalk, looking up at the balcony. Another officer was on his hands and knees patiently going over the floor of it.
It was an older building, built on a slope like so many buildings in Seattle. The third floor was really only two, two and a half floors off the ground at Donnelly’s balcony, Mac estimated. The beige stone building had mature evergreen trees around it — large rhododendrons, other things, Mac didn’t recognize by name. Large enough to support a man, however. A person could go up one at the corner, work his way from balcony to balcony.... Mac shook his head. Unlikely. Three balconies? Too easy for someone to see the person. More likely, flung up a climbing rope, went right up. Wouldn’t take no time at all if you knew what you were doing.
“They figure out how the shooter got up there?” Mac asked the same officer. Bored officers talked eventually; Mac believed.
The officer shrugged. “Wouldn’t be hard with a climbing rope. But we don’t know. Left the site damn clean.”
Mac nodded, took one more walk past the building, and then walked back up hill to his car.
Back in the newsroom, Mac picked up the fax of Donnelly’s bio, flipped through his notes and started to write. Janet was gone for the day. An assistant editor called up his story on his screen and looked it over. He grunted. “Good enough.”
Mac sighed, flipped off his machine, and got out before something else happened to stop him. His body ached. He felt like he’d inhaled some of that crap that floated loose in the Sound. Ought to be the punishment for anyone caught flipping shit into the water — toss them in.
He went home to a silent house. He popped in a CD, turned it up loud. The message light was blinking; he listened to the messages.
A long one from Anna Marie, Lindy’s lover, saying she was going to pick Lindy up at the hospital and Lindy would stay with her for a while. Mac liked Anne Marie fine if she’d just shut up. She dithered, about everything, and at length. He wondered how Lindy stood it.
And then from Jules: “You bastard. You had me sitting outside a cop’s apartment while he’s getting shot? Cops think you did it!”
Mac called Jules back. “What the hell do you mean, cops think I did it? Did what?”
“I don’t want to talk to you here,” she said.
“J, level with me. What are you talking about?”
She lowered her voice even more. “Just a bit of a rumor. But something. Something about a reporter. About bad blood. Your name.”
Mac was silent, thinking rapidly. It didn’t make sense. “PIO said it went down about 8 p.m.,” Mac said. “I was at Johnnie’s.”
“I don’t know,” Jules was careful not to use his name. “But I can’t talk now. You haven’t told anyone, have you? About me?”
“Of course, not!” he said, insulted. “It happened much earlier than when you were there anyway.”
“You do get yourself into some messes don’t you?” Jules said, amusement showing in her voice. “Call me when you’re back to being Clark Kent, will you?”
“So what am I now, Superman?” he said, teasing.
“Or his evil twin.” Jules hung up. He grinned. It wasn’t just her beauty that had attracted him once.
He hung up the phone slowly. Cops linking his name with a shot cop. He didn’t like the sounds of that. Besides, Donnelly had gone down before he was hit. He wouldn’t have had reason to go for Donnelly until after that. Sent those bozos his way. If he had. Used Donnelly’s name, for whatever that was worth.
It worried him, the attack, the cold looks today, the snippets of rumor. Mac knew what Jules was talking about, just words caught here and there. Nothing much, but worrisome. He was glad Lindy was out of the way, safe. Hell, if someone went for her at Anne Marie’s she could talk them to death.
Thinking of Lindy reminded him of the next call he needed to make. He dialed the number.
“Yo,” said the voice that answered.
“Toby, it’s Mac.”
“What’s up, bro?”
“Someone beat up your mom last night and tried to kill me,” Mac said bluntly. “You involved in something I should have known about?”
“You mean something someone would be after my family for? Hell, no. I’d have warned you if something was coming down,” Toby said. “Don’t make no sense for someone to go after you all without threatening me first. What would be the point?”
“No turf wars, no bad debt, bad product, bad customers?”
“Ah man, always those things. But no one’s coming after me. And anyone who’d know about you all would know better to take you on anyway. Did they hurt Mom? She okay?”
Lindy and Toby didn’t speak to each other. Toby didn’t like his mom being a lez, as he said, and Lindy referred to her son mockingly as the drug lord. They occasionally passed messages through Mac, who rolled his eyes at their distaste for each other’s “alternative lifestyles.”
“She’ll be fine. They roughed her up, some. Looking for me.”
“It don’t have nothing to do with me, Mac. I swear to God, it doesn’t.”
Mac believed him. “Okay. How are your girls?”
“Beautiful, more beautiful every day,” Toby said proudly. His wife and his daughters were the joys of his life.
“Give them my love,” Mac said.
“Will do. You take care of my Mom, you hear?” Toby said seriously, and then laughed. “I’d say take care of yourself too, but someone coming after you, they deserve what they get.”
“Right,” Mac said, not mentioning how close they’d come to killing him last night.
Mac stretched experimentally. He needed a workout, get the kinks out of the muscles after last night.
He locked up carefully. Tossing his gym bag in the passenger seat of his car, he drove to the YMCA. He was a regular there. Six nights a week. Weights. Run laps on the track. Tuesday and Thursday nights basketball. He held to a close routine. People left him alone. He’d catch someone eyeing him, but usually a dead stare shooed them away. He didn’t do the chat bit. Focus was key.
He weighed 10 pounds less than when he left the Marines. Not bad for nearly 30. He wanted to drop 2 percentage points of body fat over the next year. Not with gimmicks. Already he’d cut out processed sugars, added a bit more protein to his diet. Now he was experimenting with slower, fewer reps of a slightly higher weight, followed by two sets of lower reps. Shoulders, arms, one night. Legs the next. Abs every night. Sticking to the basics.
He watched others sometimes. They didn’t work at it. They didn’t sweat. And they were the same size, the same poor shape as they were when they came there. Hell, one woman who walked the treadmill three times a week must weigh 300 pounds. She’d been coming in for six months. Mac had the urge every now and then to walk by and crank up her pace, put in a few hills and make her sweat.
He ran laps for an hour. He still did a six-minute mile. He didn’t speak to anyone. No one spoke to him. Tuesday and Thursdays were a bit different — he’d been playing hoops with the same guys for a year. He was one of the old guys. Young guys, 20 or so, thought they could run over him. They soon found out they were wrong. He grinned at the thought, sweat dripping down his face. He liked it when some 20-something tried to jam it down the center only to be stopped by him. It wasn’t height, these young guys had three, four inches on him, it was all about strength of will. Mac knew what it meant when he set himself in that center lane and committed himself to standing up to the faster kids. And he knew they’d fold.
The stress was gone when he went out to his car, drove home. His mind was thinking clearly again. And the thought that kept echoing was, I need to be carrying.
When he got home, Mac pulled a 9mm out of his closet. It didn’t have a serial number on it. He cleaned it. Found bullets for it. He hesitated, then loaded the weapon and tucked it in the bottom of his backpack. He’d feel better having it on him. He could leave it in his rig, didn’t want to set off the metal detectors at the Examiner or the PD. Be a bit hard to explain that. He grinned.
He turned on the television to ESPN. He fixed supper of chicken and broccoli, ate it, then washed the dishes.
“The picture of the girl,” he said aloud. He retrieved it from the washer in the laundry room where he’d set it to dry. He took it in the living room with him, set it on the coffee table. Looked at it. Familiar, but not familiar. He couldn’t put a name to her, couldn’t fill out what the rest of her looked like.
It was frustrating. Mac flipped through the channels, stopping for a moment on MTV to listen to a music video. Had he seen her on television, maybe? Why that ghost of familiarity?
He glanced at the clock, flipped to King 5. He sneered as one reporter stumbled over place names. King 5 didn’t have much on the attempted murder; he checked out the other stations. They had even less.
Content that he had indeed covered the story the best — even if it wasn’t going to be out until the morning — Mac flipped back to ESPN. There was Gary Payton talking trash; periodically he glanced at the picture of the girl. Who was she?