Investigation, strode up and spoke to him for a minute, then ducked inside. I took a breath, waited until the cop was alone, then rounded the corner and approached him.
'Help you?' he said. Nothing to see here, move along.
'Henry Parker, New York Gazette. ' I showed him my press credentials. Might as well have been a slab of lemon, the way his face scrunched up.
'Go on, get out of here.'
'Something going on inside this building?' The cop locked eyes with me, then spoke deliberately.
'You know you don't have a whole lot of fans in the law enforcement community.'
I nodded. Even though charges had never been brought for the murder of Officer John Fredrickson, if not for me he'd still be alive. And even though he was dirty as sin, that was something no cop or Fed would ever forget.
'Crime scene is over on Thirteenth.' He jerked his thumb back where I'd come from. 'You want a better view of the crime scene, might I suggest walking to the middle of the
Brooklyn Bridge and then jumping off.'
I laughed, pretended it didn't affect me. 'I saw several officers entering and exiting this site.'
'You saw wrong.'
'Officer…' I said, looking at his badge. 'Officer
Lemansky. I know this is the building the killer shot Athena
Paradis from. You and I both know this murder is going to make both of our lives a living hell until the killer is caught.
All differences aside, the story is huge, and it won't go away just because you tell me to. Whether it's the Gazette, the
Dispatch or the National Enquirer, you're going to have reporters up your ass until this psycho is caught. Do you read the newspaper?'
He nodded. 'So what?'
'So you must have read that story the Dispatch ran last week. Detective Pedro Alvarez, killed in the line of duty. Did you know him?'
Lemansky's silence was an affirmative.
'So you know the Dispatch ran a front-page story two days after his death. About his mistress. Lena something, right?'
Officer Lemansky sniffed. He shuffled his feet.
'Fucking parasites,' he said. 'Madeleine deserved better than seeing her family's name dragged through the mud.' He looked at me. 'Alvarez was a good cop and a good husband. If
it wasn't for people like you he'd still be remembered that way.'
I had my opening.
'I don't work for the Dispatch. I'm not interested in smear campaigns and ruining families to sell papers. If you don't talk to me, another reporter will get the story. You've read the
Gazette. So you can talk to me right here, right now, or I can't promise what tomorrow's headline will be in the Dispatch.
But I can promise you what the headline will be in the
Gazette. '
Lemansky was searching my eyes for the truth. Whether he could trust me. I knew he could.
He nodded. 'I give you something, it came from an anonymous source. I get quoted, or you do anything to go back on what you just said, I don't care if the papers start claiming we're fucking aliens from Mars, you'll get a mouthful of broken teeth before you ever get another story.'
I said, 'You have my word.'
He looked around. I thought about Curt. Knew the cops just wanted to make sure the right thing was done.
'Forensics is saying they found a note scrawled up on the roof, below the ledge they think the shooter rested the gun on.
They're analyzing it, but they say he wrote in block using a
Sharpie so it's pretty much useless. They're sifting through about a ton of loose gravel up there, could take days to find anything else.'
'The note,' I said, speaking softly, half to calm the cop and half to slow down my heart. 'What did it say?'
The cop looked around again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
'Some lab rat passed copies around, asked if anyone had ever heard of someone talking like this before. I didn't know, but…' He licked his lips. His eyes danced around, like somebody was about to leap from the morning shadows.
He handed it to me.
'Get out of here,' he said. 'And remember what you said.'
I nodded, took the paper and walked off.
I waited until I'd gone about three blocks and was out of the line of sight from the building. Then I opened my hand.
It was a simple piece of paper on which was written a single sentence. And if Lemansky was correct, besides a murdered girl, this was all the killer left behind.
I read the sentence. Felt my breath catch in my throat.
Right then I knew why Officer Lemansky was scared. I knew what my angle was. A chill of fear ran up my spine, similar to the one I felt last year when I was accused of murder.
And I knew that Athena Paradis wouldn't be the last victim.
5
I was sitting in Wallace Langston's office as he read a printout of the article. My palms were coated with sweat and my eyelids felt like they were being dragged down with two-ton weights. Evelyn had posted the text of my article at 4:22 a.m., holding it up just to confirm my source.
When I told her the quote the killer had left at the scene, she paused.
'Why do I recognize that line?' she asked.
I took a breath before answering. 'Because I wrote it.'
The slip of paper Officer Lemansky gave me had one simple sentence on it. It read:
The only difference between the innocent and the guilty is that the guilty are the only ones who believe in their cause.
I had written that line several weeks after being cleared of the murder of John Fredrickson. When I was on the run, when the whole world saw me as a murderer, other than Amanda I was the only one who knew and believed in the truth. The article was in response to those who'd been so quick to pass judgment, including the Gazette' s own Paulina Cole. I was happy to hear when she left for the Dispatch. I couldn't imagine going to work every day, sitting next to someone who printed such vileness without knowing the truth.
When the world assumed I was guilty, they looked at me as a degenerate, someone to whom committing murder was justified.
And now a killer had taken my words, used them to support whatever twisted reasoning goes through the mind of someone willing to steal an innocent life.
The killer knew he was guilty. Only he didn't care. He had a cause. Causes don't simply end. Murderers don't simply lose interest. There were more victims out there.
'This came out well,' Wallace said, mainly to fill the silence. We both knew the copy wasn't great, but contained all confirmed and pertinent facts and was as good as could be expected from a reporter running on Red Bull and a deadline.
He put the papers down on top of a copy of the morning edition of the Dispatch. Wallace had it delivered
