Unpunished Page 12

  “Who’s Alex?”

  “My brother.”

  Correa reached over and brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. “You’re smiling. You two are close?”

  “Yeah, very. Our parents passed away—car accident—a few years ago, so it’s just the two of us. The two of us and his wife and two kids, who get dragged all over the country with his cover band.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Older.”

  “Ah,” he said, continuing to work on his fries. “There’s nothing like older brothers to keep you humble. When I told mine I wanted to be a reporter, he beat me up. He said that way I had something to report on. So I reported to mom and dad and he beat me up again. Oh, don’t look like that—he didn’t hurt me. Just kid stuff. Thus I had been taught everything I needed to know about journalism. You lose your job if you tell the truth, and lose your soul if you don’t.”

  “And now here I am, having come full circle. News as an entity, has gone back to being the utterly biased, paid-forby-sponsor pack of screed it started out as in the seventeen hundreds because it can’t turn a profit any other way. And without that profit, no one can afford to create enough new content to fill an entire newspaper. Or an entire twenty-four-hour-a-day news channel—that’s why I say not just newspapers, but news itself, has changed. For instance, a lot of the people you see on broadcast news are not reporters. They will show a video segment that looks exactly like a regular old news broadcast, with some pretty person with a perky smile standing on a sidewalk with a microphone telling you about something that happened. She ends with, ‘This is Miss Perfect Teeth in Washington, DC.’ But Miss Perfect Teeth never tells the viewing audience who she works for. You assume she works for the network, but she actually works for a PR firm or a lobbyist or a candidate. These segments—they’re called video news releases—look just as good and sometimes better than the real thing. The TV channel has twenty-four hours to fill up, this is available, and it’s free. Newspapers get the same thing in printed press releases. The editors got to get the paper into the rollers, and the release is there, and it’s free. So they give it to the copy editor. Why the hell not?”

  “But it’s not news.”

  “No, indeed. What is news anymore? We have a whole generation of people who don’t remember that broadcast news used to mean someone came on and told you what happened. It wasn’t four people sitting around bickering like kids on a playground about their opinion of what happened. Then they bring on ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ who get a few minutes to push whatever agenda they’re plugging that week. They look good, sound professional, and play into the political leanings of the target audience. But when they’re done all the audience has gotten is a slightly classier version of The Jerry Springer Show, which apparently keeps them entertained enough that they don’t complain. But what they don’t get is useful information.”

  Roger Correa might be permanently nailed to a soapbox, but Maggie still found this information both fascinating and convincing. Not to mention convincingly scary. “That’s awful.”

  “It is. Everyone keeps saying that it will all sort out and we’ll settle into some balanced system of digital and print media paid for with advertising, except that’s not panning out because too much of the Internet is free. Even hugely popular sites like the Drudge Report or HuffPost largely repeat content they get elsewhere and barely break even money-wise. Or maybe some system of public funding like PBS, libraries, and schools, which is not as much of a conflict of interests as it first appears. Something. Anything. But I’ve been watching and waiting for this ‘settling’ to occur and as of yet, it ain’t happening.” He rested one temple on the seat back, gazing at her with flashing but discouraged eyes. “So before the Herald disappears entirely, tell me your best story, forensic scientist. I’m a reporter. I love stories.”

  “I’d have to think on that a while. Most crimes are pretty mundane.”

  “Okay. Wildest thing you’ve ever seen, then?”

  Still she hemmed. “It’s pretty gross.”

  “Come on! I’ve seen some things, too, you know. Tell me.”

  “Bugs crawling around under the skin.”

  He froze, a piece of fried potato halfway to his lips.

  “I see insect activity on the skin all the time, of course, but these were quite large, third larval stage probably and moving under the skin, and—”

  He dropped the rest of his fries in his paper bag and crumpled it up.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You asked. Speaking of my mad forensic skills, what am I going to be photographing?”

  He cleared his throat, pushing the image of squirming Diptera away. “The CEO of New Horizons, a guy named Barkley. Justin Barkley. He’s going to be exiting his office any minute now because he has a dinner date with the esteemed councilman from district number twelve.”

  “And that’s . . . bad news? Good news?”

  “Well, that all depends on how much money changes hands, doesn’t it?”

  “I thought reporters kept their scoops secret,” Maggie said.

  Correa gave a dry chuckle. “From whom? There’s no rival paper left to compete against. Broadcast doesn’t care what I do because a city manager advisory council meeting doesn’t make for sexy TV, and the digital side just wants an update on filming the latest Avengers movie in Public Square.”

  Maggie sat up as a man appeared in the glass doors. He stepped out, letting the door swing shut behind him, and walked to a white Lexus. She snapped photos as best she could in the low light as he drove away.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “That’s what we waited two hours for?”

  Roger opened his door and swung out into the damp night. “Yes and no. Come on.”

  Chapter 21

  Jack and his partner visited most of Shania Paulson’s usual places to be, but the woman stubbornly refused to materialize. Now he drove to the last one as Riley used his cell phone to argue with two different cell phone carriers. He and Jack were betting on one of three possibilities. One, Shania had murdered her cousin after a falling-out over their investment scheme and then for some reason decided to gut him like a fish and go on the run. This would hardly be outside the realm of their experiences. Family members had been gutting one another on a regular basis since the beginning of time. This would be a tidy solution for the cops, though not so tidy for either Shania or her cousin, and would do nothing to explain the death of Robert Davis.

  Two, someone else had killed Jerry Wilton, either with or without Shania’s help, and had subsequently killed her. This would create added complications and work for the cops, and wouldn’t do much for Shania, either.

  Three, someone else killed Jerry Wilton and Shania knew or suspected who that someone else might be, and had made herself scarce before that someone could take her out as well. This scenario created complications for all three parties: the killer; the cops who had to track Shania down; and the girl herself, who had to stay alive.

  Jack rubbed one temple. He hated this stage of detective work, running down leads that went every which way without knowing what might be a complete waste of your time, while evidence sat elsewhere, being destroyed before you could get to it. Maybe that’s why he liked his personal way of doing things—waiting until other agencies had compiled a long list of the person’s offenses, double-checking a few things himself, and then inviting the target in for a quiet chat, followed by three bullets to the brain. Over and done, with a minimum of fuss.

  Maybe he was just lazy.

  Riley hung up. “Have I told you lately how much I hate Sprint?”

  “Not for at least ten minutes or so.”

  “They can’t get us Davis’s call history or text messages until they run the subpoena past their legal department, and of course they’re attorneys who work attorney hours and don’t come in until the stroke of nine tomorrow. I finally got them to look at the GPS and they said it’s not working, must be turned off. No joke, it’s tu
rned off, it’s probably at the bottom of the lake. Where are we going?”

  “Shania’s ex-boyfriend’s.”

  “Another one? This girl changes guys like my older girl changes her shade of nail polish.”

  “You’ve got to kiss a lot of toads to find one prince.”

  Riley looked at him as if he had begun speaking in Latin. “Whatever. He lives here?”

  Jack pulled the car into the skinny drive leading to a skinny white clapboard house on Madison Avenue near West 65th. “According to DMV and Shania’s mother.”

  “So I asked them,” Riley continued, “where the phone had been, just give me the past GPS coordinates, and the punk techno-nerd on the phone laughs like I asked him to beam me up. ‘They don’t store that information,’ he said. ‘Would crash the system if they tried to store everybody’s info like that. Individual apps might, but that would be on the guy’s phone, and of course we don’t have the phone.’ So then I try Verizon about Wilton’s phone, because the court came through on that one, too, but they can’t do much either because it’s an iPhone and they need the code. Privacy, she said. Nice chick, but she said they’d have to get the owner to tell them the code and give them permission to use it. I said the owner is hanging in his living room staring down at his guts all over the floor. I think I made the poor girl cry.”

  “You’re a bad man, Riley.”

  “I don’t mean to be. Anyway, I need to fax them a copy of the subpoena and they will tell me what they can, but it may not be much. iPhones have security on them that even the NSA can’t crack, I guess. We’ll have to call the North Koreans if we want to know who Wilton has been talking to.”

  They got out of the car. Colored lights from the television set danced across the inside of the curtains, and a man lumbered to the door when they knocked. He did not seem happy to see them. But then most people weren’t.

  “We’re looking for Shania Paulson,” Riley said.

  “You and everybody else. Her mama’s called here twice today trying to track that girl down.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  He appeared to ponder this. “Saw her at work. Her work—the Indians game home opener. She was handing out keychains on the concourse level. We talked a bit.”

  “So you’re still friendly?”

  His face, which had been as intimidating as the rest of him, softened. “Hard not to be friendly with Shania.”

  “Do you know her cousin, Jerry Wilton?”

  The caution came back. The man was weighing his words before every answer. The house behind him made no noise, the television on mute. A pug waddled out from the hallway, stared at them, huffed, and waddled back into the darkened area. “Met him.”

  “You heard he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, her mama made that clear, too.”

  “He and Shania had some business together. You know what that was about?”

  “Business? What, like drugs? You think just because Shania is black—”

  Riley held up his hand. “Nothing to do with drugs. I mean actual business, like investing.”

  The man’s eyebrows crept up his forehead. “Shania? Invest? I can’t see that . . . she’s a smart girl, yeah, but Suze Orman she ain’t.”

  Riley asked a few more questions, then finished by pointing out that Jerry Wilton had been brutally murdered and everyone—the cops, the family, and probably the ghost of Jerry Wilton—was concerned for Shania’s safety. He left out the part about her being the prime suspect in the same murder, and mentioned only the need to locate the woman.

  The ex-boyfriend listened gravely, nodded, and promised to convince Shania to call them, should she reach out to him in any way.

  Jack and Riley thanked him for his time, said good night, began to walk back to their car, and then darted around the back of the house and waited for Shania Paulson to come out. Riley took up a spot at the corner of the yard, hidden by a large oak tree. Jack waited in the shadows of the detached garage and thought of excuses to give the homeowner, should he decide to take out the garbage and wonder why two men were standing in his backyard.

  The night drifted cool and damp over Jack’s face. A rapid transit train rumbled through the valley behind them. Voices carried from the community garden nearby, teens hanging out where they probably shouldn’t be after dark. Tree branches gave rushed whispers to the wind above his head, and birds clucked and twittered. Birds never slept, Jack had long decided. No matter what hour of the day or night you were up, some species would be out there making noise.

  Whoever had sliced up Jerry Wilton was a dangerous person. He—or she—had killed at least two people so far and had gotten away with it, but more than that, had enjoyed it. He had great fun making it clear to the police that Davis had not been a suicide, or a fluke. He had perhaps a business-related motive for the murders, or perhaps it had been a personality conflict, but either way, once committed to the action, he couldn’t resist putting his own personal flair on the tableau. He was, in short, the kind of killer that Jack hunted.

  Hunted, present tense. Because no matter what he told Maggie Gardiner, he had no intention of abandoning his work. He would tone it down for a while to keep them both out of jail, but eventually he would get back to it. He saw no point in stopping. His soul was already damned, if that were an issue, and the world not yet safe for everyone, which is the issue. To stop trying to help the innocent would be weak. It would be wrong.

  As he mentally reaffirmed his own commitments, Shania Paulson exited the rear door of the house, backpack strung around both shoulders, long hair pulled through the back of an Indians cap. Tall and lean, she wore jeans, running shoes, and a dark blue T-shirt with long sleeves and a low scoop neck. Even in the dim light, Jack could see why she didn’t lack for male attention.

  The man of the house appeared behind her, telling her that she ought to stay.

  “If they tracked me here, he could, too,” she told him, trotting down the steps and onto the grass. She stopped cold when she caught sight of Jack.

  He held out his badge and had gotten out the first two letters of the word police when she bolted, running across the backyard, exactly between himself and Riley. Tufts of grass flew up from her heels as she sped away.

  Animal instinct took over, and Jack’s body leapt into motion before his brain caught up. He forgot the damp air and the chattering of the birds, and forgot that he could barely see and there were no streetlights where she led. The night reduced to moving and breathing. They were the gazelle and the pursuing cheetah.

  Except this gazelle was damn fast and knew the territory.

  The backyard exited into another backyard; the girl ran through the houses and across the street. She plunged between benches and a group of teens marking the entrance to the EcoVillage community garden. He could hear himself and Riley shouting things like, “Police! Shania! We’re here to help you! You may be in danger!” in between puffs of exertion. She either didn’t hear them, didn’t believe them, or didn’t care.

  She reached the ironwork gate for the community garden and pulled herself up and over without visible exertion or pause. Jack did the same, with, he felt sure, visible exertion and great pause lest he impale himself on the narrowed tips of the fence posts. When his feet met the ground with a bone-jarring thud he hoped there wouldn’t be a corresponding fence on the other side of the park. If so, he needed to catch Shania Paulson before she reached it.

  The red trim of her jacket flashed in front of him, about twenty feet away. He left Riley to do his own cursing and climbing, and pounded after her. He shouted a few more things, but they had no more effect than his first attempts.

  She led him through the winding sidewalks and the neatly staked and labeled vegetables, past a small potting shed. His lungs were protesting. He could hear the shouts of the teens as they egged Riley on over the fence. His stocky partner probably represented the most entertainment they’d had all week.

  There was, indeed, a corresponding fence on th
e other side of the park, but not as tall as the entrance, Jack saw with relief. Shania Paulson already straddled the top.

  “Stop!” he called, stretching for any part of her he could grab. “We’re trying to save your life!”

  “Let me go!” she shouted, real panic in her voice, and his fingers just brushed the sole of her shoe as she flipped over the top of the fence.

  He tried to vault it as she had, but swinging his frame, with its hundred extra pounds, required a different mass times velocity equation. The chain-link wobbled under him and he tumbled, rather than jumped, over the top. His arm slipped, and the wire peaks of the fence top nearly took out his left eye. He landed awkwardly and his knee would complain about it later. In fact, it said the hell with it and started complaining immediately.

  He straightened and realized where Shania Paulson was heading.

  Up a narrow sidewalk and over an elevated path sat the rapid transit station. He could hear the next Red Line train clattering up the tracks.

  He shouted her name at her disappearing form. Still no effect.

  She slowed to squeeze past three men moving in the opposite direction. Jack heard her voice but couldn’t make out the words. He stepped onto the elevated walkway, no more than twenty feet long, with a ten-foot-high chain-link on both sides. The concrete gave him great traction and he might have gained a yard on her . . . at least until he figured out the gist of what she had said to the three men.

  They formed a barrier at the other end of the walkway. Two were black and one was white and all three were big, dressed in sweats, hands in their pockets, shoulder-to-shoulder. The same grim look on each face. Behind them, Shania pulled open the glass door of the station and dashed past the attendant on duty. He didn’t even have time to protest that she didn’t have a bus pass or even $2.25 in exact change.

  Jack put on an extra burst of speed and shouted that he was a cop.

  The men didn’t move. Instead, as he drew close enough to invade their personal space, they brought up arms and fists and he ran into a human brick wall.