Friday Edition, The (29 page)

Father Ken nodded. “When Sally came to get me, she said I’d better get over to the church before you left. She said you looked sad and desperate and might need someone to talk to.”

Sam was sad. And desperate.

“Forgive me, Father, but I don’t remember anything about that day,” Sam said and looked away. Her foolishness made her feel angry.

“I know. You told me why, Samantha. You told me about your parents and what happened to Robin and where April is.” Father Ken smiled gently and went on. “And you told me you thought you might have a substance abuse problem.”

“Was I drunk?”

Father Ken nodded. “Yes, Samantha, you were. But I understood where you were coming from and told you why.”

“Why?”

“I was an alcoholic for years before I went to AA. That was almost fifteen years ago.”

“Do you still to go AA?”

“Once a week, every week. Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.

“Did I tell you I worked here?”

Father Ken nodded. “When we were in my office, you left these things behind. So I came to bring them back to you.”

Sam had not noticed the small brown paper sack Father Ken had brought with him. He set it on the table before her. She opened it and inside was her wool hat and a small white envelope with her handwriting on it.

“I don’t remember writing this on here,” she said looking from him to the envelope.

He looked at her saying nothing. Her handwriting said it all.

“I must’ve written down someone else’s prayer when I was in the prayer room. It looks like a child’s handwriting,” Sam said as she read the words …

I want my dad to spend more time with me.

But it was the line below that made her draw a deep breath involuntarily.

Please can I have a better life.

Sam looked at Father Ken, her eyes glistening with tears.

“She is where I once was.”

“Perhaps,” he said quietly.

Sam ran her hand over the envelope.

“How long was I in your office?”

“I didn’t keep track of the time. We couldn’t let you drive home. We called a cab and Sally and I followed.”

Her face flushed with embarrassment.

“Did you come to bring these back?” she asked.

“Yes, and to see how you were.”

Sam thanked Father Ken and walked him to the main doors. She stayed at the door and stared in the direction she last saw his car for a long time. She returned to her desk to finish the AA quiz. She flipped to the final question on the last page.

Would my life be better if I quit drinking?

Sam sighed deeply, folded the brochure and returned it to the envelope. Instead of putting it in the drawer, she placed it in her purse, to keep it as Robin had.

When she looked up, the computer screen beckoned, the cursor blinking in anticipation. She didn’t feel as overwhelmed and anxious. She no longer felt perilously lost. She allowed herself a small satisfied smile and pulled her chair closer to her desk. She set her fingers lightly on the keyboard, ready to type.

She wrote headlines for her editors to consider:

Suburban Drug Ring Cracked

Grandview police chief faces charges in smuggling operation,

death of district attorney, police officer

Her smile was bittersweet. She rubbed her temples in an attempt to soothe the terrible pounding. She ignored the throbbing and wrote her byline beneath the headlines.

The story followed:

“Charges will be filed this week against Grandview Police Chief Wyatt Gilmore who was taken into custody this week for running what investigators are calling a “highly profitable and long running suburban drug smuggling operation.”

Gilmore, 58, a popular and well-liked police chief and respected community member, was taken into custody without incident at his office.

According to a police report, in the 21-count charges, Gilmore was arrested for narcotics trafficking and smuggling, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion and filing false income tax returns for the last three years.

Other charges are forthcoming, investigators said.

The alleged conspiracy also charges that Gilmore, along with the late Cmdr. Jonathan Church, killed last week in a car explosion, and others discussed the possibility of killing a newspaper reporter conducting an investigation into the crimes.

Gilmore has also been charged with the murder of Robin Marino, 28, an assistant DA with the Truman County District Attorney’s Office. Marino, who had been investigating the alleged local drug smuggling ring, was about to go public with her information when she was murdered Christmas Eve. Her death, originally ruled a suicide, was reopened as a murder investigation earlier this month.

Gilmore has also been charged with the death of 29-year-old Reynaldo Edward Estrada, a five-year veteran of the Grandview Police Department. Estrada died in a traffic mishap, which officials have now determined was a set up designed to end the officer’s life, officials said.

Investigators could not speculate how long the alleged drug smuggling ring had been operating from Truman County, but estimated that it may have been as long as 10 years.

Hints of an investigation into such a ring—the first of its kind and magnitude ever known to hit the streets in the Denver-metro area—began to surface after Marino’s death.

At the time of Gilmore’s arrest, it was estimated that he was allegedly earning about $1.5 million per month from cocaine, black tar heroin from Mexico and methamphetamine sales, according to investigators.

Gilmore was depositing the cash in a bogus bank account established at the Grandview National Bank under the false name of “Roy Rogers.” The local bank was one of several hundred banks with accounts that were frozen by federal authorities last fall because they contain illegal drug cartel money.

Profits from
the alleged Grandview-based drug smuggling operation have been estimated at nearly $600 million a year, according to authorities.

Investigators said the suburban drug smuggling operation had become so powerful and successful that those involved “weighed their money instead of counting it.” Investigators also said that Gilmore “ruled the ‘Drug Empire’ with an iron fist.”

Local investigators said the ring operated in the Denver metro area and Rocky Mountain Region, and had branches that extended to New York, California and Florida. Smugglers used the “cutting edge of technology,” with cellular telephones and Blackberries to conduct and complete their drug transactions, authorities said.

Government documents cited direct links between the ring and drug sources in Colombia and Mexico and charged that Gilmore was “responsible for making most of the high-level business decisions,” from his desk at city hall.

Authorities said Gilmore and his associates funneled a near-daily supply of drugs to a “vast array” of dealers in the Denver-metro area, as well as along the Front Range before branching out to other cities nationwide.

Gilmore is being held without bail in the Truman County Jail.

An investigation continues …”

Sam went on to finish the article, which included a color photograph of Wyatt being taken away from his office in handcuffs, as well as mugs of Robin and Rey and three photos from the night that Sam and Rey were at High Pointe Warehouse. Sam insisted Rey receive photo credit. Nick Weeks granted her request.

Sam went on to write two more stories. One detailed how the Denver metro area and the Rocky Mountain region had become third in the nation for drug smuggling and trade. The other article was about Jonathan.

When she finally finished writing late Wednesday afternoon, the total package contained just over sixty inches of copy. The main story would fill all of page one of the Friday edition. It would go to press and on the website Thursday evening and hit the streets Friday morning. She knew now it was only a matter of time.

****

The
Grandview Perspective
landed with a thud on W. Robert Simmons desk late Friday afternoon, just as he was preparing to leave for the weekend. His eyes met directly with the bold headline Sam Church had written.

He picked the paper up slowly and grimaced as he began to read.

It was Saturday. One week since Sam’s articles had been published in the
Grandview Perspective
, and the first full day she had alone to herself. Her original stories had been picked up by the wire services, and, of course, the
Denver Post
. Sam felt a little more satisfied when she saw that another reporter at the
Post
had written the story and not Simmons. Reporters called from other newspapers nationwide wanting background information to write their own stories. Sam had spent most of the past week writing her own follow-up articles. She told investigators all she knew about the local drug smuggling operation.

She told them everything and about everyone except for one person. She told them nothing about Ruth. Though she hated her for betraying Robin, Sam had spent the week remembering what Ruth had done for her sister. In ways Sam could not explain, that somehow superseded her final act. Ruth would have to live with her actions. That, Sam hoped, was sentence enough. The memory of what she had done would be her prison for the rest of her life. Sam could live with that.

Sadness pulled at her when she thought of Brady. He was there the morning authorities arrested his father, standing in the doorway of his father’s office and watching as they put one hand behind the other. The last of it was the click of the handcuffs.

Wyatt passed his son at the door, but did not look at him. Wilson and Sam went to Brady’s basketball game the day after her stories hit the stands. His team won. Sam talked to Todd that Sunday after the story was published. He told her he had gone up to Lookout Mountain Friday night and had stayed until dawn. Sam knew the place. Todd and Robin used to go there often to watch the city lights and talk. There, on top of the mountain, the city stretched out for miles like a giant glittering blanket.

“I really did love her,” Todd had told Sam on Sunday. “I asked her out so many times and she always said no, but I thought that maybe one day she would say yes. But I know now that no matter how long I had waited she would never have felt the same about me. It was always Brady and always would be … she could never love me. It was always, Brady.”

“She did love you, Todd,” Sam said. “She really did, it’s just … she loved Brady too and she just couldn’t do that to him. His feelings for Robin were the one part of the old Brady that survived. The only thing that was strong enough to survive. If she had abandoned him then, that last part of the old Brady would die. The last of the Brady she loved would be gone forever and she couldn’t bring herself to do that to him … or her.”

It had been an unseasonably warm winter day. It was evening now and, with the sun gone, the winter air had turned uncomfortable. Sam was closing the windows in her apartment and was about to shut the last one when the sound came and stopped her. The plaintive wail of the distant train whistle entered the apartment with the night air. The sound made Sam draw a breath involuntarily. Whenever she heard that distinct whistle one person instantly and always came to mind. She smiled with the thought that she would go there tomorrow.

About twelve miles from where the pavement turns to gravel, a 280-acre ranch lies at the end of a rugged county road.
As Sam approached she could see the figure standing at the gate that was the entrance to the property. She saw that he was attempting to fix the gate when she pulled alongside him. “Hi, Howard,” Sam said.

She felt an immediate sense of belonging. Howard looked up. His blue eyes beamed in her direction, pleased to see her.

“Samantha,” Howard always called Sam by her given name. “How are you doing, young lady?”

“It’s been a rough few weeks, but I think it just got better.”

Except for the wire-framed glasses, Sam always thought that Howard Skinner could pass for “Mr. Clean.” He was in his mid sixties now, but still the big bear of a man Sam always remembered. He had always been as hairless as a statue and she never saw Howard in anything but crisp white T-shirts, Levi’s and workmen boots. He was well over six feet and, at the end of a thick neck and beefy shoulders and forearms, were hands the size of baseball mitts. Despite his size he was gentle and placid. “Like a piece of bread,” was the expression her grandmother had always used to describe him.

Howard lived in a small satellite house adjacent to her grandmother’s home. More years ago now than Sam could remember, Howard Skinner had answered a newspaper ad Frances Marino had run for a caretaker for her ranch. He had taken care of the place since.

“Whatcha doing?” Sam asked.

It was another unseasonably warm winter day and she allowed the sun to fall on her face. Howard’s bare brow and head were beaded in sweat. “Gate’s stuck,” he said, tapping it lightly with the wrench he held. “Can’t get the darn thing to close.”

“I guess that’s an invitation for me to enter,” Sam said.

“Your grandmother’s at the house,” Howard said, using the wrench to point in that direction. “She’s waiting for you and you know her, she’s cookin’ up a storm.”

Sam moaned happily. “Howard! I’ve got to lose weight, not put it on!”

He grinned. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Sam waved and traveled the rest of the road to a rambling ranch house surrounded by an acre of grass. She pulled into the driveway. The large window in the living room allowed her to see through to the kitchen.

When Frances Marino wasn’t in the garden, or hanging clothes on the line to dry, which she still did despite modern appliances, or walking the dogs, she was wearing an apron and standing in front of the stove.

Sam opened the front door and was instantly enveloped by the smell of butter and fresh baked bread. Happiness overcame her as she entered the house and called her grandmother’s name. She passed quickly through the expansive great room to the kitchen, where Frances Marino stood stirring spaghetti sauce in a large black pot.

Within seconds they were wrapped in each other’s arms. Sam caught the scent of her grandmother’s Oil of Olay, a fragrance that brought her back to childhood days long since passed. In those fleeting moments, Sam was completely consumed by the love she had for her grandmother. “Smells delicious, Nona,” she said.

“It’s your favorite,” Nona said and picked up the wooden spoon and began to stir again. “And Howard’s, too.”

After dinner Howard built a roaring fire for Sam and Nona and the great room glowed with warmth. He left them alone to talk.

“I couldn’t help your mother, Sam,” Nona said. “She followed in the footsteps of your father and his father before that. All alcoholics.”

Sam nodded. “I know. You tried.” She looked at her grandmother’s face. It softened in the glow of the firelight. Nona had been a homely child, but the years had been kind to her as she aged. She had aged with grace. Few lines showed on her round face.

“When will it ever stop?” Sam directed her comment to her hands, too embarrassed to look at her grandmother.

“It can stop with you, Sam. Robin managed to do it. Now you have to.”

Silence fell between them.

“Everyone’s gone,” Sam said and rose and walked to the living room window. Away from the city lights, stars took command of the sky. She looked out the window as she spoke. “I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter what you plan with someone for the future. There’s no guarantee they’ll stay. No matter how long they’ve been in your life. No matter what you’ve been through together. No matter how close you think you are.”

She was quiet a moment, watching the heavens. The Milky Way was a thin ribbon of light illuminating the darkness. “The only guarantee is that there is no guarantee.”

“It’s called life, Samantha. It’s all about coming and going.”

Sam turned to face her grandmother. “Even you won’t be here forever.”

“But I am here now.”

Sam returned to the warmth of the fire.

“What’s the same for everyone is that we all experience disappointment and loss,” Nona said. “What makes us different is how we chose to handle those experiences.” The fire crackled and popped. “After seventy-seven years on the Lord’s good earth I can tell you this much, this moment is all there is.”

Nona extended an open hand toward the fire. She watched a moment, the flames moving in quiet rhythm. “Howard builds the best fires,” she said, her voice low and soft. “He knows how to get them going quickly and hot. Some nights we’ll sit in here after dinner and the room will be warm and filled like it is now, with the rich smell of coffee and wood. We might sit for an hour and not say anything. We just enjoy the moment. Despite all that’s been and what we hope will be, Sam, we don’t know about tomorrow, so we just enjoy the moment.”

“I want to be able to do that, Nona.”

“You can, but it’s up to you, dear.”

“I want to bring April home where she belongs. But before I can bring her home, there are some things I need to do for myself. But I can’t do it alone.” Sam took a deep breath. “Can April, Morrison, and I come and stay with you and Howard until I get some help and get back on my feet again?”

It only took Frances Marino a second to answer her granddaughter’s question.