She shut the door as she left, leaving it unlocked, the way she’d found it, walked to her room, and cried.
– 85 -
When he joined the force, the hardest thing for Ambrose to get used to was the discomfiting juxtaposition of violence and food. The disgusting details of this job never let up, even for meals.
As he did many mornings, Ambrose stared at the cinder-block wall, mulling over the Wicker Man case and eating a roach-coach egg-and-sausage biscuit. He was frustrated. Frustrated that he knew little more about Suspect M, the Candlestick Maker, than he did the week that tip had come in. The task force didn’t have the resources to put a citizen on round-the-clock surveillance based only on the whim of a single lieutenant, and his men didn’t share his certainty with regard to this suspect. Plus, the guy was a moderately prominent figure in the city. Not a household name, but a frequent guest at charity auctions and balls. He no doubt had lots of friends – probably even a few on LaSalle Street. These people could make life for Ambrose extremely difficult if the Candlestick Maker knew he was being watched.
I could do it myself, Ambrose thought. I could chase him down on my own time. He thought about Clint Eastwood movies. Dirty Harry. A cop who could operate outside procedure because his instincts were always right. What else did Ambrose have to do with his spare time? Nothing, when his kids weren’t visiting. And he had to shake things up. This couldn’t go on indefinitely. The next time there was a body, the terrorized people of Chicago weren’t going to tolerate a cute speech and a shrug from the leader of the Wicker Man task force. No, he was going back on the street. Solve this case himself. Some reporter would probably write a book about it. The Candlestick Maker would make a good title for a true-crime book. The idea seemed smarter to him the more he thought about it.
Looking up through the window in his office door, he could see activity in the squad room. Cops were on the phone. Other cops were running for their cars. Ambrose had turned the ringer off his phone so he could think, and now it blinked at him furiously. He watched Detective DuPree stop himself on the way to the door and reverse directions. DuPree opened the door to Ambrose’s office and said between breaths:
“Lieutenant. We got a witness.”
– 86 -
Malik spent most of most days in the conference room, meeting with management, meeting with department editors, meeting with his staff. The sight of gray paint, the sound of squeaky chairs, the smell of people sweating in unventilated rooms was usually enough to make him drowsy as soon as the door closed behind him. Not today.
“I got the gist on TV,” Malik said to the three reporters who worked the Wicker Man beat. “But tell me anyway.”
Sally said, “Five o’clock this morning. Woman walking her dog along Division near the expressway. Sees a man in a hooded sweatshirt standing over a body in the alley. She said he was hovering over it. He had a towel in his hand-”
“It was raining, yes?”
Lynn Bellingham said, “It had been storming earlier, but by the time the woman took her dog out, the rain had subsided a bit.”
“What else?”
“Man in sweatshirt hears her coming, looks at her briefly, then runs off. She holds her dog back. Struggles over to the body. Sees the dead girl. Calls police on her cell. The body was both strangled and stabbed. Sexual assault. Posed. It has all the earmarks.”
“The victim?”
“Prostitute, apparently. They haven’t released her name if they know it.”
“And the best news?”
“Blood besides the victim’s, and semen. Cops are guessing the dog walker interrupted his cleanup. That and the rain let up.”
“Good golly.”
“Torriero, the police spokesman, was practically giddy.”
“Suspects?”
“The witness didn’t get a good look except to say the attacker was white. But Ambrose himself came out to say they’d be running the DNA against the database and hoped to have a suspect by the end of the week. Put himself right on the line and said it.”
“All right,” Malik said. “Give me the cops’ side straight, get me an interview with the witness, and give me a feature on Teddy Ambrose. He’s been on the Wicker Man from the beginning. And I want good pics of the cops working the crime scene. Not that blurry, unframed bullshit we got last time.”
Roles were assigned and accepted. Reporters dispersed. Sally remained.
“What?” Malik asked.
She shut the door. “We’re going to miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“The exclusive.”
“Tell me.”
“Why do you think Ambrose is putting his ass on the line, promising a suspect in three days?”
Malik turned a chair around in front of him and sat in it wrong way out, resting his forearms across the backrest. “Because he’s been on this case for too many years and he’s a little overenthusiastic. Also, the conventional wisdom has to be that this guy’s been picked up for a felony before, and his DNA would be in the system.”
“No,” Barwick said. “He’s putting his ass on the line because they already have a suspect and they’re just waiting for the DNA to confirm it.”
Malik understood. “Your stalker.”
“Right.”
“That’s a leap,” Malik said. “Ambrose is getting a lot of pressure to name a suspect, and that statement takes the heat off him for a few days and puts it on his detectives. It’s political arm-twisting. The odds that this asshole’s in the database just makes it a good gamble for him.”
Sally’s hand disappeared into her hair. “Stephen, this is the way it’s going to happen. On Friday, or possibly Thursday if they don’t want the best get of their careers stuck in Saturday’s paper, the police are going to announce that Sam Coyne is their suspect in this latest killing. They won’t mention the Wicker Man, but it will be obvious to everyone because the cops don’t hold press conferences every time they find a dead hooker. If he hasn’t fled the country, they’ll arrest him, but they won’t charge him because Coyne’s DNA isn’t in the system. He’s never been arrested in his life. I checked. They’ll take his blood, and when it matches, they’ll try to connect him to the other murders.”
“If you say so.”
“But we know Coyne’s the guy right now. And we’re the only ones who know it. We should run it in tomorrow’s paper. If we wait for the cops to announce it, the Trib ’ll be just another white ass in the weekend gang bang.”
A few weeks ago, Malik had reconsidered his opinion that Sally Barwick had potential to be an excellent reporter. Now he was reconsidering again. Sally had potential to be a great reporter. A great reporter is aggressive, ambitious, and takes huge personal risks. She had that in her, and he didn’t. That was why Malik himself had been only a decent reporter, and why he was a failure as an editor besides.
“Say we run it. What’s your story?”
“That an ongoing Tribune investigation of the Wicker Man murders had been pointing toward Sam Coyne for several weeks. That an analysis of his gaming patterns had revealed a correlation between his copycat activities in
