“Has anyone been charged yet?”
“What about David Best? Is he going to be charged?”
“Are there any other suspects?”
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
The last question was shouted from the back of the room, a deep baritone bouncing off the wall behind Tom. We all waited.
The chief shook his head. “No.”
“But had she had sex before she died?”
It was the question we all wanted to know the answer to. I craned my neck to see who was asking the right things.
The chief took a deep breath. “Yes.” He put his hand up. “I’m afraid that’s all we have time for.” He ducked out through a back door, Tom not far behind. They left a roomful of hungry reporters very unsatisfied.
“Who was that?” I whispered to the Channel 30 reporter next to me.
“The guy from the
Times,
Richard Wells. Asshole,” he added before he turned back to his cameraman.
I wondered if I was as beloved as Richard Wells. I wanted to think I at least had the respect of my peers.
I pushed my way through the crowd and into the hall with Dick hot on my trail. “Where are you going now?” he asked.
I successfully suppressed an urge to say something really out of line. “Have you ever met Richard Wells?” I asked him instead.
“Sure. That’s him over there.” Dick pointed and I felt my mouth hang open down to my knees. This was the guy who bedded sources and wooed councilmen into telling him secrets?
Richard Wells was at least a head shorter than me, balding with a comb-over that seemed to tuck behind both ears. His gray eyes were small, his nose hooked, his cheeks chipmunk-like. He was heavyset and wore a red plaid sport jacket over brown pants. He spotted me looking at him and grinned. It was like a train wreck. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. Unfortunately, it sent the wrong message.
“You’re Anne Seymour, aren’t you? I’ve seen your byline.” He stuck his hand out and I felt compelled to take it. It was like shaking a dead fish. “I’m Richard Wells.”
“Hi.” I must have sounded and acted like a giddy schoolgirl, but I was merely in shock. He wasn’t clever enough to see that.
“Want to get some coffee? Maybe we can help each other out on this.”
Help each other? How? I didn’t like the sound of that and it snapped me back into the moment. “Sorry, I don’t collaborate with the competition,” I said coldly.
“We could still get some coffee.”
I searched his face, his person, trying to find the charm. If it was there, it was not obvious. “I’m sorry. I’ve got an appointment.” I walked away.
Dick was laughing behind me. “Shut up,” I said.
“He hit on you.”
“Yeah. But I shot him down.” Had I? I wasn’t sure.
“He works at the
Times.
Maybe he could get you a job there.”
“And maybe I could fuck a duck.”
He was still laughing when we got out on the street.
I had to call Hickey Watson again, but this time I didn’t get a breathless “Come Together.” I got an answering machine, would I please leave my name and a message, we’re so sorry for the inconvenience. The cops got to them, and they were keeping a low profile, if not going out of business altogether. I left my name. It was the only option.
Within minutes my phone rang.
“I thought I gave you all the answers I could.” Hickey Watson didn’t waste any time. He was probably screening the calls.
“I need some more. Can we meet somewhere?” We weren’t going to get anywhere on the phone, I knew that and he knew that, because I could hear him thinking, the wheels of his brain louder than a train whistle.
“Would it get you off my back?”
“Listen, I don’t give a damn what you do, but a girl is dead. You know, if you help out with this, the cops might look more kindly on you.”
I must have pushed a button. We agreed to meet at the Twin Pines Diner in East Haven on Route 1, a little dive of a place, just out of the way enough so we would be left alone. It was his choice, so I wondered just where his “office” was located. “I meet all my girls there,” he explained. I didn’t tell him that even though I was thinking of a career change, it wouldn’t include becoming one of “his girls.”
“Early deadline tonight,” Marty said as I passed his desk.
“Okay, okay. Why don’t you have Dick write up the press conference?”
“Where are you off to?”
I told him about Hickey Watson. “I’m going to try to get more out of him about who Melissa met that night. I don’t think he’d meet me if he wasn’t going to tell me anything.”
Marty sighed. “This whole thing is ballooning. Let’s try to stick a pin in it.”
A definitely murdered Yalie was worse than one who just jumped from a balcony. I wish I could say I felt his pain.
The diner was dark, darker since I’d left my sunglasses on.
“One?” the waitress was asking, pulling out a menu.
I shook my head. “I’m meeting someone.”
She smiled. “Oh, yes, he’s here.” I was guided to a booth in the back, where Hickey was ignoring the ban on smoking in restaurants, but no one in any position of authority here seemed to care. I coughed on purpose.
“You’re one of those reformed smokers, aren’t you?”
It was the curse of quitting. After enough time without a cigarette, I felt any smoke that invaded my lungs was the enemy. I used to crave it, drink in secondhand smoke like baby’s milk, but now it annoyed me. “You know, there’s no smoking in restaurants anymore.”
He took a long drag and purposely blew a smoke ring toward me. I still had my sunglasses on and I studied his face. Everything on it was wide: his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, his mouth. The crew cut just accentuated it. He was between thirty-five and fifty, I couldn’t narrow it down more than that. He wore a sweatshirt with PENN STATE riding on top of a beer gut that barely fit behind the table. Between the smoke and the rank smell emanating from Hickey’s person, it was too bad I was hungry and thought I’d be able to have lunch.
He was studying me as much as I was checking him out. He blew another smoke ring. “You know, a few years ago you would’ve made me a lot of money.”
I think he meant it as a compliment.
“That hair is great, and a lot of guys might like those legs wrapped around them. But you must be over forty now, too old for me.”
I kept reminding myself he was a source and I had to be nice to him. But I crossed my leg and whacked my boot into his shin.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, the cigarette falling out of his mouth. I took the butt and stamped it out.
“Let’s get on with it,” I said coldly.
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“I need to know about McGee.” I didn’t want to waste any more time, but the waitress suddenly was hovering over us. I shook my head, but Hickey picked up his menu.
“A cheeseburger platter with extra fries,” he told her.
My stomach growled. What the hell. “A tuna melt with fries. And a Coke.”
She disappeared.
“I told you I can’t reveal anything about our clients,” Hickey said.
I was going to have to do it. I had no choice. I needed a place to start and I was nowhere right now. “Off the record.”
He paused, thinking about it.
“Whatever you tell me, I’ll confirm with other sources. I won’t use your name.”
“The cops are coming down pretty heavy on me. They’ve already searched my place.”
What place? An office? His apartment? A train station locker? I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know, so I pressed on. “Did they find anything?”
Hickey’s mouth moved into a grin. “Are you kidding? Nothing’s on paper.” He tapped his forehead. “It’s all right here.”
It was a scary thought. “McGee?” I said again.
Hickey sighed and leaned closer toward me. I tried to close my nostrils to the tobacco scent emanating from his mouth. “They’re regulars. Three different guys, but they always want the same girls, young, smart, pretty. Melissa was hot, and they knew that.”
“Do you have a regular contact?”
He nodded. “Same guy always set it up. But I’m not sure which one Melissa saw that night.”
“Would it be possible to talk to one of the girls who saw these men?”
“I don’t want to reveal my girls’ identities.”
“I don’t care about them, I just want information about McGee.”
The waitress reappeared with two plates. I took a bite of my tuna melt and savored it, despite the rank air around me.
Hickey nodded. “You know, I really liked Melissa. She was a good kid. So I’m going to hook you up with Allison. She’s a Yale student, too. But you have to promise to keep her off the record.”
I nodded. “Okay. When can I talk to her?”
“I’ll call her when I get back and have her call you.”
I finished my tuna melt in about three minutes and downed the Coke. I gave him my cell phone number again. “Have her call me on this. That way no one at the paper will intercept any calls.”
He nodded, his mouth full of cheeseburger. I threw some bills on the table. “Thanks, Hickey, it’s on me.”
As I pushed my way out of the booth, he wiped his mouth. “You know, I think I was wrong about you. I’ve got some guys who’d really get off on you. Interested?”
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding, so I just shook my head and walked away.
My cell phone rang when I got into the car. It couldn’t be Allison this soon. It was Tom.
“Just thought you might like to know we’re going to make an arrest.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why would I kid?”
“Who?”
“The ex-boyfriend, David Best.”
“What have you got on him?”
“Fingerprints at the apartment. And we’ve got two witnesses who saw him, one outside as he was yelling up for her to come down, another who saw him in the hall.”
“He was there? How did you ID his fingerprints?”
“He was arrested for drunk driving last year.” So much for the clean-cut college boy. “We’ve got a warrant, his lawyer’s going to get him to turn himself in in about an hour. Thought you might like to know.” He hung up.
I stared at the phone. It was over. Sort of. I was still curious about McGee, but if they thought they had their man, then my job was to report that and get on with the business of the day. I’d had a nagging feeling about David Best from the start, when I talked to those kids and then when I talked to him. It was him. It was as simple as I’d first thought. But somehow I felt let down.
I didn’t let myself think about it. I went back to the office and told Marty what was up. The furrows in his forehead grew. A Yalie killing another Yalie. I was glad I didn’t have to tell the publisher about that one.
T
HE POLICE STATION
was surrounded when I got there, cameras jockeying for position, waiting for the perp walk. Richard Wells caught my eye and winked. I was tired of the wrong men winking at me. Tom was nowhere to be seen.
But he was there, that guy, the other winker, the Frank Sinatra look-alike. He was off to the side, sandwiched between two television cameramen. At first I wasn’t sure it was him, but when the guy next to him moved back a little, I saw him plain as day. This had gone on long enough. I squeezed my way around a couple of other reporters, but when I got to the spot where he’d been, he was gone. My brain kicked into overdrive. Maybe he was one of the McGee people; no, couldn’t be, why would he be following me? Maybe he was another reporter. I let him slip away again as a dark car pulled up along the sidewalk, about six cops surrounded it, the doors opened and the show began.
David Best looked like hell. His face was pale, his hair slicked back. His lawyer stuck to his side, repeating “no comment” to anyone who even looked at him. In a second it was over, they were gone, and David would be under the gun all night. I’d caught a glimpse of Tom as he brought David in. The lines in his face were longer, deeper, and his eyes didn’t reveal his thoughts.
“What do you think?” Richard Wells was at my side, his notebook closed, his pen secure in his shirt pocket.
“About what?” I just wanted to get back and get this story done.
“Do you think he really did it?”
I stopped and looked at him. “That’s not really for me to say.”
“Give me a break. You’ve got an opinion. We’ve all got one.”
Yeah, and while reporters have a certain camaraderie that allows them to share a few beers and their own opinions away from the listening public, Richard Wells was hardly someone I would do that with. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take advantage of his willingness to talk to me. “So what do
you
think?”
He shook his head. “No way. The kid’s not a killer. It’s not in him.”
“How do you know?”
Richard lowered his voice conspiratorially. “He’s known about this life of Melissa’s for a while now. Why now? Why would he suddenly snap? It doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they had an argument that night, but would he really have the balls to kill her over this? I don’t think so. He’s just some snobby rich kid who couldn’t get what he wanted.”
“But anyone can snap at any time.”
“True. But I think this is all bullshit.”
“How did his fingerprints get in the apartment?” I wanted to trip him up, throw a wrench into his theory, but I was intrigued, being uncertain myself.
“He was there, but I don’t think he has the balls to off anyone,” he repeated.
I remembered my first impression of David Best, and I couldn’t say without a doubt that I thought he did it or didn’t do it. But even if he didn’t, something had happened between him and Melissa that night.
“I’ve got to get back. Nice talking to you.”
I left him with his mouth hanging open. I’m not sure what he’d expected.
Dick was already writing when I got back to the paper. He had canvassed the university and gotten reaction to the arrest.
“Memorial service tomorrow,” he reminded me.
And my black dress still hadn’t made it to the cleaners. Damn.
I quickly wrote up the main arrest story and dragged my ass out at a reasonable hour to an empty apartment with an empty refrigerator. I’d forgotten to get dinner. Abate’s Pizza delivers. As I was dialing the number, my cell phone started chirping.