published in The Harbinger two weeks after the fire. Said the headline:
FIFTY YEARS of history go up in ANGRY smoke
“That’s the oldest story we have,” she said.
“What about the college library?” I asked.
“They don’t even have this one,” she said.
I drove back to work, right past a Burger King and a McDonald’s and two Wendy’s. I was feeling much too empty to eat.
What had I hoped to find in The Harbinger ’s old files?
For one thing, I wanted to see how they’d covered David Delarosa’s murder. If they’d uncovered some interesting little morsel The Herald-Union hadn’t. For another, I wanted to see if something else had happened back then, something that I’d forgotten about, or never knew about, that Gordon might have known about and might have remembered.
And, to tell you the truth, I also wanted to splash around in my own past a bit, just like I’d told Gabriella Nash that afternoon. Hemphill College was an important part of my life. I’d grown up there. Blossomed there. Lost all of my small-town virginities there. When you reach my age you’re no longer interested in reliving your youth, but you do like to visit it occasionally.
I left the morgue right at five. Not to forage through my files in the basement. To pick up James’ winter poop in the backyard, before the grass started growing in earnest.
James is my neighbor Jocelyn Coopersmith’s American water spaniel. Of all the backyards in the neighborhood, James, for reasons only a dog could appreciate, likes to poop in mine the most. Even in the winter when the snow’s a foot high he waddles back there to do his business.
I put on my worst pair of khaki slacks and an old sweatshirt that, if worse came to worst, I could deposit right in the trash can. I got my biggest garden trowel and a plastic garbage bag, wiggled my fingers into a pair of yellow kitchen gloves, and headed for the backyard.
I don’t have much of a front yard-but boy do I have a backyard. It’s as big as a football field. My bungalow was built in the late forties, when young newly married couples were leaving the inner city neighborhoods for, quite literally, greener pastures. The old houses in the city were huge but they had very small yards. The new houses being built on farmland at the edge of the city were just the opposite. To make them affordable, the houses were no bigger than a shoebox. To make them attractive to couples bent on producing a gaggle of antsy kids, the backyards were enormous. Lawrence and I bought my bungalow in 1963, four years after we were married. We planned to fill our backyard with antsy kids, too. But then Lawrence got that job doing PR for the autoworkers’ union. A secretary with irresistible tits came with the job. His preoccupation with those irresistible tits put an end to our procreation plans. We divorced. Lawrence got the secretary. I got the bungalow. Which turned out to be the better long-term investment. Lawrence would marry three more times before he died.
I started at the back of the yard and worked forward. For a while I worked alone. Then Jocelyn let James out the back door. He came running, with all the grace of a duck learning to roller skate.
James is never going to win the Westminster. He’s covered with wild brown curls. His sides stick out like he’s swallowed a beach ball. His front legs are shorter than his back, so he’s always going downhill. His ears dangle like ping-pong paddles and his tail looks like it was transplanted from an opossum. His tongue flops over his gums like a big, pink slice of Easter ham. He also has the most beautiful brown eyes you’ve ever seen. And I just love him to death. “Good afternoon, Mr. Coopersmith!” I sang out.
He circled me twice and gave me another plop of his neighborly love to pick up.
I laughed. And quoted Shakespeare. “Et tu, Brute?” He rolled onto his back and dangled his legs in the air. I peeled off my rubber gloves and scratched his big belly.
Chapter 9
Tuesday, March 27
It had been a week since Dale promised to look into the Delarosa murder for me. A week since that uncomfortable episode at Ike’s. Except for a few finger wiggles across the newsroom, a week since we’d had any communication at all. Half of me would have been perfectly happy to wait another week. But the other half-the half that almost always ends up winning-refused to wait another minute. I punched Dale’s extension the second he got to his desk. “Up for a little lunch today, Mr. M?”
“Why not,” he said.
So at noon we buckled ourselves into his red Taurus station wagon and drove to Speckley’s. We were still waiting for the hostess to seat us when he clutched his chest and hissed, “Shit!” I thought he was having a heart attack. But it was only his cell phone vibrating. He angrily fished his phone from the breast pocket of his sports coat and pressed it against his cheek. His eyes narrowed and darted back and forth. “Okay,” he growled into the tiny, candy bar-sized electronic wonder. “And send Weedy if he’s available.”
Weedy was Chuck Weideman, the photographer Dale always wanted with him on important crime stories. I started buttoning my coat. If Dale wanted Weedy sent somewhere, that meant Dale was going there, too. “You can drop me off on the way,” I said.
The afternoon of misery that apparently awaited me made him grin. “No time for that, Maddy.”
We got on the interstate and hurried north to Hannawa Falls, a once picturesque village now uglified beyond recognition with strip malls. Dale told me what he knew: “A man in a fifth-floor apartment apparently doesn’t want to be questioned by police. He’s got a rifle and a whole lot of bullets. He’s already shot one cop in the foot and blown out a bunch of windshields. We get to hang around until he’s arrested or dead.”
We parked at the Home Depot and trotted against the sloppy March wind toward a large block of apartment buildings. A dozen silver cars with blinking blue lights were scattered about the street and adjoining parking lots. Cops in combat wear were jogging about with huge black shields. Yellow police tape was being strung between telephone poles. Behind us a trio of EMS trucks were inching forward without their sirens. The satellite truck from TV 21 was already there. Tish Kiddle, the station’s cute-as-a-button crime reporter, was already preparing to go live.
We spotted Weedy and waved to him. He waved back and went about his business, looking for that one perfect photo that told it all.
Dale led me to a corner mailbox just a few yards from the police line. It was one of those big blue jobbies that look like a World War I battle tank. “We’ll make this our office,” he said. “We can duck and cover if bullets start flying our way.”
“That likely to happen?”
“I’ve covered enough of these SWATathons to know anything can happen any second. That’s why the cops take their good old time.” He spanked the top of the mailbox. “And why we’re going to stay close to Big Bertha here.”
No sooner had he said that, than he started walking toward a gaggle of police officers. “I thought we were going to stay close to Big Bertha?” I squeaked.
He turned and grinned. “I’ve got a story to cover. See if you can find some coffee.”
I pitied myself for a few minutes then let the wind blow me back toward the Home Depot. There was a Starbucks right across the street from it. I bought two blueberry muffins, a large coffee and tea to go. I also took the opportunity to use the ladies’ room. I am a big believer in the preemptive strike.
It was a good forty-five minutes before Dale returned to the mailbox. He took a huge gulp of his coffee. “Cold as polar bear piss. Just the way I like it.” He chewed on his muffin and told me what he’d learned: “This is going to be a good story no matter how it comes out. The shooter in the apartment is-lo and behold-a suspect in the Zuduski murder. His name is Kurt Depew. Apparently his brother Randy is a suspect, too. No evidence they’re both up there, though.”
The murder of Congresswoman Zuduski-Lowell’s baby brother had been Page One for several weeks now.
