Chapter 4

C. J.

C. J. furiously flipped through her reporter’s notebook in search of a blank page before resting it on the steering wheel of her Honda Civic. She ripped off the lid to her ballpoint pen with her teeth and held her cell phone in the crook of her shoulder.

“Hello, Mr. Mayhew! Thank you for calling me back,” she said, trying her best to keep the giddiness out of her voice but not succeeding.

She had been just about to climb out of her car and head into the offices of the Chesterton Times, where she had worked for the past two and half years, when she saw Philip Mayhew’s number on her phone screen. He was a source she had been hounding for weeks, trying to get an interview with him. The owner of several local restaurants—one of which was located in Chesterton—had been accused of improperly paying his employees or not paying them at all. Mayhew had threatened those same employees with deportation if they complained to the authorities. One of the waitresses at his restaurant had come to C. J. last month with the accusations, looking terrified and taking frequent, hesitant glances over her shoulder the whole time she spoke with C. J. at a small coffee shop outside of town.

“Thank you for coming to me with this,” C. J. had told her, trying her best to calm the woman’s worries. “You’re very brave.”

“No, you are the one who is brave. I read your . . . your stories,” the woman had said quietly in her heavy accent, gazing timidly at C. J. “I see how you stand up for poor people.”

Of course, the woman was referring to the stories that C. J. had written about the corruption at Murdoch Bank and how the bank had conspired to foreclose and push out homeowners from one of the oldest neighborhoods in Chesterton to make way for a tacky new shopping center.

C. J. had worked hard on those stories for more than a year, seeing them as not only a way to bring attention to the plight of hardworking people who deserved better, but also to stick it to the late George Murdoch, whose shadiness was legendary. She despised men like him, who used their money and power to lord it over others, who reminded her much of her own domineering, manipulative father.

But despite C. J.’s best efforts, the stories hadn’t accomplished much besides winning a few investigative journalism awards from the Virginia Society of Professional Journalists. The homes had been foreclosed on and the four blocks of houses were scheduled to be bulldozed by the end of the next year to make way for the new mall. Murdoch Bank was still in existence and the last she had checked, the share price of its parent company, Murdoch Conglomerated, was the highest it had ever been. The company had expanded even further under the leadership of George’s eldest son, Evan Murdoch.

C. J. was an optimist, but she wasn’t deluded; she knew you couldn’t always win. Sometimes the little guy got the short end of the stick no matter how hard you tried. But that didn’t mean she would stop trying. It didn’t mean she couldn’t make sure scum like Philip Mayhew was held accountable for what he did.

“Yeah, I called you back,” Mayhew now answered bitingly. His voice was so brittle that she could have mentally snapped it in half. “I heard you were going to write some bullshit story about me in your little newspaper. I wanted to tell you I was going to sue your ass for defamation if you printed that goddamn story.”

“Libel,” she corrected, leaning back in the driver’s seat and taking her pen top out of her mouth, unfazed by his threat.

“Huh?” he barked.

“I said you’d have to sue me for libel, Mr. Mayhew, because I’m a reporter. You couldn’t sue me for defamation. But know that the requirements for proving libel in the United States are tough. You’d have to prove intent to destroy your character and—”

“What are you . . . a fuckin’ law expert?” he snapped.

“You’d also have to prove that I lied,” she continued, undaunted, self-righteous indignation spurring her on, “and we both know that I am most definitely not lying. You haven’t been paying your staff the same amount that you’ve been reporting to the government, Mr. Mayhew. That is not only unethical, but also a federal crime.”

“Look, lady, I don’t have to—”

“I have pay stubs and money orders proving this. I also have statements from several of your employees.”

“Oh yeah? Well, whoever talked to you is fucking fired! I’ll make sure they’ll be on the next boat to Honduras!”

C. J. rolled her eyes. According to her sources, this was a threat Mayhew made often.

“I wouldn’t advise that, sir. If you fire them, I’ll just print a story saying how they were penalized for telling the truth. You’ll look like the biggest bully in the county and it would make operating several businesses in this area very challenging.”

At those words, Mayhew finally fell silent.

“Look, I believe in balanced reporting. I’m offering you the courtesy of responding to these allegations. I’d like a quote from you, Mr. Mayhew. Here’s your chance to defend yourself.”

“You want a quote from me, bitch?” he yelled over the phone, making her pull it away from her ear. “You really want a quote? How about this? Fuck you and suck my dick!”

He then hung up.

C. J. sighed and dropped her cell phone back into her satchel. She shrugged. In her early days as a cub reporter, such words would have left her devastated and badly shaken. But after five years of working everything from the crime beat to city council, she had developed a thick skin.

“ ‘When reached, Mayhew had no comment,’ ” she muttered as she scribbled it on her notepad. She then threw open her car door.

Less than a minute later, C. J. strode into the Chesterton Times newsroom on the second floor of a two-story walk-up on Main Street. It was an unassuming office with wall paneling and old carpet that was so stained that its checkered-pattern was no longer identifiable. A lone window kept the room’s inhabitants from feeling like they were stuck in a musky basement. All of the five reporters’ desks were in a bull-pen arrangement. C. J. beelined straight for her desk, where her laptop already sat open, waiting for her to file her next story.

“The African queen has arrived, everybody!” Sports reporter Eddie exclaimed, throwing up his arms. “All hail the queen!”

C. J. bestowed him with a withering glare and gave him the finger as she passed. He and a few of the other reporters burst into laughter.

She knew she had a reputation in the newsroom for being snobbish and unapproachable. Maybe it was a product of her reserved upbringing, or maybe it was because she was the only female and black person on staff, but she had never bonded with the other reporters, though she had been at the newspaper for two years. Whenever they went out for drinks after hours, she declined their invitation to join them. Whenever they grabbed a quick bite to eat or took a doughnut break at Mimi’s Café up the street, C. J. begged off and said she had already eaten or had to get to her next assignment and didn’t have time for lunch. After a while, the other reporters stopped inviting her. Now they were content just to ridicule her and make flippant remarks—hence the nickname “African queen.”

“Still saving the world and protecting it from evildoers?” Eddie asked sarcastically, leaning back in his rollaway chair. He sucked through the straw of his Big Gulp, emitting a loud, annoying sound that made C. J.’s skin crawl.

“Don’t you have some Little League game to report on?” she replied, dropping her satchel onto her desk. “Or isn’t there a mascot somewhere you can interview?”

Eddie laughed again, though this time there was no levity in his voice. “Well, not all of us want to pretend that we’re working at the friggin’ New York Times, sweetheart. And last time I checked, this ain’t the Wall Street Journal! You’re at a Podunk, small-town paper just like the rest of us, even if you like to pretend that you aren’t. So you can just climb off that high horse of yours!”

“Oh, believe me, I know where I am,” she muttered before lowering herself into her chair.

When C. J. had graduated from Spellman, she had had dreams of working at The New York Times or maybe being a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press or Reuters. Her family name and connections certainly would have helped her get one of those positions. But she hadn’t used the Aston family name. She didn’t want to be beholden to her parents for yet another thing in her life. She didn’t want her father to have something else to hold over her head. Besides, he never would have helped her anyway, not with how she had “betrayed” him. So instead she applied for jobs at smaller newspapers, abbreviating her name on her résumé from the more identifiable “Courtney Jocelyn Aston” that gave away her identity, to the less conspicuous “C. J. Aston.” She took her first reporter job across the country at a local paper in Southern California and never looked back. Not only did she not owe her success as a reporter to her family, she hadn’t spoken to any of them in years.

“Cut it out, Eddie,” their managing editor, Jake, ordered. He stepped out of his office and into the newsroom. “At least let her boot up her laptop first before you start ribbing her.”

C. J. turned to find Jake standing over her shoulder. The squat man had his glasses perched on his bald head and one of his hands in the pocket of his gray slacks.

Jake dressed and looked like an insurance salesman or a high school principal, but there was nothing mundane about him. If C. J. was tenacious about covering the news, Jake was just as tenacious in running his newsroom.

“I’ve got a story for you, C. J.” He tossed a sheet of paper onto her desk and she slowly picked it up. “There’s a rumor going around that Terrence Murdoch got drunk and plowed into some poor old lady’s car in D.C. He’s at Medstar Medical Center recovering. I need you to talk to Metro Police and get a statement from ol’ Terry.”

C. J. frowned as she stared down at the paper where Jake had scribbled a few basic details.

In the process of covering Murdoch Bank, C. J. had learned a lot about the Murdoch family, or the “Marvelous Murdochs,” as they were called around Chesterton. She certainly had heard a lot about hazel-eyed, pretty boy Terrence Murdoch, who made most women in Chesterton swoon.

C. J. had caught a glimpse of him a few times while he was sitting behind the wheel of his silver Porsche, or as she liked to call it, his “big dick on wheels.” She had even run into him once. Well, actually he had run into her, almost hitting her with a door he was holding open for a model-looking type in a short skirt whom he was squiring around town.

“How serious was the accident?” she asked, staring at the sheet of paper.

“Don’t know,” Jake answered before turning around and heading back toward his office. “Guess you’d better get to the hospital and find out.”

 

C. J. pretended not to be one of the small throng of reporters waiting in front of the hospital’s automatic doors with cameras and notepads at the ready, hoping to get an interview with Terrence Murdoch or his family. With the same ease, she strode to the nurses’ station, already working out the lie in her head that she’d have to tell in order to get past the desk, down the hall, and into Terrence’s hospital room. She wasn’t family, neither was she Terrence’s friend. This would be quite a challenge, but for now at least, she was up to it.

She had made a few calls and gotten a few more details about the accident from Metro Police. Terrence had been in the car accident at around 2:15 a.m. at a four-way intersection in Northwest D.C. No one knew for sure who was at fault. The other driver—a sixty-five-year-old woman who had been on the way to pick up her granddaughter—said she couldn’t remember whether she saw Terrence waiting at the stop sign prior to driving through the intersection. But two eyewitnesses said that Terrence had definitely come to a full stop, then drove on before the other driver plowed into him. Of course, these eyewitnesses had been drunk so their credibility was in question. Terrence also had done plenty of drinking earlier that night while he partied at a local strip club. Now both drivers were waylaid in the hospital with injuries.

According to one cop, “We’re still going over accident reconstruction, but off the record, I think that rich boy is at fault.”

If that was the case, Terrence might get sued or worse, face criminal charges for what had happened that morning. C. J. had already updated Jake on her findings. He was holding the slot open on the front page for this baby.

“Hello,” C. J. said as she stopped in front of the nurses’ station, trying her best to look distraught, “can you please tell me where Terrence Murdoch’s room is?”

The nurse, who had shoulders wider than a linebacker’s, leaned back and squinted up at C. J. “Are you related to Mr. Murdoch? Only relatives are allowed to visit patients in this wing.”

“I’m his . . . his fiancée,” C. J. whispered before lowering her head demurely.

She also broke the nurse’s gaze because she couldn’t continue to lie and look at her at the same time. She might have developed a thick skin after years of reporting, but she was still a horrible liar.

“I’m not a blood relative, but I might as well be one, right?” C. J. said with a nervous laugh. “I heard about the accident and I just want to see him. To . . . to make sure he’s okay.”

The nurse hesitated, then slowly nodded. “Well, I guess you can see him.” She held up two fingers, showing C. J. the “peace” sign. “But only two people are allowed in the room at a time. His brother and sister are already in there. When they leave, you can—”

“They’re already there?” C. J.’s head snapped up. Her eyes widened with alarm.

Her reaction made the nurse narrow her eyes further at C. J. “Yes,” she said slowly, “they’re in the room with him now. When they leave, you can see him.”

“Oh, uh. Okay. I . . . I have no problem waiting.”

She didn’t want to run into Evan Murdoch. If she did, her whole plan, along with her cover, would be blown. He had seen her before when she tried to interview him a few times for her stories on Murdoch Bank. She had tracked him down a year ago while he was having a business lunch in town and he had not been happy to be interrupted by her.

“The next time you ambush me like this, my lawyer will be contacting your paper and I’ll have a restraining order filed against you. Understood?” Evan had said tersely, before storming off.

Evan did not like her, and if he found her standing here in the hospital, he’d like her even less.

“I’ll just go grab something to eat . . . you know . . . in the cafeteria . . . downstairs,” C. J. said hastily to the nurse. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“But here they come right now,” the nurse called out just as C. J. turned away from the desk.

“What the hell are you doing here?” a baritone voice boomed, making C. J. wince.

Damn, she thought. I was so close!

She loudly swallowed and turned to find Evan Murdoch glaring at her.

The last time she had seen him, he had looked the part of a company CEO in a pin-striped business suit, sensible blue tie, and crisp white shirt. The other reporters thought C. J. was stuck up, but Evan Murdoch had her beat. He gave off an air of superiority that only came with growing up rich and knowing that you would always be rich.

But he didn’t look like that today. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and wrinkled jeans. He was even sporting a five o’clock shadow. Bags were under his eyes. If she had seen him in a crowd, she might not have recognized him.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated tightly.

A woman stood at his side, looking confused. C. J. instantly recognized her as Paulette Williams, Evan and Terrence’s little sister.

“I . . . I was . . . I was here to . . . uh . . .” C. J. struggled to make up a lie. To say that she was also visiting a patient in the recovery ward, but she wasn’t fast enough.

“You were here to see my brother, weren’t you?” Evan said, taking a step toward her and making her take a step back. “Are you writing a goddamn story about this?”

Lie, C. J.! Tell him anything! a voice yelled frantically in her head, but she was tongue-tied. She could be bold when she knew she was doing the right thing, but that resolve always faltered when she felt like she was doing something wrong.

The guilt trips her father had exerted on her for more than two decades had worked wonders.

“I . . . I wanted to hear Mr. Murdoch’s side of the story,” she said. She forced herself to stop trembling, pushed back her shoulders, and met Evan’s gaze. “I wanted to give him a chance to defend himself. I believe in balanced—”

“He could have died!” Evan shouted, taking another step toward her. This time his sister grabbed his arm, tugging him back. “He could have fucking died, you heartless bitch!”

At the sound of his shouts, a few people stepped out of the nearby waiting room. One was a pretty woman in a turtleneck and yoga pants. She quickly stepped forward and rested a hand on Evan’s shoulder.

“Ev, what’s wrong?”

“Sir,” the nurse said quietly, “this is a hospital. You’re going to have to keep the noise down.”

“She’s here to write a goddamn story about my brother!” Evan said to anyone who would listen, jabbing an index finger at C. J. “He’s hooked up to a fucking respirator and she wants to get a quote from him! Are you kidding me?”

C. J. quickly shook her head. “I-I didn’t know.”

No one had told her the extent of Terrence’s injuries. She had tried to get that information, but the police hadn’t even known.

Now as she gazed at his family and she could see how much they were grieving, she knew she had made a mistake coming here.

“Look, I’m . . . I’m sorry.” Her knuckles went white as she tightened her death grip around the straps of her satchel. “I—”

“You’re sorry?” Evan repeated, still glaring at her. He tried to tug his arm out of his sister’s grasp, but she only held on tighter. “You’re fucking sorry?”

“Evan, calm down,” the other woman beside him said. In contrast, his sister continued to stand mutely at his side, looking befuddled and overwhelmed.

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave if you continue to yell like this,” the nurse ordered.

“I’m not leaving! He’s my brother! Make this fucking parasite leave! She shouldn’t be here, anyway. You just let reporters walk into patients’ rooms? What kind of goddamn hospital is this? Where the hell is security?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but this young woman told me she was his fiancée,” the nurse argued. “I wouldn’t have—”

“Well, she fucking lied!”

C. J. stood frozen, like a deer caught in headlights. She wanted to escape, but she felt paralyzed. The woman at Evan’s side suddenly wrapped an arm around C. J.’s shoulder and steered her back toward the elevator, catching C. J. by surprise.

“Let’s go,” the woman whispered into C. J.’s ear, walking swiftly down the corridor and dragging C. J. along with her. “You need to get out of here before he kills you.”

The woman was being hyperbolic, right? C. J. gave a wary glance over her shoulder at Evan Murdoch, who was still railing.

“Ev’s not normally like this,” the woman said, stopping in front of the elevator doors. She pressed the Down button, not giving C. J. a chance to tell her where she wanted to go. “Terry’s accident really scared him. He’s more than just a little distraught.”

“I’m sorry,” C. J. whispered again.

“It’s okay,” the woman replied as the elevator doors opened. “You just came at a very bad time.”

C. J. stepped onto the metal elevator and turned to the woman. “Thank you, Miss—”

“Hawkins,” the woman said. “Leila Hawkins. But everyone calls me Lee.”

Leila Hawkins. She recognized her now. Evan’s mistress, according to the town gossip.

The elevator doors shut and C. J. collapsed against the metal walls.