by Lisa Black
“This is a big place. Could be anybody, and they’re not going to speak up now. No reason to,” Jack said.
“But they were careful. They wouldn’t have involved anyone they didn’t need.”
“There’s Roger,” Rebecca commented to the room at large.
Looking at the screen, Maggie saw a large man shuffling along in a blue windbreaker, the hood obscuring the face. “That’s him?”
“Yeah, I recognize the tie. He’s got some wild ties.”
It looked like a blur of various shades of gray to Maggie, but then the younger woman spent a lot of time viewing her coworker through this particular lens.
“I think I need to talk with Mr. Correa,” Jack said. “Now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Maggie said.
Chapter 46
Jack protested, of course—Maggie had no business accompanying him on a suspect interview. She was neither trained nor authorized, and it would be a mess to explain in court. But she convinced him that her presence would put Correa at ease. She could say they stopped by only to drop off the photo disk with his pictures and video of Elliott at the bar. Besides, she did not entirely trust Jack to be alone with someone he might think had rolled a 1900-pound weight over Tyler Truss. Not entirely . . . actually, not at all.
“I don’t think he did it,” she told Jack as he drove.
“For logical reasons? Or are you thinking with another part of your anatomy?”
It seemed to surprise him when she laughed. “For emotional reasons—but his emotions. Roger thinks newsprint is a sacred trust. His life is that paper, and half the city won’t receive their copy today because there’s guts all over the paper rolls.”
“But what a story it will make for tomorrow’s paper. Rebecca said if it bleeds, it leads.”
“I’m not sure Rebecca can recognize a tie from a fuzzy video either.”
“She sees those people through that fuzzy video every day.”
“Yes . . . and knows who’s coming and who’s going . . .”
“We’re suspecting the security guard now? You really think little Rebecca could strangle a guy with nothing but her hands and a mesh strap?”
“It’s all about leverage,” Maggie reminded him. “But no, honestly, I don’t. She had no reason to feel desperate—there will always be jobs in security. But for that matter, what happened to the whole rope thing? Truss wasn’t strangled like the other three. And what was the digital guy doing in the print room?”
Jack pulled into Roger Correa’s driveway and Maggie took in the house. A real-estate agent would refer to the bungalow as “classic” when everyone else would have said “old-fashioned.” She had expected either a trendy loft or a seedy apartment over a bar, and wondered if Correa had inherited the home. But she recognized the car in front of the detached garage, which sagged under the long branches of a weeping willow.
She noted the tree. But, of course, it was one of the top ten most common in Ohio. During her childhood her neighbors had an entire row. It meant nothing.
Jack knocked on the side door. A series of barks was emitted from the house, and someone came to open the door. But it wasn’t Roger Correa. Instead, a young man with shaggy hair and an easygoing smile greeted them, rubbing his eyes like a child.
“Nice to see you awake,” Jack said to him.
Maggie had no idea what that meant. Past the kid, through the doorway, she saw a young black man with a Bluetooth headset typing on a laptop and glimpsed a girl with long dark hair. She seemed to be pinning something to the wall, just out of sight.
The boy said, “I work weird hours. Roger isn’t here, he’s out with Chaz somewhere.”
“His car’s here,” Maggie said.
“They’re on her bike. What can I do for you? The dogs are going to keep going nuts as long as someone’s standing here.”
Maggie noticed the logo embroidered on the kid’s black shirt.
Jack noticed something else.
“Dogs?” he asked the kid. “As in plural?”
“Um, yeah.”
“We need to see them.”
“What, the dogs?”
“Jack—” Maggie said, thinking about the Great Lakes Brewing logo on the kid’s shirt. Perhaps he knew something about the conspirators’ secret meetings at the eatery.
“Yes, the dogs.” Jack pulled out his badge. “Right now.”
“Dude, seriously? Why do you need to look at the guy’s dogs?”
“Jack—”
“We’re coming in, and we are going to see those dogs.”
“I don’t care if you have a badge, I know you still need, like, a warrant to enter premises—”
Maggie interrupted. “What kind of dogs are they?”
This shut both men up. Then the kid said, “Um, Max is a German shepherd and Olaf is a Rottweiler, I guess. I mean, he’s got that shape and coloring. I never asked for their pedigree—”
“I didn’t see the Rottweiler when I was here,” Jack said, making this sound like an accusation.
“He’s old, spends most of the day sleeping in Roger’s bedroom. What the hell is going on that you’re here asking about dogs?” The animals had, anticlimactically, finally grown bored with the barking and quieted down.
Maggie got the significance of the Rottweiler fur and moved on to the next topic. “You work at Great Lakes Brewing?”
“Yeeeah.”
Now Jack peered at her and back at the kid, plugging in another piece of the puzzle. “You overheard Roth and the others talking about the deal, and reported back to Correa.”
The kid’s eyes grew wide, and he stepped backward and tried to shut the door. Jack kept it from closing with one hand, his gaze boring into the kid through the glass, and reluctantly the boy let it open again.
“That’s not illegal. There’s nothing illegal about it,” he insisted.
“Then you’re not in any trouble. Right?” Jack pointed out.
This didn’t seem to reassure him. “But is Roger?”
“Roger can take care of himself. You provided table service for Roth’s meetings and listened to their discussion. What did you tell Correa about what they said?”
The kid looked from Jack to Maggie and back again. “I think I’d better talk to Roger before I tell you anything.”
Jack lacked the patience for this. “He’s not an attorney, and nothing you heard or repeated is privileged. You have to tell me.”
“I’m a source. He can protect his sources.”
“Not if we already know who you are, nimrod. There’s nothing Correa can do at this point. Four people are dead and we’re trying to prevent a fifth. So talk.”
He shuffled his feet as a show of reluctance before giving in. “Sometimes I’d overhear business stuff.”
“Such as?”
“About how they wanted TransMedia to buy the paper, and they’d all get—”
He broke off as a motorcycle zoomed up the drive. Roger Correa drove up with a girl clinging to his back. They both stared at the two visitors. The girl stepped off. She wore all black, from her leather jacket with feather fringe to her high-tops, and looked about as welcoming as a thornbush. Correa stayed on the bike, not surprised to see them but not concerned.
The girl opened her mouth to say something, and Correa gunned the engine, turned the wheel, and sped away.
Jack ran for the car, and after one startled second, Maggie followed, jumping into the passenger seat and pulling the door shut just in time to avoid clipping the girl in black, who stood in the driveway with her mouth still open.
“You think he did it?” Maggie asked, struggling to get her seat belt buckled as the car bounced over a pothole.
Jack seemed to notice her presence. “What the hell, Maggie? What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.”
“You can’t be here. We don’t know if he’s armed or what. This could go bad—”
Roger Correa turned onto Chester and ran a red light. Jack hit the red a
nd blue flashers and Maggie closed her eyes as they entered the intersection, tensing for the crunch of twisted metal. No one hit them. Correa picked up speed, but Jack didn’t.
“Aren’t you going to lose him?” she asked.
“He’s on a motorcycle. I don’t want him goosed more than he already is—if he hits a pebble he might spin out of control.”
Indeed, Correa’s speed stabilized, and he stuck to Chester. If he was trying to lose them he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
She lost track of where they were, unfamiliar with this neck of the woods, and Correa must have seen the train before they did. But she felt the rumble.
“Jack,” she warned, without even knowing what she warned of.
The red lights flashed, the white arms of the crossing gate lowered. From her right she glimpsed movement between the houses and trees, a giant being with a white light glowing like an eye, illuminating the track ahead and across the road. Jack took his foot off the accelerator.
Correa did not. He swerved into the other lane and sped around the lowered crossing gate arm. Onto the tracks, just as the train appeared.
Maggie shouted, “No!”
Jack hit the brakes.
They watched the taillight of Chaz’s motorcycle dodge past the other gate, just before the engine clattered across the road, splitting the night with one outraged horn blast.
“He made it,” Maggie said, wonderingly.
“And we’re stuck,” Jack snapped, letting the car coast to the crossing and then stomping on the brakes with irritated force. He calmed enough to add, “But I can guess where he’s going.”
Maggie shuddered. “Me too.”
Chapter 47
Correa had disappeared into the night by the time the train rumbled past and the gates reopened, but at least, Maggie reflected, pieces of him were not scattered across the asphalt. Jack hit the accelerator and they shot forward. Maggie grasped the door handle through the rough and much too fast ride. Jack had used the wait time to call his partner and explain that he might need some backup, when and if he located Roger Correa.
“Might need backup?” Maggie asked when Jack hung up. “I’d say you definitely need it.”
“We don’t know he’s at the Herald. I’m not calling out troops until I’m sure I need them.”
“You shouldn’t go after him alone,” Maggie said evenly, meaning, I don’t trust you with him alone.
“Don’t worry.”
She worried. Jack had been in a fury at Truss’s grisly end, and especially at the sad orphaning of the two Davis kids. She knew if he wanted to continue his old habits he would have to find a new technique. Shot while trying to escape would work, and Correa had certainly tried to escape—he had Maggie to verify that.
When they arrived at the Herald building, it seemed to have already been sold, gutted, and shuttered. Windows were dark and the delivery trucks already gone. No one worked on the docks, and only a few scattered vehicles remained in the lot. This didn’t surprise her—the workers had probably dispersed the reduced amount of papers printed. No more could be produced until arrangements could be made to clean and decontaminate the cutting mechanism, and the police had sealed it off as a crime scene. Roth and any remaining employees had probably gone home.
Chaz’s motorcycle sat parked, neatly within the lines, outside the north employee entrance.
Which created a problem. Correa had a key card to get inside—they did not.
“Stay here,” Jack said as he bailed out of the driver’s side.
Maggie, of course, did not listen and joined him as he pounded up the sidewalk to the door. He raised one arm to hammer at it—pointlessly—before noticing that it sat ajar, by no more than a quarter inch.
They both stopped dead, staring at the sliver of blackness along its edge, the hint of a deep and unknown interior.
Jack unholstered his weapon.
“Stay here,” he said again.
“No,” she answered, tone still even.
“I am not shitting, Maggie!” He kept his voice low, but forceful. “This is police business. You have no authority to interfere.”
“I’m not interfering. I’ll stay behind you. I’ll stay out of the way.”
“This is not your choice.”
“You’ve made it my choice.”
Then he got it. His expression changed from rage to such exasperation that she thought he might push her out of the way.
“Oh, for God’s sakes, Maggie—I’m not going to kill him!”
As if that settled it, he pointed his gun at the door and pulled out a flashlight. He nodded at her, and she pulled open the door as fast as she could, tensing for the shot and protected by the brick wall. Jack swept the inside of the entranceway with the light, apparently saw nothing, and went in. A smooth operation.
She followed him.
Inside, the hall and stairwell were lit only by an emergency light on the next landing, filling the space with a ghostly blue glow. The opening ahead led into the reporters’ bullpen. It didn’t appear any more illuminated than the dark stairwell. Jack doused his flashlight and crept ahead silently.
Until he realized she was still behind him.
“Maggie!” he hissed.
“Let me talk to him. He likes me.”
Jack poked his head into the cavernous room, surveyed, and retreated in one motion. He kept his voice near a whisper, but it made a furious sound all the same. “You think because he has the hots for you he’s going to give himself up on four counts of murder?”
“I think he wants to tell a story—he’s been telling it to me all week. That’s what this is all about, the story.”
“Are you trained in hostage negotiation?”
“Huh? No.”
With a hand on her stomach he pushed her back against the wall. “Then stay here and shut up.” With that he stepped into the open area, gun raised and pointed high.
“Freeze, Correa!” he shouted, in a boom that filled the canyon. “Step away from him!”
She heard Roger Correa’s voice, easy, mocking. “Glad you finally got here, Detective. We’ve been waiting for you. Where’s Maggie?”
Chapter 48
She watched Jack step into the darkness, gun raised and aimed. “Just me,” he called to Correa, not as loudly as before. “Step away from him.”
“All I have to do is push and he goes over. So I think you ought to put the gun down.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You can’t hit me from there, and you know it. Not without going through him.”
Maggie took two silent steps forward.
“Only one way to find out,” Jack warned. But this didn’t work, Correa must have feinted somehow, because Jack gave a startled twitch and held the gun away from himself in a gesture of capitulation.
“Okay, okay. Gun is down. What do you want?”
Maggie could stand it no longer. She crept to the corner, only three feet from Jack, and risked a peek into the bullpen, hoping that the shadows would hide her. It sounded as if Jack was right—the situation was bad, Correa had a hostage, and she could not help in these circumstances. Best to stay out of the way and leave it to the professionals.
But she had to have a look first. Then she could leave the building and call Riley, let him know to send the SWAT team and what they could expect.
Jack faced the east end of the building. On the second floor, in the hallway right outside Franklin Roth’s office and backlit by its fluorescents, Roger Correa had tied a noose around the editor’s neck and marched him up to the dangerously low Plexiglas barrier. He had tied the loose end off to the round, clear railing . . . and yes, all he had to do was give the man a hard shove and the last of the conspirators would die, dangling over the newsroom he had sworn to protect. Of course then Jack would shoot Correa, but she didn’t think the reporter cared much about that at this point. He couldn’t have made his own confession more plainly than this standoff.
The shadows did
not do their job.
“There she is!” Roger Correa crowed. “Hello, Maggie.”
She jumped back—too late, of course.
“What do you want?” Jack asked him again, after shooting a look of pure rage at her.
To her surprise, Correa said, “I want Maggie.”
Jack couldn’t help a startled glance in her direction before saying, “Not going to happen.”
“That’s what you said about putting the gun down.”
“Not. Going. To—”
“Oh, relax, I’m not going to abscond with her. I simply want her to take dictation. Maggie, come on out. Let her come out—I don’t have a gun, I’m completely unarmed. I can’t do anything to her, or you, and I don’t want to. The only person in danger here tonight is our esteemed editor.”
Maggie didn’t move from her place against the wall, deciding, perhaps too late, that she would defer to the professional officer. Even if that professional officer was simply waiting for Roger Correa to leave him enough room for a kill shot. There were only so many circumstances she could affect, and she had no way to determine if Jack would be a cop or a killer tonight. She would have to trust him.
That would not be easy.
He looked at her, considered. Then nodded.
She stepped out into the space. Correa still stood behind Roth, using him as a human shield. The editor’s hands were tied behind his back, leaving him helpless. She couldn’t see his expression, but his body stayed still. At that distance he barely seemed to be breathing.
“Great, there you are,” Correa said.
This didn’t seem to require a response.
“This is what I want—Maggie, I assume you can type?”
“What?”
“Type? Like, words? Even if it’s hunt-and-peck—”
“Yes, I can type.”
“Excellent. Would you grab my laptop—it’s on my desk—third from the end there—”
She didn’t move.
“Just come toward me, I’ll tell you when you get there.”
