“He’s so guilty -you should’ve seen his face. I don’t know this police stuff, Jason. Besides, the cops trust you. Can you help me confirm the charges? I called Eldon and he wants to run the story tomorrow on page one as hard news instead of a feature next week! I need help, now!”
“I’m not touching it. It’s all yours. Good luck.”
“Jason, listen,” she dropped her voice. “I need your help. Eldon’s afraid that the Times and P-I might get wind of the school principal’s arrest and steal my story. He told me to tell you to help me. Please. I need this now.”
Jason hated how this was being handled. First he was nudged from a crime story, then he was told to help- and by a reporter, not an editor. It spelled trouble. But after considering his situation, he made a snap decision, then made some calls. He confirmed that nine of the ten men were charged.
The one man not charged was Brian Pillar, the principal, he told Cassie.
“Turns out the guy was on his way to pick up some part for his wife’s wheelchair and really was lost. The others were local street types, known to police, that sort of thing. Guess that takes your story down a peg,” he said.
“Damn. Are you sure? Because the suburban school principal is exactly what I need to make my story stronger.” She was frantic. “I’ll talk to Eldon.”
Don’t let the facts get in the way, Jason joked to no one. Seriously, with its drama diminished, Cassie’s story would surely go deep inside the paper, he’d reasoned. But his jaw dropped the next morning as Brian Pillar’s face stared back at him from a front page story that featured him prominently as a “suspected John,” along with the other men who were arrested.
Principal One of 10 “Johns” Arrested In Neighborhood Hooker Sting
Cassie’s story quoted Pillar pleading with the Mirror not to publish his name or picture. “I had nothing to do with that sort of business. I’m begging you to please think of my wife, our daughters, my students. My school. Please.”
But there was the news photo of Pillar in handcuffs along with the undeniable fact of his arrest, which was not the same as a charge. Even though he wasn’t charged, he looked guilty in the Mirror ’s photo and under that headline. The story also quoted an unsympathetic community activist. “I do not feel sorry for him. When these men are caught with their pants down, they will say anything, except the truth.”
That morning Jason got a call from a detective he knew.
“Nice number today on the principal, Wade. We told you he’d been cleared. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“It’s not my story. I don’t know why they played it like that. I guess Cassie will have to follow this up by talking to him and clarifying things.”
“That might be a challenge, Ace.”
“Why?”
“Brian Pillar hanged himself in his garage this morning with an extension cord. His oldest daughter found him, managed to cut him down with a hedge trimmer and call 9-1-1.”
“Jesus, is he alive?”
“Barely.”
Brian Pillar survived and recovered, and the Mirror paid him a “six-figure amount” in a quick out-of-court settlement that also involved a front-page retraction and a presentation on journalistic responsibility to be given by senior editors to Pillar’s school board. Before all that happened, Cassie Appleton and Eldon Reep blamed Jason for the mess.
“How can you blame me? I was never part of Cassie’s story.”
“She called you for help,” Reep said.
“And I told her he was not charged, that she’d better be careful.”
“That’s not Cassie’s account. She’s informed me that you clearly told her,” Eldon picked up a legal pad with handwritten notes, “that all the men had been arrested and charged.”
“She’s dead wrong!”
“Are you calling her a liar?”
Jason met Reep’s cold stare.
Be careful, he told himself.
Cassie Appleton was one of Reep’s hires. Reep had replaced Fritz Spangler as metro editor a few months ago. Reep was a Seattle native who’d worked at the rival Seattle Times before leaving for Toronto to help launch the new daily, the Canada News Observer. After sixteen months, the new paper and Reep’s marriage had folded. He wanted to return to Seattle, made some calls, and landed Spangler’s old job.
Reep wanted to recharge the Mirror ’s newsroom. One of his first new hires was Cassie Appleton. She’d worked at some small midwest triweekly but had won some obscure writing awards. She never smiled. She focused on her ambition to get the city hall beat, to use it as a stepping-stone to the state bureau in Olympia and then the Mirror ’s national bureau in Washington, D.C.
According to the newsroom gossip, Cassie was a home wrecker who’d been cast out of her small town following a torrid affair with her managing editor.
Reep was rumored to have a thing for her.
So be very careful, Jason told himself.
“Answer me, Wade. Are you calling Cassie a liar?”
“Yes.”
“And you can prove this, how?”
Jason couldn’t prove it and immediately realized what was going to happen. He was going to be the scapegoat for this.
And he was right.
Eldon suspended him for a week, then put him on nights indefinitely while he decided his fate, informing Jason that one missed story, or one mistake, would end his employment with the Mirror.
“- all units…we have a report of a… ”
The scanners yanked Jason’s attention back to police matters and his desk. He adjusted the settings but was again frustrated by fragmented cross-talk coming out of the Central District area near First Hill-no wait-that’s closer to Yesler Terrace. What the heck was happening out there?
“…report of a second car prowling… ”
Car prowling? Is that all? No story there.
Jason was relieved, on the verge of releasing the channel and his concern when somewhere in the static storm of a broken transmission he heard, “…nun’s apartment…send it to you on your MDT… ”
Nun’s apartment? What’s going on? Jason knew there were several buildings owned by the Archdiocese. And now they were using the Mobile Data Terminal. Better try the precinct, he thought, reaching for his phone when it startled him by ringing with an incoming call.
“ Seattle Mirror. ”
“I’m calling for Jason Wade-is he at this number?”
“You got me.”
The stranger’s voice was coming from the din of a party crowd, the sounds of a cash register, and chinking glass.
“I’m calling about your father.”
“ My father? What about him? Is he all right?”
“He asked me to call, he says he needs you here right away.”
“What, where is he and who are you? What’s going on, is he hurt?”
“Look, I’m delivering the message. He’s here at the Ice House Bar, he said you know where it is and that it’s an emergency. I gotta go.”
Bar.
Jason buried his face in his hands.
He’s at a damn bar. I don’t need this, Dad. Not now.
The scanner crackled with another fragment.
What was going on near Yesler Terrace?
