“I said no.”
“Look, you’re right. All it is is a story that I want. The big scoop. But I deserve it. You know I do. The FBI wouldn’t be coming around if it wasn’t for me. But I’m getting shut out. . . Think about it. Think if it was you. Think if it was your brother that this happened to.”
“I have and I just said no.”
I stood up.
“Well, if you change your—”
“I won’t.”
“Look, when I leave here, I’m going to check in at the Hilton. The one where Reagan got shot.”
That’s all I said as I left him there and he didn’t say another word.
15
Passing the time in my room at the Hilton I updated my computer files on what little I had learned at the foundation and then called Greg Glenn to fill him in on everything that had transpired in Chicago and Washington. When I was done, he whistled loudly and I pictured him leaning back in the chair, thinking of the possibilities.
It was a fact that I already had a good story, but I was unhappy. I wanted to stay on the leading edge of it. I didn’t want to have to rely on the FBI and other investigators to tell me what they felt like telling me. I wanted to investigate. I had written countless stories about murder investigations but each time I was always an outsider looking in.
This time I was inside and wanted to stay there. I was riding the front of the wave. I realized that my excitement must be the same as Sean felt when he was on a case. In the hunt, as he called it.
“You there, Jack?”
“What? Yeah, I was just thinking of something else.”
“When can we do the story?”
“Depends. Tomorrow’s Friday. Give me till tomorrow. I have this feeling about the foundation guy. But if I don’t hear anything by mid-morning tomorrow I’ll try the FBI. I’ve got a name of a guy. If that doesn’t get me anywhere I’ll come back and write the story Saturday for Sunday.”
Sunday was the biggest circulation day. I knew Glenn would want to go big with it on a Sunday.
“Well,” he said, “even if we have to settle for that, what you’ve got is a hell of a lot. You’ve got a nationwide investigation of a serial killer of cops who’s been operating with impunity for who knows how long. This will—”
“It’s not that strong. Nothing is confirmed. Right now it’s a two-state investigation into the possibility of a cop killer.”
“It’s still damn good. And once the FBI is in, it’s nationwide. We’ll have the New York Times, the Post, all of them following our ass.”
Following my ass, I felt like saying but didn’t. Glenn’s words revealed the real truth behind most journalism. There wasn’t much that was altruistic about it anymore. It wasn’t about public service and the people’s right to know. It was about competition, kicking ass and taking names, what paper had the story and which one was left behind. And which one got the Pulitzer at the end of the year. It was a dim view but after as many years as I had been at it, my view pretty much wasn’t anything else but cynical.
Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t savor the idea of busting out a national story and watching everybody follow. I just didn’t like talking about it out loud like Glenn. And there was Sean, too. I was not losing sight of that. I wanted the man who did this to him. I wanted that more than anything.
I promised Glenn I’d call if anything developed and hung up. I paced around the room for a while and I have to admit I was thinking about the possibilities, too. I was thinking about the profile this story could give me. It could definitely get me out of Denver if I wanted it to. Maybe to one of the big three. L.A., New York, Washington. To Chicago or Miami, at the least. Then beyond that, I even began to think about a publishing deal. True crime was a major market.
I shook it off, embarrassed. It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.
I needed to get out of the room but couldn’t leave because of the phone. I turned on the TV and it was just a bunch of competing talk shows serving up the usual daily selection of white trash stories. Children of strippers on one channel, porno stars whose spouses were jealous on another and men who thought women should be kept in line with occasional beatings on a third. I turned it off and thought of an idea. All I had to do was leave the room, I decided. It would guarantee that Warren would call because I wouldn’t be there to take the call. It worked every time. I just hoped he would leave a message.
The hotel was on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. I walked toward the circle and stopped into Mystery Books to buy a book called Multiple Wounds by Alan Russell. I’d read a good review of it somewhere and figured reading would take my mind off things.
Before going back into the Hilton I spent a few minutes walking around the outside of the hotel looking for the spot where Hinckley had waited with a gun for Reagan. I remembered the pictures of the chaos vividly but I couldn’t find the spot. It made me think the hotel had made some renovations, maybe so that the spot didn’t become a tourist destination.
As a police reporter I was a tourist of the macabre. I moved from murder to murder, horror to horror without blinking an eye. Supposedly. As I walked back in through the lobby toward the bank of elevators I thought about what this said about me. Maybe something was wrong with me.
Why was the spot where Hinckley waited important to me?
“Jack?”
I turned around at the elevators. It was Michael Warren.
“Hey.”
“I called your room. . . I thought you might be around.”
“I was just taking a walk. I was beginning to give up on you.”
I said it with a smile and a lot of hope. This moment would determine a lot of things for me. He was no longer in the suit he had on at his office. It was blue jeans and a sweater. He had a long tweed coat over his arm. He was following the pattern of a confidential source, coming in person rather than leaving a possible phone record.
“You want to go up to the room or talk down here?”
He moved toward the elevator saying, “Your room.”
We didn’t speak in the elevator of anything of consequence. I looked at his clothes again and said, “You’ve already been home.”
“I live off Connecticut on the other side of the beltway. Maryland. Wasn’t that far.”
I knew that was a toll call and that was why he hadn’t called first. I also figured that the hotel was on the way from his house to the foundation. I was beginning to feel the small tick of excitement in my chest. Warren was going to turn.
There was a damp smell in the hallway that seemed to be the same in every hotel I had ever been in. I got out my card key and let him into my room. My computer was still open on the little desk and my long coat and the one tie I had brought with me were thrown across the bed. Otherwise, the room was neat. He threw his coat on the bed and we took the only chairs in the room.
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“I did a search.”
He started to take a folded paper out of his back pocket.
“I have access to main computer files,” he said. “Before I left for the day, I went in and searched the field reports for victims who were homicide detectives. There were only thirteen. I have names, departments and dates of death here on a printout.”