Dead of the Day (2007)

by Karen E. Olson

  The door opened a little more and I squeezed inside, allowing the woman who let me in to lock it behind us before I looked around.

  While this condo had been bright with sunshine a few days ago, now it was dark, as all the curtains were drawn and only a dim light was on in what I remembered as the kitchen. I turned to the Asian woman who'd let me in.

  ''I'm Annie Seymour,'' I repeated. ''With the Herald. I spoke with the Rodriguezes for a story this past week. I'm so sorry about what's happened.''

  The woman nodded. ''I'm Lin's sister, Mei. She will talk to you.''

  Mei led me into the kitchen, where Lin Rodriguez sat slumped over a cup of tea at a small table. She looked up and tried a smile, but it didn't work.

  ''I'm so sorry, Mrs. Rodriguez,'' I said again, sitting across from her.

  Her sleek dark hair was pulled back from her face, which was white with her sorrow. ''Thank you,'' she said softly. ''My husband spoke kindly of you.''

  He did? Well, he hadn't been on the job too long.

  ''Would you mind terribly if I asked you some questions?'' I asked, pulling my notebook out of my bag.

  Mei took a step toward us, but Lin held her hand up. ''I'll answer her questions. I have to do what I can.'' She turned back to me. ''What do you want to know?''

  ''Did you see the man who did this?''

  She took a deep breath. ''It was a car. I never saw a face, or even a gun. It was a dark car, loud music. It was so fast.''

  ''You were there to see the play?''

  She did smile then. ''We have season tickets. Tony loves the theatre.'' Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked a couple of times to keep them at bay. ''We always go on opening night. Whoever did this may have known that.''

  Maybe, maybe not. So far, this wasn't really helping much.

  ''You don't know of anyone who might want to hurt your husband?'' I asked.

  The hesitation was slight, but it was there, and I saw her eyes flicker toward her sister, then back to me. ''No. Of course not.''

  I glanced at Mei, but her face was unreadable.

  ''Are you sure?'' I asked Lin. ''Anything might help.''

  She shook her head; this time there was no hesitation. ''I'm afraid I know nothing. My husband was a police officer. They have many enemies, but none I know of.'' She sighed. ''That's all I can say. Thank you for coming.''

  I was being dismissed. I stood up and allowed Mei to walk me to the front door. But before she could open it, I turned to her and whispered, ''What's going on? Who is she afraid of?''

  I could see Mei struggling with herself, wondering if she should say anything. Finally, ''Tony had been getting phone calls.''

  ''What kind of phone calls?'' I glanced back at the light in the kitchen, but something else caught my eye. Behind Mei was one of the most interesting paintings I'd ever seen, a sort of mosaic modern interpretation of a beehive that was filled with gold and yellow and streaks of black that turned the beehive into a bee. ''Wow,'' I whispered without realizing I was speaking out loud.

  Mei sighed. ''Tony bought that for her a few months ago when she started the project.''

  ''What project?''

  ''She's working with bees now. She's been a bit secretive, but she usually is when she starts a project.''

  Bees? My thoughts jumped back a day to the body the cops had fished out of the harbor. I had to find out if it was always bee season. Seemed like Lin would be the best one to ask, but this wasn't the time.

  I shook myself back to the matter at hand and remembered what I'd asked a few seconds ago. ''What were the phone calls about?''

  Mei shrugged. ''I'm not sure. Lin is very secretive about it, like with her projects. She said it had nothing to do with his job, it was personal. But whatever it was, it was upsetting to her.'' She paused. ''It was a few months ago, so I'm not even sure it's relevant.''

  So why the hell did she mention it? If the calls were really that irrelevant, why bring them up? But before I could push the issue, she opened the door and I stepped back outside, hearing the click of the lock behind me as I walked toward Cindy.

  ''How'd you get in there?'' she demanded as I got closer. I saw she'd put on more lipstick and that her skirt showed off muscular calves. Jesus, Dick had actually gotten himself a hottie. She was dumb as a brick, but she was hot.

  ''My natural charm,'' I said lightly, grinning as I went past, the cameraman chuckling.

  Chapter 12

  Sam O'Neill was my next stop. A phone call wasn't going to do it, obviously, since I'd struck out earlier. So I pointed my Honda in the direction of the police station. Thinking about what Mei had told me, I wondered if Sam knew about the mysterious phone calls since Rodriguez had said he and Sam were tight.

  I found a parking spot on the street across from the station. It was a miracle, really, since the train station was just a block down and there were still no meters on this side. Commuters usually jammed these spots, unwilling to pay for the garage, which was always full anyway.

  The police station is one of those big blocks of concrete that passed for architecture back in the 1960s and 1970s. The old New Haven Coliseum was another one, but they tore that down after the minor league hockey team's contract was up and not renewed. I'd been sorry to see that building go, despite its ugliness; I'd spent a lot of time there at concerts when I was in high school and college. It was a part of my personal history. I didn't want to think about how long ago it'd been.

  I was reminded, though, when the cop at the desk looked up at me. He was young, really young, maybe just out of high school. Or middle school. Everyone was looking younger these days. Except me.

  ''Annie Seymour here to see Sam O'Neill,'' I said, although just as I said it, I wondered if I shouldn't say ''Assistant Chief Sam O'Neill.'' Oh, hell, I'd never stood on formalities before. Why start now?

  The young cop picked up the phone and dialed. I pretended not to listen, but heard him say, ''Annie Seymour . . . she's right here . . . she wants to talk to you . . .'' He hung up the phone. ''He doesn't want to talk to you,'' he said flatly.

  I frowned. ''Call him back and tell him I have information about Rodriguez.''

  The young cop pursed his lips, not unlike the way Cindy Purcell had outside Rodriguez's condo. But to his credit, he didn't argue, picked the phone back up, and when O'Neill answered, told him just what I said. When he hung up this time, he nodded. ''He'll be right here.''

  I hated it when I wasn't allowed into the inner sanctum, but this would have to do.

  The lobby was dingy, the fluorescent lights casting a sort of unearthly glow. I didn't want to sit in any of the plastic chairs lined up along the wall. Who the hell knew what sort of germs were residing there. So I busied myself with reading the names of the officers who had fallen in the line of duty and studying their pictures. The most recent listed was in 1970. Did that mean no cops had died in the line of duty since then? I made a mental note to try to find out.

  It must have been ten minutes later when the glass door swung open and Sam O'Neill came out. He looked only slightly better than Lin Rodriguez. His reddish-brown locks were slicked back, and even his freckles were pale against his white Irish face, which looked only whiter under his dark eyebrows.

  ''Hey, Sam,'' I said. ''Somewhere we can go?''

  ''Let's take a walk.''

  I followed him out the door, down the stairs, and

  onto the sidewalk. He started walking toward the train station at a pretty good clip.

  ''So what's your information?'' he asked as I struggled to keep up.

  ''Rodriguez had been getting phone calls at home. His wife was concerned about them,'' I said, hoping that by being cryptic he could fill in the blanks and I could get more information.

  Sam stopped suddenly and looked at me. ''She told you about that?''

  I nodded, crossing my fingers in my pocket.

  ''We're looking into it, but I'm not sure it's as big a deal as Lin is making it sound. Hell, we've all broken up with peop
le who couldn't handle it. Anyway, she stopped calling a few months ago.''

  That coincided with what Mei had told me, but those irrelevant calls seemed to be getting a lot of attention, even though they'd ended a while back.

  ''But they've been married, what, seven years?'' I asked, following his train of thought but not sure where it had been or where it was going. I was just going along for the ride. ''This woman is from his past?''

  Sam's eyes narrowed as he searched my face. ''Just how much about this do you know?''

  He was onto me. ''Probably not as much as you do,'' I admitted.

  ''Did Lin tell you she thinks this woman is responsible? Because Lin is distraught, and we've already considered that, but there's nothing to it.'' Sam suddenly turned and started walking back to the station. He was quiet a few seconds, then, ''I don't want you going to Behr about this. He's got his hands full and he doesn't need you pushing him for answers, either. I don't like it that he talks to you at all, and that's going to change if I stay in this job.''

  Shit.

  ''If you have questions, you have to go through official channels, talk to me, and I'll decide what you get and what you don't get.'' We were at the bottom of the steps now. ''Do you hear me?''

  ''Loud and fucking clear,'' I said, not happy at all with this turn of events. I probably should've just called Tom about Rodriguez since Sam seemed to have a real bee in his bonnet over me for some reason, and my anonymous caller had said Tom knew something. I probably shouldn't have cursed, either, but it just came out.

  But to my surprise, he laughed. ''Christ, Annie, don't get pissed. We're all on edge here, and I can't let you start printing shit that could fuck up the investigation.''

  I watched him as he went up the steps and disappeared into the building. As I went back to my car, I realized I hadn't asked him anything about the shooting itself. Marty wouldn't be happy about that—if I told him.

  My conversation with Sam only made me more curious about Rodriguez's former girlfriend. My stomach rumbled, interrupting my thoughts, and I checked the clock on the dashboard. It was four o'clock, no wonder. I hadn't had anything to eat since my early lunch before meeting with Marisol.

  But I knew I couldn't stop to eat now. I had to get back to the paper to write up my interview with Lin Rodriguez for the Sunday paper. I didn't really have much of a follow-up—I'd lost a lot of time with my mother's break-in—but I'd do the best I could with what I had.

  Dick Whitfield, however, was typing furiously with two fingers as I tossed my bag on my desk.

  ''What've you got?'' I asked through clenched teeth. From the look of determined concentration on his face, I could see Dick had something and I dreaded finding out what it was.

  He looked up at me with a wide smile. Suddenly I wasn't so hungry anymore.

  ''That guy, Roberto Ortiz? He works in the mailroom.''

  I frowned. ''What mailroom?''

  ''Our mailroom. The one down the hall.'' Dick cocked his head in the general direction of the New Haven Herald mailroom, where about twenty people stuffed advertising inserts into the newspaper every night.

  ''No shit?''

  ''He's worked here for about a year.'' He paused. ''And his sister works here, too.''

  Goddammit. How the hell did Dick get this? But he was talking, interrupting my thoughts.

  ''. . . met her at the hospital while I was over there earlier,'' he was saying, answering my unspoken question. ''She told me their life story.'' He leaned toward me, whispering now. ''I don't think they're legal.''

  They probably weren't, but that posed a bigger question. Would the powers that be want us to print a story about a Herald employee who might not be legal who went around shooting cops? It was probably a good thing that Bill Bennett was still on that tropical island with my mother. But it would have to go through Marty, and then the executive editor, Charlie Simmons, who had just been brought in from corporate. We'd been operating without an executive editor since last summer, when Wallace Morris had keeled over and died after eating a tuna sandwich from the cafeteria. While there was no proof that the sandwich had actually killed him, it was true that Wallace was about a hundred years old and had been at the Herald since Nixon's resignation. When the paper was bought out by the big corporation that now owned it, the CEO decided not to rock the boat and kept Wallace on. But he had very little power and decisions were made higher up.

  Even though we all questioned Wallace's existence, we were struck with fear when faced with the thought of a new editor, one who would perhaps have more say in our day-to-day operations and who would stringently tout the company line.

  Charlie Simmons was still an unknown quantity, a big man with red cheeks, a bulbous nose, and a swath of black hair that poufed up and made him look sort of like an Elvis impersonator. To his credit, he listened to Marty and the other editors, although we knew there would be a day when he would stop listening and start making the rules.

  Looking at Dick and thinking about Roberto Ortiz working in the mailroom made me realize that this could be that day.

  ''You might want to leave out that last part. About them not being legal,'' I advised.

  ''Who's not legal?'' Marty had come up behind me, a Dunkin' Donuts coffee in one hand, his glasses in the other.

  I shook my head violently at Dick, but in his dense way he must have thought I had Tourette's or something because he blurted out, ''Roberto Ortiz and his sister; they work in the mailroom here.''

  A flush crept up Marty's neck and into his face. ''They're not legal?''

  ''Now, we don't know that for sure,'' I butted in. ''Dick just assumes that.''

  ''And they work here?'' Marty ignored me and looked at Dick for an answer. ''If you don't know it for fact, we won't print it.''

  ''But she said she was waiting for her green card; she didn't have it yet,'' Dick argued.

  I sat down and pretended to look at a press release. Dick was digging a hole for himself but didn't seem to realize it. Now if it was my scoop, I'd probably fight for it, too, but I'd try to find another way to get it in the story without coming out and openly saying the New Haven Herald was hiring illegal aliens or, as the politically correct like to say, undocumented workers.

  That is, if I wanted to keep my job.

  Jesus, I sounded like someone who plays by the rules. What the fuck was going on?

  Marty herded Dick toward Charlie Simmons' office. I turned on my computer and, as I waited for it to boot up, movement caught my eye over near Kevin Prisley's desk. Another mouse. They'd had babies and were everywhere.

  Hoping that the mice stayed out of my way, I started writing up the story about Lin Rodriguez, every once in a while glancing over at Charlie's office. I wanted to be a fly on the wall, but at the same time was glad I wasn't involved.

  Roberto Ortiz and his sister kept invading my thoughts, even while I was writing. I glanced toward the hallway that led to the mailroom. It was like a goddamn moth to the light. She was probably out there now, putting the inserts together.

  I peeked over at Charlie's office. The door was still closed. Who would be the wiser if I went out there to talk to her?

  Okay, so maybe I'd get something new, maybe not. But it would put more of a face on the story for me. Or so I told myself as I sauntered down the hall, hoping no one would ask me where I was going since there was nothing in that direction except the mailroom, and who the hell would want to go there?

  It was noisier than a fucking bulldozer. The machines were running, and I looked up to see a large zipperlike contraption carrying shiny, colorful WalMart inserts between its teeth. That yellow smiley face taunted me as it passed overhead. I had a smiley face necklace when I was thirteen.

  Why was everything reminding me of my teenage years?

  A group of young women were sorting papers in what looked like an assembly line. I walked up to a guy who was leaning against the wall; he was the supervisor. He was a head taller than me, bald, with some sort of Chinese characte
r tattooed above his left ear. He wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. The paper was more relaxed with dress code out here. He'd been at the paper for a long time, probably as long as me, and I usually ran across him in the cafeteria.

  But I didn't know his name. I held out my hand. ''Annie Seymour.''

  He looked at my outstretched hand. After a second, he took it and nodded. ''Garrett Poore. This is my Poore-house,'' he said, laughing, like it was funny.

  I pulled my hand away when I realized he wasn't going to let go. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was something smarmy about this guy.