One by One

by Sarah Cain

  “I’m not sure he’s expecting two of us.”

  Alex glared at him. “Too bad. I brought you food, but it’ll keep. I’m going to put it into your fridge, and I expect you to eat it. You know, real food?” She placed the roasted chicken and a salad in the refrigerator and turned to face him, hands on hips. “I made my special dressing for the salad. It’s in that plastic container. Sam says it’s liquid heaven.”

  “I’ll bet he does. Since you probably make him beg for a meal.”

  “I do my best. You know, I work too.” Alex sighed. “Maybe he’s the one who sends me all that nasty mail.”

  Danny gave her one of those looks like maybe he suspected all wasn’t well. She winked at him and smiled. He didn’t need to know Sam hadn’t come home again last night.

  “Depends on how you keep him in shape.” He grabbed his keys. “You can’t be tight-assed and a ho-bitch. It’s a contradiction, don’t you think?”

  “My correspondents aren’t necessarily the brightest lights.”

  “Most of mine think I’m a gay fascist socialist.”

  “Also a contradiction.”

  “Alex? Thanks.” His eyes had gone soft and sad. Sometimes Danny would get that look like he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to take the time to do anything for him. It always made her chest tighten. Oh, hell.

  Before she’d started at the Sentinel, Alex had heard about him. Dan Ryan, Pulitzer Prize winner, the columnist who won Keystones and everything else every year.

  He’d been her mentor, and she’d needed one. Her big mouth and “bad attitude” had made her unpopular in Atlanta, where her editor had been more interested in her boobs than her byline. When she and Sam had arrived in Philly, she’d landed a floater’s job on the metro desk, and the great Dan Ryan took a shine to a piece she’d written on child mortality in the North Philly combat zone. It had been buried on page nine.

  “Alex Burton?” he’d said, sidling up to her desk. Of course, she’d recognized him, but she’d pretended she hadn’t.

  She’d expected an asshole. The soft-spoken, humble guy who’d introduced himself, congratulated her on the piece, and offered to take her to lunch had been a surprise. At first she’d thought he was hitting on her, until she’d realized he was married with a baby son. The ideal family, she’d believed at the time, but the guy who had everything turned out to be a good egg with a fucked-up life.

  Somewhere along the way, they’d become friends. She’d been hurt when he shut her out after his wife and son had died and he fell into that black hole of despair. But Sam had said every man had to grieve in his own way, so she’d made Danny casseroles and baked him pies and waited for him to call. When he had, she’d let go of her hurt. He’d come back to the Sentinel, but he hadn’t stayed. Nothing was the same anyway. After the paper was sold, many familiar faces had departed.

  Danny never talked about the black-hole time, and Alex didn’t ask. He knew she was around if he needed her to listen, and maybe that was enough. She knew he was damaged, but he was her friend. Nothing would change that.

  He was still like those beautiful guys she’d crushed on in high school, but she could see he was as goofy and weird as she was. Since they now lived close to each other, they’d taken to dropping off stupid gifts for one another. He bought her a rhinestone tiara as a joke for her birthday. She got him a plastic ghoul for his.

  Alex kissed him on the cheek. They were probably walking into a shitstorm.

  The phone buzzed again.

  6

  As they motored across the Walt Whitman Bridge, Alex bopped in the seat to some tune on the radio that Danny didn’t recognize.

  “If I could twerk my booty on TV, I’d be making a lot more money,” Alex said.

  Danny glanced over at her, imagining. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse the color of fresh peaches, and a thick gold cuff gleamed on her slim wrist. Her honey-colored ponytail bounced and swayed with the music. Hot and cool. That was Alex.

  “You’re more likely to be stalking the mayor than twerking your booty,” he said.

  She sighed. “You know, your texter is probably like the Phantom Menace.”

  “The movie?”

  “You don’t remember? Karl Ratland, that committeeman from the northeast?”

  “Oh, damn. The Phantom Menace.”

  “He did have an impressive lightsaber,” she said.

  “To make up for his other shortcomings.”

  They exchanged high fives.

  Alex laughed. “The Phantom Menace. And that woman who thought she was Cleopatra? The one who stole a taxi?”

  “Oh, yeah, but she thought she was Queen Latifah, not Cleopatra.”

  “You always got the colorful shit.”

  “Well, that’s because I wrote a column. Don’t worry, when you grow up you’ll get a column of your own.”

  “Daniel, I’m not even going to dignify that. I’m just gonna work on my moves.”

  Danny smiled. He’d noticed her potential when she’d first started at the Sentinel. He’d also noticed the smoldering thousand-pound chip on her shoulder, but a reporter needed that spark. The moment chasing down stories became routine was the time to get out. For Alex, it was still a blood sport, and she was a lioness.

  Once they passed over the bridge, she pointed and said, “We have to go straight on the Forty-Two. The Bellmawr exit’s not far.”

  “Is that how you spend your off hours? Watching YouTube to perfect your skills?”

  Alex gave him a sidewise glance. “Honey, you don’t know what I do in my off time, besides looking after your ass.”

  “You don’t have to look after my ass.”

  “If I don’t, who will?” She folded her arms and nodded as if the argument was settled. In a weird way, it amused him to watch her try to run his life.

  “I wonder if Greg Moss will be surprised to see you,” she said.

  “I was surprised to hear from him.”

  Danny wasn’t sure what he was going to say to Greg when he saw him again. He didn’t know much more about the guy than he had a week ago. The closer they got, the more bizarre this whole adventure seemed. Now he was getting these mysterious texts. It made no sense.

  They reached Greg’s street, a nice middle-class section of homes in a well-kept, quiet neighborhood in Bellmawr, which was part of Camden County but removed from the city’s poverty and crime. Danny pulled up in front of a Cape Cod with blue shutters. A maple tree grew in the front yard and a neat row of alternating red and white begonias lined the path to the front stoop. It looked like a realtor’s home. The azaleas lining the house were neatly trimmed, and the lawn glistened with the green perfection of a golf course. It could have fronted a postcard stamped “Buy Me Now.”

  Danny exchanged a look with Alex. “Maybe I should call and warn him there’ll be two of us.”

  “No. I say better to ask forgiveness than permission.” She hopped out of the car. “Come on, Comrade.”

  They walked to the front door, and he rang the bell. Silence.

  “Greg?” Danny called and rang the bell again.

  “I’m going to look around back,” said Alex.

  Danny peered through one of the glass panels on the side of the door. Everything seemed neat and still inside, and he wanted to kick himself. He double-checked his phone. They had agreed to meet today at two, which it was now just after. Where the hell was Greg? How hard was it to call and say, “I’m running late”?

  Danny stepped down and eased behind the azaleas to look through the bay window into the living room. No one inside. Then he heard a cry.

  “Danny!”

  He ran to the back of the house. Alex had managed to clamber up onto the small balcony that ran along the second floor window by using a picnic table and three cushions to gain purchase. She stood with her hand pressed against her mouth.

  “Are you all right?” he called.

  “Oh, my God.” She gripped the railing, white knuckled. “Danny, get up
here.”

  He climbed onto the picnic table, grasped the edge of the post, and pulled himself up to the balcony, scraping the skin on his side when he pushed over the top of the railing.

  Alex put her icy hands around his face and turned him toward the sliding glass bedroom door. Inside, on the bed, Greg Moss lay naked and spread-eagle. His mouth was a gaping hole, and the blood from the gunshot wound in his chest had already congealed into a deep-brown circle.

  7

  Blond, blue-eyed Detective Ted Eliot of the Camden County PD looked like a smaller, softer-faced version of Junior, if Junior had made it to his thirties. Danny leaned against the police car and tried to block out the memory of his brother lying on a slab in the morgue with a number two lead pencil protruding from his right temple. Junior had looked vaguely surprised, though maybe that was just the way Danny remembered him now. Time had a way of rearranging memories.

  Detective Eliot’s African American partner was interviewing Alex down by the crime scene van. If they thought sending the black cop to talk to Alex would make her more pliable, they were in for a surprise. Danny stuffed his hands into his pockets and balled them into fists.

  A small group of neighbors had assembled across the street in the time it had taken the local cops to contact the county detectives. Danny kept his head down, glad for the sunglasses that shielded his eyes when he glimpsed the inevitable cell phones pointing his way. “Citizens with cell phones,” his old editor used to say. Andy Cohen had believed that the news was the province of professionals, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle encouraged the nutballs and self-promoters to “crawl out from their slimeholes.” Thinking about Andy still hurt.

  “Mr. Ryan?” the detective said.

  Has he been speaking the whole time? Danny blinked. “I’m sorry. I missed the question.”

  “You say you had a meeting with Mr. Moss.”

  Danny nodded. “Yeah. We arranged to meet a few days ago.”

  “And why were you getting together? Are you friends? Acquaintances? Are you a client?”

  “I went to high school with Greg. He had asked me to look into something for him.”

  “I see.” Detective Eliot gave him a brief smile and made a note. “And what were you looking into?”

  “It was a personal matter.”

  “Mr. Moss is dead. It’s not personal anymore.”

  Danny nodded. He knew he should just tell the cop what he wanted to know, and he would. He always fought that residual distrust. “He was getting texts. Strange texts. He asked me to look into it.”

  “Why you? Why not go to the police?”

  “That’s what I asked him. He said he wanted to keep it quiet. My brother’s a Philly cop. We made some inquiries. I didn’t think it was anything to worry about. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  “What kind of texts was he getting?”

  Danny tried to pull up the quotes from the recesses of his mind. “One was about it being better to be at the house of mourning than feasting. The other was something about vowing and paying—I forget exactly, but it’s in my notes.”

  “That seems pretty threatening to me. Did you figure climbing up on the balcony was part of your agreement as well?” The cop pursed his lips. He didn’t have to say, “Are you stupid?” for Danny to understand what he was thinking. Danny almost nodded at the unasked question. This ranked low on the list of stupid things he had done in his life.

  “I, uh, was worried.”

  “So you had a meeting. Then when he didn’t seem to be home, you and your friend climbed up on the balcony for what purpose?” The cop looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes. He was still friendly enough, but Danny could sense his growing skepticism. Hell, Danny himself didn’t understand why they hadn’t just turned around and gone home. He should have called Kevin. Except he hadn’t driven to Jersey just to turn around.

  “He was pretty definite about meeting today. I thought something might have happened.” It sounded lamer each time he said it.

  “I see.” The cop’s eyebrows rose slightly as he digested Danny’s words with a vaguely bemused look on his face. “You and your friend will need to come down to the station to make statements.”

  “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  Detective Eliot shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you appear to have been the last person to have heard from Mr. Moss. You discovered his body. You and your friend. We have a man who was killed and no apparent motive, and until we nail down time of death and get some more solid evidence, I’m afraid you’re all we’ve got.”

  “Alex just came along for the ride,” Danny said.

  “That’s her problem for now.”

  “Do we get to make phone calls?”

  Detective Eliot gave him a toothy, fake smile. “Of course. It’s just a formality. We just need to get your statements.”

  “Can we follow you?”

  “That’s your BMW?” The detective pointed to Danny’s Z4. When Danny nodded, he said, “We’ll have someone bring it along for you.”

  When he gave Danny a reassuring pat on the shoulder, Danny knew he was in for a long afternoon. He avoided looking at the neighbors who stood with cell phones at the ready as he slid into the detective’s car.

  *

  Danny stretched out on the uncomfortable straight-backed chair in the interrogation room and prepared to wait. He wished he had come alone, though once she had gotten over the shock of finding Greg’s body, Alex seemed to be holding up well. If nothing else, she was game. She’d given Danny a grim smile and thumbs up before she strolled off with the other cop to a second interrogation room.

  Detective Eliot entered and set a cup of coffee in front of Danny. “I should have asked if you’d prefer a soda. Do you need milk or sugar?”

  “No, thanks. This is fine.” Danny straightened and put on his sincere face. There was nothing like shitty cop coffee. He pushed the red coffee stirrer around the black liquid. It gave him something to do with his hands.

  “So you’re a reporter, right?” The detective looked over his notes.

  “I’m a freelance journalist, yeah.”

  “Is that like the guys who snap cell phone pictures and send them to the news?”

  Danny was reasonably sure the detective had already done a background check on him, but he was willing to play along if it got him out of this room. “No. I was a columnist for the Sentinel until I quit a while back. Now I do freelance columns for papers like the New York Times.”

  “So this might be something you could write about?”

  Danny shook his head. “I write about different issues. Last month I did a four-part series on human trafficking.”

  “Is that right?” The cop leaned closer. “For the Sentinel?”

  “For the Times.”

  Maybe he should have told the detective that his very last piece was about the Shamrock, but he doubted that would have gained him many points. Detective Eliot didn’t look like the type who hung in neighborhood tappies by choice. He dressed too well for a cop. His gray suit was custom, and he wore a red silk tie with a slim gold tie bar. Either the detective came from money or graft was profitable in the Camden area. Since Bellmawr was a working-class section of New Jersey and the detective worked homicide instead of vice, Danny opted for the former theory. For now.

  The detective glanced at Danny’s phone, then looked up at him, his face bland. “That’s interesting background, Mr. Ryan. So tell me. Did you think this guy, Greg Moss, was involved with human trafficking?”

  Danny almost dropped the cup of coffee. “What? No. I told you. I was doing a favor for him.”

  “Yeah, I understand that, but we have a little problem here.”

  Danny frowned at him. “What kind of problem?”

  “Well, it’s a funny thing. We didn’t find Mr. Moss’s cell phone in the house.”

  Danny processed what the detective was saying. He didn’t like the way the detective seemed to be measuring him up, like maybe he had
more than one reason to be at Greg’s house. “I don’t understand. You didn’t find his cell phone?”

  Eliot said nothing for a moment and then let out a slow sigh. He leaned a little closer, inviting Danny to do the same. “We didn’t find his cell phone or computer. I have some of my people looking for them now. So I’m going to ask you again, do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill Mr. Moss?”

  Danny folded his arms and didn’t budge. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill Greg. I haven’t seen him since high school, but he seemed like a pretty normal guy. I don’t understand why anyone would threaten him. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Okay. You went to high school together. You both stayed in the area. Maybe you have friends in common.”

  “I don’t think so.” The few people he had stayed in touch with from high school had no connection to Greg. Danny was sure of that. He saw no need to drag them into the investigation.

  “Is there a possibility this has something to do with high school?”

  “Anything’s possible, but Greg and I weren’t close friends. We knew each other in passing. We didn’t hang out. He was a big-time jock, and I wasn’t. He was in the very cool group, socially speaking.”

  “So you never hung out?”

  “We existed in different universes. Greg was a social guy though. He was outgoing. Got along with most people. Like during senior week, he probably invited half the people in the class to stop by his shore house if they needed a place to crash.”

  “Including you.”

  “Sure.”

  “But you weren’t friends.”

  “He invited a lot of people.” Danny wasn’t about to get into the whys of the invitation. “It was one of those ‘if you need a place to crash, feel free’ sort of invitations. That’s the way he was.”

  Danny stared up at the detective, and he knew from the way Eliot’s eyes narrowed that he shouldn’t have mentioned senior week or the shore house or the party.