quiet from his balcony above St. Peter’s Square. “Now-now. We don’t need another shoving match here.”
He was referring, of course, to the episode in his office between Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates.
“We figured it would be wise to have Dale follow you around town,” Tinker now said to Aubrey, “not only to see if you’d give yourself away, but also in case you tried to hurt someone else. And because we were afraid you might recognize Dale’s car, Dale drove his wife’s, a red Taurus station wagon.”
The “sssshit ” that leaked from Aubrey’s lips was better than any confession.
I continued: “We were just beginning to think it was a waste of time, when you made up that business about the man in the station wagon attacking you. Tinker thinks you did it to make your story sexier-reporter risks life and limb to get the truth-but I think you did it to get Eric back.”
Aubrey was suddenly like a girl in junior high, denying to her friends that she liked some goofy boy with braces. “I beat myself up to get Eric back? Puh-leeze.”
I knew everyone wanted me to get on with my story. But I also knew that Aubrey-murderer or not-had fallen in love with Eric. And I knew that Eric-world-class doofus or not-had fallen in love with her. Keeping Eric in the dark had been the toughest part of this whole affair for me and I felt the need to confess, so she could go to prison knowing that at least one person, once upon a time, had truly loved her.
“Eric didn’t know anything about Dale following you,” I said. “He didn’t know anything about anything. That night in Meri when he chased Dale down the alley, he was truly trying to protect you. When I saw him staggering back across the street, I figured it was all over. But discovering that the mysterious man in the station wagon was none other than Dale Marabout, and that Dale was following you because you very likely were the real killer, and that I was behind the whole blessed thing-well. Eric was so confused he couldn’t even talk.”
Whatever Aubrey felt inside she was keeping inside. “That’s all so sweet. But if that was Dale in the red Taurus then it was Dale who attacked me. Because, regardless of what any of you say, I was attacked that night.”
Dale grinned at her victoriously. “That night-Monday, June 12-the Taurus and I were staying at the Motel 6 in Rush City, after spending the day talking to your old co-workers at The Gazette.”
Aubrey threw up her hands, as if being caught in a series of lies meant nothing at all. “So I was foolishly blinded by love, desperately trying to get my boyfriend back. So what?”
Dale leaned over Aubrey’s keyboard and scrolled his story down a bit. “You might want to read this.”
Aubrey swiveled back and read:
Detective Grant refused to discuss publicly the evidence that lead to McGinty’s arrest. Nevertheless, from a variety of sources the Herald-Union has been able to piece together the chilling story of a murder painstakingly planned and meticulously carried out.
That story actually may have begun three autumns ago on the campus of Kent State University, where McGinty was just beginning her senior year.
McGinty, like many students in the journalism department, worked on The Stater, the daily campus newspaper. Like other students, she planned to use those stories to get her first job after graduation.
“The better your stories the better your chance of landing on a big paper,” Dr. Edward Firestone, faculty advisor for The Stater, told his student reporters again and again.
Three weeks into the fall semester, the university’s famous black squirrels began dying. Their carcasses were found in flower beds and at the base of the huge oaks that dot the sprawling campus.
The carcasses of 22 squirrels were found before campus police announced that the squirrels died after eating ears of corn laced with chlordane, a powerful chemical used to control crickets and other insects.
I don’t know how fast Aubrey was reading, but I was well into Dale’s background on how the squirrels were first brought to Kent when she started laughing. “This is some real crap reporting, Marabout,” she said.
Dale smiled and motioned for her to read on:
“I remember that Aubrey handed in a completed story on the squirrel deaths before the editors could assign somebody to cover it,” Firestone told the Herald-Union. “We were impressed with her initiative and gave her the green light to cover the story the rest of the way.”
In all, McGinty wrote 16 stories about the squirrels, including one detailing the campus police department’s inept handling of the investigation.
No suspect was ever identified and the poisonings stopped before the semester ended.
According to college transcripts, McGinty took an elective course in criminal toxicology during the spring semester of her junior year.
Patrick Byner, dean of Kent’s Criminal Justice Studies program, told the Herald-Union that it is rare for students not majoring in law enforcement to take what he called “such an arcane, graduate-level course.”
Byner said the course deals with techniques for investigating deaths by poisoning.
Aubrey smirked at what she’d read. “You can’t print innuendoes like these.”
“We were pretty close to printing yours,” Tinker answered. “Anyway, we hope that by the time this goes to press you’ll have confirmed them.”
Aubrey turned back to her computer screen, as anxious as the rest to read what came next, I think:
During the spring semester McGinty applied at a number of larger newspapers, including the Herald-Union. She did not receive an offer from any of those papers, however. Three months after graduation she accepted a job with the small daily in her hometown, the Rush City Gazette.
According to Gazette Managing Editor Marilyn Morely, McGinty made no secret of her desire to move on to a larger newspaper as rapidly as possible. “She tried to make even the most routine stories seem important,” Morely said.
One story that wasn’t routine was the murder of Rush City High School football coach Charles “Chuck” Reddincoat. A month after police charged the father of a boy dropped from the team for harassing younger players, McGinty presented evidence pointing to what police admitted was “a more likely suspect.”
Dale’s story went on to recap Aubrey’s investigation into the coach’s murder. How, based on her information, police found bloody overalls and a gun at a hunting cabin in Coshocton County. How that evidence led to the arrest and conviction of the cheerleading advisor’s jealous husband. How Aubrey had spent the night following the murder at a motel just three miles from the hunting cabin.
Aubrey sighed sarcastically. “You have descended into the ooey-gooey depths of innuendo again, Marabout.”
Dale was enjoying himself. “You’ll be happy to know that the police in Rush City are already taking another look at the case.”
Aubrey answered coldly. “Are they?” She resumed reading:
McGinty’s coverage of the killing, and the police department’s arrest of the wrong man, were among the clippings she sent to the Herald-Union ’s newly appointed managing editor, Alec Tinker.
“I was very impressed,” Tinker said. “She was just the kind of reporter I was looking for. I promised her a job as soon as there was an appropriate opening.”
Can you imagine how hard it was for Dale to write that part of the story? Calmly taking notes while Tinker all but admitted he forced him off his beat? So he could replace him with a younger and more energetic reporter? I was so proud of Dale at that moment. We all kept reading:
Tinker and McGinty kept in touch for more than a year, exchanging e-mail messages and periodically having lunch. Last August he told her a police reporter’s job would be available shortly after the first of the year.
“I had decided to reassign a number of reporters and considered Aubrey as my number one candidate for the police reporter position,” Tinker acknowledged.
Aubrey started nodding, the way any reader thoughtfully nods when he sees where a story is headed. “So after killing the squirrels and the football coach, I killed Buddy Wing, for the good clips?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop here and talk to Detective Grant in private?” I asked.
“And miss the rest of Dale’s brilliant reportage?”
She pronounced that last word, reportage, as if she was a snooty French cabaret singer.
She continued reading.
We all continued reading.
