by Osborne, Jon
Not that she was going to get off the hook that easily, of course.
The newsman laughed and shuffled his feet to block her path, slipping momentarily on a patch of black ice hidden beneath his brown dress shoes and temporarily losing his balance.
Price flung out his arms wildly to his sides and regained his equilibrium quickly, but otherwise looked like an adult who was attempting to ride a skateboard for the very first time in his life. Still, once he’d regained his balance, he acted as though nothing had happened at all. Not even a single flicker of acknowledgement on his handsome face that he’d come perilously close to smashing out all his pretty veneers against the hard ground.
Dana watched all this unfold in amazement. Not a single hair on Price’s head had moved out of place despite his near-fall and the fact that the healthy wind swirling around the parking lot at the moment called to mind a certain famous fictional tornado that had once dropped an entire house on a wicked witch sporting ruby-red slippers.
She shook her head in bewilderment, wondering where the heck TV folks got all their confidence. She highly doubted it came from a can of industrial-strength hairspray or ten pounds of pancake make-up, though. No, it was something else. Maybe a complete lack of self-awareness, an utter inability to step outside their own bodies and view themselves through the eyes of others. The same lack of crushing self-consciousness that Dana seemed to have been born with.
Whatever it was, however, she knew that she could probably use some more of it herself. A lot more of it, actually. She hated knowing that she didn’t even trust herself anymore. How could she expect anyone else to trust her?
And in her job, trust was everything.
That being said – much like a cat’s love – trust was something that needed to be earned. Or, in her case, earned back. Starting with Gary Templeton and Christian Manhoff’s grieving family. No matter how hard it might be for her to accomplish right now, Dana knew that she needed to regroup mentally, to stay strong, to show everybody that she hadn’t cracked and that she was still capable of doing her job properly.
And maybe, just maybe, even excelling at it every once in a while.
“Sure you don’t know what I’m talking about, Agent Whitestone,” Price persisted, turning down the corners of his mouth into a frown to indicate he wasn’t buying her story. “Nice try, though. I guess you really didn’t want to talk to us, huh? Anyway, it’s a good thing for me that my source on the inside finally coughed up the information. The rest of those idiots are still waiting for you outside Fairview General.”
He cast his gaze up at the menacing winter sky above and clucked his tongue with false concern. “The poor bastards. It’s going to get dark out pretty soon and our weather guy says that it’s supposed to get viciously cold out here tonight. Can you believe that? Helluva way to describe the weather, huh? But that’s what he said. Viciously cold. I’ve never heard the weather described that way before, have you?”
Dana ignored Price’s question and forced herself not to glare, even though the sneaky newsman had taken all of about three seconds to get all the way underneath her skin. Still, she knew that she looked like a stark raving lunatic whenever she glared at somebody on television and that was the last impression on earth she wanted to create right now. Or reinforce. Hell, everybody out there probably thought she was crazy already.
Accurate as the impression might be, she didn’t want to reinforce it by appearing the part.
She concentrated on keeping her voice completely even and entirely devoid of emotion, a little trick that she’d learned during a media-relations course taught by her former mentor and partner, Crawford Bell – another victim of the Cleveland Slasher when he’d been strung up by his neck with a length of electrical cord in a perfect replica of her childhood wardrobe. “Good to see you, Brett,” she said, purposely getting the newsman’s first name wrong. “How are your wife and kids doing?”
She studied the newsman’s reaction as he processed her words. Personal questions like the one she’d just asked him put the media on the defensive and made it more likely that the footage they’d just shot wouldn’t wind up on the ten o’clock news. It was a simple trick, but an effective one nonetheless. Because not even the fanciest editing job could cover up when a picture jumped wildly to and fro with no natural segue. And in the news business – much like in the FBI – trust was everything. Even the slightest hint that you were trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes and attempting to fool them into believing anything less than the absolute truth meant that you were dead in the water.
Sure enough, Price looked confused for a moment, casting a sideways glance at one of his cameramen before returning his gaze to Dana. “What are you talking about, Agent Whitestone? My name’s Brent and I don’t have a wife and kids. I’m single.”
Dana crinkled up her face and affected an embarrassed look, as though she’d just been caught in a mortifying social faux pas and could just die right there on the spot. “Ah, right,” she said, sucking in a lungful of cold air over her bottom teeth to show him just how stupid she felt. “Sorry about that, Brent. I guess I must have been thinking about Brett Grodin over at Channel Two.”
Price’s face reddened, but in his case the mortification was completely genuine. Brett Grodin and the rest of the cast over at Channel Two had been kicking the crap out of Channel Four every ratings period for the past five years now, and Brent Price – much like all newsmen – hated to be outdone by his contemporaries. Despised knowing that somebody out there was doing a better job than he was and would probably get out of Cleveland a hell of a lot sooner than he did.
Dana allowed herself a small smile at Price’s obvious discomfort. She just couldn’t help herself. It served the inconsiderate jerk right, though. Maybe now he’d know how she felt. How it felt to be ambushed at home like this. The shoe was on the other foot now, and the best part of it all was that Price hadn’t even realized the transition was taking place. She’d turned the situation around on her questioner with two simple sentences, just like Crawford Bell had taught her to do.
God, she missed that man.
“No problem,” Price said after another long moment of awkward silence. Still, he looked pissed off that they’d probably have to trash the entire opening sequence, waving four fingers across his throat to let his cameramen know they could stop taping.
Despite his pushiness, Dana almost felt sorry for him as she watched him try to recover his composure in front of his colleagues. Because much like her, looking like a complete jackass on television didn’t do a damn thing to further his career, either.
Price cleared his throat and gathered himself before nodding to his cameramen to start taping again. “Anyway, do you have a minute to give us a quick interview, Agent Whitestone?” he asked, slipping back into his smooth newsman’s persona now that the all-seeing electronic eyes were capturing his slick performance once more. “Maybe we could go inside where it’s warm and have a little sit-down, if that’s agreeable with you. We’ll make it nice. No pressure. Everyone’s dying to know what went on in your recent cases and you’re a very hard target to catch up with.”
Dana shook her head but continued smiling at Price. At twenty-five or twenty-six, he couldn’t have been more than three or four years removed from J-school, and local Cleveland news obviously hadn’t been his first choice. Then again, whose first choice had Cleveland been? Sure, Dana had chosen to return to her native city after graduating from Cleveland State University in 1994 with a degree in criminal psychology and beginning her career in Washington, DC three years later, but she marked the exception to the rule, not the rule itself. For most people, Cleveland had always been the place where promising careers went to die. Probably always would be.
Still, in this economy, you took jobs wherever you could find them.
“Sorry, Brett,” she said, getting the erstwhile reporter’s name right this time and trying her best to look disappointed about the refusal. No use rubbing salt
in his open wounds. He looked plenty enough wounded already as it was. “I can’t do it right now because I’ve got a very important appointment I need to keep. But I’ll tell you what: how about I give you an exclusive in a couple of days or so? I could call you at the station to set it up, if that’s all right with you.”
Price brightened at the suggestion. At least the trip out to Lakewood hadn’t been a complete waste of his time. “Hell, yeah,” he said, perking up at the notion that he might be the one to finally nail down the elusive first interview with Dana Whitestone following a pair of the most bizarre serial-killer stories the country had ever seen – an interview that not even Barbara Walters and the rest of the clucking hens over on The View had managed to get up to this point. “How about next Monday or Tuesday? We’ll be in winter sweeps then and it would really help me out. Make me look like a big shot to the boys upstairs if I could get the scoop on all the rest of the vultures.”
Dana pulled back the left sleeve on her bomber jacket and checked her watch to remind Price of the fact that he was making her late. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll call you at the news station in a day or two. What’s your extension?”
“Four-five-four-three.”
“Fine. I’ll give you a call at that number then.”
“Awesome,” Price said. “Thanks a million.”
He jerked his head toward the far end of the parking lot to let his camera and soundmen know they could follow him toward their news van. “Well, I guess we’ll just wrap things up here for now then, Agent Whitestone. Talk to you soon.”
Dana watched the news crew walk away, then called out to Price before he could climb up into the passenger compartment of the van. “Hey, Brett?”
He turned around to face her. “Yeah?”
“I’ll give you that exclusive on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
Dana held his stare. “I’ll give you the exclusive if you promise to never pull this crap again. Don’t ever ambush me at home like this again, OK? I don’t like it and it isn’t fair. Do we have a deal?”
Price lowered his head. Even he knew that the press could and often did overstep its boundaries. God knew he wouldn’t have wanted anyone harassing him at home like this. If they did, he’d probably wind up chasing them off his property with a twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands, locked, cocked and loaded for bear.
“Yeah, it’s a deal, Agent Whitestone,” he said, finally dropping his affected tone and sounding like a real human being for the first time all night. “Sorry about that.”
Dana waved away his apology. “It’s all right. Just make sure it never happens again, OK? I’d really hate to have to give that exclusive to Brett Grodin. I’ve never liked that prick.”
A brief smile flashed across Price’s full lips, followed almost at once by a full-blown grin that showed off his pearly whites to their best advantage. “I’d hate it more, Agent Whitestone,” he said, climbing up into the van’s passenger compartment. “And believe me, I hate that prick a hell of a lot worse than you do.”
And with that, Brett Price slammed the door shut behind him and he and the rest of the Channel Four news team drove off into the cold night.
CHAPTER 24
When Brent Price and the rest of the Channel Two news team had safely driven off in their news van, Dana climbed behind the steering wheel of her silver Mazda Protégé and cranked the engine to life.
“Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield immediately came on over the car stereo and she found the volume control on the steering wheel with her thumb before turning it all the way up. She’d always loved this song. It had always reminded her of her high school days, back in the days before her life had become so damned complicated all the time.
Dana dialed up the power on the defroster to clear off the frost from the windshield and hit Interstate 90 for ten minutes before taking the West 25th Street exit and heading directly into the heart of the city, sighing as the last strains of the nostalgia-inducing song wound down and the radio kicked over to “I Wonder” by Kellie Pickler, the former American Idol contestant who’d recorded a Top Ten smash-hit with a song detailing an irretrievably broken relationship between a mother and her daughter.
Dana sighed heavily. The song had always made her miss her own mother that much more. And why not? Sara Whitestone had been her entire world during the brief time they’d shared together on this earth, and it would have been really nice to call her mom right now and ask for some advice. Because the sad truth of the matter was that Dana didn’t know what to do anymore. About anything. Her life. Her career. The thrilling-yet-absolutely-soul-freezing possibility of adopting little Bradley.
About a million other little things that mothers and daughters around the globe routinely discussed on a daily basis.
Dana sighed again. One thing she did know, however, was that as much as she didn’t want to, she’d make good on her promise to Brent Price about sitting down with him for that exclusive interview. Still, the thought filled her stomach with dread. No doubt the national networks would tap into the live feed and broadcast the interview countrywide, and the last thing in the world she wanted right now was any more attention.
Thankfully, though, Price still looked a little wet behind his ears to her, and that was exactly the kind of reporter she wanted to deal with on this matter. Using the tricks that Crawford Bell had taught her, hopefully she could steer the interview with Price in whatever direction she chose, and she was pretty sure he’d be happy enough to have scored the initial Q&A with her that he wouldn’t recognize – or at least wouldn’t call her out on – what she already knew would be completely evasive answers designed to put the public’s insatiable curiosity about her to rest once and for all. Hell, most people didn’t care what Dana said, they just wanted to hear her saying it – preferably in prime time, if at all possible. Somehow, despite the infinite number of more important issues out there worth obsessing over, her story had become hot. One of the hottest in the past decade, if not even longer than that – at least in the world of law enforcement. And like it or not, she knew it would remain that way until she could take away at least some of the mystery for the curious masses.
Twenty minutes later, having successfully navigated the treacherous road conditions on I-90 as yet another heavy snow began to fall from the heavens, Dana swung the Protégé in front of the main stationhouse of the Cleveland Police Department and came to a gentle stop.
She glanced out her window and frowned. From all appearances, it looked like Brent Price’s weatherman colleague had been spot-on with his gloomy forecast for the night. It did look like it was going to be a cold one out there tonight.
A viciously cold one.
Just as she’d suspected he’d be, Gary Templeton was waiting for her on the curb, dressed in a long black trench coat over a perfectly creased navy-blue police uniform, with his hands shoved deep into his pockets against the inclement weather.
He approached the passenger-side door with a wide smile on his face, letting in an icy blast of freezing air behind him before finally settling down into the passenger seat and pulling shut the door again.
“Hey, there, Dana,” he said, lifting his large hands to his face and blowing into them for warmth. “Long time, no see, huh?”
Dana leaned forward and turned up the heater inside the car. “You should have waited for me inside the stationhouse, Gary,” she scolded. “You’re lucky you didn’t catch your death of pneumonia out there. This weather is insane.”
Templeton chuckled. “Tell me about it. Welcome to Ohio in December, right? Ain’t exactly Honolulu, is it?”
Dana peered into the side-view mirror to make sure the coast was clear before swinging the Protégé back out into the traffic that was crawling down the ice-covered street. Prospect Avenue – the same busy road on which Christian Manhoff’s naked body had been discovered just a few days earlier.
She turned down the radio and looked sideways at the Templeton. “So,
what picture of my brother was attached to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring, anyway?” she asked. “And do you have any idea of who might have put it there?”
Templeton brushed a light dusting of snow from the sleeve of his trench coat. Tiny white crystals immediately melted in the hot blasts of air blowing from the vents. “Well, it was the same picture that he used with his byline when he worked for the Plain Dealer,” he said, referencing her half-brother’s former job as a newspaper reporter in the city. “The same picture he used back when he was still going by the name of Jeremiah Quigley. We’re running it for prints and fibers now. Same thing with the dog bone. Hopefully we’ll know something more in a day or two. Nothing yet, though. Crime scene was pretty clean. Sound familiar to you?”
Dana grimaced at the mention of her brother’s penchant for never leaving behind any evidence at his many crime scenes – not to mention the unsettling mention of his birth name. “Quigley” had been her mother’s maiden name, and in the hundreds of times Dana had read the horrible account of her parents’ deaths in the newspaper – an account written by none other than her half-brother himself – never once had she bothered to look at the reporter’s name or mug shot. If she had, maybe she could have saved Crawford and Eric and all of the others from dying their horrible deaths.
But she hadn’t, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it now.
Templeton broke into her thoughts. “And, no, I have no idea who might have put the picture there. Do you?”
Dana shook her head. “Not a clue.”
Templeton grunted. “So, I guess we’re starting from ground zero then, huh?”
Dana looked over at the Cleveland cop and lifted her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, taking his inventory. Close-cropped silver hair that sat atop a ruggedly handsome face highlighted by a pair of piercing brown eyes. A dead ringer for Richard Gere if ever there’d been one, mixed in with more than just a small helping of Clint Eastwood for good measure.
