If Angels Fall (10 page)

“I don’t want my name in the paper.”

“Listen ma’am—“

“What I have to tell you, I have to say now, while I’m
up to it.”

“I won’t talk to you unless you tell me who you are.
You know how people accuse us of making things up.”

She gave it some thought: “Florence.”

“Got a last name, Florence?”

“Just Florence.” She sounded grandmotherly, early
sixties, working class, probably watched soaps and game shows all day.

“Why are you calling, Florence?”

“You know about that little boy who was kidnapped
today, how they’re saying it’s just like that little baby girl who got murdered
last year, but they don’t know who did it?”

“Go ahead.”

“I know who killed her.”

Sure you do, dear. “What’s the killer’s name?”

“I don’t know his real name.”

“Look, I’m really—how do you know this guy’s the
killer?”

“I heard him confess. He said he did it and no one
knows.”

“Really? Did you tell the police?”

“I called them. They said they needed more specific
information from me. But they never came around. Never talked to me. So when
that little boy got kidnapped today, I decided to call you.”

She continued. “I love crime stories. I read all the
papers. Yours are the best, except for that mistake you made about the Sunday
school teacher being the killer.”

“The Sunday school teacher didn’t kill Tanita Donner?”

“Well, not by the way the real killer talks. I wanted
you to know what I heard, but don’t put my name in the paper. He scares me.”

“Do you think the killer also kidnapped Danny Becker?”

“What do you think? You’re a smart fellah.”

“How did you come to hear Tanita Donner’s killer
confess?”

A moment passed and Florence did not answer.

“Are you a clairvoyant, Florence?”

“A psychic? Who no, I’m a Roman Catholic. I sing in
the choir at Our Lady Queen of Tearful Sorrows.”

“That’s lovely, Florence. Listen, I’m really sorry but
unless you can be more specific—“

“I heard him tell God he did it.”

Under R, religious nut: bingo?

Suddenly Duggan loomed over him.

“Fifteen minutes.” Duggan tapped his watch.

Again, he asked for her full name and number. She
refused.

“I’ve got to go, Florence.” Just a lonely old woman.
Reed hung up, finished the story, read it, then sent it to Duggan through the
computer system.

In the washroom, Reed bent over a sink, and ran the
cold water. His tip on Wallace had come the same way, but the guy who called
offered something concrete he could check: Wallace’s conviction in Virginia.
Reed confirmed it and Sydowski confirmed Wallace was the suspect. Didn’t he?
That Wallace tip had to have come from a cop, the voice sounded like an old
source, yet Reed couldn’t put a name or face to it. This Florence person was a
nut. “I heard him tell God.” Sure. But if Wallace killed Donner, why was the
file still open? Did the killer call Reed to set up Wallace? That was
Sydowski’s thinking, but Reed couldn’t accept it. For it meant the real killer
was still out there. And now, with another child abduction, and in Balboa, it
meant another child may be murdered and that he may have truly contributed to
the death of an innocent man.

He splashed his face until he washed the fear from his
mind.

The few strands of gray invading the temples of his
short brown hair were multiplying. He was thirty-three. Thirty-three and he had
nothing. Nothing that mattered. Nothing but his job, self-doubt, and an
increasing affection for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Sipping Whiskey. When Ann
left, she opened the door to a dark truth, showing him exactly what he was. On
the way back to his desk, Reed saw Molly Wilson reading the memos posted on the
newsroom bulletin board.

“Hey, Tomster, finish the story?”

“Why haven’t you gone home yet?”

“Didn’t feel like it. Feel like a beer?”

“I am tired. It’s been a long day. Can I take a rain
check?”

Molly stepped closer. He could smell her perfume.
“I’ve given you a handful already, Tommy. When are you going to put them to
use?”

He liked her perfect-teeth smile, her ice-blue eyes
inviting him to a place he as tempted to enter.

“See this?” A perfect fingernail tapped a memo. “Could
be exciting, don’t you think?” Molly said before leaving.

It was a managing editor’s notice calling for
applications for the paper’s new South American bureau in Sāo Paulo. Reed
took five seconds to ingest the idea of applying and the consequences of
success before returning to his desk for his jacket.

“Any problems?” he asked Duggan on his way out.

“Good piece. Just in time for first.”

“I’ll cover the Becker press conference tomorrow?”

“No, you’re working the night shift in here tomorrow
night.”

“But I’m the lead report on this one.”

“Benson called in the order. You’re off the story.”

Myron Benson, the editor of the paper’s largest
editorial department, controlled fifty reporters. Invoking Benson’s name gave
any instructions immediate currency. Duggan stared at Reed. No elaboration was
needed. The fuckup last year, and that Benson had nearly fired him and kept him
on indefinite probation were known facts.

“Fine, fine. I get it.”

Duggan gave him an opened business envelope addressed
to the paper. It bore Metro University’s seal and came from a Dr. K.E. Martin
of the psych department. Reed’s name had been scrawled on it.

“What’s this?”

“Benson wants you to do a feature on this bereavement
group.” Duggan nodded at the envelope. “He wants you to tie it in with the
anniversary of the Donner murder and the Becker kidnapping.

Reed was wounded. Again. He swallowed it.

“Sure. I’ll get right on it.”

Crumbs and crap, that’s what they were feeding him.
Reed tucked the envelope into his jacket and headed for the parking lot.

The distant horn
of a tug echoed from the bay as Tom Reed walked across the
Star
parking lot. Cool Pacific breezes carried the stench of diesel and exhaust from
the freeway overhead. The green ’77 Comet he had bought after Ann left waited
like a lonely, faithful mutt.

Reed lost his awe for San Francisco- the lights of
Coit Tower, the financial district, the pyramid, the hills, the bridges, the
Bay.

He ran a red light entering Sea Park, a community of
uphill mansions whose views rivaled Russian Hill and Pacific Heights. It
bordered a small park dotted by stone tables topped with permanent chessboards.
Old European men brought their own worn pieces here to play friendly games and
reminisce. Beyond the houses were rows of condos. A sedate community. Gleaming
Jaguars, BMW’s and Mercedes lined the streets. Precision clipped shrubs and
hedges hid the
pong
of tennis balls, the splash of a private pool, and
the occasional whispered investment tip.

Reed parked near the three-story Edwardian house where
he lived with five other men. The owner, Lila Onescu, was a Rumanian grand dame
with gypsy blood who lived in a condo two blocks away. After Ann left with
Zach, Reed couldn’t bear living alone in their house. A buddy told him of Lila
Onescu’s place, a jewel in Sea Park, well kept, quiet. A hundred bucks a week
for a room on the second floor where he would share a bathroom and kitchen with
two tenants. This was his home.

Reed creaked up the staircase, welcomed by the typed
note taped to the door. “Where is the rent? L. Onescu.” He was two weeks
behind. He would give her a check tomorrow he promised, fumbling for his key.

His room had three bay windows overlooking the Marina
District and the Pacific. A dorm-style single bed with rumpled sheets was
against one wall. A mirrored dresser stood against another near an ornamental
fireplace. A small desk sat opposite the bed, and a tattered, comfortable sofa
chair was in the middle of the room, which had hardwood floors and faded green
flower print wallpaper. Reed’s framed degree, his two awards, a
Star
front page, and silver-framed pictures of Ann and Zach, were leaning on the
fireplace mantel, hastily placed in the hope they would be collected at a
moment’s notice. A stack of newspapers tottered a few feet from the floor next
to the dresser. It had started growing the day he moved in-three weeks after
Ann moved out of their bungalow in Sunset. When she left, their house had
become a mausoleum for their marriage. He had to leave, or be entombed. They
agreed to rent their house.

Reed went down the hall to the kitchen for ice. In his
room, he poured some Jack Daniel’s, striped off his clothes, casting them onto
the pig-sized heap in the corner, slipped into jogging shorts. He opened the
bay windows and watched the twinkling lights of the Golden Gate.

All he ever wanted in this world was to be a reporter.
The dream of a kid from Big Sky Country. His dad used to bring him a newspaper
six days a week,
The Great Falls Tribune
. He’d spread it open on the
living room floor and read the news to his mother. When he was eleven, he
started his first
Trib
route. Trudging through the snow, shivering in
the rain, or sweating under the prairie sun with that canvas bag, nearly black
with newsprint, slung over his shoulder like a harness. Dad had knotted the
strap so the bag hung just so, like an extension of himself. He would read the
paper as he delivered it, dreaming of seeing his stories in print. He had forty
customers and every day, by the time he emptied his bag, he’d have read the
day’s entire edition.

Life’s daily dramas enthralled him. He became a news
addict and an expert on current affairs. In high school, he graduated from newspaper
boy to cub reporter, writing stories for the school paper. He was accepted into
J-School at the University of Missouri, where he met Ann, a business major with
big brown eyes and a smile that knocked him out. She was from Berkeley and
wanted children and her own shop to sell the children’s clothes she would
design and make herself. That was a secret, she told him.

He wanted a family, too, but he wanted to establish
his career first and maybe write books, the last part was a secret. If you talk
about writing books, you’d never do it.

They were married after graduation. A few weeks later,
he got a job with AP in San Francisco. Ann was happy to move back to the Bay
Area, where she would be near her mother. And Reed was determined to prove
himself in San Francisco. He hustled for AP, breaking a story about the Russian
Mafia. He was short listed for a Pulitzer, but lost out.
The San Francisco
Star
then offered him a job as a crime reporter at twice his salary.

Ann got an administrative post at one of San
Francisco’s hospitals, at night, she worked on her business plan and clothing
designs. He traveled constantly, worked long hours and was rarely home. The
years passed. Starting a family seemed impossible.

Then boom. Ann was pregnant. He was stunned.
Unprepared. She had forgotten her pills when they vacationed in Las Vegas. He
hinted that she’d done it purposely. Not true, she said. They didn’t want to
argue. In the following months, they retreated, withdrew into themselves. Ann
welcomed the coming of a baby, Reed braced for it.

When he witnessed the birth of their son, he felt a
degree of love he never know existed. But soon, he grappled with his own
mortality. It frightened him, overwhelmed him with the realization that he had
little time in his life for accomplishments. He was a father. He feared he
would fail fatherhood. He compensated the only way he knew: by striving through
his job to leave Zach a legacy as a man who had made his mark. Someone Zach
could be proud of. Consequently, the
Star
became his mistress and
family. It seemed Ann and Zach became people he appreciated only when needed.
They shared the groceries and the furniture. On the surface, he was like any
other young husband and father. In truth, he only gave of himself when it was
convenient. It was cute how Zach imitated him and wanted to be a reporter, just
like his daddy. It was reassuring how Ann understood that he never had time for
them. But something was crumbling, little by little, day by day. Reed was blind
to what had happened, oblivious to Ann’s achievement of single-handedly getting
her small shop of the ground while raising Zach alone. He had become a stranger
forcing them to survive without him.