Friday Edition, The (20 page)

Wilson’s face clouded. “Sam, maybe you ought to have some help on this. We can bring in another reporter. We can’t let things get out of hand any more than they already have.”

Sam was adamant. “No, Wilson, please, what’s happened isn’t going to stop me. I’m going to write Judie’s story and then I’ll …”

Her voice trailed off. Wilson waited for her to speak, but she didn’t know what she planned to do next. She felt isolated and lost without options. Everything was closing in on her. “Please trust me, Wilson, I know what I’m doing.”

He watched her leave. When Sam settled in front of her computer, she thought of Robin as she straightened her shoulders and sat perfectly tall in her chair, ignoring every ache in her body. She scanned the notes from her meeting with Judie and within the hour wrote the first draft.

The bold headline read:

Balcony Death Ruled a Homicide

“The death of a prominent Truman County assistant district attorney, who plunged to her death from her apartment balcony Christmas Eve, has been ruled a homicide.

The Truman County Coroner’s office determined this week that 28-year-old Robin Marino’s injuries were consistent with being pushed from the balcony, rather than falling, as had been previously reported, according to deputy coroner Judie Rossetti.

Marino’s death had originally been ruled a suicide by Grandview Police detectives investigating the incident, but detectives reopened the case this week as a murder investigation after being contacted by the coroner’s office, Rossetti said. After Marino’s death last month, the coroner’s office duplicated the fall by dropping a mannequin from her apartment balcony, according to Rossetti.

“The test was conclusive,” she said. “The spot where Robin Marino landed wasn’t consistent with an accidental fall or a suicide.”

An investigation continues.

Marino had been with the District Attorney’s office for three years at the time of her death ...”

When Sam finished writing, she stared at the last six words of her story for what seemed a long time.

At the time of her death …

When her story was published Friday, Judie would call her source at KCNC, Channel 4, and tell her to read the story in the
Grandview Perspective
. Sam knew one call would start the ball rolling. Before long, the
Post
and the television stations would have their own reporters covering the high profile story.

Sam stopped in to say goodnight to Wilson.

“How’s the story going?”

“Okay for a first draft,” she said. “I got a text from Jonathan, too. He said not to worry about April. Everything’s been taken care of. At least that’s one less thing I have to worry about.”

Wilson nodded as if to approve. “Would you like to grab a bite to eat?”

“Sounds good, but I have to pass.”

“You shouldn’t be alone tonight, Sam.”

“Thanks for the nice offer, but thought I’d stop at the market and get something good and healthy to eat. I can’t remember the last time I ate a green vegetable.”

At the small corner market where Sam often shopped, she selected chicken and fresh zucchini, green peppers and onion. She was waiting at the checkout when her cell phone chirped loudly. She immediately thought of Rey and the last time she had paged him. Her heart felt heavy.

She pulled her cell phone from her purse. And something else. A business card. The back of the card faced her. Puzzled, she turned it over and saw the blue police shield. Her knees buckled slightly and she grabbed the cart handle for support. Sam remembered only one place Rey could have carelessly left it.

The records room.

“Oh, no,” Sam said loud enough that the woman standing in front of her turned and stared at her.

You saw what happened to Rey Estrada. You’re next!

The next line left her numb.

It’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on your daughter.

Sam gasped and backed away from the cart. The woman in front of her turned again and looked annoyed. Sam grabbed her purse and, left the cart in the checkout line and ran to her car. She drove home and called Jonathan the minute she walked into the apartment. She didn’t mention the text message, but asked about April.

“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?” he asked and his voice reflected his anger toward her. “I told you not to worry. She’s already had her bath and is in bed. I have a squad car sitting right outside her window that will be there all night.”

Sam hung up the phone, relieved. She sat for a long time on the edge of her bed and stared out the window to the dark street below. Morrison meowed loudly at the bedroom door.

“Here, kitty,” she said, patting her lap.

Morrison jumped into her lap. She stroked him gently and he purred with delight.

“How ’bout a treat?” Sam asked and scooped the cat into her arms, carrying him into the living room. She turned on the stereo before she went to the kitchen and Van Morrison began to spill out of the speakers. She gave Morrison a treat. She fell heavily onto the couch and wrapped herself in a blanket. She drank tea with lemon and honey hoping that the drink and the music would calm her. Morrison curled beside her.

Thoughts of April pressed heavily against her. She got up and went into the bedroom and returned moments later with a small white box. She settled on the couch and opened it. Inside lay a baby tooth the size of a popcorn kernel.

She smiled as she took it from the box and placed it gently in her palm. It was clean and white, so much prettier than her own. Unspoiled like hers from years of abuse from coffee, alcohol and tobacco. She had started to smoke as a teenager, but quit when she began to date Jonathan, at least managing to stay clean of one vice.

April’s first tooth was a perfect specimen for the Tooth Fairy. She remembered how April had beamed the evening she brought her the tooth. “Can we put it under my pillow, tonight, Mommy?” she asked.

Sam examined the tooth and said the Tooth Fairy would bring her top dollar. April got on her knees on her bed and, with great care, centered the tooth beneath her pillow, making certain the tooth would not fall to the carpet as she slept. “I hope I get a whole dollar,” April announced after she covered the tooth with her pillow.

April looked at her mother. Sam was sitting on the bed next to her, rubbing her back gently.

“In school, Meagan said the Tooth Fairy brings her a whole dollar every time she loses a tooth.”

Sam laughed and said, “A whole dollar huh?”

April nodded then shrugged slightly. “I think she likes to show off, but I’d bring a real dollar to school and show her if the Tooth Fairy brought me one, too.”

“I’ll talk to the Tooth Fairy when he comes tonight and see what I can do,” Sam said. “Now time for bed. The Tooth Fairy can’t come if you’re not sleeping.”

April quickly snuggled beneath her covers and was asleep within minutes. The next morning when April woke, she put her hand under her pillow. She felt a piece of paper. She clutched it and pulled it into view.

It was a clean, crisp dollar bill.

Sam found herself smiling at the memory. But it was replaced by something much more unpleasant that the judge had told her during the custody proceedings not too long after April lost her first tooth. Sam was standing before the court, listening to the judge speak about the tender years doctrine, how it was often prescribed that after divorce, young children were better off with their mothers.

After all, they were the ones with tender mercies and the innate ability to nurture. But the judge, a rigid woman in her late sixties, didn’t see it that way in Samantha Church’s case. The judge had determined that her excessive drinking had hindered her care for April. “You have a serious drinking problem, Mrs. Church,” the judge had sternly told her. “Until you get your act cleaned up, and I mean by getting sober and attending AA meetings on a regular basis, I’ve determined that Jonathan shall have full custody of April Denise.”

The judge arranged visits, not to Sam’s satisfaction, but there was nothing she could do. Except get help for her drinking. “I don’t have the problem with alcohol everyone likes to think I have,” Sam said to Morrison as she stroked him softly.

She would never forgive herself if something happened to April, but she had faith in Jonathan. She knew he loved April every bit as much as she did. She picked up the picture of her daughter on the end table and looked at it for a long time. The little girl was a cherub, holding onto the last vestige of baby fat. She brought the picture to her chest and held it tightly. She fell asleep as Van Morrison played on in the background.

During the night she had nightmares. Sam dreamed she was attending Robin’s funeral. She was standing at the coffin looking at her sister. Her head had been shaved. Her eyes were gray and open and she was looking at Sam, but there was no life in them. Robin extended her hand for her sister to take. But Sam folded her own hands tightly behind her back and stepped away from the coffin. She turned and ran out of the room.

She did not want to touch the cold hand of death. The dream woke Sam with a start early Tuesday morning.

When she was fully awake, she called in sick.

Eight o’clock Wednesday morning Sam’s phone rang, dragging her unwillingly from a deep, dreamless sleep. She mumbled hello.

“Sam, I’ll be there at ten to pick you up for Rey’s funeral,” the voice said, skipping a greeting.

Despite her sleepy haze, she recognized Wilson’s voice. Tuesday had passed in a blur of pain and she didn’t remember much of the day, only that Wilson had not called. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Better,” she said, touching herself lightly about her midsection, carefully avoiding the areas that were tender.

“Sorry about yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to come in.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wilson said. “I understand. You needed a mental health day. I knew that when you left Monday.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling at his comment. “I’ll be ready at ten.”

Sam was thinking of Robin’s funeral when they walked into St. Joseph’s Catholic Church a few hours later. She pointed to a place near where she sat for her sister’s mass and Wilson followed her to the pew. After they settled Sam glanced briefly around the church. It held more police officers than she had ever seen in one setting. They wore their best; their hands gloved in white and their shields partially covered by a single band of black. Their shoes and the bill of their hats were perfectly polished.

Pallbearers carrying Rey’s casket, draped in a purple cloth, passed slowly beside their pew. Sam watched as Rey’s wife and two daughters walked solemnly down the aisle behind the coffin and as they walked to the first pew and stopped. The woman, tall and slender, wore a black dress that made her look elegant and refined. The girls wore matching lavender dresses and ribbons in their hair. She knelt before the altar and crossed herself, then stepped to the side to let her children do the same. She ushered them gently into the pew.

Before she entered the pew, she put her hand lightly on her husband’s coffin and let it linger for a moment. The young girls watched their mother and waited. Sam looked on as their mother helped the girls settle and saw that their faces were long and sad. Her heart ached for them as she remembered what she told Rey the night at High Pointe Warehouse. “I have no intention of going back into a church for a long, long time.”

She was here now, left with fleeting thoughts of their brief time together. It seemed ephemeral. A transitory moment of time that she wasn’t sure now she had lived. She felt overwhelmed by emotion. She thought of the kindness that radiated from Rey’s eyes when he looked at her. It made her smile. Rey had become her trellis, and she had clung to him.

When the funeral mass was over, Wilson and Sam stood together at the grave and listened as the priest completed the rest of the service. Then it was time to go.

“Do you want to go into work?” Wilson asked Sam when they were in his car.

Sam sat motionless, staring out the car window. She could see Robin’s grave, just a few rows from Rey’s. She had walked by Robin’s grave when the service had ended, but only stayed a moment. Her sister’s grave was marked just as Rey’s was, with a simple marker bearing the name, age, date of birth and day of death.
Is that all that’s left of them? An aluminum marker to remember their smile, the sound of their voice and the feeling of being next to them?

She looked at Wilson and smiled slightly. “I need some time,” she said simply. “I need to be alone.”

He took her home.

“I’ll be in tomorrow,” she said and thanked him for taking her to the funeral.

She walked up the stairs to her apartment feeling as though she had been raped repeatedly. She called Jonathan early in the evening and asked about April. He assured her everything was fine and that the squad car would be outside again tonight. Sam was in bed by 8:30 and slept hard. She was at work by nine the following morning. Wilson was already in and a smile covered his entire face when she popped her head in his office.

“Good morning,” she said.

Wilson knew she came to work Thursday for two reasons: to get a quote from Jonathan to finish Robin’s story and to write Rey’s.

Sam reread the notes from Rey’s accident that Jonathan had given to her on Monday. Her hands poised on the keyboard, she thought a moment before she wrote a headline for the editors to consider.

Grandview Officer Killed by Car

“A Grandview police officer was buried this week after being struck and killed last Saturday while directing traffic at a busy intersection after a traffic signal had malfunctioned.

Officer Reynaldo Edward Estrada, 28, was being transported to Lutheran Medical Center, but died en route to the hospital, according to Grandview police spokesman Jonathan Church. Estrada was struck at Wadsworth Boulevard and Colfax Avenue. The intersection is reported to be one of the top 10 busiest roads in the Denver-metro area.

Estrada was wearing a safety-orange vest but was struck by an oncoming car, Church said. Estrada died of massive internal injuries after being thrown nearly 20 feet following impact, he said.

The driver, Dean Brown, 64, of Denver, apparently suffered a seizure while driving through the intersection, Church said. Charges are not expected to be filed against the driver, he said.

Estrada’s death has been ruled an accident.

Family and friends and numerous law enforcement officers from jurisdictions throughout the metro area attended Estrada’s funeral services, held Wednesday at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Burial followed at Golden Cemetery.

Estrada, a five-year veteran of the Grandview Police Department, leaves behind a wife and two daughters …”

Sam closed her eyes when she finished the story, feeling as though she were in a coma. On Friday, Robin’s story was published on the
Perspective’s
front page, along with a color shot from Rey’s funeral. The photograph showed a long procession of police cruisers with their headlights on, glistening as they moved along rain-soaked streets. The image made Sam think of a long pearl necklace.

Rey’s story ended up on page three, the second front, along with two black and white photographs. One showed his daughters placing flowers over their father’s casket and the other, his wife holding a tissue to her eyes, her arms clutched tightly around her slender body.

Rey’s story left Sam drained when she reread it in print late Friday afternoon. She could do nothing now except wait for the fallout. She was looking forward to seeing April, and then home to spend a quiet evening in front of the fire.

****

That evening Captain entered Roy Roger’s office and threw the
Grandview Perspective
on his desk. It landed before him with a lifeless thud, the story of the reopening of Robin Marino’s investigation as a homicide stared him in the face.

Roy Rogers scanned the headline. When he finished reading Robin’s story he looked at Captain.

“She’s not getting the message,” Rogers said. “For a fat girl, she doesn’t sweat much.”

Captain nodded. “Now what?”

Roy stroked his chin a moment as he thought.

“She doesn’t leave us much choice, does she?” he said looking from the bold headline to Captain.

“You know what to do then,” Rogers said.

Captain nodded slightly.