It was nearly 7 P.M., and even the hardest working members of the administrative staff were leaving. If Heidi was going to make her request tonight, she needed to do it soon.
She rode the elevator to the fourth floor, silently rehearsing her speech for Lon Hubbard. She found him at his desk, busy as always. As far as Heidi could tell, Lon was the single most valuable employee at the paper. His title was something like Facilities Manager, but he essentially ran the nuts and bolts of the operation. He figured out how to house all the bodies required to keep the paper afloat in this tiny building. He made sure your phone extension followed you when you transferred departments. He could get you one of those cool keyboard pads that were supposed to prevent carpel tunnel syndrome. And he was the one who had opened Percy’s office for Heidi when she’d met with the District Attorney and the detective.
“Hey there, Lon. You working late?”
“Yeah, looks like it,” he said, shaking his head. “I keep saying I’m going to start leaving here right at five o’clock, six at the latest. But it seems like there’s always something.”
“Like I say, ‘All roads lead to Lon.’”
He smiled. Heidi had come up with that her third week at the paper. Every time she had one of those new-employee questions—where do I find pencils; can I get a key to the back entrance, how do I change my e-mail password?—she’d start somewhere sensible on the long list of phone extensions. Eventually, and inevitably, someone would tell her, “Oh, that’s Lon Hubbard.” Ever since, she’d been telling Lon that all roads led to him, and he absolutely loved hearing it.
“What are you working on tonight?” he asked.
“Same old boring stuff. Tom’s got me fact-checking a background piece Dan Manning wrote about one of the lawyers reportedly on the president’s short list for a vacant judicial spot. Given what Dan turned up, I think Tom wants to make sure we don’t get sued. Dan gets the byline; I get to spend the night poring over old law-review articles.”
“Makes my life sound fun.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I was taking a break from it, and I realized that Percy’s family would probably like to have his personal belongings from his office. Since they live in California, I thought I’d offer to pack them up if it hasn’t been done yet.”
Heidi had expected Lon to allow her to be helpful, but she did not expect his elated response. “You, my dear, are a gift from the heavens. A friend of Percy’s called earlier asking about that. I guess the parents are up here for the week. Anyway, she thought it would be a little too much for them to pack up the stuff themselves, so I told her I’d do it and call her when it was ready. But if you’re willing to take care of it, that’s one less thing on my list.”
Lon handed Heidi a scrap of paper with the name Selma Gooding and a phone number written on it. “No problem,” Heidi chirped. “Just give me a key to his office, and I’ll bring it right back up with the boxes when I’m done.”
As she turned the key in the lock, she felt a little guilty. Inside Percy’s office, with the door closed, she picked up the photograph with his mother that Percy kept on his desk. Looking at his broad smile, she wondered whether he had any way of knowing now what she was doing. Probably not, she thought, but in her shoes, he would have done the same exact thing, she was sure of it.
Heidi went directly to the file drawer of Percy’s desk and retrieved the cell phone records and business expense reports that the police had photocopied and she had refiled. After checking the hallway to make sure it was clear, she made copies for herself.
Then she spent the next two hours gingerly organizing and wrapping Percy’s belongings, filling each cardboard box with the respectful care of a mortician preparing a coffin for burial.
Back at her apartment, Heidi eyed the business expense reports first. Percy had attended a conference of black journalists in Atlanta four months earlier. He also kept track of his mileage for monthly reimbursement requests, but the paper still used the honor system for these and did not require reporters to itemize each trip and the locations visited.
The cell phone records were slightly more promising. The vast majority of his calls were incoming. Heidi thought about the pattern and decided it made sense. She had seen Percy in his office, dialing potential sources doggedly. He’d use his desk phone to make the calls but invariably give his cell phone number in the messages he left. Unfortunately, the bills did not reflect originating telephone numbers for incoming calls.
They did, however, contain a list of all of the telephone numbers Percy had dialed in the last several months of his life. Two of them she recognized right off the bat: the paper’s voice-mail system and a pizza place on Northwest 23rd that she herself called at least weekly. The rest would take some work.
She connected to the Internet on her I-Mac and searched for a reverse phone directory. For the first seven numbers she entered, she got only one hit, and that was for the deli next door to the newspaper. Just as she feared, these directories were no better than they were four years ago when an ex-boyfriend from college had begun crank-calling her obsessively. Unavailable new and unlisted numbers, cell phones, and direct business extensions made for unproductive amateur sleuthing.
There was another way to do this, of course. Heidi grabbed her phone book, confirmed that *67 would block anyone she called from identifying her number, and started dialing.
On the first call, she got a machine. Hello. You have reached the home of Larry and Patricia Crenshaw. We’re not home right now, but— Percy’s parents had been the last number dialed on his phone. She hoped he got through.
She tried another number and got another recording, the service desk of a Mercedes dealership. Percy and his car.
She dialed again. Berlucci’s. Pickup or delivery?
“Sorry, wrong number.”
Heidi reconsidered her plan. Paging through the last three months of Percy’s bills, she compiled a list of all of the numbers dialed, keeping tally marks next to those that were repeats.
She picked up the phone again and entered the number he called most often. Tex-Mex Express. Pickup or delivery?
This time, she just hung up. Did Percy ever eat at home?
She tried the next most frequent number and heard a familiar Doo-doo-doo. The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Dammit!
She moved down the list to the next one.
“Northeast Precinct. Is this an emergency?”
“Um, no. No emergency. I think I dialed wrong.”
She hung up quickly. Northeast Precinct. Or, as Percy had abbreviated it, NEP.