Morgue Mama

by Corwin, C. R.

  “Maybe she did do it.”

  Aubrey slid in the next tape. “I wonder if she would have been so convincing if she’d been interrogated before Dale Marabout’s story on the poisons ran?”

  “Dale’s story ran before her confession?”

  “Three days before. You can see why I don’t trust the police. Kudos to Marabout, but they should never have given him that evidence so early.”

  The next tape was from the arraignment. Sissy was wearing an orange jumpsuit now. Her hair was flat and greasy and pulled back into a makeshift ponytail. She told the judge she was guilty. She said she was ready for whatever punishment God and the state of Ohio had in mind. The judge ordered the obligatory psychological testing.

  The last tape was from the sentencing. Sissy’s childhood had been horrible enough for her to avoid a death sentence but not life without parole. Deputies led Sissy from the courtroom. You could see Guthrie Gates sitting in the gallery.

  Chapter 5

  Monday, March 20

  Monday evening Aubrey got into a big mess with Dale Marabout and managing editor Alec Tinker. I’d already gone home for the day, but Eric Chen was still in the morgue and overhead most of it.

  Chief Polceznec’s reorganization plan had reassigned all of the district commanders but one, the 3rd District’s Lionel Percy. Aubrey thought that odd, given that most of the city’s problems with police corruption came out of the 3rd District. The 3rd is a royal mess, that’s for sure. Hardly a month goes by that some cop there doesn’t get demoted or indicted for something. Sometimes a whole slew of them get in trouble at once, like the time two years ago when TV 21 reporter Tish Kiddle found eight officers moonlighting at a Morrow Avenue show bar where the lap dancers were completely naked and cocaine as easy to get as pretzels.

  So Aubrey wanted to investigate why Chief Polceznec didn’t reassign Commander Percy. Tinker was all for giving her the green light, but Dale filibustered: It wasn’t the paper’s job to go on fishing expeditions—that, he said, was the job of the state attorney general, or the U.S. Justice Department, or the department’s own internal affairs division.

  But Aubrey insisted there’d been enough crap in the 3rd to question why Lionel Percy was left in place when all the other district commanders were either given administrative jobs at headquarters or tempted into retirement.

  Eric told me the argument went on for a half hour, ending with Aubrey screeching obscenities, Dale storming off to the men’s room, and Tinker wondering out loud why he’d accepted the transfer from our sister paper in Baton Rouge.

  I’d have to say both Dale and Aubrey were right. A newspaper shouldn’t go on fishing expeditions. But when something already smells to high heaven? Well, that was a judgment call Tinker had to make and he gave Aubrey the green light she wanted.

  ***

  Let me give you a little background on the Herald-Union, and how Alec Tinker landed here as managing editor.

  The Hannawa Herald was founded in 1855 by Elton Elsworth Newkirk, a Connecticut-born abolitionist who helped bankroll the anti-slavery crusade of John Brown, who, before achieving infamy in Kansas and Harper’s Ferry, toiled for many years right here in Hannawa. The Hannawa Union did not appear until 1876, late in the corrupt second term of President Ulysses S. Grant. It was an unapologetically Republican paper that championed the region’s industrial growth. It reigned as the city’s biggest newspaper until the Great Depression, when its anti-New Deal rantings cost it half of its circulation.

  In 1937, the Herald’s then-publisher, Bix Newkirk, bought the near-bankrupt Union for a song. By the time I came along in the Fifties, the Herald-Union was a vibrant, well-heeled afternoon paper, the fourth largest in the state. Then suburbia raised its ugly head and families by the thousands moved to the cornfields. By 1972, the paper’s circulation and advertising revenues had sagged so badly that the heretofore industrious Bix Newkirk suddenly developed an interest in sailboats. In 1974 he sold the Herald-Union to the Knudsen-Hartpence chain, headquartered eight hundred miles away in St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to its flagship paper there in St. Paul, The Northern Star-Pride, it owns papers in Duluth, Tampa, Baton Rouge and a dozen or so smaller cities.

  Knudsen-Hartpence brought in Bob Averill as editor-in-chief and changed us from an afternoon paper to a morning paper. Home delivery increased by a third and the suburban malls boosted advertising revenues. We’ve been languishing lately—nobody under forty reads newspapers and everybody in America is unfortunately under forty, or so it seems—but the corporate gurus in St. Paul have plans for changing that. They’ve sent us Tinker, a thirty-two-year-old wunderkind from our paper in Baton Rouge.

  At the time of his appointment the company newsletter said Tinker would make reading the Herald-Union “Not only irresistible but imperative.” So far he’s done that by running shorter stories and larger photographs, though he has promised to initiate what he calls “a synergistic blend of in-your-face and in-your-mind journalism.” Talk about bullshit.

  Tinker’s arrival at the Herald-Union was anything but good news to veteran reporters like Dale Marabout. Knudsen-Hartpence sent Tinker here to get the paper’s circulation up, which meant shaking the town up, which meant shaking the editorial staff up.

  Dale is certain, and I’m sure he’s right, that Tinker’s marching orders were to fill as many of the paper’s major beats as possible with as many indefatigable kids as possible. So the arrival of Tinker was a godsend to Aubrey McGinty. She’d been trying to get the Herald-Union’s attention since her freshman year at Kent State. She’d repeatedly applied for stringer work—to cover boring suburban school board meetings and the like—but she never got a call. Nor was she ever chosen for a summer internship. During her senior years she lobbied every department editor except sports for a job after graduation. Her stories in the college paper were good enough to get her a couple of interviews, but not good enough to get her a job. And if I know Aubrey, all the time she was trying to get our attention, she was trying just as hard to get the attention of every big-city newspaper in the Midwest. Like most journalism grads, she ended up on a small paper in a small town, covering small stories, trying to survive on a pitifully small paycheck, plotting her escape.

  The way young reporters escape small papers is through the stories they write. They clip them out and stick them in manila folders. As soon as they’ve got six months or a year under their belt, they start sending those clips to bigger papers. The better their clips, the bigger the paper they’ll land on. So they joyfully work their brains out at those small papers, praying that the good-clip gods let something horrible happen on their beats, like the murder of the local football coach, so they can cover the hell out of it.

  Tinker liked Aubrey’s clips on the football coach murder. He liked how she didn’t accept the Rush City Police Department’s verdict. He liked how she pursued the rumors of the coach’s affair with the cheerleading advisor. He liked how her relentless pursuit led to the arrest of the cuckolded husband. Aubrey McGinty was just the kind of reporter he wanted covering the cops in Hannawa, Ohio.

  From what I gather, Tinker and Aubrey started wooing each other a good year before she was actually hired. Aubrey sent him her clips and he took her to lunch. There were letters and phone calls and then finally a firm commitment that she’d be hired just as soon as there was an opening.

  Dale did a wonderful job covering the Buddy Wing murder in November. Everyone in the newsroom praised him to high heaven. But Tinker had already made up his mind and when Wally Kearns announced in January he was taking advantage of the paper’s early retirement program to write that novel he’d been putting off, there was suddenly a copy editing slot on the metro desk for someone with an experienced eye. For Dale Marabout.

  Aubrey, as you know, showed up the first week of March, full of vinegar.

  ***

  Wednesday, March 22

  On Wednesday I took Dale to lunch at Speckley’s.

  I was expecting him to
be pissed off by Tinker’s decision. Instead, he was concerned only about Aubrey’s safety. “Maddy,” he said, “the 3rd District has been corrupt for decades. I don’t know if Percy is part of any illegal stuff or not. And I bet Chief Polceznec doesn’t know either. But what both the chief and I do know is that Lionel Percy is a five-hundred-pound piranha. You don’t swim in his pond. Polceznec probably figures Percy will retire in a couple years and then he can put some Spic-and-Span guy in charge and turn things around.”

  I tried to get Dale to eat his meat loaf sandwich before it got cold but he just kept playing with his potatoes. “Why didn’t you tell Tinker all this?” I asked. “It looks like you’re trying to protect your pals on the force again.”

  Dale wasn’t happy with that. “Again?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He stuck his fork in the top of his potatoes and folded his arms. “If I tell Tinker I’m afraid for Aubrey’s safety, that will only prove her point, won’t it? If only Aubrey wasn’t so damned gonzo about everything.”

  Well, Dale was right about that. Aubrey was one very determined young woman. Most reporters are emotionally detached from the stories they cover. It doesn’t matter much if they’re covering a murder trial or a Red Cross blood drive. They go where they’re assigned, gather up the who-what-when-where-and-why, come back and write the damn story, go home and feed their cats. They get whooped up about a story from time to time, sure. But when they do, it’s the story that gets them excited, not the reality.

  From what I’d seen, Aubrey McGinty was different. With her it was the reality. Yes, she’d told Guthrie Gates she was only interested in Buddy Wing’s murder because it was a good story. But I had the feeling she really wanted to help Sissy James. And if she wanted to investigate why Chief Polceznec left Lionel Percy commander of the 3rd District, it was because the people living there deserved better.

  “Now Mr. M,” I said, “It might turn out to be a good story.”

  He decided to eat. “It’s not sour grapes. She really could get hurt.”

  ***

  Friday, March 24

  Aubrey not only sat on my desk, she pulled her legs up under her chin. It was one of those late March days in Ohio when the weather should have been a lot better than it was, when wet snow covers the sprouting daffodils and tulips, when people are torpid and testy, bundled up in sweaters they’d already put away for the summer. “Look around the newsroom,” I hissed at her. “Do you see anybody else sitting on the top of their desks?”

  She didn’t get off, but she did lower her legs and dangle them over the side. I accepted the partial victory. “So, what brings you to the morgue on this wonderful afternoon?”

  She yawned. “I finally got that stuff from probate on the good reverend’s estate.”

  Suddenly it wouldn’t have bothered me if she were standing on her head. “And?”

  “It seems the money trail leads straight to God.”

  “You don’t think He poisoned Buddy Wing, do you?”

  She was no more in the mood for my smart-assed remarks than I was for hers. “It’s really quite remarkable. Wing only had $6,400 in the bank. A $10,000 life insurance policy. A tiny paid-for colonial in South Ridge. A 1987 Pontiac Sunbird valued at nothing. All left to the Heaven Bound Cathedral.”

  “What about all the white suits and loud ties?”

  “God got those, too.”

  “Then he wasn’t killed for his money.”

  Aubrey handed me my tea mug and we headed for the cafeteria. “Do you know Wing only made $34,000 a year. You’d think he was a member of the newspaper guild.”

  “And how do you know he only made $34,000 a year?”

  “I goo-goo eyed one of the young studlies in homicide into showing me the church’s financial report from their files.”

  “You think Guthrie Gates will settle for $34,000?” I asked.

  “He was already making $60,000 when Wing was killed.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, that’s this year’s financial report, isn’t it? Which the police don’t have. And I’m guessing Gates wouldn’t be too crazy about sharing with us. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  We’d just walked through sports. I took a look over my shoulder. A half-dozen sets of male eyes quickly shifted from Aubrey’s jeans, some to the ceiling, some to computer screens, some to the floor, none to me. “It doesn’t matter?”

  Aubrey was looking over her shoulder, too. Making sure she was being appreciated. “Even if Gates killed poor old Buddy for the tithes and offerings, he’d have to take it easy with the church elders for a while.”

  This late in the day the cafeteria was empty. I headed for the hot water. Aubrey headed for the candy machine. “So where does this leave your investigation?” I asked.

  “Nowhere and everywhere,” she answered. “Just like before.”

  Chapter 6

  Saturday, April 1

  It was a toss-up whose car we’d take that morning. Neither my Dodge Shadow nor Aubrey’s Ford Escort was in any shape for a long drive. But if we were going to Marysville somebody had to drive. My car got the nod when we compared tire tread.

  I picked her up at her apartment building, a crumbling old Art Deco palace at West Tuckman and Sterling. It had been a wonderful neighborhood once. I’ve seen the old pictures: muscular oaks lining brick streets, trolley cars, big old Tudors surrounded with wrought-iron fences. Now the oaks are gone, the bricks paved over with asphalt, the trolleys replaced by boxy buses, the wrought-iron by chain-link, and the wonderful old homes chopped up into efficiency apartments for poor souls who don’t have two nickels to rub together.

  Aubrey was waiting outside for me, in the rain. She got in the car with soaked hair, a mug of black coffee, and cheeks as pink as bunny slippers.

  “Good gravy,” I scolded, “you’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “Pneumonia is caused by micro-organisms, not raindrops,” she said.

  It was only six-thirty and I made an illegal U-turn to get back to the I-491 interchange. “I don’t think so, Aubrey.” I told her how President William Henry Harrison gave a four-hour inaugural speech in the rain, contracted pneumonia, and died four weeks later.

  She was pressing the coffee mug against her forehead. “Don’t mother me, Maddy.”

  I took I-491 to I-76 to I-71. We hit one pocket of rain after another. Aubrey was driving me nuts changing stations on the radio.

  My lunch with Dale Marabout the previous week had poured more fuel on my already combustible curiosity and sent me looking for answers about what made Aubrey tick. Whenever I’d gotten a spare minute, I’d snooped through the files looking for anything to do with Rush City or a McGinty. And now I was chomping at the bit to ask her about something I’d found. However, what I’d found wasn’t good, and that kept me chomping instead of asking. It kept me disappointed in her, and disappointed in me, all the way to Marysville.

  Marysville is a little city of eleven thousand or so in Union County, a half hour northwest of Columbus. Back in the Eighties the governor persuaded the Japanese carmaker Honda to build a big auto plant there, providing thousands of good jobs and ruining thousands of acres of good farmland. Until then the county’s biggest employer was the Marysville Reformatory for Women. It’s where they sent Sissy James after she confessed to poisoning Buddy Wing.

  Saturday morning is not a good time to visit someone in prison. It’s when everyone wants to visit. So there were quite a number of cars lined up at the gate and the guards were taking their time checking people in.

  Except for the chain-link fences and Slinky-like rings of razor wire, the prison looked like a small college. Some of the buildings were old and strangely quaint—the first were built in the early nineteen hundreds—while others were cold and modern. There were a few bunches of trees here and there, though the prison clearly could have budgeted a little more for landscaping. On the drive from Hannawa, Aubrey told me that Marysville housed eighteen hundred women, most for
non-violent crimes like drugs or forgery or prostitution, most for getting mixed up with the wrong kind of man.

  I was surprised that Sissy James had agreed to talk with Aubrey. I also was glad Aubrey invited me along. I’d sat in the morgue for forty years watching reporters rushing in and out, watching the stories they banged out turn into neat columns of print. Now I was getting a chance to see a reporter in action. I knew that Aubrey cared how this whole Sissy James thing panned out, but frankly I just liked the snooping and the lunches afterward.

  The guards directed us to the maximum security building. It was big and new. Except for the bars in the windows it didn’t look much different from the middle school they built up the street from my bungalow a few years ago. Inside we were politely interrogated, checked for drugs and weapons, and led into a tiny windowless room. It was furnished with an uncomfortable-looking blue sofa, a single wood chair without armrests, and a small coffee table made of molded plastic. The walls were bare except for a closed-circuit TV camera and a framed photo of Republican Governor Dick Van Sickle.

  Aubrey motioned for me to sit in the chair. She sat in the middle of the sofa, so Sissy would have to sit close to her no matter which end of the sofa she chose. We only had to wait a couple of minutes before Sissy was ushered in. Her baggy cotton slacks and blouse were the same gray as the floor tiles. The guard positioned herself in the doorway, arms folded across her mixing-bowl breasts.

  Sissy was surprisingly friendly. She smiled and shook our hands and sat on Aubrey’s left side. She’d only been in Marysville for four months, but she looked thinner than she did on the interrogation and arraignment tapes. Aubrey took a notebook and pen from her purse, but she didn’t open the notebook or click the pen, her old off-the-record trick. “What job do they have you doing here, Sissy?” she asked.

  “Flag shop.”

  “Making flags you mean?”