“Out of space? Out of time? I mean, come on, Jack, that has got to be a thought that goes through the minds of many people who contemplate or actually do commit suicide. The fact that it’s mentioned in a poem written by some morbid guy a hundred and fifty years ago who also wrote another poem this other dead cop quoted, it’s not the stuff conspiracies are made of.”
“What about Rusher and Roderick Usher? You think that’s a coincidence, too? So now we have a triple coincidence and you say it’s not worth checking out.”
“I didn’t say it’s not worth checking out.” His voice rose a notch to a level signaling indignation. “Of course, you check it out. Get on the phones, check it out. But I’m not sending you off on a national tour on the basis of what you’ve got now.”
He swiveled in his chair so he could check his computer for pending messages. There were none. He turned to face me again.
“What’s the motive?”
“What?”
“Who’d want to kill your brother and this guy in Chicago? It doesn’t make—How come the cops missed this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you spent the day with them and the case, where’s the hole in the suicide? How could someone have done this and just walked away? How come you came away yesterday convinced that it was suicide? I got your message, you said you were convinced. How come the cops are convinced?”
“I don’t have any answers for that yet. That’s why I want to go to Chicago and then to the bureau.”
“Look, Jack, you’ve got a cushy beat here. I can’t tell you how many times reporters have come in here saying they wanted it. You—”
“Who?”
“What?”
“Who wants my beat?”
“Never mind. It’s not what we’re talking about. The point is, you’ve got it good here and you get to go anywhere in the state you want to go. But for this kind of travel, I’ve got to be able to justify it with Neff and Neighbors. I also have a newsroom full of reporters who would like to travel every once in a while on a story. I would like them to travel. It helps keep them motivated. But we’re in an economic downturn here and I can’t okay every trip that gets proposed.”
I hated these sermons and I wondered if Neff and Neighbors, the managing editor and editor of the paper, even cared whom he sent where as long as they got good stories. This was a good story. Glenn was full of shit and he knew it.
“Okay, I’ll just take vacation time and do it myself.”
“You used everything you had after the funeral. Besides you’re not going to run around the country saying you’re a Rocky Mountain News reporter if you’re not on an assignment for the Rocky Mountain News.”
“What about unpaid leave? You said yesterday that if I wanted more time you’d work something out.”
“I meant time to grieve, not go running across the country. Anyway, you know the rules on unpaid leave. I can’t protect your position. You take a leave and you might not have the beat when you come back.”
I wanted to quit right there but I wasn’t brave enough and I knew I needed the paper. I needed the institution of the media as my access card to cops, researchers, everybody involved. Without my press card, I’d be just some suicide’s brother who could be pushed aside.
“I need more than what you’ve got now to justify this, Jack,” Glenn said. “We can’t afford an expensive fishing expedition, we need facts. If you had more, I could maybe see going to Chicago. But this foundation and the FBI you could definitely do by phone. If you can’t, then maybe I can get somebody from the Washington news bureau to go over there.
“It’s my brother, my fucking story. You’re not giving it to anybody.”
He raised his hands in a calming manner. He knew his suggestion was way out of bounds.
“Then work the phones and come back to me with something.”
“Look, don’t you see what you’re saying? You’re saying don’t go without the proof. But I need to go to get the proof.”
Back at my desk, I opened up a new computer file and began typing in everything I knew about the deaths of Theresa Lofton and my brother. I put down every detail I could remember from the files. The phone rang but I didn’t answer it. I only typed. I knew I needed to start with a base of information. Then I would use it to knock apart the case against my brother. Glenn had finally cut a deal with me. If I got the cops to reopen my brother’s case, I’d go to Chicago. He said we’d still have to talk about D.C., but I knew that if I got to Chicago I would get to Washington.
As I typed, the picture of my brother kept coming back to me. Now that sterile, lifeless photo bothered me. For I had believed the impossible. I had let him down and now felt a keener sense of guilt. It was my brother in that car, my twin. It was me.
9
I ended up with four pages of notes which I then synthesized after an hour of study and thought to six lines of shorthand questions I had to find the answers to. I had found that if I looked at the facts of the case from the opposite perspective, believing Sean had been murdered and had not taken his own life, I saw something the cops had possibly missed. Their mistake had been their predisposition to believe and therefore accept that Sean had killed himself. They knew Sean and knew he was burdened by the Theresa Lofton case. Or maybe it was something every cop could believe about every other cop. Maybe they’d all seen too many corpses and the only surprise was that most didn’t kill themselves. But when I sifted through the facts with a disbeliever’s eye, I saw what they did not see.
I studied the list I had written on a page in my notebook.
Pena: his hands?
after—how long?
Wexler/Scalari: the car?
heater?
lock?
Riley: gloves?
I realized I could handle Riley by phone. I dialed and was about to hang up after six rings when she picked up.
“Riley? It’s Jack. You okay? This a bad time?”
“When’s a good time?”
It sounded like she had been drinking.
“You want me to come out, Riley? I’m coming out.”
“No, don’t, Jack. I’m okay. Just, you know, one of those blue days. I keep thinking about him, you know?”
“Yes. I think about him, too.”
“Then how come you hadn’t been around for so long before he went and. . . I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bring things up . . .”
I was quiet a moment.
“I don’t know, Riles. We sorta had a fight about something. I said some things I shouldn’t have. He did, too, I guess. I think we were kind of in a cooling-off period. . . He did it before I could get back with him.”
I realized I hadn’t called her Riles in a long time. I wondered if she had noticed.
“What was the fight about, the girl that got cut in two?”
“Why do you say that? Did he tell you about it?”
“No. I just guessed. She had him wrapped around her finger, why not you? That’s all I was thinking.”
“Riley, you’ve got—Look, this isn’t good for you to be dwelling on. Try to think about the good things.”