Unpunished

by Lisa Black

  She didn’t move.

  His sigh reached the ends of the cavern. “Get the laptop and bring it up here. We’re going to write and file my story. Franklin here can fact-check any details for us. All I want you to do is type and hit Send. That’s it. Then we can all go home. Well, you can go home, and this worthless asshole here can go home. I assume Detective Renner and I will be taking a ride in a squad car.”

  “That’s the deal?” Jack asked. “You file your story and then you’ll let Roth go?”

  “I give you my word as a newspaperman. Don’t judge by our esteemed editor—those words still mean something to me.”

  Jack looked at her, and she told him, “I can do it.”

  He said to Correa, “She comes up there, I come, too.”

  “No need for that.”

  “Not negotiable.”

  “I can’t do anything to her but dictate. I have no weapons other than our editor’s weak neck.”

  “Not negotiable.”

  “You’d rather see me toss said editor’s body off the landing?”

  “Go ahead,” Jack said with such finality that Maggie watched, terrified, fully expecting the editor to fall and die in one muffled snap.

  Correa considered, then folded. “No closer than ten feet. Both of you.”

  Jack accompanied her to the desk where the laptop charged its battery. She pulled the power cord out of the back. If it ran out of battery life, so much the better, it would give them more time to think of something.

  They took the elevator. Correa didn’t protest, since it only went to two floors and both stops were visible to him. Maggie expected Jack to spend the brief trip lambasting her for not leaving when he told her to, but instead he called Riley and gave his partner a brief but comprehensive layout of the problem, speaking so fast she could barely understand him.

  Ding.

  For the second time he shoved her against the wall next to him, so that they would not be clearly visible to Roger Correa. Just in case he’d been lying about his lack of weapons.

  The doors slid open. Maggie held her breath.

  “I’m still not armed, Detective.” Correa’s voice floated into the space. “You can come out.”

  Jack stepped into the opening, and Maggie followed him as he turned left to circle the open atria. They passed Jerry Wilton’s and Tyler Truss’s offices. Maggie reminded herself to breathe.

  “Ten feet,” Jack spoke in a near whisper. “Don’t you get any closer than that, no matter what he says, no matter what happens. If things go bad, you run like hell. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “We’re trying to save Roth, but our safety comes first. That’s how this works.”

  “Right.”

  He glanced at her, as if second-, third-, and fourth-guessing his decision to let Correa call the shots and involve her. The expression on her face evidently did not reassure him. She realized, too late, that she must have looked scared as hell. “Roth is not your responsibility, so don’t—”

  “I’ll do exactly what you tell me,” she said. And mostly meant it. This didn’t seem to reassure him either, but they had run out of hallway and come within ten feet of Roger Correa and Franklin Roth and, therefore, run out of time for further discussion.

  Correa, his silk tie loosened, his hair going every which way from the motorcycle ride, watched them with gleeful excitement. He had turned his hostage to face them, maximizing the use of him as a barrier, and stuck close to the man’s back. His head shifted to the right and left and back again, never giving Jack a steady target.

  A stream of blood matted the editor’s thin hair, just behind his right ear. It made a spot on his shirt collar but seemed to have partly dried. Maggie said to Correa, “What did you hit him with? I thought you said you had no weapons.”

  “A chair. I don’t believe office furniture counts as a weapon.”

  “An adjustable wrench might, though. Under the right circumstances.”

  Correa’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

  Franklin Roth didn’t seem so still up close. His thighs trembled, and circles of perspiration darkened the dress shirt under his arms. He smelled of fear but said nothing, his jaw tightened with a determination to stay strong and hang on to his dignity until the bitter end. For his sake, she hoped he could do it.

  “Sorry I don’t have a desk for you, Maggie,” Correa said.

  In response she sat down on the carpet, crossed her legs, and opened the laptop. Jack stood next to her, watching for an opening. Watching and waiting. She could feel the heat from his body radiating toward her like an electric current. The rest of the building sat around them, silent and lifeless.

  “Okay,” she told Correa. “Go ahead.”

  Chapter 49

  A half hour later, she was still typing, fingers beginning to cramp as she struggled to keep up with his rapid-fire prose. Outside, she knew, Riley and other Cleveland police officers would be massing, waiting for Jack’s cue before breaching the center of the building.

  “In a series of secret meetings in a quiet location, these four men plotted—no, laid the plans to cut the throat of the Cleveland Herald and step quickly away, clutching their money before the blood it bought could splash onto their shoes. No, stain their shoes. That’s better.”

  Maggie finished typing the sentence and waited for him to continue. Correa’s voice had not begun to flag or grow short of breath. He paused only to consider his phrasing. He stayed behind his editor, but not as carefully as before. Jack kept the gun at his side and seemed to be willing to stick to the deal, so Correa grew more casual with his hostage. Roth, meanwhile, seemed about to wilt, resting one thigh against the Plexiglas to relieve the quaking in his knees. Maggie wondered if the weakness came from fear or simply from standing in one place for what must seem like a lifetime.

  Jack, she could swear, hadn’t moved at all. She couldn’t tell he even breathed.

  Correa started up again. “Jerry Wilton, the circulation manager—”

  “You already said he was circulation manager,” Roth said. Once an editor, always an editor.

  “I did?”

  Maggie checked the previous pages. “Yes, you did.”

  “Okay, just ‘Wilton’ then. Wilton not only betrayed his readers and his coworkers, but his fellow conspirators as well by secretly and illegally buying up Herald stock, expecting the price to jump—no, skyrocket—once news of the sale reached the public. What’s a little insider trading when you’re already on your way to the ninth circle of hell?”

  Roth made a sound.

  “What’s that, esteemed managing editor?” Correa asked him.

  “A little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  Correa gave him a little shove, no more than a minor shifting of his bulk, but against the flimsy barrier it seemed that Roth wavered dangerously over open space. The editor’s face reflected his fear. Correa said, “I write color, not play-by-play.”

  Maggie interrupted. “How did you know?”

  Reporter and editor stared at her.

  “About Wilton and the stock. How did you know he was doing that?”

  “The more you interrupt, Maggie, the longer this is going to take.”

  “But how did you know?”

  Correa blinked. “You told me.”

  “Me!”

  “The police department, I mean. I have sources there, one called me yesterday.”

  “So you didn’t know about the stocks when you killed him,” she clarified. “Only about the kickbacks to sell the paper.”

  He cocked his head at her. “And that’s not enough?”

  It was as close to a confession as she’d gotten from him. She pressed on. “Why did you take their phones? Davis’s, Wilton’s—”

  “To see who they were talking to, of course. And texting. Truss was really into texting. Digital guy, so I guess it figures. Our editor here, not so much. An old-fashioned man about everything but ethics.”

  “Is that
how you found out about the meetings at Great Lakes? Through—”

  “No, no, Austin noticed them months ago and alerted me. A reporter needs to have contacts everywhere. Or spies, if you prefer.”

  “What about Stephanie Davis?”

  His head uncocked, and his expression flattened. “What about her?”

  “Why did you kill her? She didn’t have anything to do with the sale—”

  His voice chilled about ten degrees. “But she still wanted to profit from it. She found out about the murder of public information and did nothing but blackmail the crooks for her cut of it. No one will shed any tears for that little snake.”

  Beside her, Jack stirred. Maggie thought she could hear the rumble of his anger below the surface as he said, “No one but her two kids.”

  “But how did you know about her?” Roth asked his captor, as if the question had just occurred to him. “She said she hadn’t told anyone else before she met with me at Tower City, and then she . . . she was found in the parking—”

  “Parabolic mike,” Correa said, a bit of his insouciance returning with his dimples. “The running water made it a pain in the ass, but I could still catch the conversation. You know, that archaic equipment we still have lying around from when we used to be able to do real investigative journalism?”

  Roth approached the end of his figurative tether, if not his actual one. “That’s what you think this is? Journalism?”

  “Exposing corruption that works against the public interest? Yes! That’s exactly what I think it is!”

  Roth twisted to look behind him. “Writing a story about it is journalism. Killing your subjects off is insanity!”

  Correa shifted his weight, pushing the man into the Plexiglas—a slight move, but the clear partition bowed out enough to make Maggie gasp and Roth lean back, trying to backpedal. Correa held him there as he hissed, “It was self-defense. You four were trying to kill the thing that gives the rest of us a reason to live. You four versus one hundred and fifty, versus the 1.2 million people who live in this county and need to know more than just who wore what to the Oscars. You’re the villain of this piece, Roth—don’t forget it. Continue, Maggie. ‘But the tragedy at the Herald is a story that has already been written thousands of times across the country in cities large and small, as newspapers have been shuttered, swallowed, and driven out of business by owners’ greed—no, the greed of their owners and the apathy of their readers. The real tragedy is yet to come, when a celebrity’s shoe size will be the only accurate fact a citizen can glean from the corporate machine referred to as news, quote unquote. ’ I mean actually put the quotation marks in—”

  “I got it,” Maggie told him.

  “On that day, democracy as a function will have truly ceased to exist.”

  He stopped.

  Maggie looked up. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, as if this came as a surprise. “I think that’s it. Put a thirty at the bottom. Hyphen, three zero, hyphen.”

  She did so. He gave her instructions for submitting it not only to the Herald site but to all the major news outlets, from the Associated Press to the Huffington Post. She didn’t try to fool him; Maggie didn’t care if the story went out. Why not—it was all true. She didn’t care about saving the Herald’s reputation, or the memory of the victims. She only cared about saving Franklin Roth from the hangman’s noose. However—

  “We’re done,” Jack said, his voice landing like a stone in Correa’s puddle of Pulitzer fantasies. “Let Roth and Maggie walk out of here, and then you and I can take a ride.”

  “Jack—” Maggie stood up, still holding the laptop. She didn’t dare leave Jack alone with Correa.

  “Maggie can go as soon as she hits Post on that screen. I have no interest in hurting Maggie.” If Correa meant this to sound reassuring, it didn’t.

  “And Roth,” Jack said.

  “Seriously?” Correa said, his arm on the editor’s shoulder as threatening as a gun to the head. All it would take was one shove, easily done. Of course Jack would then have a clear shot at Correa, but only after Roth dangled from the end of the strap. With his hands bound Roth could do nothing to save himself. “You think he deserves to live?”

  Maggie moved to the Plexiglas railing.

  “I think if he doesn’t walk out of there, you won’t either,” Jack said.

  “I can see my own future and—Maggie!”

  His voice had the edge of true panic, and all three men stared at her as she held Roger Correa’s laptop out over the railing, only her two hands keeping it from plummeting through thirty feet of space to the hard floor below.

  “I haven’t hit Post yet,” she explained to Correa, willing her voice to sound calm and cool and only partially succeeding. “If I drop this, your story disappears.”

  Correa said nothing. He seemed to be sorting through options while holding his breath. Roth stayed still as well, aware that his life hung at the edge of a precipice both literal and figurative.

  “Untie Roth and I’ll hit the button,” she said.

  “Maggie, haven’t you been listening to anything I said? I thought you cared about—”

  “I have no problem with filing the story. I think people should know. But I also think there’s been enough murder and I’m not about to let you kill this man in cold blood.”

  “There’s nothing cold about it!”

  “Let him go, or the story dies.”

  She thought she could see the hint of a smile at a corner of Jack’s mouth. He turned back to Correa and said, “I’d listen to her. She doesn’t care for compromise.”

  Correa hesitated, but not for long. His story trumped all other considerations. With a sigh and a glare he loosened the noose from Franklin Roth’s neck and let it drop to the floor. The editor’s relief showed in the heavy hiss of air from his lungs and the slow collapse of his shoulders.

  “And his hands,” Maggie said.

  “Show me that you posted it first.”

  Still at the railing, she moved toward them, but Jack stretched out an arm. “That’s close enough.”

  Balancing the laptop on the unsteady railing, she clicked on the Post button, then turned the screen so Correa could see the confirmation that the story had been sent. His mannerisms echoed the relief of his editor. It was done. He had finished his story.

  He shoved Roth aside with both hands.

  With his arms still bound, the man could do nothing but tumble helplessly into the clear barrier. It might have stopped him, he might have been able to catch onto it with his feet or legs, but it tore away from its moorings as if it had been made out of cardboard. The railing sections came apart and the whole thing flopped open, creating a slide straight into open space. Roth went over the edge of it with only a strangled cry.

  Jack leapt forward, colliding with Correa, who aimed to either stop Jack or make sure Roth completed his fall. Their weight fell on the section of already bowed out Plexiglas. A snapping sound rent the air.

  Maggie never remembered dropping the laptop and stumbling forward, reaching for Jack. She did remember that some sensible, calmer voice in the back of her head had already begun to calculate the distance to the floor below, estimate injuries depending on whether he landed on a desk or on the floor, if he landed on his feet or his torso or his head. Thirty feet, maybe twenty-five, acceleration due to gravity—he could probably survive the fall with just broken bones.

  Probably.

  But maybe not.

  Her hand caught his.

  She had already been in a crouch so she didn’t have quite as far to go when his weight snapped her to the floor, the not-clean industrial carpeting digging into her cheek. An explosion of pain in her right shoulder made her vision turn to bright white. The searing agony reverberated to her toes and back again. She would have screamed had she been able to draw in any air. The universe condensed to one single thought: Hang on.

  And one other: Don’t let them pull you over.

  But h
er body lay on an open area, with nothing to use as an anchor except the railing supports, and she had just seen how well they worked.

  Her vision cleared enough for her to see Jack below her, hanging on to her hand with an odd expression on his face, as if he could not determine how he had come to be there. Below him, Roger Correa had both arms wrapped around Jack’s left leg. She had two large men dangling from her arm. No wonder it hurt.

  Though hurt was an understatement. Her arm would be ripped away from her body if she didn’t—

  Jack raised his free leg, and with thoughtful aim kicked Roger Correa in the face.

  The reporter fell away, and Maggie watched him slam into a reporter’s desk, half on, half off, his spine catching the edge with an audible crack. Then he quaked, rolled, and landed on the floor next to the supine editor. She didn’t calculate his odds of survival. She no longer cared whether Roger Correa or Franklin Roth still lived. She almost didn’t care if Jack did. She just wanted the pain to stop.

  Jack gave one strong tug to her arm—and now she did scream—to get one hand, then the other, up on the walkway edge. Somehow he pulled himself up, climbing over her, the weight of his body crushing the breath from her lungs. Then he turned her over. When she thought over the mass of sensations later she realized he’d been trying to be gentle, but it didn’t make a difference. Her vision went white again.

  When it cleared, she heard him calling for an ambulance and then updating the situation for the entry team. He snapped the phone shut.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  She couldn’t answer. She was too busy trying to breathe.

  Chapter 50

  Rick Gardiner rubbed one eye and watched his ex-wife’s coworker—Josh, the kid’s name was Josh—brush black powder all over the piece of Plexiglas that had fallen from the second floor. Neither he nor Josh saw the purpose in it, both had made clear to the other, since all their suspects were (a) dead and (b) worked in this building, so their prints on the railing would prove exactly nothing. But both he and Josh knew that their respective butts would be chewed if that box on the solvability checklist hadn’t been colored in, so the kid threw powder and Rick watched. At least until Patty Wildwood figured out some other grunt task for him to do since, as usual, she had put herself in unofficial charge. He could be at the hospital asking his ex-wife how she had come to be in the middle of this, how very, very physically she had been in the middle of it, and how that bastard Renner had jerked her arm out of its socket—