Mystery Dance: Three Novels (36 page)

He squinted. “You lost me.”

“You’ve been pushing it hard, John. Why don’t you take a day off?”

“News never sleeps. Besides, I’m still on employee probation.”

“Don’t worry about the paperwork. I’ll move your hours around.”

Our human-services director had taken passive aggression to an art form, to the point where everyone was afraid to speak to her, much less ask about benefits, retirement funds, or how many sick days we had left. We just filled out all the proper forms and made sure everything looked good on paper, then went ahead and did whatever worked best for the team.

I wasn’t that lenient with the other reporters, whom I barely noticed these days. I was hoping Moretz’s performance would inspire them to mediocrity if not greatness, but apparently they’d been all too happy to take a back seat and slack off even more.

“I can’t afford to take time off,” Moretz said.

“You’ll be paid. You’re on salary anyway.” Reporters sign special contracts acknowledging they might have to work crazy hours because of the nature of the job. Plus, contract workers are incredibly easy to terminate.

“It’s not the money. It’s this murder case. I think the cops are keeping something from us.”

“We do what we can do as the Fourth Estate. We’re making sure our public officials are serving the public.”

“That’s what doesn’t pass the smell test. A murderer loose in this little community, and we seem to know more about it than anybody, including the police.”

“Cops may look dumb, but they have a ton of resources. Sure, they hardly ever solve a breaking and entering, but once a case hits the front page, they make an arrest or else.”

The police scanner in the newsroom squawked and Moretz cocked an ear, hungry for an emergency. The static-filled stream of English interrupted by numeric code revealed the cops were 10-20ing for a late lunch at Aunt Annie’s, a greasy spoon where it was still okay to flirt with the waitresses and run a tab if you were a regular. Moretz deflated a little at the lack of crime, like a junkie watching the empty needle pull away.

“Okay,” Moretz said. “I’ll work from home. I have a few calls to make, anyway.”

He paused at the door. “But text me if anything develops.”

“Sure,” I said, an odd sense of relief washing over me. I had the feeling that if I followed him out of the parking lot, he would dissipate once he left the property, as if he only existed when he was chasing a story.

The phone rang, my direct line, which meant the caller was one of the Big Fish. “Hello, this is Howard,” I said in the guarded voice that most people initially took as a recording.

“Sheriff Hardison,” came the equally guarded reply.

“Hello, Sheriff, how can I help you?”

“This story of yours that just ran in the paper.”

I glanced at the edition splayed across my desk: the heartbroken sister, the 40-point headline
No Leads Yet In Murder
, and a thumbnail mug of Hardison just to remind everyone who was in charge of the mess. “Yes, sir?”

“That reporter of yours put in about how the sister told about the victim’s boyfriend. Things were said we hadn’t been told about.”

“According to the story, Jennings wasn’t a boyfriend, just a guy she’d dated a few times in the summer.”

“Same difference. Any man sniffing around a sweet young thing that turns up dead is a person of interest.”

I hated the phrase “person of interest.” It had been created to give the government permission to hassle people without the formality of calling them “suspects.” But it wasn’t the time, place, or opponent for fighting that particular battle. I borrowed a phrase from Moretz. “My reporter just wrote down what she said.”

“That’s the problem. She never bothered mentioning such a boyfriend to us when we interviewed her. Makes us look like a bunch of dumb-hick ‘Walking Tall’ wannabees.”

“Sheriff, Moretz invited you to go on the record with any comments. And you have my direct number.”

“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

“So you’ve said.”

The sheriff paused and it sounded like he was spitting smokeless tobacco. “The public might rest easier knowing there’s a suspect sitting in my jail.”

“But you don’t want just any old suspect, do you? You want the right one.”

“Howard, you and this Moretz wouldn’t be holding anything out on me, would you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your reporter seems a step ahead of my detectives on all this.”

I grinned to myself. “We do what we do.”

“Just don’t be playing no games. I’d hate to have to come down and search your building after receiving an anonymous tip. No telling what we might find.”

“Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

“Nah, consider it an anonymous news tip.” He rang off.

So the sheriff was reading our paper along with everyone else. Maybe it was time to ask the publisher if we could move to a daily. It all depended on whether he’d paid cash for the Porsche.

6.

It was the second victim that spawned the nickname “The Rebel Clipper.”

A couple of weeks had passed, and police efforts in the first murder had shifted to the missing, mysterious boyfriend. We did our due diligence, tracked down the guy’s name and a mug shot, no criminal record, just another college grad in between jobs and pursuing other opportunities in the wonderful new economy.

I didn’t grumble too much about running his mug as a person of interest, since Moretz had other crime news crammed around it. The break-ins were causing a restless populace, and the sheriff had arrested a couple of Mohawk-wearing skater punks and charged them. Conveniently for him, they were minors and their names couldn’t be released.

Moretz wasn’t in the office when the scanner announced a body had been discovered, possible homicide. I texted him and he buzzed back that he was already on the scene. Of course.

This victim was also a woman, a little older, mid-thirties. She was found sitting in her car behind the county health department, head pitched forward over the steering wheel. Her scarf had been tightly wrapped around her neck, but otherwise she was unharmed.

Except for being dead, of course.

Her husband had reported her missing after midnight, according to Moretz’s article. A housewife, no kids. I was glad about the “kids” part, even though we could have squeezed some column inches about the grief counselors swarming into a local school and protecting children from the hard realities of life.

“Do we want to put in the part about the clippers?” Moretz asked, as we proofed the story.

“Clippers?”

“Found at the scene. A little pair of nail clippers with a Rebel flag etched in the handle.”

“Do you think it’s significant?”

“Hardison asked me to keep it off the record. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Hmmm. Probably nothing. Maybe this time we throw a bone to the sheriff to keep him from growling.

“You think it means something? Some sort of symbolism?”

I waved my hand. “If they get fingerprints, maybe. I don’t think a killer is going to sit around pruning a corpse’s fingernails to protest Northern aggression. ‘The Rebel Clipper’ isn’t in the same league with the Bind Torture Kill guy or the Green River Killer.”

“Might make a more interesting story, though.” Moretz repeated the phrase aloud. “‘The Rebel Clipper.’ Has a ring to it.”

“Yeah, like Joe DiMaggio was ‘The Yankee Clipper’ in baseball. But we don’t know if this is the same killer and we just promised the sheriff we’d sit on that little detail.”

“Since when has a journalist ever kept a promise when it stood in the way of a story?”

“Good point. If nothing breaks, we’ll run with as the lead Friday. We’ve got three hours before press time. Get on the phone to some retired FBI types for a quote.”

7.

The sheriff wasn’t too happy with the story, but it helped him out in one way. The SBI sent a couple more agents in, which allowed the sheriff to deflect some of the blame for the unsolved murders. More passive voice.

“Progress has been made, but the state boys asked me to keep a lid on it,” he said at his press conference. “Leads have been pursued, but that’s about all I can say.”

Seven newspapers were represented in the little gray-walled conference room in the courthouse basement. Moretz was there for the
Picayune
, of course, sitting up front with his laptop, and I’d sent Fitz with her camera for the obligatory official-at-the-podium shot.

Kavanaugh was on hand with her stub of a pencil scratching at her notebook, glowering at me for coming up with the Rebel Clipper. I figured there was a rule that a serial killer ought to be named by a local, not by somebody who just wandered into town for a cheap thrill.

Two of the network affiliates had news teams on hand, and those guys like to take over a room, arranging chairs, setting up lights, and sticking cameras in front of print reporters, whom they regarded as only slightly above movie bloggers on the media hierarchy.

Three radio stations had parked microphones on the table in front of the sheriff, and he looked at them occasionally as if they were about to spray water at him. Hardison was clearly uncomfortable with all the attention, chewing on the edge of his Styofoam coffee cup and at one point letting a white pebble fall from his lips.

“Sheriff,” Kavanaugh shouted as he rose to leave.

He blinked as if not realizing someone might actually ask a question at a press conference. “Huh?”

“The Rebel Clipper. Do you think it’s some sort of political statement?”

“What, like a terrorist or something?”

“A fingernail clipper is one thing, but a Rebel flag is still controversial.”

“Murder is controversial,” the sheriff said. Nice quote.

I checked to make sure Moretz wrote it down. It might be the only five-syllable word Hardison ever employed, though he’d only used four of those syllables.

“Anything linking the two victims?”

“We’ve not as yet ascertained the two are connected.”

“Except the fact they were both murdered,” one of the stand-up news guys said, slicking back his wet-looking hair in preparation for going on camera and pretending like he knew more than the sheriff. TV types like to be provocative, hoping they can get a few seconds of emotion for the vacant-eyed zombies in their audience.

“Like I said, the scenes have been investigated and the evidence has been collected,” the sheriff said. “Nothing else can be shared at this point in time.”

Moretz was busy typing as the sheriff waded out of the room. Kavanaugh edged over to me and nudged me like a rugby player. “That your whiz kid?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s John. This case is going to give us a sweep of next year’s association awards.”

“Don’t count on it,” Kavanaugh said. “Rookies are strong out of the gate but they make mistakes when they try to pace themselves for the distance.”

“You only came up from Raleigh to pad your mileage.” I wasn’t going to let her intimidate me, though she did, a little.

“No, the boss told me to take a few days and write a series. They’ll be talking about it all over the state. If the cops link the two killings, then you’re going to start getting some big boys in here, Fox News and CNN. Then we’ll see how fast you and John Moretz get pushed to the side.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but it was likely to happen. Even a homegrown hero like Hardison would have his head turned by a chance to go national. All I could do was hope the Rebel Clipper stayed small but still sold papers.

“What say we go out to dinner and compare notes?” I said.

She winced. “That could be dangerous.”

“This is strictly professional.” I tested a lie. “We’re not competing, since our audiences don’t overlap.”

“What about Moretz?”

“He’s got to cover the town council tonight.”

“Well, you probably know more than you’re putting in the paper.”

“Actually, less.”

She frowned.

“Kidding,” I said. Those big-city reporters sure take everything seriously.

“So, where do you think he’ll strike again?”

“First, we’re not sure this is a serial killer, and second, this could be some sort of coincidence.”

“The coincidence is Sycamore Shade has averaged about one murder per year for the last decade, and now there are two in the last couple of weeks? And a lot more violent deaths since Moretz got here?”

“We can get into all that over dinner.”

“Thanks, but I don’t fraternize the enemy.”

A she pushed her way out of the room, one of the television heads yelled at her for shoving the camera during his stand-up. She didn’t even pause, just slapped her notebook against her hip loudly enough to disturb the radio people who were calling in their live reports.

I wish I could afford to hire her, but no way could I compete with big-city salaries. Besides, even though she shot me down on dinner, Moretz was eating her lunch.

And I don’t think she liked it.

8.

Victim Number Three floated up seventeen days later.

Moretz had been fidgety around the office, killing time with a few drug busts, an exclusive interview with the second victim’s husband, and the arraignment of the mayor’s son, in which Wilbanks pleaded “Not guilty” and had his bond set at $50,000.

Kelsey Kavanaugh filed her series entitled “Murder shakes sleepy mountain town,” and life was more or less back to normal.

Loraine Shumate, 33, was found on the far side of the lake in the state park, less than a mile from the first murder scene. A couple of boys with fishing poles and cigarettes discovered the body, but Moretz somehow found out and got there before the police and rescue squad. I’d asked him to check around the first murder scene, so he must have been pretty close when the call came in.

To his credit, he resisted the urge to drag the body out of the water and search it, although he did get several dozen pictures of the face-down corpse stuck in the muddy reeds, a ragged gash around her neck. He also talked to one of the boys, who asked if she had been killed “by that Clipper guy.”

Shumate’s throat had been slashed, probably with a straight razor. She was dressed in a lavender jogging suit, her hair streaming out in a ponytail. She must have been putting in some miles on the wooded trails when the killer jumped out, gave her an extra smile, and tossed her in the lake.