Unpunished

by Lisa Black

  “You didn’t leave him your number,” the IT tech pointed out.

  “Crap,” Riley said, then redialed.

  Again, “Hot for Teacher” sounded from the adjacent space. This time, Jack jerked his head at his partner, and they moved over to where a door labeled 184 stood open. A carbon copy of Wilton’s office, except it had a different motivational poster on the wall, a collection of shot glasses on the windowsill, and a bright blue cell phone on the corner of the desk piping away.

  A voice behind them said, “Looking for me?”

  * * *

  Tyler Truss had pale skin, dark hair, and a slightly Asian quality to his features. Tall but slender, he wore a blue dress shirt missing a collar button and carried a steaming mug with a tea tag hanging from the rim. He seemed unconcerned to find two detectives on his doorstep, even after they explained their arrival.

  “Oh yeah. Bob Davis called me all the time.” His voice sounded like a verbal eye-roll.

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  Truss moved around to the back of his desk. “Have a seat, please. Just toss that stuff over—um, there.”

  Riley picked up a stack of paper with two iPads perched precariously on the top. “What is it you do here, Mr. Truss?”

  “I’m the digital content editor.” At their blank looks, he added, “That means I handle the web part of the newspaper.”

  Riley said, as if he hadn’t just learned of its existence, “The online edition.”

  “Yes, but . . . so much more. People think we just take the stuff that’s in the paper and cut and paste it into a website. That’s not it at all. We’re taking two-dimensional items and exploding them into three dimensions—stories aren’t told only in words and pictures anymore. There’s video, there’s sound, there’s moving items, there’s links with affiliates that have to be constantly monitored and maintained. And that’s just the content. The advertising is a new world. Target-driven, click-through compiled, focused on local sensibilities.”

  “So everything is peachy in your universe,” Riley summed.

  Truss snorted and ran hands through his very short hair. “Hardly! Technology is constantly evolving, billing—look, ads pay for a paper, but with the Internet, advertisers have too many options, cheaper options. We can’t charge rates that give us a high rate of return the way a few column inches did. It’s like eBooks—suddenly there’s this product, a great product, but no one knows what to charge for it. That can paralyze. Then there’s local versus national—most advertising is local. National companies use national media like USA Today or cable TV. Those rates are too exorbitant for locals, especially with the economy still down. So every day is an experiment, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. We’re moving forward, but on shifting sands.”

  He must have realized that the pep in his pitch had flagged, because he went on. “Exciting, yes, don’t get me wrong—online isn’t just a version or a feature of the newspaper. Online will soon be the newspaper. That will change everything, once we finally shake off the ball and chain of a physical paper. Printing presses, rolls of paper, ink, people to run all those machines, people to pack the paper onto trucks that break down and use gas and have to be insured and maintained, to take the papers to paper boxes that can freeze shut or merchants who have to stop what they’re doing and take delivery—just like nearly every other industry, when you don’t have physical product, that eliminates a glacier of costs.”

  “And a glacier of jobs,” Riley pointed out.

  Truss looked concerned. “Yes. Unfortunately, yes. A lot of people’s jobs will be eliminated. Just like blacksmiths when the automobile was invented, just like telegraph operators, elevator operators, telephone operators, and the steno pool. Times change, and change is hard. But you can’t stop it.”

  “Why was Robert Davis calling you twice every day? On average?” Jack asked, having heard all he ever wanted to hear about the decline of print journalism.

  The eye-roll again. “Oh, that.”

  “Yes,” Riley said. “That.”

  Tyler Truss sat forward, giving them his full and solemn attention. “Bob Davis was a copy editor. You know what they do?”

  “We’ve been informed.”

  “A copy editor checks over the stories, approves which stories go in, and does the layout—with the layout editor, but the copy editor has final say.”

  “Yes, we’ve—”

  “One of the very few advantages of print newspapers, other than being able to wrap your potato peelings in them, is that when you pick up a paper, where is the biggest story going to be?”

  He waited until they figured out this was not a rhetorical question. “Page one?” Riley guessed.

  “Exactly. Page one will have the story about the school shooting. Page two will have the international economic summit. Page B-10 will have the schedule for resurfacing the potholes in Euclid Avenue. Everybody knows that. You don’t have to explain it. But on a digital site, it’s not that easy. The stories are mostly listed as links, and people click through to read only the ones they want. It’s harder for them to get a sense of ranking. A large part of a copy editor’s job, you see, is telling the readers what is important.”

  “So Robert Davis—”

  “Wanted to help me with this task. He wanted to coach me on ranking story importance and finding a way to convey that online. Thing was, I didn’t need his help, and he knew nothing about digital layout. First thing he’d do every morning is go to the website, then call me with all sorts of suggestions about what to put where and how to play up this or that story, none of which made any sense to me. I started ignoring his phone calls, but that didn’t help, he’d just redial. Poor guy. I’m sympathetic, I am, but what Robert Davis really wanted was to move himself into the digital side so he’d still have a job when print goes the way of the stagecoach. And I couldn’t give him that. The Herald of the future will need people a lot more digital media savvy than Bob Davis was.”

  Riley consulted his printout. “A lot of these calls were in the evening.”

  “Yeah, all hours of the day and night. Drove me nuts.”

  “Did you know Davis personally? I mean, outside of your work here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t have beers now and then? Get the families together?”

  “No,” he said.

  Riley gave Jack that exasperated look, which said they’d just spent fifteen minutes being lectured by this bozo and learned exactly nothing. Robert Davis had been worried about his job, just like every other employee at the newspaper. But Jack wasn’t so sure. Tyler Truss talked a little too much.

  “What about your neighbor, Wilton?” he asked the man. “Know him at all?”

  “Yeah, we’re friendly. We do have beers now and then—did, I mean.”

  “Any reason why he and Robert Davis would be the ones murdered?”

  Tyler Truss’s animated face slowed to a freeze. “Jerry was murdered?”

  Chapter 28

  Stephanie Davis sat on the edge of the dancing water fountain at the south end of the Tower City mall’s three stories plus of gleaming white terrazzo and glass. She perched on the edge because she would look ridiculous if the water sloshed and soaked her bottom. She had dressed as though for a job interview, which in a very obscure way, it was. She was interviewing for Bob’s old position. But not the one as copy editor. And the people in charge had better not turn her down.

  She picked Tower City since it was brightly lit and full of people. She felt safe, her target should feel safe, and the running water should interfere with any listening devices in case her target had the police after him. She had seen that in a movie.

  A nicely turned-out mother and child went into The Children’s Place store. She had never been able to afford their clothes . . . though her boys would have revolted if she had tried to drag them into a place labeled children. They had more bravado and hormones than could be good for her nerves, but the thought of them made her smile. />
  Clear panels formed the roof of the mall, and the sunlight made the whiteness even brighter. It could hurt the eyes, but the city got too many cloudy days for anyone to complain. Indeed, some people paused and tilted their faces upward, as if they could get a start on their tan through the glass.

  Someone came and sat down next to her, also perching on the edge. The face seemed vaguely familiar. She guessed the baseball cap and sunglasses were meant to protect against the mall’s video surveillance. But why would anyone ever look at the video? Their cloak-and-dagger stuff was stupid, she knew, but if it made both of them feel better, where was the harm?

  She cleared her throat. “I went through Bob’s paperwork this morning. I know what you’re doing.”

  The person spoke, quietly. “How?”

  “How? How did I figure it out, you mean?” Stephanie snorted. “Jeez, you sound just like Bob. I am a store manager. He thought that meant I went around putting sweaters back on hangers, but I manage a concern that generates over a million dollars in sales each month. I know more about business than my husband would ever have known. Frankly”—she snorted again—“your mistake was not coming to me first, instead of him.”

  “What do you want?”

  Two little boys raced by, tiny sneakers squeaking against the floor tile, shouts echoing off the glass skylights. Honestly, the way some people let their children run wild. “I want Bob’s share, of course. That’s all. I’m not greedy and I don’t enjoy blackmailing you. I have two sons who need to go to college on a one-income household. Bob’s life insurance will barely pay off that stupid car he bought. Your plan can go ahead without interruption—just give me Bob’s share and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  She let this sink in. She had to play it cool, had to be tough, but as had happened so much over the past few days, she found it impossible to stay silent. “If you don’t mind me asking”—a phrase that always guaranteed someone would mind—“Bob was a copy editor. What did you need him for?”

  She thought she wouldn’t get an answer, it took so long to arrive. “Bob worked with the printing supervisor, but the printing crew works nights. Execs don’t schedule meetings at night.”

  “You needed someone to verify your print burden—how many papers you actually print as opposed to how many you tell people you print.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was all?”

  “They’re thorough.”

  She refrained from snorting again. “Not thorough enough, apparently. When will it be done?”

  “Two to three weeks.”

  “Then how long until I can expect delivery?”

  “Quickly. A few days.”

  “Good.” She nodded, more to herself than—

  “Do you even care who killed your husband?”

  The question surprised her, even shocked her. Somehow she had not connected the two situations and fear flooded her from her scalp to her toes, leaving a tingling, quavering feeling in her skin. She spoke without thinking. “Was it you?”

  “No!”

  She tamped the feelings down and said, ridiculously, “Good, then. I mean . . . of course I care. But Bob—poor guy—is dead and my boys still have a future. They’re my priority now. Get me that money and everything can proceed as planned.” She stood up, hoping to look firm and determined. “You know where to find me.”

  She walked off without looking back. Tough. Determined. She didn’t let herself draw a deep breath until she got to the elevator. As the doors closed she tried to put this plan into perspective, but her mind ping-ponged all over the place. How should she ask them to deliver the money? Cashier’s check? That could be traced. Cash would be best. Anything else left a paper trail she’d rather not leave. But what to do with it? She couldn’t just drop it in a savings account. It would be safe, but the IRS might notice when her 1099-INT took an exponential leap.

  She exited the elevator and went to find her car. The sunlight outside seemed blinding compared to the dank parking garage.

  She couldn’t leave it in a box in the basement, either. Suppose the house should be robbed, or burn down? Insurance doesn’t cover cash, and the last thing she would want to do was have to explain its existence to someone. Like her children.

  Where was her car? She had put it next to one of the short supporting walls for easier locating—there. She could probably get a new one, or take over Bob’s, but maybe not. It wouldn’t be wise to start throwing money around during the early days of her widowhood. On the other hand, she could explain it as life insurance money—no, she’d sell Bob’s stupid car and keep her practical one.

  A safe deposit box would be her best option. No one would know what was inside, she’d have access to it, nothing reported, no taxes paid. Probably parcel it out to a few different banks. Robbers these days like to rip out all the deposit boxes. She’d seen that in a movie, too.

  Stephanie pulled her keys out of her purse. Yes, she’d handled that perfectly. Just the right combination of threat and reasonableness. No reason for them to try to block her out.

  She stepped up to her car door.

  Setting up the meeting in a brightly lit and populated place had been an excellent idea. What she had forgotten to think through, however, was that to get to the brightly lit and populated location, she had to park her car in a place that was neither brightly lit nor populated.

  Nor safe.

  Chapter 29

  Jack and Riley visited again with Janelle, the layout editor, who didn’t even look up from her screen as she answered their questions, the mouse under her palm rotating all over the desk blotter. She also ignored the general soup of activity going on around them in the vast oval of the reporters’ bullpen. She had to get the next day’s paper set for print with only herself and the assistant copy editor, Bennet, to do the job formerly performed by the perfectionist Davis.

  Jack regarded Bennet, now so poised to take over his superior’s job. Bennet barely seemed old enough to drive, with visible pimples, wisps of an attempted mustache, and arms too thin to strangle his baby cousin, much less a strapping man like Davis. Jack promptly eliminated him from the suspect pool. Janelle would make a more likely murderer, and Janelle probably couldn’t bring herself to swat flies.

  Though she could, without blinking, hack a story until it bled.

  “He’s got to drop a paragraph,” she told Bennet.

  “He’s already cut fifty words.”

  “It’s not going to fit. Do we really need all this stuff about the sun rising over the rapid transit station?”

  “It’s local color.”

  “Locals already know what the sun rising over the rapid station looks like. It’s not vital to the story. Tell him to cut.”

  Bennet gulped but went off to face the soon-to-be unhappy reporter.

  Janelle still hadn’t looked up from her screen. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “We’d like to ask if there is anything else about Robert Davis’s personal life that you haven’t told us.”

  “No. As in, there isn’t.”

  She was courteous but in a hurry and under pressure. Directness would be reciprocated here. Jack snagged Bennet’s chair from the next desk and leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. Around them reporters made phone calls, typed faster than humanly possible, and argued with one another.

  “Look, his wife doesn’t seem real broken up about his death. We’re wondering why that is. Did he have an affair? Sleep with someone here? Discover that he was gay? Embezzle from the petty cash? Take payoffs to keep some politician off the front page?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t know, no, and no. To the best of my knowledge. Bob and I just arranged the layout. We weren’t confidants. Though”—she broke off to give Jack a quick grin—“I’m pretty sure I would know if he had been fooling around with anyone here. This place is a seething cauldron of professional busybodies.”

  “Okay, so not love. That leaves money. He come into any lately?”

  �
�No . . . he bought that car, but he got a loan like any other schlub. I remember talking about interest rates.”

  “How about hate?”

  The mouse hadn’t stilled. On the screen, Jack could see that she had finished one page and moved on to another. “No one particularly liked Bob, but no one hated him, either. Except Roger Correa maybe, but he hates everyone. No one else, you see, is capable of his standard of journalistic purity.”

  “Bob?”

  “Roger.”

  “Janelle!” A man brushed past Riley to stand at the edge of her desk, on the other side of Jack. He stood about six feet and had the kind of tan one got in a studio. Right now it seemed deeper than might be healthy, but only in his face.

  “It’s just one paragr—oh.”

  “Yes, oh! I understand you’re to thank for this!” He held up the Local section of that day’s paper. Front and center, the headline read, CITY PROP MGR OVERBILLS COUNTY.

  “Are you Mr. Martin?” Janelle asked, before Jack could.

  “I am. I am the Martin who you described as, let me see, ‘Made himself a small fortune by conspiring with building managers throughout the county to overbill businesses for ad space rental.’ You called me a criminal conspirator. In print!” He took a step closer to her. Jack closed in, ready to grab him should an errant fist fly.

  “I did no such thing. Not to pass the buck, because this paper stands behind what it prints, but the reporter’s name is—”

  “Roger Correa, yes, I know! But I heard that he was under control until you guys let him off the leash and approved printing this kind of drivel—”

  Janelle, Jack thought next, would have made a good cop. Because she jumped on the telling phrase in his statement. “Heard from whom?”

  “If this isn’t libel, then—what?”

  “Heard from whom? Who told you that I approved this story?”