“At this time it appears to be a home invasion, a burglary. But we’re trying to check everything out.”
“Of course, of course.”
Cat waited for Lavinia Johnson to speak again, giving her a little time to absorb the news. She heard Duke come into the office and pull a chair over closer.
Then Lavinia spoke. “Does his family know? I have his emergency contacts.”
“The news has been shared,” Cat answered.
“I didn’t want to have to make calls,” Lavinia admitted. “Is there anything I can do?”
“We’d like access to the archive of Larry’s articles.”
“Do you think...? No, I guess I shouldn’t ask that. Ongoing investigation. Yes, certainly. If you have a pen ready, I’ll give you the newsroom’s log-in and password.”
“I’m ready,” Cat answered. She scribbled quickly and repeated the information to Lavinia.
“That’s it,” the editor agreed. “Damn, I still feel like the world’s spinning. Larry was a fine reporter and a fine human being. We’re very proud of him here.”
“I’ve heard wonderful things about him.”
“Every one of them is true,” Lavinia answered. Her voice was growing tight, and Cat could almost hear the coming tears.
Cat finished up with, “I’m very sorry for your loss. I didn’t know Larry for long, but it was definitely a pleasure.”
When she hung up, she didn’t waste any time logging in. “I figure we’ll work back through time.”
“I agree,” Duke answered.
“Do you want me to print it out for your use?”
“You’ll need a mountain of paper for that. No, I can get the articles myself when I get home.”
She turned to look at Duke. “His editor said he was a fine reporter and a fine human being.”
Duke’s face darkened slightly. “That’s nice to hear. From Larry’s telling, it sounded as if the newsroom could be a powder keg. Deadlines, ugly stories, sources that didn’t call back. High pressure leading to short tempers, I guess.”
Well, that was another thing to keep in mind, Cat thought. It might not have been the subject of one of his articles who wanted him dead. Maybe he had some enemies in the newsroom. “Do reporters make much in big cities?”
“Not from what I understand. It isn’t poverty level, but it’s not generous.”
“That’s what I thought.” So how could another reporter afford to mount any kind of trip to kill Larry? And really, how bad could a newsroom explosion be? Bad enough to want to murder?
She expected to find more fertile ground in his investigative pieces.
“Oh man,” she said as Larry’s articles began popping up in a list of titles.
“What?”
She felt Duke lean closer.
“It looks like he did a lot of articles. This list is huge.”
“He wrote a bunch of shorter pieces, like every other reporter. Partly because the paper wasn’t going to pay him for a couple of years while he wasn’t writing anything. Partly because newsrooms were shrinking—probably still are—and the workload went up for everyone. I gather he might have written a story or two every week.”
“That’s going to help,” she said sarcastically. “I don’t know how well these stories are tagged. Give me that one that upset you. Maybe that’ll get us into something. Or maybe we need to read them all.”
“That’s quite a body of work. How long do we want to spend reading?”
She looked at him again, wondering if he expected her to let him be a second pair of eyes. The problem with that wasn’t him reading Larry’s articles—he had every right to—but he wouldn’t see them through a cop’s eyes.
Plus, she only had one computer. They’d have to read over each other’s shoulders or take turns.
He spoke. “Well, the murder-for-hire story was in September, just over two years ago.”
“Okay, I’ll start there. Then maybe we should come forward in time before we start going backward. In case it was a more recent story.”
She looked at the screen again. There’d be some eyestrain before long.
AN HOUR LATER they headed for the truck stop to have lunch with Bud Wicke, the garage mechanic. The garage was conveniently located, in terms of his business. Bud sometimes had to run over to the truck stop to repair a long-haul truck, as well as performing routine repairs for locals.
As they drove toward the truck stop, Duke said, “Tell me a little about this guy, if you can. Just public knowledge.”
Cat stifled a smile. “Like I could tell you much more than that.”
“I know. Just the common knowledge.”
“Well, Bud Wicke is one of our local garage mechanics. He started working for the place years ago and eventually bought it.”
“Hard worker.”
An insight. Cat hadn’t really given it much thought. “I guess so. Anyway, I don’t know much about him, because I’ve only been here a little over two years. Whether there’s much more, I can’t say. But I can still tell you he’s a bit unexpected.”
She felt Duke look at her. Amazing how you could tell when someone was watching you. “How so?” he asked.
“I hear he’s got a college degree in math, as well as all his mechanic’s certifications. Apparently, he just loves working on cars.”
“He likes to learn.”
“That would be my guess. Larry was interesting, too. He made friends with an eclectic group of people around here.”
She turned into the truck stop parking lot and nosed toward a vacant parking space near the diner. On the far side of the lot there was parking for the big rigs, but that area was nearly full of idling trucks. Truckers preferred driving on nighttime roads if they had a choice, sleeping during the day to avoid heavy traffic. Hasty’s diner stayed busy during much of the day.
Inside, the tables were busy. Hasty, a tall, lean man, flipped burgers on his grill and shuttled through breakfast orders and even veggies. He could do just about anything on that grill.
Bud Wicke sat at a corner table beside the wall of windows that surrounded the dining area on two sides. He smiled and waved them over.
Cat made the introductions, reminding Bud that Duke was Larry’s brother in case he’d forgotten or she
