Murder at The Washington Tribune: A Capital Crimes Mystery

by Margaret Truman

  “I’ve heard the rumor,” he said, taking another drink. “I don’t see any relevance to the murder.”

  Grant leaned close. “Is it possible, Joe? I mean, could Kaporis have been turning tricks after hours and pissed off some client?”

  “I doubt it, John. I really doubt it. Where did your friend get it?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Are you moving it on the wire?”

  “This morning.”

  They enjoyed their drinks in silence until Grant said, “What’s with your buddy Hawthorne?”

  Wilcox turned to him. “My buddy?”

  Grant laughed and ordered a second drink. Wilcox declined.

  “Yeah, your buddy, the hotshot reporter with the attitude. I heard you and he got into it up here.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Wilcox said, reconsidering and asking for a second drink. “What’s this place become, a little old ladies’ club? Yeah, I brought the bastard here for lunch and got into it with him. He left in a huff, which was fine with me.”

  “That’s not the way he tells it,” Grant said.

  “You talked to him?”

  “No, but I heard him talk about it.”

  “How did that happen?” Wilcox asked, feeling increasingly agitated.

  “I was in the Trib Bar, that little joint up the street from you,” Grant said. “Hawthorne was there with a half-dozen yuppie friends, pontificating and shooting off his mouth after a snootful of booze, trying to impress the gals who were with him—who, by the way, were knockouts. Anyway, our young Mr. Hawthorne is giving a lecture on how journalism has changed, and how people who’ve been in it for a while can’t keep up with the changes.”

  “Changes for the worse,” Wilcox muttered.

  “That’s not the point, Joe. Hawthorne starts telling a story about this over-the-hill reporter who took him to lunch here at the club. God, he went on about how the club is nothing but a haven for hacks and losers. Tickled his audience, who were all about his age. I was tempted to take a shot at him, but my pugilistic days are long gone.”

  “He mentioned me by name?” Wilcox asked.

  “Yeah, once. At some point in the story, one of the gals asked who the reporter was who took him to lunch. He said it was Joe Wilcox, which was not an unfamiliar name to one of the nubile young ladies because she associated you with the serial killer stories. That triggered recognition from the other, who said she’d seen you on TV. So did I, Joe. You’ve got a new career ahead of you. Let’s have lunch. I’m starved.”

  “I’m not staying,” Wilcox said, draining his second drink. “No, I, ah, I have an appointment somewhere. I have to be somewhere. I have to—I’m sorry. Good seeing you. I have to go.”

  “Okay,” Grant said. “Hey, Joe, about Hawthorne. Don’t let it get to you. I just thought you’d enjoy hearing the story.”

  “Sure. Yeah, I did.”

  Wilcox stood and asked for his bill.

  “I’ve got it,” said Grant. “Go on, go to your appointment.”

  Grant watched his friend leave the room.”You notice anything strange about Joe?” he asked the bartender, who’d been serving drinks at the National Press Club for more than twenty years.

  “He looks a little uptight, Mr. Grant.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Grant said, shaking his head. Unstated: The guy’s cracking up.

  Wilcox walked to the Tribune Building but didn’t enter. He went past the entrance and wandered aimlessly along nearby streets. There were times when he thought he might pass out and took refuge against a building wall, trying to be as subtle as possible so as to not draw attention to himself. Mild nausea came and went. What’s wrong with me? he wondered. He felt like an old man, feeble and easily victimized, taking careful steps to avoid falling, crossing intersections with great care, starting across when the light changed but hesitating because he wasn’t sure whether it was safe to go to the other side.

  After forty-five minutes of this drifting, he felt sufficiently composed to return to the newspaper and his cubicle. He’d no sooner settled in his chair and started to check e-mails and voice mail messages than Morehouse summoned him.

  “What’s up?” Joe asked, taking a seat across the desk from the editor.

  “What’ve you got for tomorrow?”

  “Just what I sent you before lunch.”

  “What’s the problem, Joe?”

  “There is no problem, Paul. I’m working my sources. Hopefully, I’ll have more tomorrow.” It seemed insufferably hot in Morehouse’s office, and Wilcox dabbed at his brow and upper lip with a handkerchief.

  “You sick?” Morehouse asked.

  “Sick? No. It’s hot in here.”

  “Well, Joe, it’ll get a lot hotter if we don’t come up soon with a different slant on the murders. We took the lead in packaging the serial killer idea, thanks to you. Now that we have, we can’t just drop it. Everybody else in town is running with our story, Joe. I’m not running a journalistic charity here.”

  “I’m doing all I can,” Wilcox said, weakly.

  “I doubt that.”

  Wilcox stiffened. “Now wait a minute, Paul,” he said. “Don’t tell me whether I’m giving it my all. I resent that!”

  Morehouse came from behind his desk and stood at the window overlooking the main newsroom. Wilcox started to get up to leave but Morehouse motioned for him to remain seated. The editor said, without looking at Wilcox, “You know I like you, Joe.”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “I always have,” Morehouse said, his attention still on the scene through the window. “Times have changed, though. You aware of that?”

  It was more of a snort than a laugh from Wilcox. “I’ve noticed,” he said.

  Morehouse propped himself on the edge of a two-drawer file cabinet. “You’ve been a hell of a good cops reporter, Joe. I mean that. There’s nobody in this city who could top you.”

  “ ‘Could?’ ” Wilcox said. “That sounds past tense.”

  “The way things are going,” Morehouse said, “we’re all about to become past tense—but only if we let it happen.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When I hired you, Joe, I was the boy wonder around here, the youngest editor of a major section in the paper’s history. I have to admit that it was awkward at first bossing around grizzled veterans, guys who’d forgotten more than I knew. And it was all guys, the old-boy fraternity at work, women need not apply.” He paused and glanced through the glass again. “I was a lot like Hawthorne and the other Young Turks out there, Joe, full of myself and looking down at the old-timers.” He laughed. “Funny how fast you become an old-timer, too.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that! One day the wunderkind, the next day the guy with the bad back and molded shoes.”

  Wilcox didn’t know how to respond. In all the years he’d worked for Morehouse, he’d never heard him slip into retrospection like this, even after their professional relationship had morphed into a friendship of sorts. Morehouse’s asperity was well known, his temper on a hair-trigger. But quiet soul-searching wasn’t incorporated into his psychological map.

  What are you getting at? Wilcox wondered.

  Morehouse addressed Wilcox directly now, his index finger poised to lend weight to his words. “Now, you listen to me, Joe Wilcox. You may not like what’s happened to this business over the years any more than I do. You don’t like Hawthorne and his ilk and neither do I. But times have changed big time. We don’t as much report the news any more as we turn it into a story that has marketability. Sales, Joe, the bottom line, ad revenue, increased circulation, dollars and cents, that’s where it’s at these days, and like it or not, we either embrace that reality, or we get out of the way before the Hawthornes of the world run us over.”

  “I know you’re right, Paul,” Wilcox said. “The news business isn’t what it was when I saw myself as the next Ed Murrow or Ernie Pyle. But I won’t take a backseat to anyone, including guys like Hawthorne. Especially guys like
Hawthorne.”

  Morehouse grunted and resumed his chair behind the desk. “We’re in a fight to survive, Joe, like the airlines. People no longer automatically open their daily newspaper every morning and catch up on the news. There’s cable and the networks, the bloggers on the Internet, the radio talk shows and the Matt Drudges of the world. We’re losing ground every day. That’s why we have to give readers what they want, in this case a reason to buy the Trib.”

  Wilcox said nothing, and an awkward silence settled over the office.

  “I’m putting Hawthorne on the serial killer story, Joe.”

  Wilcox fairly came out of his chair. “You’re what?”

  “Putting Hawthorne on the story. I know you two don’t get along, so I’m not suggesting you work together. You go ahead and continue to work your sources, and do the writing. He can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to that. But he’ll be working his contacts, too.” He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. Wilcox picked it up and read a statement from the mayor, in which he called upon the city’s women to go about their daily lives as usual, but to also exercise prudence and caution until the killer is brought to justice.

  Wilcox threw the paper down on the desk. “Why didn’t he give this to me?” he demanded.

  “For the same reason you won’t have anything to do with him, Joe. You guys act like you hate each other.” Wilcox tried to say something but Morehouse said, “I don’t give a goddamn whether you and Hawthorne ever say a word to each other. What I do care about is following through on the serial killer story we initiated. You catch your daughter on the noon news, Joe?”

  “Roberta? No. Why?”

  “She reported that AP is investigating the possibility that there may be a connection between Jean’s murder and what her roommate does for a living.”

  “That’s unconscionable,” Wilcox said.

  Morehouse came forward. He’d been calm until this moment. Now, his face reddened and his voice mirrored his anger. “I asked you, Joe, about that connection with Kaporis’s roommate, and you told me nothing panned out. You lied. I called Jillian and Lansden in and asked them about it. Lansden said she’d told you that the roommate—what’s her name? Pruit?—worked for the Starlight agency. Did she?”

  “No. She said the guy at the agency hesitated or something when she mentioned Pruit’s name. That was it.”

  “So, where did AP come up with it?”

  “Ask somebody at AP.”

  “Ask your daughter.”

  “Yeah, I will. Is that it?”

  “I could say don’t let me down, Joe. Take what Hawthorne gives you, work your own side of the street, and keep this serial killer story on the front page. Better yet, Joe, don’t let yourself down. Make me a hero upstairs and we’ll both go out in a blaze of glory.”

  Morehouse watched his veteran reporter slowly get out of the chair and go to the door. His hand was on the knob when Morehouse said, “Believe me, Joe, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  Wilcox turned, smiled, nodded, and left, wishing his boss hadn’t felt compelled to add that final disingenuous comment.

  TWENTY

  Wilcox went to his cubicle and placed a call to the detectives’ room at First District headquarters.

  “Edith,” Wilcox said, “I just heard about the AP story on the Kaporis murder and that her roommate, Pruit, worked for an escort agency.”

  “Right.”

  “I talked to my daughter who used it on the noon news today. She says it came from MPD.”

  “It might have, Joe. I don’t know.”

  “But you knew about the possible link,” he said. “I was the one who told you.”

  “I remember. Sure. My partner and I followed up on it. Ms. Pruit said she worked for the Starlight agency.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Wilcox asked, audibly exasperated.

  “Because—because it didn’t occur to me to tell you, Joe.” She lowered her voice. “There’s nothing to it. It’s a red herring. Look, I can’t talk now. I’ll get back to you.”

  He pulled up the AP story and added portions of it to his article: “MPD is investigating a possible link between the murder of Washington Tribune staffer Jean Kaporis and a Washington escort service for which the victim’s roommate is alleged to have worked.”

  Next, he wove the mayor’s statement into the story, using it as the new lead. And he added Jean Kaporis’s father’s comment that his daughter had indicated she was dating a married man in Washington named Paul. No, he thought, I promised I wouldn’t use that, and struck the line.

  Satisfied that the article read right, but not feeling especially good about having written it, he filed it electronically with Paul Morehouse. As he prepared to leave, Gene Hawthorne sent him a computer instant message, asking whether Wilcox had gotten the mayor’s statement.

  “Yes,” Wilcox wrote back.

  “I’ll see what else I can come up with,” Hawthorne wrote.

  Wilcox didn’t bother responding.

  He called Roberta at the TV station.

  “Hi,” he said. “It’s Dad.”

  “Hi,” she said. “Only have a second. What’s up?”

  “You’re coming to dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this thing you want to speak to your mother and me about?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow, Dad.”

  “Okay. Hey, I just learned that you went with an AP story about Jean Kaporis’s roommate working for an escort service.”

  “Dad, I really have to run.”

  “I had that information, Robbie, but decided to not use it.”

  She said nothing.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “MPD.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she said.

  “Using the escort service slant is real tabloid journalism, Roberta, and I—”

  A click in his ear ended his speech.

  Rick Jillian, who’d been told to develop a short chronological feature on the Son of Sam serial killer case in New York for possible inclusion as a sidebar to Wilcox’s article, tapped Wilcox on the shoulder, causing him to jerk to attention.

  “I wake you?” Jillian asked.

  “Wake me? Of course not. I’m just leaving.”

  “Here’s the Son of Sam piece, Joe.”

  “Great. File it with Paul. I’m out of here.”

  The phone rang. It was the VP of human resources asking why Wilcox hadn’t kept his three o’clock appointment.

  “Sorry,” Wilcox said, “but I got busy. The serial killer story, you know.”

  “You’re doing a great job with that,” the VP said. “When can we meet?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Three?”

  “Sure.”

  Wilcox beat a hasty retreat to the elevators, not because he was running late, but because he wanted out of the newsroom and building, to be as far away from it as possible. He got in his car and headed for Michael’s apartment building on Connecticut Avenue NW, arriving a little after four-thirty. A parking space across the street and a few buildings up from Michael’s opened up and Wilcox maneuvered into it. He was about to get out of the car but reconsidered, remaining instead inside and watching the door to the apartment building. Minutes later, Michael appeared carrying an envelope, which he slid beneath a large flowerpot near the front entrance. Michael came to the sidewalk and looked around before heading on foot in a direction opposite from where Wilcox was parked.

  Wilcox waited long enough to be sure his brother wouldn’t be returning to get something he’d forgotten and went to the flowerpot. The envelope contained two keys on a simple key ring. Wilcox tried one in the front door. It worked, and he entered the building’s interior, went down the long hallway, and stopped in front of Michael’s apartment. He was in the process of inserting the second key into that door when a man’s voice said, “Who are you?”

  Wilcox turned to face
a burly man leaning on a cane.

  “Who are you?” the man repeated.

  “Mr. Wilcox’s—Mr. LaRue’s friend,” Wilcox answered. “Who are you?”

  “Rudy. I’m his friend, too. He ain’t here.”

  “I know. He gave me his key.”

  Wilcox turned his head to avoid the alcoholic fumes coming from this man named Rudy. “Excuse me,” he said, opening the door and stepping into the apartment, aware of Rudy’s eyes boring into his back. He closed the door and drew a deep breath. Maggie came from the kitchen, looked up at him, meowed, and preceded him into the living room.

  Wilcox stood in the center of the room. It was quiet; only an occasional honk of a car horn on Connecticut Avenue violated the silence. He went to each window and looked out, his thoughts as jumbled as the apartment was neat. In the narrow, old-fashioned kitchen, the day’s dishes had been washed, rinsed, and left to dry in a blue dish drainer. A vase of wilting flowers sat next to the drainer.

  Back in the living room, Joe sat in a chair next to where Michael’s guitar and amplifier stood. He picked up the instrument and ran his fingers over the strings, the sound barely audible without amplification. He considered turning on the amp but was afraid he’d do something destructive, push the wrong button or turn the wrong knob.

  The hollow core door on file cabinets on the opposite side of the room was as tidy as everything else in the apartment. The only items on its surface were the old electric typewriter, a desk calendar, and a halogen lamp. He sat at the desk, opened the file cabinets’ drawers, and perused their contents, barely disturbing papers as he went through them. He withdrew an envelope from a photo processing shop and rifled through the small color snapshots, most of them of Michael at an undetermined outdoor social event. He removed one from the pack that showed Michael alone, smiling into the camera, and placed it in his inside jacket pocket. A recurring chorus of ideas accompanied his seemingly aimless search. Were he pressed, he would have denied the thoughts he was having at that moment. But they were present, coming and going like mental dust bunnies.