“I’m coming over.”
“No. I’m fine. I have things to do.”
“I thought you were going to bed.”
The phone fell silent. Then Mom said, “Just be sure to lock the door. And make your bed in the morning.”
A single light burned over the kitchen sink at Mom’s. The house was quiet. I locked the kitchen door, slipped off my boots, turned my phone off, and tossed it on the snack bar. I opened the fridge. It was packed with platters and casseroles wrapped in cellophane and foil that neighbors had dropped off. I chose a chicken dish with broccoli and noodles and slid it into the microwave over the stove.
Walking through the bathroom with its doors at each end, I saw a balled-up clump of police tape in the wastepaper basket next to the toilet. The tile floor was bare, the Me Sweet Ho rug having been confiscated as evidence. The door to Mom’s bedroom was closed, but I inched it open and peeked in. She was asleep, faced away from me toward the lake side of the house. A paperback by Jacquelyn Mitchard rested on her nightstand.
It gave me a little start. Mom had given me my first book, From the Rocket to the Jet: Hockey’s Greatest Heroes, when I was six. I almost didn’t read it because the title didn’t include the greatest player of them all, Gordie Howe of the Red Wings. Mom told me not to judge a book by its cover. I read it. Gordie was in it after all.
Mom bought me another book, The House on the Cliff, and then another and another until I was reading them so fast that my parents couldn’t afford to keep buying them and I got my first library card. I thought of the sixty- year-old photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office showing a young woman, a nun, who had done the same for my mother. If Mom had ever said a word about her, I had missed it, or forgotten.
I shut Mom’s door.
Back in the kitchen, I scooped a heap of the chicken casserole onto a plate and poured myself a glass of milk. A set of headlights eased past the house. I went to the window and squinted into the dark to see if it was a Pine County sheriff’s cruiser but it was gone before I could be sure. I took my plate and glass into the living room and sat in the recliner and grabbed the TV remote. I clicked the volume low and pushed Channel Eight for the news. The set blinked on to a hockey game, the Wings playing the Blues in St. Louis, late in the third period, Wings up, 4–2, and Stevie Yzerman squatting for a face-off.
I tried to clear my mind for a few minutes of everything I had seen and heard and read in the long day behind me. The casserole was delicious. The Wings were about to win. I set the plate on the end table next to me and picked up the remote. Maybe I wouldn’t bother with the news after all. Maybe I could find a Seinfeld rerun instead. The Blues pulled their goalie for an extra skater. I shoved myself back in the recliner, thought I wouldn’t mind if I fell asleep right there.
Less than twenty seconds remained in the game when a ribbon of words began to scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” they began. Not another snowstorm, I thought. The string went blank, then these words rolled across: “BINGO NIGHT KILLING LINKED TO LATE PRIEST.” I bolted up in the recliner. “What the fuck?” I whispered. I waited. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” it repeated while my stomach
twisted into a knot. The next line rolled past: “POLICE INVESTIGATING CONNECTION TO FR. NILUS MOREAU. DETAILS AFTER THE GAME.”
I jumped to my feet, thinking, How the hell could they know that? It had to be Tawny Jane Reese reporting. There was no way that Darlene would have told her, or that D’Alessio would have known now that he was openly campaigning against Dingus. Vicky Clark? Could Vicky have figured out what I was really doing at the clerk’s office? And even if she had and then had thought to call Tawny Jane, Tawny Jane couldn’t have reported it based solely on a secondhand tip from a deputy county clerk.
The only other person who knew was Luke Whistler.
I went into the kitchen, turned on my phone, dialed Whistler.
“Where the hell were you?” he answered.
“Did you just moan it out when she was going down on you?” I said.
“Settle down, junior,” Whistler said. “I didn’t tell her a thing. She told me. I got it out of her. I tried to call you from her bathroom.”
“Bullshit.”
“I left you a message about twenty minutes ago.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear. The message light was blinking. Shit, I thought. “I don’t give a damn,” I said. “You told her.”
I looked through the kitchen and dining room to the TV. There was Tawny Jane on the screen, microphone in hand, doing a stand-up in front of St. Valentine’s. Goddamm it, I thought.
“The next time you accuse me,” Whistler said, “I’m gone, and you can fill your little rag by yourself. If you’d had your phone on-”
“Shit!” I said, spluttering it.
“If you’d had your phone on, you could’ve beaten her to the punch on the Web and I’d be getting my ass chewed by her instead.”
“Then how the hell did she know, Luke?”
“Are you watching her now?”
I walked into the living room. Tawny Jane was signing off, her brows furrowed into their deepest crease of seriousness. “Yes. Fuck.”
“She didn’t have anything more than what we already knew. I’m betting you’ve already made some progress in your reporting, am I right?”
“Some. But how did she know? Really.”
“She wouldn’t tell me. But I’m betting it was D’Alessio.”
“Come on. Dingus has got to be totally shutting him out.”
“Maybe he has his own department mole.”
I considered this, doubted it, but didn’t know what else to think. I shut the TV off.
“Should we pop something online?” I said.
“That would just be an admission of defeat. And it’ll be seen by about six people. Might as well stay on the trail and do a better story when we got it. Look, partner, T.J.’s good.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Enough,” he said.
He was right. Tawny Jane Reese could be a good reporter, as I had learned from hard experience. “All right,” I said. “Let’s talk in the morning.”
“Get back on the horse.”
The kitchen filled with the glow of headlights. I heard tires crunching snow. I started walking to the kitchen door.
“And look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But you’ve got to understand-”
“Yeah, I know, I know. I can see how you’d jump to the conclusion. But, look, I’m on your side.”
Darlene was standing outside Mom’s kitchen door. She didn’t look happy. I unlocked the door, swung it open, stepped outside, pulled the door closed. Her cruiser was idling, the exhaust a coiled wraith in the dark. “Good night,” I said into the phone, hanging up. Midnight cold enveloped me. I wrapped my arms around my chest.
“Checking in with T.J.?” Darlene said.
“That was Whistler,” I said. “We got scooped big-time.”
“Really? How would the TV bitch know about Nilus if you didn’t tell her?”
Oh, holy shit, no, I thought. “I didn’t tell her anything.”
“Do you get extra points at work for helping Channel Eight? Do the bosses send you an attaboy? Or maybe T.J. has one for you, huh?”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. “I’m not sleeping with Tawny Jane, Darl.” I decided against telling her about Whistler and T.J. “She knew on her own. Whistler’s as pissed as I am.”
“Uh-huh.”
She didn’t look convinced, but what else could I say?
“Did you hear what she said?” Darlene asked.
