Front Page Fatality (18 page)

He began by telling the small group of reporters that Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Gavin Neal was found dead, his body weighted down in the James River after an apparently fatal gunshot wound. Two guys out fishing found Neal’s body after one of them dropped a wristwatch in the water.

I made a mental note to get their names from Jerry and waited for Lowe to get to something else I didn’t already know.

“No official cause of death yet from the coroner. We will know more after he completes Mr. Neal’s autopsy,” Lowe said. “The hearts, thoughts and prayers of the Richmond Police Department are with the Neal family today and in the weeks to come.”

He nodded to the new girl from Channel Ten, who started with the obvious. “Do you have any suspects yet, chief?”

“We are pursuing a number of leads in this case, and we have been building a list of suspects for nearly a week now,” Lowe said. “Mr. Neal worked within the criminal world for many years, and he may have recently gotten involved, through a case he tried, with a very dangerous part of that world. Our strongest lead, given the circumstances surrounding his death, includes ties to organized crime. That’s all I’m going to say about that today.”

My mouth fell open. Somewhere far away, I heard Shelby’s unmistakable high-pitched drawl, asking if there was evidence of foul play.

“Aside from the gunshot wound and the weights holding him under the water?” Lowe kept a straight face as he spoke, but Charlie’s mike picked up her own chuckle at the reply. “There was not.”

“That’s your girl?” DonnaJo asked.

“She used to cover the garden club, now she wants my beat.” I felt a little sorry for Shelby. But only a little.

“Nice.”

Charlie hit Lowe with a barrage of questions about the exact time and place of the discovery, and how long they thought the body had been there, but I only half-heard, my mind looping back through Lowe’s first answer like a scratched record.

“What do you make of that, DonnaJo?” I asked her as Lowe thanked the reporters and disappeared. “What he said about the mob?”

She shrugged, a thoughtful gaze narrowing her swollen eyes.

“I don’t know what to make of any of it,” she said. “I mean, the Mafia is, well, full of bad guys. But this sounds like something out of a black and white movie. We put people away all the time. We don’t generally end up dumped in the river, though. What the hell is going on here, Nichelle?”

It sounded absurd even in my head, the idea that the cops killed Neal and were trying to frame the mob, so I just returned the shrug and kept my mouth shut.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But we’re smarter than your average bear. Why don’t we have that drink and see if talking helps us figure it out?”

She got up and moved toward the door.

“I’m going to stop in the ladies’ room,” she said.

I followed, leaving my bag on the floor in front of the sofa.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.

“Capital Ale?”

“Works for me,” she said, pushing open the bathroom door.

Drying my hands a few minutes later, I snapped my fingers.

“Damn,” I said. “I forgot my bag. You go on down and I’ll catch up.”

DonnaJo eyed me sideways and shook her head slightly. But she didn’t object. “Where’d you park?”

“Right outside on the street. You can’t miss it.” I turned back toward her office as the elevator chimed. “Be right there.”

When the doors closed, I sprinted back to her office and grabbed my bag, teetering on my eggplant Nicholas Kirkwoods when I turned toward the door with Neal’s name on it. I took a deep breath and darted inside, no time for second thoughts.

I jerked open file drawers one after another, finding only folder upon folder of numbered cases. Damn, there was a lot of crime in this city.

Dropping to my knees, I flung open the credenza doors, already afraid DonnaJo would come back looking for me if I didn’t go downstairs shortly. In the back corner of the cabinet, almost hidden by two reams of paper, I saw the corner of a red file folder.

I wriggled it free and flipped it open. My article on the Darryl Wright murder lay on top of a small stack of papers, two paragraphs highlighted and a question mark in the margin.

Jackpot. I wanted to make photocopies, but I was seriously out of time. I stuffed the folder into my bag and ran back to the elevators, smoothing my ivory linen tank dress and taking a few deep breaths while I waited. Before that week, I’d never violated anything worse than a traffic law. In two days, I’d trespassed on a cop’s boat and stolen a file from the prosecutor’s office. If I hadn’t been so focused on the story, I would’ve felt guilty.

DonnaJo arched an eyebrow at me when I walked outside.

“You get lost?” she asked.

“I had to pee again,” I clicked the button to unlock the doors and stowed my bag in the back. “Too much water this afternoon, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” She climbed into my passenger seat. “Glad to hear you’re hydrating properly.”

We politely shoved our way through the after work crowd at the bar and settled into a polished oak booth in the back of the long, narrow dining room. As tables of power-suited professionals dove into platters of gourmet hot wings and fancy hamburgers amid discussions of politics and the stock market, DonnaJo and I sipped Virginia chardonnay and talked about Neal and the police department and the Mafia for two hours. DonnaJo dissolved into tears twice during the conversation, and while I wanted to be invested, I was itching to go through the file I’d swiped from Neal’s office.

As the stars became visible overhead, I stopped the car and told DonnaJo goodnight in front of her office building, offering my condolences again as she stepped out of the car.

“Hey Nichelle? I know you’re onto something, and I know you don’t want to tell me what it is,” she said, holding the door open. “I’m okay with that. But Gavin was a good friend and a damned fine lawyer. So don’t screw this up, okay? I want to see the guilty bastards put away. And you let me know if I can help you.”

“You already have, honey,” I said, easing my foot off the brake. “Get some rest. I’ll talk to you soon.”

She shut the door and disappeared into the parking garage.

Snuggling Darcy and sipping another glass of wine, I settled on my sofa and slid my heels off before I opened Neal’s file.

My story on Darryl was first. He’d highlighted the paragraphs about the similarity in the crime scenes, with drugs being left at both of them, and inked a big question mark in the margin.

I kept flipping, finding more articles about drug arrests, a copy of his civil service complaint, and several police and lab reports. The upper corner of one page caught my eye, and I pulled it to the top of the stack. I scanned the data at first, then read again with more care, my jaw dropping as a big chunk of my puzzle fell neatly into place.

“Holy shit, Darcy,” I said, and the dog’s ears perked up. “They’ve been getting away with this for…well, for God knows how long. How many hundreds of thousands—or millions—of dollars are we talking about here?”

Hours later, my brain refused to stop running questions in circles, and I gave up on sleep. I fiddled with the five-thousand-piece rendering of
The Scream
that I’d picked up at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ expressionist exhibit when I’d gone with Jenna in May, but couldn’t concentrate enough to finish the border. I gave that up after ten minutes, flipping open my laptop instead.

I checked my email and then scrolled through shoe listings on eBay, bidding on a pair of aubergine Manolos with transparent silk flowers on the ankle straps and hoping no one else would notice them before the auction’s end on Friday night. I couldn’t afford to go much higher, and they were the cutest pair I’d seen in my size in months. My feet are anything but dainty—a European size forty, which is about a nine in U.S. sizing. Secondhand ones that big can be hard to find.

Nothing made sleep any easier, though. I ended up staring at my ceiling fan until dawn, mentally paging through Gavin Neal’s secret file.

By a quarter to seven the next morning, I was dressed to kill for my interview with Chief Nash: black pencil skirt, powder blue silk tank and my favorite black patent Louboutins giving my strut a little extra oomph as I rang Bob’s doorbell.

“Come to apologize for the earful I got from Les last night?” Bob said when he pulled the door open. He’d traded the pajamas for khakis and a golf shirt, which he favored year-round even though he hated the game.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry I’m not the kind of person who abandons a distraught wife when she finds out her husband turned up dead in the river.” I stepped inside and followed him to the kitchen. “But wait ’til you see what I have!”

“It better be damned good,” he said, pouring me a cup of coffee and pushing the sugar bowl across the high granite bar. “Les is pushing to give Shelby full rein on this thing with the lawyer.”

“It’s fantastic is what it is.” I handed him a copy of the lab report I’d found in Neal’s file. The originals were tucked under a loose floorboard in my coat closet, which made me feel both ridiculous and important at the same time.

He squinted at the places on the report where the ink was faded, thanks to my aging scanner, and then looked back at me.

“What the hell does pancake mix have to do with heroin?”

“Everything, when you’re talking about cops running drugs out of the police evidence room. How’s that for a sexy story?” I bounced on the balls of my feet. “This is what I’ve been looking for—well, it’s a big part of it, anyway. Look at the dates on the tests. There was a bag of heroin entered into evidence last summer, and the results of the lab tests to confirm that it was heroin got lost at the courthouse.

“The ACA on that case asked for another test, and the lab said it was pancake mix. Pancake mix! Then the PD claimed there was a mistake by the lab and sent another sample to be tested, and that time it was drugs again.”

I stopped to take a breath, the hope this nightmare of a story might have a happy ending—for me, anyway—sending adrenaline through my veins in waves.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Bob’s thick eyebrows shot up.

“No.” I sipped my coffee. “They are replacing the drugs in the evidence locker with ordinary stuff, but only after the samples have been sent to the lab. Heroin looks like beige powder, just like pancake mix. And no one would look too closely after it’s been tested. It’s brilliant. And foolproof, except when someone loses their paperwork. This—” I shook the paper. “This is their mistake.”

I remembered the copy of my story Neal highlighted, sudden certainty about his reason for going to police headquarters the day he disappeared making me shudder.

“Neal knew it,” I whispered. “He was down there to test the drugs from the dealer murders, to see if they were still drugs. He figured they were selling the drugs, and probably guessed that his guns were being sold, too. I’d bet my entire shoe collection I’m right.”

“This is great stuff, kid,” Bob smiled and pushed the paper back across the bar. “But where’d you get it?”

“Where?” I dropped my eyes to the counter, pretending to be fascinated by the random onyx and cream flecks in the stone.

“Where.” He drew the word out.

“I found it at the CA’s office.”

“You found it? Or you stole it from the dead lawyer’s files?”

“Does it matter? We’ve finally got something concrete. It doesn’t link Lowe to the actual drugs disappearing, but it shows what they’re doing with them.”

“It’s good,” Bob said. “And you’re definitely onto something, but there’s two things: one, since I didn’t think it was necessary to spell this out for you before, you can’t steal evidence from the prosecutor’s office. Especially not when the prosecutor in question has just turned up murdered. You could get in serious trouble for this. Two, this is good, but it’s not concrete. It says right here that the third test showed a mistake by the lab on the second one.

“And your guy Lowe isn’t mentioned on it anywhere. We can’t accuse the deputy chief of police of being a drug lord on something this thin. You have to get more.”

Nice how he could burst my bubble so effectively, yet be kind about doing it.

“Of course I do.” My shoulders heaved with the sigh that rushed from my chest. “Dammit. That’s why Neal was down there looking for more evidence.”

Bob patted my hand. “You’re doing good work here, Nicey. I know it’s frustrating, but you really are. Here’s the thing: they’ve barely cleared me to leave the house, and I’m not supposed to drive yet. Les is determined to make you look as incompetent as he possibly can. And while Shelby didn’t exactly earn herself a Pulitzer yesterday, her story was more than decent, and she was there, which is his big argument right now.

“I pushed back as much as I could and told him you were in a very unusual situation, but he’s going to go over my head if you screw anything else up, and the suits like him better than they like me. I’m just a dinosaur who’s won some awards. Good to trot out for the old folks on the board who remember when I covered Vietnam and civil rights, but that’s about it.

“Charlie had ten minutes this morning with the fishermen who found the lawyer yesterday. Go find them, get something new out of them, and shut Les up for today. I’m begging you. When you’ve done that, get to the bottom of this, pronto.”

I opened my mouth to protest and he put up a hand and shook his head.

“I know it takes time to get something like this right, but your clock is ticking and I can’t do much to slow it down from here.” He sighed. “We need this story, Nicey. Every bit as much as you need it for your portfolio. Nail it down. Just keep me in the loop, and don’t fuck up again.”

I didn’t think I’d fucked up before, but since my opinion didn’t seem to be the popular one, I nodded and promised to toe the line in a timely manner.

“I’m going to interview Chief Nash this morning, and then I’ll find the fishermen,” I said. “You do me a favor and get better. Les and his girlfriend are getting on my nerves.”

He smiled. “I’m doing my best. And Parker brought me dinner last night. He asked about you. Apparently Shelby put on quite a show on her way out to the PD yesterday. I told him you were with the lawyer’s wife, and he said to tell you to ask if you need help with anything. Might be nice for you to have a friend in the newsroom.”

If the friend wasn’t Dave Lowe’s college buddy, sure it would. I half-smiled and nodded, spinning back toward the front door.

“Thanks, chief.”

I left the copy of the lab report under my seat in the car when I went into police headquarters to interview Nash.

His office was cavernous, the walls decorated with certificates and medals. A tall bookcase held copies of the criminal justice code, the Virginia Constitution, a smattering of legal thrillers, several coffee mugs emblazoned with logos from different police departments, and a Gators pennant.

“Miss Clarke.” Nash stood when his assistant showed me in. He offered a Parker-worthy grin from behind a polished cherry desk, putting a hand out.

He was bigger than I remembered, taller than me with broad shoulders and a thick, solid chest under his trademark charcoal jacket. While most of my non-uniform cops favored a more business casual dress code, I had never seen Nash in anything but a suit.

Not that I saw much of him. The head of a big-city department rarely has reason to talk to the press unless they just like seeing their name in the news, and Nash wasn’t a limelight hound.

“Forgive me, but I’m going to have to make this quick,” he said. “You’ve caught me on a very interesting day.”

“I won’t take too much of your time, and I appreciate you seeing me.” I shook his hand. “We’ll just jump right in, if that’s okay with you.”

He nodded and settled back into his tufted red leather chair. I took a black armchair across from him and pulled out my notes, firing questions and scribbling his answers.

He seemed fond of Lowe. Nash said though it wasn’t part of Lowe’s responsibility to train officers for the river unit, he had an interest in the water patrols thanks to a Hampton Roads upbringing, and often went above and beyond.

“He’s invaluable,” Nash said. “Spends hours outside his regular duties mentoring promising young officers.”

How generous of him.

“To come back from his youthful indiscretions and be the kind of officer he is shows extraordinary determination,” Nash continued.

“Youthful indiscretions?” I echoed, furrowing my brow and looking up from my notes.

Nash smiled. “I assumed you knew. Dave doesn’t make a big secret of the fact that he had a bit of a wild streak when he was young. A couple of brushes with the law: drugs, misdemeanor theft. When he was arrested, it served as a wakeup call. He’s really turned his life around.”

Hot damn. I slowed my scribbling, mostly as an excuse to keep my face hidden behind my hair as I bent over my notebook. It took supreme control to refrain from jumping up, shouting “eureka,” and sprinting back to my office.

I switched gears, moving the topic to the boat crash.

Nash didn’t have much to say about the FBI investigation, which I expected, and his comments about the accident itself were restricted to things I already knew, but I needed the conversation to have more than one focus. The discovery of Neal’s body was the hot news of the day.

“Chief Lowe mentioned yesterday that the department thinks the murder of Gavin Neal could be the work of organized crime,” I said, thinking of Joey’s smile and hoping it wasn’t in spite of myself. “Can you elaborate on why that is?”

“I’ve taken a personal interest in that investigation.” Nash shook his head. “We’re working several leads, but given Mr. Neal’s instrumental role in the New York trucker trial last year, we’d be remiss to ignore the possibility that this was a Mafia payback.”

I nodded. There should be a course on cop doubletalk in every college journalism department.

On a whim, I asked him about Mike.

He frowned. “That’s troubling, to say the least,” he said. “Sergeant Sorrel is one of our best officers. We hope to have an answer for his family very soon.”

I nodded as I scribbled, wondering if Mike really could be in on whatever had gotten Gavin Neal killed—or if he was in the river somewhere, too. Either seemed possible, and I honestly wasn’t sure which I preferred.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Clarke,” Nash said, standing when I closed my notebook and smiled at him. “I enjoy the work you do, even when it doesn’t make us look like the smartest cops around. The
Telegraph
is lucky to have you.”

I smiled. If I was the type, I might’ve blushed.

“Thank you for your time, chief,” I said. “I appreciate your fitting me in. This was very helpful.”

Nash hit a button on his desk phone and the assistant came to show me out.

I cranked up the stereo and ran through my suspects as I drove back to the office. Though I had more on Lowe, Nash hadn’t offered anything that substantially changed my list. Nor had he given me any real answers.

I made my living asking other people questions, but I was so tired of them I didn’t care if I never thought of another one.

A copy of the morning paper, Shelby’s story on Neal blocked off in pink highlighter, lay on my desk with a big red “thank you” scrawled across the top of it. Nice. Stuffing it in the recycle bin, I looked up a phone number for one of the fishermen who’d discovered Neal’s body and dialed.