As Li settled into the visitor’s chair, he recalled the moment of his arrival: the split-second terror in Frank’s face, the way he talked too loud, the insistence that he’d personally give Li a tour of the offices. Frank was anxious to accommodate him. Probably because when Li booked this appointment with The Gazette’s editor, he said, “Constance Henderson suggested I take a look around your offices.”
If there was one person Frank wanted to please, it was Constance.
Whoever Frank believed Li to actually be, it seemed Frank wasn’t privy to Mrs. Mayor’s espionage and had zero background on his enigmatic applicant. “So Liam, do you have any questions?”
“Yes. What sort of experience does your staff have?”
Frank propelled into a celebration of the staff’s credentials. “From all over the world of publishing and broadcasting. Jessie Molina runs her own radio program here in the city. Luanne Clemmons worked as a contributor and later editor for Shire Magazine. Tom Delancey is a nationally syndicated sports columnist who had quite a successful run at The San Francisco Chronicle before coming down here. Sheila Davenport had stints at both Simon and Schuster and Publishers Weekly. And our previous restaurant critic had three global best sellers in the food world. Years of diverse experience.” His smile strained at the corners.
“Sterling careers. It must be a coup to have them all here working for the local paper.”
“Well, we all come to Shorewood for different reasons. Some wanted to change the focus of their careers. Others had spouses who acquired jobs in the area. Still others wanted to move closer to their families.” Frank’s fingers had trouble staying still. They flitted about his desk, straightening this, moving that. Li’s eyes fell on a brass paperweight on the desktop. A football paperweight that had been dented somehow.
Sign of a violent temper?
Frank cleared his throat. Loudly. “Did you have a specific position you were interested in filling?”
Li applied for the only vacancy. “I was curious about the post of restaurant critic.”
Frank’s right eye winced. “Ah. Yes. Well, we do ask our applicants to submit a five hundred-word sample of their writing—”
“Which I have right here.” Li handed Frank a single sheet of paper. He thought it would come to this and needed an opening gambit. And he thought of a doozy.
Frank examined the sample. His face emptied of all color, his old acne scars making his cheeks look like twin golf balls. His eyes swelled, and the hand holding the sample started to tremble. His jaw slackened.
The sample was only four words.
I know your secret.
An old device, but Li believed it would work. He remembered how frightened and submissive Frank’s voice had been on the night Oscar died. And when Li saw the rampant anxiety scuttling through Frank’s body, he was even more certain of its success. He wanted to get a reaction. He wanted to spur the truth.
He got it. “W-what is this? Who are you?”
“Constance Henderson sent me.”
“But … But why? We weren’t supposed to be communicating!”
“She felt she was uncertain about your end of the bargain.”
Frank’s jittery hands knocked over a picture of his wife. “I did everything she told me! I fired Juliana! I changed the article! I published what she wanted!”
“You were there at the grocery store when Oscar was killed. Things change when it comes to murder.”
“I didn’t do it! I just followed him to find out what he was up to, I swear! He was scheming again. I could smell it. His resignation scared the hell out of me. I wondered if he wanted to devastate The Gazette completely. I was shocked when I found out Connie had followed him there too.”
“Did you tell the police what you knew?”
“I told them what I was supposed to tell them. Connie handled that. Connie handled everything. Don’t you know that?”
“She’s not sure she’s satisfied. What exactly did you see?”
Frank flinched. His eyes darted around the room as if calculating whether he could take the risk to rush for the exit. “I … I saw nothing. I … I spent all my time in seafood. Connie knows that! I never left!”
“I find that hard to believe.” Li steepled his fingers, hoping his portrayal of an agent of Constance Henderson was convincing. “Mrs. Mayor was there to survey the surroundings, to ascertain why the grocery store was important to Oscar.” Li didn’t know this for certain, but it had a nice ring to it. In any case, it was tightening a noose around the fidgeting Frank Dixon. “You went there specifically to find Oscar, to follow him, to learn what he was doing. Did you?”
Frank bumped the desktop with his agitated hands, making more things fall. His face was the exact shade of newsprint.
Li’s memories roared into life. Frank Dixon in seafood. Staring at a dead fish. In a yellow rain slicker dripping water on the floor.
Water on the floor. Water in the spice aisle. Water.
Li wasn’t aware that he started speaking his thoughts. “You did see Oscar that night. You found his body. There was a puddle of water in the spice aisle where his body was. The store didn’t mop yet. But you came in after the rain started, and your slicker dripped rainwater onto the floor. I slipped in it. So you must have hunted down Oscar and found him dead. Probably not long before I did. You panicked. You had a motive for wanting him dead, because he knew your secret. And now he was dead. So you slipped out of the aisle towards the back of the store, unaware that you left behind a trail of water. When you got toward seafood, you spotted the eyes of a dead fish in the counter, and it must have forcibly reminded you of your discovery. Oscar’s lifeless glare. So misery and horror washed over you, and you were paralyzed by the shock.”
Frank’s voice was brittle. “All right, yes! I found him! I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran! But I didn’t kill him! I just—” He stopped. His mouth twisted into a perplexed frown. Then a new instinct took over, the instinct of his vocation: a reporter zeroing in on the pulse of a story. “Wait a second … What do you mean before you found him? Were you there as well?” His eyes narrowed. “Hold on … I know your face. You … You’re that kid that overheard Connie and me! I saw your face when we got away.”
Uh-oh. “Thank you for your time, Mr.—”
“Oh no, you don’t.” Frank was quick. He hurled himself out of his chair and shoved Li back into his. “Don’t move. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.”
In his fist, he squeezed the brass paperweight.
Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Now Li was the one doing the math on escape routes.
Frank started muttering under his breath. “I can’t let you get away. You know too much. I’ve said too much. Connie’ll kill me. Unless …” His scarred face looked more and more like it had been chipped out of rock. “Unless I get rid of you.”
“Mr. Dixon, I—”
“Shut up. You should know better, kid. Don’t push me.” Frank’s knuckles popped as he throttled the fatal football. “You don’t understand what I’ve had to do to keep this paper alive. I’ve had to beg and plead and scrape. I’ve drained my 401k. I’ve had to cut my own salary just to keep paying my high-profile staff. And on top of everything else, there was our mayor’s little Freudian slip, Oscar’s threats, and my wife is thinking about a separation. I can’t handle it anymore. I’m not going to let you be the fuse that blows up everything I’ve done.”
Frank flung his arm back, ready to drive the paperweight into Li’s skull.
“Now, now … let’s not act rashly, Frank.”
The paperweight clattered on the ground. Frank retreated, his eyes huge. His hands flew to the collar of his shirt, and he made these strange, gurgling sounds as if the collar tried to strangle him.
Li’s hammering heart ground to a halt. He felt a cold spot slide down his spine. That new voice was deep and rich, the hum of a cello. A slim hand folded around his shoulder.
Li fought not to look at Constance Henderson.
�
��Hello, Liam. I’m surprised to find you here. Though perhaps not too surprised.” Her voice felt like black ice pressed against his ears. “And Frank, dear, you’re letting that temper get away from you again, aren’t you? Probably blabbed every secret in your heart by now. You should work on that.”
Frank’s words garbled in his throat, sounding like a new language. The language of terror.
“Now what am I going to do with both of you?”
Frank and Li gulped in unison.
She barked at Frank, who tried to recoil into the paneling along the wall. “You’re a worm, Frank. A spineless, gutless, hopeless worm. You could have ruined everything, all because you have the constitution of a wet square of tissue paper. You’re a failure. I’ll deal with you later, and you’ll be lucky to end up editing bathroom graffiti at this rate.”
A whimper escaped from the ex-editor-in-chief.
Constance’s fingernails dug into Li’s shirt. “And Liam, you’ve been a naughty boy. You could have been at home studying or spending time with your little friends instead of sadly decomposing in a ditch by the highway.” Her voice sharpened, ice over steel. “Morley, take this young man out of my sight. Don’t hurt him until you’re well out of town. I never want to see his face again.”
Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! What am I going to do?
Li’s heart thundered in his throat, and sweat poured out of his palms. Morley, a scruffy weasel of a man with sharp eyes matching his gray stubble, had prodded him out of the office and forced him into The Gazette’s utilitarian parking garage. Cars slumbered in the midafternoon lull. The sound of their footsteps reverberated off the barren concrete walls. The place was deserted, empty as a tomb.
Except for a killer and his victim.
Come on, use your brain, Liam! Think! THINK! But the blood seemed to drop away from his head and into his feet, making them want to run, to take a dangerous risk. No doubt Morley would open fire if Li even got a foot too far away.
Does he have a gun? He didn’t when he broke into my apartment. But who’s to say he doesn’t have one now?
The panic tried to drown his rational thoughts. Do it. Run. He’ll kill you. Get out. Flee. Get away. Do it or die.
Morley didn’t touch him or talk. But he followed Li at such a close distance that the boy could smell the sour stench of whiskey oozing from him. No more than the length of a single shoe.
Are you just going to let him kill you?
Li’s merciless brain played out the scenario. Forced into Morley’s or Constance’s nondescript car. A drive to a distant highway. Then murder. Constance would finally lose her current headache.
What could he do? Scream? Screams were quickly silenced. Morley was right on his tail. So close.
Too close?
An idea wriggled into his head, a stupid, hastily cobbled-together, probably fatal idea. It would give him a second—maybe less—of leeway. Was that enough?
Do it or die.
This is the stupidest thing I’ll ever do. He took a nerve-settling breath, fortified his spirit with a thought about saving his mother and sister from any more grief.
One final breath.
He stopped walking. Just stopped.
Morley was so close that he bumped into Li. There was a millisecond—no more—of shock, of displacement, of confusion at what just happened. The millisecond Li needed.
Li bolted, diving behind a parked car, his heart shifting from his throat to his ears. He found it difficult to breathe.
Morley chuckled. “Cute, kid. Very cute. Go on. Keep running. You’ll just wear yourself out.”
Li’s hands were slick with sweat. Daring not to breathe, he collapsed to his stomach and started crawling, like a soldier under barbed wire, beneath the cars. His body became sticky with oil as he scrambled through the patches under leaky undercarriages. Sweat dripped into his eyes. He prayed to whatever deity would listen to him.
Morley’s footsteps ambled along, echoing in the empty garage, echoing in Li’s ears. He was still so damn close. “Come on, kid. Hide-and-seek can’t last forever.”
Li knew this wouldn’t last. He’d run out of cars. Slowly, he began to double back, crawling on his knees and elbows back to the first car. He hoped to confuse his killer.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Now what? Li peeked out from his hiding spot. Morley’s feet were only three cars ahead of him. Not good. How would he get out of this?
He thought of his slashed sneakers.
The echoes of Morley’s steps rang out like the booming ticks of a doomsday clock.
Noise.
Li squirmed out from his hiding place. Adrenaline bellowed in his brain, making him dizzy. He peeled off a sneaker and hoped his throwing arm from high school baseball hadn’t lost its touch.
He popped up, a panicked jack-in-the-box, and chucked his shoe at a sedan parked across the way. Its car alarm wailed. Quick as a blink, Li dived under his car and watched Morley’s feet turn and walk toward the howling vehicle. Morley started whistling, his pace calm.
Li flung himself to his belly and shuffled under his line of cars.
“Aww, cute job, kid. But you’ll run out of shoes before I run out of patience.”
Li crawled as fast as his speeding heart could take it. He needed more noise, more confusion. Risking it, he grabbed his other sneaker and tossed it at another likely vehicle in a neighboring section. Its alarm shrieked. Then another car. And another. Soon the garage was a riot of noise. People had to hear it and investigate. They had to!
Morley’s feet froze at least eleven cars behind Li. They were waiting.
Li would be forced to run for it. His options were fading.
He barely heard over the screeching cars, “Where are you, Liam? Come out and play.”
He could see sunlight streaming through the garage exit. Only a few feet away.
Please, whoever’s out there, please take care of Mom and Anna for me. Li swallowed another deep breath.
He dived out of his hiding space and fled toward the exit, hoping all the running he did in baseball would pay off now. Blood surged to his legs, powering them, pumping them like pistons in a galloping engine. Behind him, he heard Morley shout, “You’re mine, kid!” His would-be killer’s racing footsteps clamored against the concrete, always sounding a mere inch away from Li.
Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.
Li ignored the stabbing pains in his socked feet and the fact his heartbeat felt like nothing more than a raw, sustained note in his chest. He gave no attention to the idea that Morley could jump in his car and run Li down like a stray animal. He burst into the sunlight and pounded his screaming legs in the direction of the police station.
CHAPTER 16
Oscar’s Secret
“Detective Hughes!!!”
“Liam? What the—? What’s wrong?”
Li had exploded into the station, having sprinted the whole mile or two from the parking garage. The dispatcher threw herself out of the chair with a shriek when he burst in—saturated in sweat, smeared with oil, eyes enormous and frightened, blood leaching through his white socks. Having spotted the detective, Li called out to him and then collapsed on the floor, clutching the stitch in his side, sure he would never force enough oxygen into his body. Morley wouldn’t need to kill him, because he was sure a heart attack would happen. Black spots danced in front of his watering eyes.
The police were quick and efficient. Li had been peeled off the floor, water dabbed on his face and poured into his body, first aid applied to his feet. They gave him a towel to wipe off the smudges of motor oil on his skin. As doctors were summoned, the officers perched him on a chair in front of Detective Hughes’ desk.
Detective Hughes, his buckeye-brown eyes wide and bewildered, kneeled next to Li, making sure he stayed hydrated and awake. “Liam, what in God’s name is going on?”
“Constance … Morley … tried … kill me …”
“Breathe. That’s it. Kee
p breathing. What’s this about killing you?”
The whole story came out, wheezing, fragmented, but there. Life and color started to seep back into Li’s cheeks, but the strain and fear in his face didn’t ease. His eyes bounced like a ping-pong ball around the station, searching for hideouts. Constance could be here. Lying in wait. A hunter in her blind. She could be anywhere. She could be—
“They’re not here, Liam. But she did call with a ‘tip’ saying she suddenly remembered seeing a man matching your description having an argument with Oscar on the night he died. That, of course, conflicts with all the other testimony we have.”
“Maybe she’s trying to frame me as well as kill me.” Li’s voice sounded like sandpaper.
“Drink your water, Liam. We’ll get you checked out and drive you home.”
“NO! Morley could be there!”
“We can’t keep you here forever. Liam, I told you to keep your nose clean. And now you’re in danger. Why on Earth would they want to kill you?”
“Because I know their secret. Mayor Marshall Henderson is a bigot.”
Detective Hughes arched an eyebrow. “Pardon?”
Li gulped water and launched into his story. “That’s the starting point. After the Bauer riots, Juliana Esposito from The Shorewood Gazette interviewed the mayor about his response to the whole thing. He responded with the belief that the restuarant’s staff deserved to be tormented! He was as racist, if not more, than Oscar himself. This is one of the most diverse cities in the state and, if his bigotry got out, it would spell the end of his mayoral career. Particularly since he lied to his constituents about his feelings. And an end to his career would mean an end to Constance’s power as Mrs. Mayor.
“She put pressure on Frank Dixon, so he changed the final article to reflect positively on Mayor Henderson. Pure censorship. Then he fired Juliana because she knew the truth. The whole thing was a big cover-up. Oscar got suspicious and found out about Frank’s and Constance’s lies. He blackmailed them, not for money, but to make them squirm and to provide leverage for his plans, such as resigning from the paper. Then I got nosy and found out as well. That’s why they want to get rid of me. To shut me up for good.”
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