by R. G. Belsky
“Manning was the first one at the FBI who found out about The Wanderer. He’s bringing it to the FBI’s attention. That makes him a big player in all this, no matter how new he is. And I’m the one who brought the information to him. That’s how we can sell this all to his boss. In any case, we’ll know more about how all this will play out—or if we should just go ahead on our own and not work with them—once I meet Manning’s supervisor tomorrow.”
“Just to be clear, isn’t Scott Manning the same guy who was involved with you on the Grace Mancuso/Dora Gayle story last year? The same guy you had working for us then? And the same guy you were sleeping with at the time, which I didn’t find out about until later?”
“We only slept together once.”
“Not the point.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“But you don’t have that kind of relationship with him now?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re not still having sex with him?”
“No sex whatsoever except for that one time last year.”
“You have no personal feelings of any kind toward Scott Manning right now?”
“Absolutely none,” I said.
That was the part where I said before that I wasn’t being completely, 100 percent truthful to Faron about everything.
I went through with him next what my people would be doing on this for the rest of the day. I was going to ask Maggie and others to gather more information for me on the victims—and the crimes themselves—from the list. I knew Manning and the FBI were surely doing the same thing right now. But I wanted to have as much information as possible with me when I met with Manning’s boss.
Before I left Faron’s office, he asked me about Gary Weddle.
“How’s everything going between you and the consultant?” he asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. It seems to be working—based on what I’ve seen so far in the newsroom and in our ratings numbers.”
“Yes,” I told him. “We’ve accomplished a lot in terms of meshing the ‘The News Never Stops’ concept of Weddle’s together with our normal newsroom schedule. Feeding stories in instantly via texts, tweets, video streams, and the rest. But we’ve still maintained the integrity of the actual news broadcasts. Gary Weddle and I are working extremely well together.”
“I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
“You don’t generally get along with people like that. And you were resistant in the beginning to me bringing him in here at all. Why the change in your attitude?”
I shrugged. “I like him, Jack.”
“Like him how?”
That question startled me.
“What do you mean?”
“People here tell me you two seem to get along maybe too well. Nothing obvious, but there seems to be some sort of bond there, I’m hearing. Are you having a personal relationship with this guy, too, Clare?”
I thought about the conversations Gary Weddle and I had had about our future. About the times we’d managed to sneak away to spend a bit of private time together. About the stolen kisses between us.
“Of course not.”
“Good. Because you know how complicated that kind of a relationship can be in an office these days. I’m already getting enough stress about what’s going on between Brett and Dani. I mean, I’m not sure whether they’re going to have sex on the air some night or file lawsuits against each other. I don’t need another Brett and Dani situation in this office. Which is why I asked about you and Weddle.”
“My interest in Gary Weddle is simply putting out the best—and most profitable—newscast we can do here at Channel 10.”
“Glad to hear that,” Faron said.
Okay, that was the second untruth of the conversation.
But who’s counting?
I called Maggie into my office afterward and gave her the list of crime victims to check for more information. I said I wanted newspaper articles, TV broadcasts, videos, social media coverage—anything she could find out about any and all of them. I did not tell her why I wanted this. Which was the first question she asked me.
“I can’t tell you that, Maggie,” I said.
“You can, but you won’t.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Then I’m not doing this assignment for you unless you tell me what this story is all about.”
“You’re my deputy, Maggie. You’re supposed to do whatever I tell you to do. No questions asked.”
“I’m also a journalist. I ask questions for a living. My question now is what’s going on here? Wouldn’t you ask the same kind of question if you were in my place?”
Maggie was right.
I’d promised Manning that I wouldn’t tell anyone else at the station so that it couldn’t leak out. But I’d already told Faron because I knew I had to cover myself that way in case this all blew up in my face. Now I decided to tell Maggie, too, making it clear about the need for secrecy from anyone else in the newsroom.
“Wow!” she said when I was finished. “That is a helluva story!”
“It will be once we’re able to put it on the air. Hopefully soon.”
“And you’re working with that ex-cop Scott Manning again?”
“That’s right.”
“The same guy you slept with last year?”
“Not the point.”
“Are you sleeping with him now?”
“Everyone keeps asking me about that.”
“It’s an obvious question, Clare.”
“No, I have no personal relationship of any kind anymore with Scott Manning. Please try and put together as much of this stuff as you can before the end of the day so I can have it when I go back to the FBI tomorrow. That’s all I’m concerned with right now.”
It was a nice little speech, and it sure sounded good.
And there was no question that I was focused on the story—which could be the story of a lifetime—at the moment.
That was the only reason I was looking forward to returning to the FBI office again tomorrow, I told myself.
Except why was I still so excited thinking about seeing Scott Manning again?
CHAPTER 35
SCOTT MANNING’S BOSS was a man named Gregory Wharton. Wharton was about fifty with short-cropped hair, dressed in a blue suit that looked so bland it could have been FBI-issued, and gave off every vibe of being a lifer with the bureau. He might have been nice-looking except for the perpetual scowl on his face—at least when he looked at me. He was not happy I was there or happy with the reason for it.
“This is a very unusual situation,” Wharton was saying to me now as we sat in his office. Manning was there, too, looking slightly uncomfortable. “An unprecedented situation, at least in my time here, Ms. Carlson. We have great respect for the media and the job you do, but we don’t allow journalists to be part of investigations we’re running. This is an especially sensitive investigation—both in terms of avoiding a public panic or compromising the investigation itself—so it is crucial that all of us are extremely discreet about it.”
“Discreet,” I repeated.
“Yes. I’d like to think of us both working for the public good. You came to us with some important information about a series of murders, and we are grateful for that. In return, we are prepared to work with you on this story as it develops. I think that’s a fair arrangement. A good quid-pro-quo, as they say.”
“Quid-pro-quo,” I said.
I was starting to sound like an echo.
“The first thing we have to establish is the secrecy of this investigation. Between you and I and Agent Manning here. Everything we say and do here is completely confidential. This is all totally off-the-record, as I guess you journalists say. I need you to promise me that right now, Ms. Carlson. Do I have your word on that?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said, making an imaginary X on my chest.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m giving you my word.”
“I’m serious about this. I need to be sure you’re telling me the truth about this.”
“Hey, my pants aren’t on fire or anything.”
Wharton looked confused.
“You know, liar, liar, pants on fire. Mine aren’t.”
He smiled now, but it looked forced. I had a feeling where all this was headed. I found out that I was right.
“Now, Agent Manning here overstepped his authority when he promised you would be a part of our investigation. I do understand his reasoning for doing that. You obtained the valuable information that alerted us to this series of crimes, and he felt it was important to convince you not to make this information public yet. Unfortunately, allowing you to participate in the investigation itself is not going to be possible. It’s simply not a feasible option here. I’m sure you understand the reason for that.”
I sat there and waited. Here it comes, I thought.
“So, I’m going to propose a different scenario. One that I think will benefit both of us. We will keep you informed as best we can on all the developments in our investigation, right up to—and including—the time we capture the killer. Until then, you will not be able to use any of this. But, as soon as the killer is in custody, you will have the complete story ahead of anyone else.”
“How long do you expect that to take?” I asked.
“Hard to say. It could be a matter of days or weeks or more.”
“And you expect me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs waiting for you during all this? Not good enough.”
“That’s my offer, Ms. Carlson,”
“It’s not much of an offer.”
“Take it or leave it.”
I heard a sigh and a sharp outtake of breath from Manning. He knew what was coming. I stood up and started walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Wharton said.
“Back to my station to put this story on the air.”
“Now wait a minute …”
“No, you wait a minute. I have an executive producer at Channel 10 who wanted to put this story on the air last night. I talked him out of it, but now I think he was right. You don’t want to honor the deal I made with Agent Manning? Fine. You can hear all about it on the Channel 10 newscast tonight. We’re going to lead with it, then go big again at 11 and blow it up to go viral all over our website. Everyone will pick this story up from us. Serial killer running wild, FBI clueless about it. That’s a win-win situation for us, Wharton. I can’t lose doing that. But you can. You can lose big-time. Good luck with your investigation.”
I was halfway to the door when he called me back.
“Okay,” Wharton said. “You win. We’ll go back to the original deal. The one you made with Manning.”
“I’ll be a part of your investigation?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He gave me that smile again.
The phony one.
Yep, no question about it, Gregory Wharton didn’t like me.
On my way out, Manning whispered to me: “Well, that didn’t go so badly as I feared it might.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “How could it have gone worse?”
“I thought the two of you might kill each other.” He smiled.
An hour later, I was sitting in at an organizational meeting by the FBI team conducting the investigation. There were about ten agents in the room, plus Manning and me and Wharton. Wharton was clearly in charge and ran the meeting.
He started out by listing the basic facts I’d provided to Manning about the various murders, then told about the DNA results, which indicated they were the work of the same person.
He said they were calling that person “The Wanderer”—the same name Marty had given him in his notes—because they needed a code name for the task force’s investigation. The Wanderer seemed perfect, Wharton said. I thought about how Marty had come up with that name based on an old Dion song he listened to as a kid. Now it was the name of a major law enforcement operation. Marty was back in the big time of crime reporting, even if it was too late for him to enjoy it.
At one point, Wharton introduced me as the journalist who had given them the original information and told everyone how I would be taking part in their investigation moving forward. He assured everyone I had agreed to keep whatever I learned confidential until the killer was apprehended.
I saw a lot of scowls on the faces around the room, not unlike the scowl from Wharton back in his office. None of these people wanted me there any more than he did. But that was okay. I was getting used to rejection.
Because of the massive number of potential murders by the serial killer, Wharton said it was important to focus the bureau’s investigation on the places most likely to produce results. In this case, he said, that meant the five murders with the definite DNA link. After that, they could move on to the other cases.
Agents were assigned to travel to all five areas where those definite DNA murders had occurred. Others were told to prepare a psychological profile of the suspected killer based on techniques in identifying serial killers that had proved successful in the past. And the remaining agents would comb through data and other material in the FBI files looking for some link to the person who was doing this.
When the meeting was over, Manning asked me if I planned to go to one of the areas where the murders had taken place.
“That’s what I’m going to do, all right.”
“Which one of the five targeted areas are you going to?”
“None of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going back to Eckersville, Indiana. The Becky Bluso murder. I can’t do anything more at these other places than your agents can do. But maybe I can find out something more in Eckersville.”
“But that murder is the only one that’s not been linked to any of the rest of them.”
“I know. And that doesn’t make sense to me. I still think it is connected. I have to find out how.”
CHAPTER 36
“ARE YOU SURE this is a good idea?” Janet asked me
“No.”
“I don’t like it, Clare.”
“You mean the story?”
“No, the person you’re working on it with.”
We were talking on the phone. I’d called Janet to tell her about Manning and the rest. I didn’t tell her a lot about the details of the story. Only that it involved a series of murders that might be related. Not that I didn’t trust Janet. But I’d promised Manning and the FBI I would keep all this information to myself. I’d already broken that promise twice—with Faron and then with Maggie, albeit for necessary reasons—and I didn’t want to make it worse by telling Janet everything, too.
Besides, Janet and I had this policy where we tried not to reveal to each other sensitive stuff about the things we were working on: my exclusive stories and her sensitive legal cases. We had agreed that we both had big mouths—okay, that was mostly me that had a big mouth—and could inadvertently leak privileged information without even knowing we were doing it. Anyway, it seemed to work out better for our friendship this way.
“It’s just a story,” I said now. “He’s an FBI agent working on it and I’m a journalist. That’s all this is.”
“Except for the fact that you have a torrid sexual relationship with this guy.”
“Had a torrid sexual relationship with him—past tense,” I pointed out.
“And you have no interest in having that kind of a relationship with him now?”
“He’s married.”
“That’s a non-answer.”
“I’m only interested in the story, Janet.”
“And he’s okay with that, too?”
“He insisted on it. Said it had to be strictly business right from the start when I approached him again about this. We’re both on the same page. He’s back with his wife and I’m interested in somebody else besides him.”
�
��That guy Weddle at your station?”
“Right.”
“Who you haven’t actually consummated anything with yet, because you both decided to hold off until he stops working for the station. Meanwhile, you’ll be with Scott Manning on this other story.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think this whole situation is fraught with peril.”
“Fraught with peril? Talk to me in English, Janet—not legal-speak.”
“It could all blow up in your face.”
I went back to the office and ran the afternoon news meeting. The big story was a tornado warning for New Jersey, Staten Island, and parts of Long Island. That made the lead story choice for the newscast easy. Tornadoes rarely caused major damage in the New York City area, but tornado warnings still scared the hell out of people and guaranteed big ratings.
At the end of the meeting, I informed everyone that Maggie would be running the news meetings for the next few days while I was on special assignment. Everyone wanted to know what the special assignment was, of course—the room was full of nosy journalists. But I just made a joke of it by saying: “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you all.”
I told Faron and Maggie privately all about my meeting with Manning and the FBI and why I was going back to Indiana. Faron seemed dubious about the FBI keeping its word on cooperation, and I think he still regretted not going on air with the story right away. Maggie seemed dubious about me working with Manning again, which she’d never approved of. There was a lot of dubious reaction in the room. But both agreed it was good in the end that the FBI had allowed me into the investigation.
I found Weddle then and told him I was leaving for Indiana the next day. I said it was a big story that I was working on, along with an FBI agent named Scott Manning who had helped me last year break all the Dora Gayle/Grace Mancuso murder news. I didn’t tell him much more—about the story now or about Manning.
He didn’t ask either. I was hoping he might suggest we get together that night for a farewell of sorts. Maybe some dinner. Maybe some snuggling. Maybe a secret kiss or two. But he wished me a good trip and then said—rather abruptly, I thought—he needed to go back into the office he was using to crunch some new ratings numbers.
