He told me a rambling story about going with Evelyn to high mass at St. Peter’s. It was a frigid morning about a month ago. The place had been packed with swells of people, kids in the choir, everyone wearing bulky winter coats. He was afraid of what was beneath everyone’s coats. He told Evelyn what to do if there was an explosion, and he warned her, too, that there’s often a secondary device that goes off. He curled his fingers over the lip of the pew, pushing his weight on the wood, making sure it was solid. Yes, it was good cover, until she could get to an exit. Help as many children as you can, he’d told her.
She’d reached across the pew, holding his hand, letting him fiddle with her rings, and it calmed him. Later that night, when he couldn’t sleep, she sat with him by the window and watched the snow falling beneath streetlights. “That was the night she promised she’d never leave,” he said. “And then, a few weeks later she left. I don’t know what to think. Where could she go? She doesn’t even have her car, and now the blackjack is gone, too.”
“Blackjack?”
“A weapon.” He described it as a short, leather-covered club with a coil spring and a heavy ball of lead at the end. It was small and easy to conceal, and in the District, quite illegal. He always kept it in the glove box, but it wasn’t in the car when he picked up the Volvo. “Detective Miller had me file a report.”
“It was stolen from the lot?”
“Miller thought it the most likely explanation. But I can’t stop thinking about how jittery Evie was at the restaurant. What if she took the blackjack from the car and carried it because she was frightened?” He frowned, considering the idea. “Although that’s confusing, too. Who takes a weapon to meet a man she supposedly loves?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EARLY THE NEXT morning, my cell phone woke me. It was Michael. He told me a bass fisherman had found a woman’s body in a shallow cove on the Maryland side of the Potomac, just south of National Harbor. The fisherman had gone out with the tide in the early golden light and found a body swaying in the current. Her long dark hair had gotten twisted in the reeds.
I rubbed sleep from my eyes. “You think she’s Evelyn?”
“Evidence suggests.”
“Hang on.” I reached for my notepad and pen on my bedside table. “Tell me where to go. I’m ready.”
————
The lot was marked only by a brown sign saying Overlook. Gravel crunched beneath my tires as I turned in and parked across from several Maryland state police and county cruisers, and a couple of Crown Vics, the typical unmarked DC Police car. There was an ambulance that wasn’t going anywhere. The medical examiner’s wagon blocked the entrance to a path, presumably leading to the overlook. The river was beyond the curtain of trees, some still leafless and broken by winter.
No other media had shown. Not even my own people, Nelson and Ben and the satellite truck I’d requested. Beside one of the cruisers, a big-bellied detective was interviewing a thin man wearing a floppy-rimmed hat and a Bassaholic sweatshirt beneath his windbreaker. The detective kept his head down, flipping through his notepad. The rolls on the back of his neck were pink in the morning sun.
I slipped on a ball cap and pulled my ponytail through the loop before climbing out of the car. Michael lifted his hand and walked toward me in muddy hiking boots; Michael who never muddied his shoes. His field coat was dirty, and there was tightness about the corners of his mouth, a closed look I’d seen before. It was his death-scene look. “You got here fast,” he said.
“Where’s the body?”
He pointed behind him. “In a cove. You have to climb a pretty steep path about thirty yards. From the bank, it’s about ten, maybe fifteen yards out.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
He shook his head. “The area’s been taped off. Even if it wasn’t, you don’t want to see. The river does terrible things to a body.”
“Then why do you think it’s Evelyn?”
He told me about the ATM card with her imprinted name tucked neatly in the nylon stocking worn beneath the boot on her left foot. Her purse and coat and much of her clothing had been swept away. The coat, he surmised, may have gotten snagged on debris washed down the mountains from earlier storms. Maybe that’s why she’d been down so long. Or maybe she’d been caught on something else. People dumped all kinds of stuff in the river. “We’ll wait for the ME to positively ID her,” he said, “but yeah, it’s her.”
“Take me as far as the crime scene tape,” I pleaded. “I need to see where she is, not necessarily her, but where. Maybe if I see—”
“No can do,” he said. “We can come back later, after the scene is clear.”
“I’ll owe you.”
We locked eyes for a long moment. His were cool and gray and narrowed with calculation.
“Any favor at all, it’s yours,” I repeated. “No expiration date.”
He jerked his chin. “Come on,” he said.
On the path beyond the medical examiner’s wagon, the heels of my boots sank into the steep moist slope as we descended. It was slow going. The tall grass slapped at my jeans, and dried branches cracked beneath my boots. Somewhere in the distance—kee-ahh—the call of a raptor hunting, a hawk or an osprey, maybe an eagle.
We cleared the trees. The river was dark and moody and filled the air with smells of mucky matter breaking down so that new matter could be born. I picked up my pace, skidding as we went downhill. Michael put his arm out. “Far enough,” he said.
We were on a small clearing like a shelf above the river. Out of the pocket of his field coat, he drew binoculars and aimed them at a cove where men waded among waterweed. Several boats bobbed in the tide. From this distance, the faces of the men were indistinct, and I couldn’t pick out Evelyn at all. The land curved around the cove, protecting it, and above the land, a tree spread its wide branches. A heron roosted on a branch. It was a big bird, its neck stunningly white, and it seemed to preside over the hopeless work of the men below.
Behind us, a couple of workers from the Medical Examiner’s Office were making their way down the slope. They struggled with their bag. Michael greeted them and then put his binoculars up to his eyes again.
“Evidence techs are blocking the view,” he said, still looking through the glasses. “I hate all this damn mud, but I better go down. You go back up to the lot.”
“Let me use your binoculars.”
His brow furrowed, but he handed me the glasses. “Quick peek, that’s all, then you’re out of here.”
There were plenty of reasons I should listen to him. He was a police commander, and this was his case. It was at his pleasure I was where I was, and if I caused him displeasure, he could give me the boot. But I gambled he wouldn’t do it. I ran, half falling down the slope, sliding a couple of yards before he grabbed me again, cursing me with really foul language. But I already had his field glasses to my eyes, and I could see.
One detective took pictures, as another placed something dark like hanks of hair or weed into a plastic bag held by another technician. Someone else waded through hydrilla swirling around his thigh-high boots. I could see the backs of two guys from the ME’s office and the black body bag, and the tech in the thigh boots stepped back and there she was—Evelyn—or what was left of her, a bloated naked back and one leg floating across the surface of the river, the other leg submerged. Someone pulled a reed from her tangled hair that was black with river water and adorned with clusters of branches and leaves. She was facedown, her hair all about her, her body swaying with the current and the yanking of the men trying to free her, and then they turned her over.
Her eyes were gone.
I dropped the binoculars and turned to tell Michael, but then I heaved. Nothing came out. There was a voice from very far away that seemed to be getting louder. It was Michael. “All right now,” he was saying. “That’s right, breathe.” He was rubbing my back, talking to me in a gentle voice so unlike Michael’s, saying it was okay to be a little crazy, a perfectly normal
response at a death scene; he was equally so at his first. He told stories about his “fool self” and about other detectives nicknamed Bull and Murph who had also lost their nerve. His words were soothing, and I started to feel like myself again, and then he said: “We got company.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and straightened. In the tree above the cove, the heron still roosted, seemingly transfixed by the men from the Medical Examiner’s Office trudging up the slope with the heavy black bag. When the bag was out of sight, the huge bird lifted its great wings and launched itself from the branch, lifting itself high, higher. It tipped its wing and disappeared beyond the curve of the river.
“No, there,” Michael said, pointing.
At the top of the hill, Nelson had his camera on his shoulder and was shooting from behind the yellow tape. Ben was frowning down at me, as if he expected me to fall apart. I pulled the brim of my cap low, shielding my eyes, and started my way up the slope. Without looking at Ben, I walked past him.
At the top, I called over my shoulder: “Come on, guys. We’ve got news to break.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AFTER THE LIVE shots were complete, I drove back to the station and took a long, hot shower in the locker room before heading to my office. The blinds were closed and the overhead lights off, making the office shadowy and cool. I clicked on my bank of televisions, keeping each on mute, and tidied my desk. There was my stapler and my set of pens lined in a row and my press releases stacked beside messages I’d read when I was ready. My newspapers were open, waiting like old friends. All was as it should be, now that I was where I was supposed to be, and if I stayed out of the field and here in my office, I would be all right.
I crossed to my bookshelf and pulled Ulysses from its row, dropped it to the floor, and grabbed the hidden bottle. The first shot burned all the way down. My thoughts calmed a little. I tried to rest but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Evelyn.
No way could I go to that dinner tonight. But when I tried to call Michael, he didn’t answer. With a sigh, I kicked my shoes under my desk and walked barefoot over the rough carpet to the coat rack where the garment bag hung.
Inside the bag were several dresses I’d packed when I had no idea what to wear: a couple of sleek black gowns similar to what every other woman in the ballroom would be wearing, careful dresses for a careful woman. I needed a vacation from that woman. The third dress was long and red and had to be shimmied on. My never-dared Jimmy Choos, the gold ones with the ankle buckles and four-inch heels I’d bought on a lark, winked from the bottom of the bag. Those, too, I thought as I pulled them out and stepped into them.
The heels propelled me hips-first to the mirror where a strange woman was reflected. She wore a red dress that clung to her body, which was surprisingly long and lovely, and her face was made up heavily to hide worry lines. The woman was pretty, maybe even beautiful, and I did not know that woman.
There was a melodic rap at the door. When I opened it, Nelson was still in his street clothes, his skullcap, and the khaki vest with the oversized pockets. He was obviously just back from the river. He gawked at me, open-mouthed, before he recovered. “Hey, that’s some dress,” he managed to say.
I waited for him to tell me what he wanted. When he didn’t, I said, “Do you need something?”
“Oh yeah, you got a minute to chat in private?”
“Shut the door behind you.” I went back to my desk. “Come. Sit. Commune.”
He slouched in the chair across from me. “Mellay grabbed me on the way into the newsroom. Said he wants an inventory of my equipment for an audit. I asked is the station being sold and he gives me the typical runaround, chuckling the whole time, like it’s some big joke. What do you think? We’re getting sold?”
“I have no idea. Mellay doesn’t confide in me.”
“Moira is certain they’ll sell us,” he said darkly. “Tear a good thing to pieces to make money for a few fat gray-hairs. Which makes my decision easier, right?”
“I’m not following.”
“Alexa knows people with a production company in South Florida. They do big stuff, you know, for cable channels like Discovery Channel and National Geographic, the kind of shooting I’ve always dreamed of. I sent them my audition tape. They made an offer.”
“Oh,” I said, and my throat constricted. I put my head down until the constriction went away.
“I want the job,” he went on, “but I feel terrible. Like I’d be deserting my friends when things are really bad and I’m supposed to be doing my best work for you. Ben’s my foxhole brother, but you—you gave me my start in big market TV. You believed in me first.”
He had sad brown eyes that looked through the lens with the eye of a god, and I knew that when he left, there’d be no replacement for him, not ever.
“You were born to shoot video,” I said. “That’s who you are and what you have to do. Your allegiance has to be to your talent.”
“I only want to shoot.”
“Then that’s what I want, too.” I lifted the whiskey bottle and pointed the top at him. “How about a celebratory drink? There’s another teacup on the shelf. Bring it here.”
He glanced at the closed door. “What if Mellay finds out?”
“Who cares? You’re migrating south.” I poured our drinks and lifted my cup. “Water of life,” I said, and downed it.
After that second drink, I kicked back in my chair, rocking it to the rise and fall of Nelson’s voice without actually listening to his words. He had a pleasant voice. His chip-toothed smile was endearing as hell, too. Maybe it was the whiskey, but he seemed to me the youngest, most endearing photographer in the world, and it hurt. I worried about him in a business that could be so brutal, but maybe someone would look after him when he flew south.
“Nobody gets hurt by a little dish,” Nelson was saying when I tuned back in, “but that kind of video gets you fired. That’s what Moira’s hoping. It’s risky, so she gave it to me. Since I’m probably leaving and all.”
The whiskey gave my brain a nice, slow hum. “What video?”
He folded his arms over the big pockets of his khaki vest. “Surveillance of the garage downstairs. You can see Mellay with a woman. Grainy stuff, but best guess? Looks like Heather.”
“What are they doing in the video?”
“You know,” he said, smirking.
My eyebrows were up to my hairline. “Seriously?” If somebody sent it to corporate, Mellay would be fired. If so, I’d get my gig back, and honestly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow. “I can’t believe Mellay is that stupid,” I said.
“My network buddies tell me women are Mellay’s weakness. He preys on the young girls straight out of college. Tells them he’s some big-shot news director taking special interest, reeling them in with talk about their star quality and shit. Except it’s against policy to reel them in like that. What’s that called? A conundrum?”
“A lawsuit.”
“I know, right? Sources say that’s how he got kicked out of network. I triple-checked that one.”
“You guys spend all your time in the field gossiping?”
“It’s called ‘news you can use.’ If I didn’t hate him so much, I’d feel sorry for the guy.”
“If what you say is true,” I said with disdain, “he created his own burden.”
“No, I mean, because of his sister and all. It must be tough. There’s his gimpy leg, too.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, frowning. “Why do I never know what you’re talking about?”
“I’m talking about his accident. Word is, it was bad. He complains how his foot hurts and everybody says how it left his sister in a wheelchair with only him to take care of her—”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you making this wheelchair up?”
“The sister I’ve seen with my own eyes. Didn’t you see her last week?”
“I must’ve been out in the field.”
“He was wheeling her everywhere
, showing her around the newsroom. He was a whole different person with her.” He described the sister—small, dark-haired girl, pixie face, pink blanket over her legs—and he made me see her. I wished he hadn’t.
“You’re not joking, are you?” I said glumly.
“Why would it be funny?”
“It’s just bad news, that’s all.” The mirror still held that strange, red-dressed woman with the melancholy eyes. She thought it bad news, too. “You have to keep your dog out of that nasty fight.”
“I disagree.”
“Listen, we can let Mellay crash and burn on his own bad behavior, but you can’t plot against a guy who’s caring for a handicapped sister. Do you understand? If you do, you’re responsible for hurting the sister. You do something like that, and you’re as bad as Mellay. Ethics 101.”
“But he made it so I can’t work here anymore.”
“He made it so you don’t want to,” I said. “That’s a big difference. Now give up the video.”
I held out my hand. He grumbled but reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a media card, slapping it onto my palm. I dropped it into the bottom drawer of my desk and locked it.
“But the network guys tell me it’s true,” he whined.
“Doesn’t matter. And Moira shouldn’t talk you into doing what she won’t do herself. Think about it.”
“But she’s leading the newscast, which proves reward for favors given.”
“You’re blowing my buzz, Nelson, you really are. Moira’s not leading the newscast. She’s anchoring.”
“Not Moira. Heather. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Heather is not on air.”
“Turn on your monitor,” he said, his arm sweeping toward the televisions. “She graduates straight from college to on-air at the number-one station in a top market. Even I had to start small. And I’m a real Michelangelo.”
Just then, Isaiah came in, holding a script. “That dress is a five-alarm fire,” he said with a gentle smile. “My girl’s all grown up.”
The Cutaway Page 13
