Cole waited for Michele Fields at the Calderone Club, an intimate Italian restaurant a block from the Journal Building. It was one of his favorite eateries. The soft lighting and even softer crooning of Sinatra, Martin, Como and company always relaxed him. The owner broke up the laid back and big band singing by mixing in popular songs from the late 60s and 70s. Cole was okay with that, too, since he’d hear songs his parents used to play when he was growing up. King Harvest’s “Dancing In the Moonlight” was playing now.
The reporter was ten minutes late for their planned seven p.m. meeting and Cole had already finished a Motto Mosaic Pale Ale from the nearby Good City Brewing. It was fresh and delicious and maybe went down a little too quickly. Now he took his time with a glass of Kunde Estate Merlot. He swirled it, watching as the blood-red liquid repeatedly slid up the side of the clear bowl and then fell back onto itself, revealing its provocative legs. This was a ritual he did every time he drank a nice glass of red wine. In part it helped aerate the wine, bringing out the full fruit and oak hues of the quality Napa and Sonoma vintages he preferred. Maybe, he also thought, it was a simple nervous tic.
He stood up a minute or two later when Michele made her appearance. He knew nothing about the reporter when he asked for this meeting, other than the killer had reached out to her.
“Hi, Mrs. Fields. Thank you for coming. May I order you a drink?” He didn’t have to be a special agent or a detective to figure out she was incredibly attractive. The way she moved as she made her way to his table told him she was self-assured, but there was also an almost indescribable hesitancy in her step. Maybe that was understandable given the events of the past two days.
“Yes, please,” she said, smiling as she sat down. “I’ll take a glass of sauvignon blanc. And please drop the Mrs. Fields. I’m not married and that moniker makes me feel like I should be whipping up a batch of cookies or something. Call me Michele. And one more thing, we need to split the bill. My paper won’t pay for your meal, and it also prohibits me from accepting anything of value from anyone who might try to influence a story. That includes you.”
“Fair enough,” Cole said. After signaling their waiter and placing the reporter’s wine order, he introduced himself as the FBI’s Special Agent In Charge of the Milwaukee Field Office and told her he was working on solving Dr. Smith’s murder. “Since the killer emailed you in response to your article, Ms. Fields, ah, Michele…” he corrected, “I think it’s important that you and I maintain an open line of communication.
“I doubt today’s story will be the last you write about the murder. I can feed you information, things that won’t compromise our investigation. And you feed me any information you discover that could help us catch the killer. Also, our guys have already put a trace on your computer, so we can tell in near real-time where the killer’s e-mails and phone calls originate from should he reach out to you again. If there’s another killing or attempt, I have a warrant signed by a federal judge that lets me sit in front of your computer screen and read any message that comes in.”
She leaned forward. She had on a simple navy blue pants suit with an ivory silk shirt that opened loosely at her throat. The flickering candlelight danced across her face and slender neck and Cole felt mesmerized. He had tried his best to come across as direct, impersonal, and maybe a bit intimidating. Now, he squirmed a little, uncertain he’d had the effect he’d sought.
“So,” she said, straightening in her seat again, “you feed me. I feed you. And you read my emails and listen in on my calls. I’m not sure I like where our little relationship is headed,” she said, taking the glass of white wine the waiter delivered and downing a third of it in one gulp. “Plus, there is that key verb that’s part of any strong working relationship. It starts with a “T” and it stands for Trust. How do I trust that you will share information with me before you feed the pack of reporters that will surely be nipping at your heels, no, at your throat, throughout this mess?”
Cole leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “I thought all good journalists were incredibly observant. Can’t you look at me and tell I’m one of the good guys…that my word is my bond?” He tried to hide his smirk by taking a sip of the merlot.
“Yes, reporters are usually good diviners of truth. However, in your case, I’m dealing with the FBI. You guys are all about entrapment, disguise, and intrigue. I’m not sure you’ll be straight with me.” She said the last with no hint of humor.
“That disguise and intrigue stuff is more CIA than FBI. Beyond that, I don’t know what else to say other than I’ll share everything I can that won’t compromise the investigation. Some of what I share you can attribute, and some will be off the record, that you can use as background. You’ll have an incredible advantage over any other reporter covering this story.”
“Even the hot Fox Newsgirls and the other TV starlets?” She smirked at him this time.
Cole paused, wondering if she knew about his ex-wife, before providing yet another awkward answer, “Ah, whomever. Yes.”
The waiter came back to the table and took their orders. Cole asked for a starter of fried calamari followed by a t-bone steak smothered in mushrooms. Michele ordered zucchini sticks and chicken marsala.
“What do you know,” Cole said. “Mushrooms are part of both our dinners. I think we’ve got some common ground to work from here.”
“We’re in an Italian restaurant,” she said. “We’ve probably also got garlic as another common element. You could take that to mean mushrooms and garlic are the cornerstone of a wonderful new working relationship or realize instead that unless you stuck with the beer, wine, and maybe the Italian ice for dessert, that any two meals we ordered here would have those two things in common. But, nice effort on your part to create that trust thing. You’d do a better job of that by telling me what you’ve learned so far.”
“Not a lot that will lead to anything quickly,” Cole answered, shrugging his shoulders. “We found a rifle with a scope on top of the building that sits across the alley behind the clinic. We believe it’s the weapon used to kill Dr. Smith. We also found a shell casing on the ground and a bullet in the chamber. The safety was in the off position and the gun would’ve fired again with a pull of the trigger. We’re checking the gun and ammo for prints, but I don’t hold out much hope. The serial number was visible and the gun was traced to a guy in Missouri. It looks like the guy is innocent though. The rifle was bought at a Waukesha gun show with what we believe to be a fake ID.
“We also found a small metal crucifix at the site. We think it was left by the killer, but there’s no way we can be sure of that right now. Although that would be a heck of a coincidence if it wasn’t. We also found deer blood at the scene.”
“You know, I had all that. Everything but the deer blood,” Michele admitted.
“Yes…well… We’d like to keep all of that…the rifle, the deer blood, and the crucifix, out of the media for the time being. I hope you agree that while it could add spice to your next story, it could be important in catching this guy. When we eventually corner the killer it could help us trip him up during an interrogation. He could let it slip and he’d have no way of explaining to us or a jury how he knew about any of those things without being the killer himself.
“That’s about it though. We don’t have much else to go on at this point,” Cole concluded.
“Well, to start with, he has to be crazy, right? I mean, you don’t just shoot another human being. This was done in broad daylight to a doctor who was serving the women of Milwaukee and other parts of the state as well.” She cocked her head a bit, looking for encouragement or even assent.
“Yeah, I guess,” Cole said, squeezing lemon juice over his calamari and then salting it. He dipped a morsel of the calamari with little tentacles into the marinara sauce provided. “Can we go off the record for a moment?”
“Sure.”
“He probably is crazy. But he could also be sane and a very courageous person, at least in his own mind. You view the victim as ‘a servant of women,’ but maybe our shooter thinks killing two thousand unborn babies a year, half or more of whom would have someday grown up to be women if given the chance, is very different than being a godsend to women.”
It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Cole thought the reporter’s face flushed with emotion. She leaned back stiffly and her voice rose. “In your opinion then, this was a justifiable homicide, I suppose?”
“No. That’s not my opinion. I’m saying that’s how I think the shooter sees it. Given his email to you, it’s probably even stronger than that. Today, abortion on demand, with few constraints, is protected by the law of the land, which includes me. But it wasn’t that way until Roe v. Wade, and those laws could shift again in the future given the whims of our fellow citizens…that and a new Supreme Court Justice or two.”
Michele was trying to hold her anger in check, but Cole saw a tremor ripple through her cheeks and he thought her wine glass might shatter, she gripped the bowl so tightly.
Cole took advantage of Michele’s emotionally delayed response. “Did you know Jane Roe, Norma Leah McCorvey in real life, actually did a one-eighty and condemned abortion twenty-two years after winning her case? She called it wrong, murder, and said that U.S. women ‘have literally been handed the right to slaughter their own children.’ It took courage for her to do that.”
Michele slammed her fist on the table, causing silverware to jump with a clatter. Other patrons turned to look. “Dr. Smith was the one with courage! He was the one who stood against the pro-life nut jobs. The killer is a coward. He shot Dr. Smith from a distance when he was unarmed by the way. And then he slunk off like a diseased rat. Every day the Dr. Smiths of the world drive and walk past the protesters, who yell vile obscenities at them and portray them as murderers…all so they can provide important health services to women who wouldn’t otherwise have access to those services.”
Cole followed a square of the medium-rare t-bone with two calamari circles. He hoped he wouldn’t get indigestion, but he never did know when to back off a good argument. “Did you know that Dr. Smith also pretty much had to leave the practice of obstetrics?” he said. “His malpractice rate was the highest in the city and he turned to abortion full time as a career move. It turned out to be lucrative for him. We’ve been going over his books and Smith ran that clinic like a machine. He worked four days a week and averaged twelve abortions a day. He only worked forty-two weeks a year, taking an average of ten weeks of vacation, but he still managed roughly two thousand abortions annually. And his average charge per abortion was fifteen hundred dollars. If you go on his clinic’s website you’ll see that he takes American Express, Visa, Mastercard, even the Discover Card. You could buy your washing machine with your card in the morning and have your baby aborted with it in the afternoon, probably earn double points toward travel and prizes in the process. He didn’t take personal checks, however. Dr. Smith was pulling in three million a year gross and, from what we can tell already, he couldn’t have had more than nine hundred thousand in expenses at the clinic. So, Dr. Smith was clearing two point one million a year or better, pre-tax, by killing babies. That’s professional baseball money. Maybe not Christian Yelich coin, but it beats the Major League Baseball minimum, which right now is about four hundred thousand a year. Those facts will likely never make their way into your paper I suspect.
“I don’t think Smith was motivated by altruism or working for the common good,” Cole concluded, reaching for a breadstick and snapping it in two. “He went into a business where he not only didn’t get sued when a baby died on him, but they paid him handsomely to kill them. His was blood money, and he died a very rich man.”
Michele stopped eating and looked hard into Cole’s eyes again. “I can’t believe what you’re spewing here. How in the world can you do your best to put this criminal behind bars when you sympathize with him?” Her voice rose in both pitch and decibel level. “How can you stop him, take his life if necessary, when he’s a hero to you?”
“He’s no hero to me, but neither was Dr. Smith. I’ll do my best to track down the killer the same way you’ll write stories that tell both sides of those stories, I presume, even when the only side you’re on is the pro-abortion, excuse me, the pro-choice side.” He had an FBI tab with the proprietor and signed the chit the waiter proffered. He stood to leave, then, and held her gaze. “I’ll do my best to get the killer, and you’ll do your best to write balanced stories for the same reason…because those are our jobs. It’s what we do.” He turned and weaved through the tables and left the restaurant.
Michele sat at the table reflecting a few moments, swirling the last of the sauvignon blanc in her glass, when she realized Cole had paid for the meal. “Well, shit,” she said to herself. Frank Sinatra was singing “I did it my way” faintly in the background as she drained the glass and got up to leave.