Small Town Spin (7 page)

7.

Digging for answers

Interesting quirk of Virginia law number three forty seven: all liquor stores are owned and operated by the state. Number three forty eight: the Alcoholic Beverage Commission has its own police department. With sworn peace officers and everything.

They’re about as chatty as most other cops with reporters they don’t know, too.

After the second guy in a row said “no comment” and hung up on me, I slammed my phone back into its cradle and jerked my tea cup off the desk with such force that it sloshed out all over a pile of press releases. Fabulous. I rooted through two drawers before I found a napkin, muttering every swearword I knew as I blotted my desktop.

“Tough day?” Parker’s voice came from behind me, and I jumped and whacked my knee on the underside of my desk.

“What in God’s name are you doing here on a Saturday?” I asked, spinning my chair to face him.

“I can’t just sit around my house,” he said. “Mel’s at some kind of city council workshop, and I was going stir crazy, watching all the shit about TJ and his girl on every station. So I thought I’d come see if I could help you. I dragged you into this, and you’ve been sick and all. What can I do?”

His green eyes looked pained.

I sighed. “I wish I had an assignment for you. Have you talked to the Okersons? How are they?”

“How you’d think. Ashton wouldn’t be functioning at all if she didn’t have the service to plan and the twins to take care of. Tony is going over every minute of the last week in his head a hundred times a day, trying to find what he missed. And now they’re upset about the girl, too. They adored her. Tony plays golf with her dad.”

I nodded. “It’s a suck situation, Parker. I’m sorry.”

“What the hell, Nichelle? I mean, really. I read your piece this morning. You talked to the coach. Did he say anything else?”

“Not really.”

He shook his head. “I just don’t get it.”

“That makes two of us. Hey—has Tony ever mentioned TJ having a drinking problem? Not normal teenage crap, but like an addiction? Hangovers? Excess? Moonshine?”

“Moonshine?” Parker laughed, but the smile faded when he caught the serious look on my face. “No. Why?”

“Look, I left this out of the story this morning because I want to look into it before it goes all over the TV, but there was an empty moonshine jar at the scene where the girl was found last night. I did some reading when I got here this morning, and it turns out alcohol isn’t the only kind of poisoning you can get from drinking it. There’s no way to know for sure what killed TJ or Sydney until the tox screen comes back, but I know good and well Sheriff Waters out there is assuming his case is closed while he waits for that report. I want to know where the kids are getting this stuff. I’m just not sure how to find out. I don’t have a contact at the ABC police.”

“Your guys at the PD must have one.”

“It’s Saturday. Aaron wasn’t in yet when I tried, but I’ll call him again in a bit and see if he’s willing to share one with me. I have a drug bust and a car-on-pedestrian crash to talk to him about, anyway. Keeping up with my regular job and covering crime in Mathews on top of being sick is even too much fun for me. This kind of blows, to be honest.”

“I imagine. How you feeling?”

“Better, I think. I’m on day two of antibiotics, and I had some magic soup for dinner last night. But I need some rest. Like, even just going home on time and getting in bed would be nice.”

“You’re dedicated. It’s part of what makes you good.”

“I might settle for mediocre and healthy this week.” I grinned. “No, I wouldn’t. I love it. And I want to help your friends.”

“Good luck. I’ll go hang out in my office and pretend to work, but if you come up with something I can do, holler. I’ll be around. Even if you want me to go on a coffee run.”

“Grant Parker is offering to run my errands? Cue the
Twilight Zone
theme.” I widened my eyes and glanced around.

He flashed a ghost of the famous grin that made women in twelve counties call for smelling salts. “Just trying to make it easy for you to do your thing.”

“I appreciate that, and I’m not one to look a gift coffee in the mouth, but listen: you did me a favor, too, Parker. This is a huge story with national exposure, and you insisted Bob give it to me.”

“I wish I hadn’t been in a position to do that.”

“I do, too.” I waved a stack of pink message slips. “I also wish I didn’t have thirty reporters to talk around this with. I should probably get to it.”

“Call me if you need me.” He disappeared in the direction of his office.

I sipped my tea and surveyed my desk. I picked up the first message slip. CNN.

“Here we go,” I said as I dialed the phone.

I made it through half the stack in an hour, politely saying as little as I could get away with, mostly describing the emotion in the Okerson house. After a particularly dogged woman from NBC sent me into a coughing fit (which was an excellent excuse to hang up), I took a break from giving interviews so I could conduct one.

“It’s Saturday. And you said you were sick,” Aaron barked when he picked up.

“I’m aware of that, and I am sick. Though more human today, I think. So far, anyhow.” I clicked out a pen. “I’m behind. This Okerson thing put together with the sinus infection is killing me. But I have a regular job to do, too.”

“Aw, nice of you to take a break from the glamour for me.”

“You know I love you best.”

He chuckled. “Which one do you want first?”

“The man versus car. What happened?”

“Guy was walking along the side of Patterson at close to eleven last night. Kid driving the car was sending a text. He mowed the pedestrian down and hit a tree. Knocked himself out. Phone was still in his hand when our guys got on the scene.”

“Holy shit, Aaron.” I blew out a breath. “Is everyone OK?”

“Driver was at St. Vincent’s overnight, but they expect him to make a full recovery.”

Thank God. “And the victim?”

“He wasn’t so lucky. Doctors said he bled out about an hour into surgery.”

I closed my eyes for a second before I scribbled that down. “Just walking down the street. And this kid did a stupid thing and gets to go the rest of his life knowing he killed someone. Jesus.”

“Right? If I were smart enough, I’d make a device that disabled the text feature on any cellphone inside a moving car. These are the most senseless things we see.”

“Amen to that.”

If there was one habit my job had made me positively phobic about, it was texting while driving. It caused several tragedies a month. I’d been known to snap at friends I was riding with when they reached for their phones.

“You want the drug bust, too?”

“You know me too well. That’s the other one that caught my eye. Is Stevens around today, or are you giving up that info, too?”

“I saw him this morning,” Aaron said. “He’s got a lot of paperwork to go through. They’ve been working undercover in that club for eighteen months. I’ll put you through to him.”

I wished Aaron a happy weekend before he transferred me. The new narcotics sergeant relayed the details of a huge marijuana growing and trafficking ring operating out of a bar downtown. Almost a thousand plants, plus a literal truckload of ready-to-move product. I thanked Stevens and hung up before I realized I’d forgotten to ask Aaron about the ABC police. I hit redial.

“He wasn’t there?” He asked by way of a hello.

“No, he was. But I forgot that I meant to ask you something else. I need some information from the ABC police, and so far this morning I’ve been stonewalled twice, just calling random officers. Do you have any friends over there who might talk to me?”

“A couple, but I doubt they’re in today,” he said and then reeled off names and phone numbers. “Anything interesting you need them for?”

“Maybe. There’s something nagging the hell out of me about these dead kids in Mathews.”

“It’s because they’re kids,” he said. “I saw your piece this morning, and I’ve worked with you long enough to read between the lines. I know I don’t have to tell you how common copycat suicides are.”

“See, I thought so, too. And maybe you’re right. But since no one else seems to be looking at anything other than the obvious answer, I’m going to make damned sure of it before I let this go. Those children have parents who deserve to know what happened.”

“It’s a small town and this will be a sore subject for a long time,” he cautioned. “Just watch yourself. You can’t go accusing people of murder willy-nilly.”

“When have you ever known me to do anything willy-nilly?”

He was quiet.

“Yeah, don’t answer that. But I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just poking around. If you’re right and there’s nothing to it, I’m totally safe, right?”

“Depends entirely on what you’re poking around in. Why do you want the ABC police?”

“Out in the sticks? Why do you think?”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” He sighed. “I swear, you need a vest. And a gun. Folks who run illegal booze like their firearms.”

“Noted.”

I hung up and dialed the numbers he’d given me, but got voicemail both times. I didn’t leave messages. I’d try again Monday when I could put them on the spot.

Turning to my computer, I wrote up the two stories I had for metro. I finished the second and opened my email program before I realized who I was sending my copy to for approval.

“Aw, hell.” I attached the files to an email to Shelby. That was just what I needed. “I ought to add the
Twilight Zone
theme to my iTunes,” I said as I hit send. “First Parker’s offering to be my gofer, and now I miss Les.”

“Your piece on the Okerson kid this morning wasn’t your best work.” It took me a second to realize that the voice came from behind me and was male, not Shelby prattling inside my head.

I turned the chair slowly.

Spence leaned against the wall behind my little ivory cubicle, arms folded over his chest and a studiously disdainful look on his face.

I’d never had reason to be crossways with our sports editor, who was generally full of witty commentary and whatever baked goods Eunice had brought in, though you couldn’t tell it by looking at his lanky frame.

“Good morning to you, too, Spence,” I said. “You have any constructive criticism to offer, or did you come in on Saturday just to be insulting?”

“TJ Okerson was left-handed, which made him a more formidable pitcher,” he said. “That’s worth mentioning in a story where you interviewed the baseball coach.”

“No one told me that,” I said.

“A sports reporter would know it.”

“And the sports editor would, too.” I leaned back in my chair. “I’m tired. I’m still sick. And it’s been one hell of a long week, here, Spence. If you’ve got something to say, just say it. You want my story?”

“It’s not your story. Or, it shouldn’t be your story.”

“Dead people are kind of my thing.” I paused. “Uh. You know what I mean.”

“Sports are my thing. It’s my whole life outside my wife and kid. This is the biggest sports story to come out of Virginia in half a decade, and it gets assigned to the crime desk? What kind of bullshit is that?”

“The kind of bullshit you’ll have to take up with Bob.” I closed my laptop and put it in my bag. “I didn’t ask for this assignment.”

“I know. Your good friend Parker asked you to take it. As a favor. If he worked for me, I’d have canned him. But our big shot star columnist reports to Bob.” He sneered.

I stared, dumbfounded. I had never heard Spencer Jacobs sound the least bit annoyed with...anything. And I’d worked with him for almost eight years.

“If it’s that big a deal to you, seriously, talk to Bob.”

“I was told pretty explicitly yesterday that I was to get you what you need to do a good job,” Spence said, pushing off the wall. “So here’s what you need: a background in sports journalism and some better interview skills.”

“I’m sorry, have we left the newsroom and gone back to seventh grade? I’d feel sorry for you, except you’re being an asshat. So go be one somewhere else. If you want to help, I’m happy to take suggestions and tips, and more than happy to share credit for the story. But if you’re going to hurl insults and be petty because they picked me and not you? You can bite me. And you should go hang out with Shelby. Y’all have something in common.”

I stepped around him and hauled my bag onto my shoulder, striding to the elevator. Technically, I should have waited for Shelby to okay my stories, but I was beat, and Spence had shaken me way more than I wanted him to see.

Parker poked his head into the elevator.

“You have a lead?”

“Yes. A hot one. On a nap. Also, steer clear of Spence. Someone pissed in his Wheaties, and he seems to think it was us.” I punched the button for the garage.

“Nice.” He stepped back as the doors started to close. “Feel better. Call me if you need any help.”

“You have yourself a side job, sir.”

The doors whispered shut and I sagged against the wall. Some days, an eight-to-five desk job sounded better than others.