Cole’s cell phone woke him and he looked foggily at his alarm clock as he stretched to answer. The big red numbers read three-thirty. He grabbed the phone off his nightstand and took in a lung full of air before answering. His breath rushed out in a sigh. “Hello.”
“Hey. Are you awake?” It was Michele.
He sat up . “I am now. Five seconds ago the answer would have been no. When I heard the phone and saw my alarm clock, I figured it was someone calling with bad news. Now, I’m hoping you’re calling to say you missed me.”
“Or,” she said laughing, “I might have found something that’s worth looking into.”
“What have you got?”
“Well, I couldn’t sleep. This whole thing is both scary and exciting for me. This is the kind of career-making opportunity that never comes along for most journalists, and I’m at the center of it. Anyway, I got sick of tossing and turning and went to my computer to look for any recent articles on abortion clinics, abortion violence, whatever. I came upon a story that ran the first week of January, written by the editor of a small, twice-weekly newspaper in Prairie du Chien.
“I’m familiar with Prairie. I grew up there. But what about the story piqued your interest?”
“Your hometown? Interesting. The article’s about an old-timer there who won’t leave City Hall. He’s a former mayor who’s waging a hunger strike until the country halts all abortions. The editor believes the guy will see this through to the end…meaning his death. The editor worked at the Journal Sentinel a number of years ago, and I recall some of the veterans speaking highly of him.”
“That does seem odd. When is the last time anyone in the U.S. stopped eating for any cause? It’s more of a Gandhi thing. The way we like our food, it almost seems un-American. And when did Wisconsin become the focal point of a movement to stop abortions? We represent less than two percent of the country’s population, and yet we’ve got two people in our state who are trying to stop them, one with a rifle and the other with his stomach.”
“Actually, we have three people in the state trying to stop abortions, but the last one is more subtle, and he’s in Prairie du Chien, too.”
“What are you talking about?” She had his full attention now. Like most lawmen, he didn’t believe in coincidences. He was also wondering how his hometown played into everything.
Michele answered, “The editor of the paper that ran the story about the mayor’s hunger strike? He runs a counter at the top right of every paper he prints that shows how many babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. It kind of reminds me of how McDonald’s used to show how many burgers they’d sold. It makes me sick.”
“When did the editor start running that counter?”
“The best I can tell, around the first of the year,” Michele said. “I think we should go to Prairie du Chien and interview the guy who’s fasting, and then talk with the newspaper editor. If there’s something that links those two, it could also provide a link to the shooter.”
“Are you after my job?” Cole asked. “Seriously, it’s a great idea. The best anyone has come up with yet. Meet me at Mitchell Field tomorrow morning at seven. Go to the chartered flights area. It’s on Howell. You turn a little before you get to the main terminal. And it won’t take us three hours,” he finished. “More like one. See you in the morning.”
“Cole, you mean this morning, right?”
He looked at his alarm clock again and groaned. “Right. In three hours. See you then.” He ended the call and reset his alarm. He tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t stop thinking about heading ‘home’ after more than twenty years away.