Читать книгу A Memorable Murder - John Schlarbaum - Страница 10

Arriving at a crime scene was one of Jennifer’s favourite things in the world. There was a charge in the air that could only be matched by the exhilaration of a seventh game of the World Series tied in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, two out, and a full count at the plate. Other than that, murder, mayhem and chaos were in a league all of their own.

She estimated the crowd had swelled from the usual hundred spectators to a couple of thousand.

Don’t these people have jobs? she mused to herself.

She knew the show’s sidewalk layout, where the outdoor microphone was situated and how the crowd control barriers were set up. In this kind of mob though, there was no way she could get near the action for an initial look.

She surveyed the immediate area and decided to enter the nearest skyscraper to her south, taking the elevator to the fifth floor. As expected, several office doors were open, all without receptionists sitting behind their desks. She walked into a realty office and proceeded to make her way unnoticed to the windows overlooking the chaos below. For several seconds she stood silently alongside three women dressed in business attire before one of them noticed her.

“Can I help you?”

“That depends,” Jennifer said as she pulled out her media identification card. “I’m a reporter from The Telegraph. Did you see what happened?”

The other women now turned their full attention to Jennifer.

“Ah . . . no. We got into the office a few minutes ago.”

“What about the bomb? Do you know if anyone was injured when it went off?”

“I’m not sure.” The woman pointed to an area in the middle of the crowd that was cordoned off with yellow police tape. “I think that’s where it exploded. There have been a couple of CSI people using tweezers to pick fragments off the sidewalk.”

“And what is your name?”

“Anita Byers.”

Jennifer scribbled her name in the notebook she’d taken out of her coat pocket.

“Am I going to be in the newspaper?” Ms. Byers asked, full of life.

“Not unless you shot that guy down there,” Jennifer replied nonchalantly. She took another quick look at the scene below and planned her next move. “Thank you, ladies. You’ve been more help to me than you could know.”

Jennifer exited the building and backtracked down the street away from the crowd. She proceeded to a side entrance of an old art deco structure - The Kingdom Entertainment Building - adjacent to the NCN complex, and took the stairs to the third floor. The building, a city landmark, was built in the 1950’s and still had outdoor fire escapes running down the sides.

She entered the third floor lobby and made her way through a small throng of people huddled near the windows.

“Is this fire exit alarmed?” she asked no one in particular, pointing to a door at the end of the hall.

A handsome male in his mid-20s turned toward her.

“No. That’s where we have our smoke breaks,” he said, eyeing her from head to toe.

“Thanks,” she said, hoping to bump into him at a more opportune time.

Without another word she walked down the hall and pushed the door open. She scanned the windows of the building across the street and noticed Anita Byers and her friends watching her. She gave them a quick wave and flashed a smile in their direction, which they returned.

“See, I told you you’ve been helpful,” Jennifer said as she began to descend the stairs of the metal fire escape.

Stepping off, she quickly checked her reflection in the windows of the NCN building.

Harried looking, yet still intact, she thought.

As she was technically behind the police-sanctioned perimeter, she had an unobstructed view of the scene of the crime. Sure enough, there was a deceased male bleeding from the side of his head, only a few inches from the stand-up microphone. And as her new office girlfriends had pointed out, several forensic techs were scouring the area where a ratty gym bag lay on the sidewalk, a faint line of smoke emanating from it.

She scanned the crowd and also noted the officers present. She knew two of them well: Barry Kendall and Detective Mario Stancu, both of whom were standing near the body.

A promising sign, Jennifer reasoned.

She turned her back on the crowd, pulled a small micro-recorder out of her pocket and pressed the record button. She then placed it into a specially-made pocket sewn inside her jacket close to the collar. After stating the date and time, she walked toward the crime scene, hoping no one in authority would stop her before she reached her destination.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” a male voice asked.

Jennifer turned and came face to face with Michael Speers, who had exited the building behind her.

“Detective Speers, I thought this looked like your handiwork.”

“You know the rules, Malone,” he said, unsuccessfully trying to convey his disapproval.

Jennifer looked around and pleaded innocence, which both of them knew had been lost many stories ago.

“Do you mean . . . that I’m on the wrong side of the police tape? I don’t know how this could have happened, Detective Speers. As you know, I’m a simple farm girl from a small town where these big-city crimes don’t happen.”

“You’re telling me you’re lost?” Speers asked as a smirk crossed his lips.

“No. I’m telling you that if I don’t find out what happened here today, my big mean boss is going to send me back to Kansas on the first available bus.”

“Carson is right. You do have bigger stones than most men.”

“Well, I don’t like to brag . . .”

“You know, Jennifer, I could stand here and talk all day—”

“Really? I thought you had a murder investigation to run.”

“As I was about to say . . . but I have a murder investigation to run.”

“You know I’d never think of getting in your way while you’re doing your job, right?”

“Enough already, Malone. I’m going to escort you right to the front of the line, where you can have the best view in the house. And do you know why I’m not sending you all the way back to 103^rd?”

“Because you respect me as a woman?”

“Hardly,” he laughed. “Because I respect you as a reporter—unlike some of your colleagues.”

Walking beside the swelling masses, both saw Mark Orr pushing his way to the front of the tape, still a hundred feet away from the action.

“Speak of the devil,” Speers said with a smile.

Orr stood in disbelief as he watched Jennifer and Speers pass him.

“I hate to say I told you so . . .” Jennifer said to Orr, letting the sentence trail off, satisfied with the dumb look on his face.

During the next 15 minutes, Jennifer interviewed five shocked eyewitnesses to the shooting. By day’s end, their faces would be familiar to everyone who owned a television set.

None had spoken to the man before he’d stepped up to the microphone, although one elderly woman recalled watching him briefly, as he kept fiddling with the brim of his hat.

“What do you mean fiddling?” Jennifer asked.

“Tugging it a little at the front, as if he were trying to cover his eyes. You know—so no one would recognize him.”

“You think he was hiding from someone?”

“I don’t know. It happened so fast. Maybe he was getting the brim the way he liked it.”

Jennifer wrote down the woman’s account and drew a star beside it. Although it could be nothing, something about the hat had piqued her interest. She turned and scanned the multitude of people behind her. Not a man with a hat in sight.

Was the man trying to hide something? And if so, why do it in front of millions of viewers?

Jennifer also circled the statement to remind her to keep its contents front and centre in her mind. She saw Barry Kendall looking in her direction and flashed him a smile.

“Officer Kendall—any word on the getaway vehicle?”

“I’ve been instructed only to say, ‘No comment,’ Ms. Malone.”

“What fun is that?” she replied.

“It was a grey Volvo,” she heard a man say to her left.

She pivoted in his direction and immediately spotted him. His eyes were wide with electricity and his face was that of a schoolboy who knew the answer to the teacher’s question.

Pick me! Pick me! it conveyed.

“And you are?”

“J.J. Monteleone.”

“And you saw this vehicle?”

“Yeah, it was parked on Elm Avenue.”

Now this was something interesting, Jennifer thought.

“Was there anyone in it at the time you saw it parked?”

“A man. I saw a white man sitting behind the wheel.”

“What about the woman? Was she in the car?”

“No, only the man.”

“Can you give me a description?”

“Not really. He had the visor down and was wearing sunglasses. I really only glimpsed him as I crossed the street,” the man said, almost apologetically.

“And what time was this?” Jennifer asked as she wrote down the information.

“I guess around 6:45 or so.”

“Was there anything about this Volvo you can recall—some distinguishing marks, scrapes, cracked windshield—that kind of thing?”

“There was one thing. I think it was a rental or used to be a rental.”

“Why do you say that?” Jennifer asked, about to jump out of her skin with delirium.

Eat your heart out, Orr.

“Well . . . I worked at a rental place for a while and all the companies put their logos on the front bumper. Extra advertising, you know. Then the vehicles were targeted by carjackers who saw the rental sticker and assumed the occupants were tourists.”

“I remember that,” someone beside him said.

“Anyway, when the Governor changed the law last year, we had to scrape all the stickers off.”

“Are you saying this car still had a sticker on the bumper?”

“A partial one really—you know, a corner piece.”

Please have the answer to this next question. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

“And do you remember what colour?” Jennifer asked calmly.

“A reddish-orange.”

Reddish-orange. Which company had those colours?

Jennifer’s mind began to mentally picture the logos of the well known rental companies, only to draw a blank.

“You wouldn’t possibly know which company used a reddish-orange logo, would you?” Jennifer held her breath as she watched Monteleone begin to roll his eyes, obviously a side-effect brought on by deep thinking.

“Queen City’s logo has a reddish-orange tinge to it.”

Jennifer was staring so intently at Monteleone that when the answer to her question came, she was briefly mystified how he’d said the words without moving his lips.

“Miss, I said that Queen City has a reddish-orange logo.”

Jennifer snapped back to attention and realized the speaker was an old Italian gentleman standing six feet away from her.

This is like playing Jeopardy with a thousand people—not all of whom have a buzzer, Jennifer thought.

“Are you sure?” she asked as she faced the gentleman.

“They might have changed it.”

Jennifer heard a woman gasp to her right. She turned to see the coroner load the dead man into a body bag.

“Did he die instantly?” Jennifer asked the men zipping the bag closed.

“Quicker,” the older of the two said.

“No comment,” bellowed Detective Speers, who had come up behind them.

Barry Kendall was standing alone watching the body placed into the coroner’s vehicle.

It’s now or never, Jennifer thought, noting Speers had re-entered the NCN building.

With the dexterity of a prize fighter climbing through the ropes into the ring, Jennifer ducked under the two rows of police tape and was quickly at Kendall’s side.

“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she said, as a startled Kendall became aware of her presence.

“No comment.”

“To my statement or to any questions I’m planning to pose to you?”

“Both.”

“I need a name.”

“I need the shooter.”

“The car is or was a rental.”

“What?” Kendall asked, a shocked look on his face.

“The getaway car is a rental or was at one time.”

“And how did—”

“A guy in the crowd said it was parked on Elm Avenue at 6:45 with a white man behind the wheel, trying to remain inconspicuous.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“His name is J.J. Monteleone.”

“The driver?”

“No—the witness, you idiot.” She pointed Monteleone out to him. “The guy with the blue blazer.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“What’s the dead guy’s name? I know you have it.”

Kendall looked around to see if he was being watched.

“Not a word of this to anyone, not even your editor, until Speers confirms it. Are we understood?”

“Understood. Now what’s his name?”

“Robert Barker.”

“Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Think pharmaceuticals.”

“Kendall!”

Speers’ voice sliced through the air as he came upon them with a look of fire in his eyes.

“What did you tell her?” he demanded.

“No comment, sir.”

“Malone?”

“That’s it, Mike. Tough as an acorn this one. And you know how talented I am at cracking nuts.”

“Well as far as you’re concerned, the show is over.”

“I was leaving anyhow. With all these people, a dead body and a bomb, I was thinking of getting away from it all for a while. You know—to clear my head.”

“Just stay out of my way. Deal?”

“Your wish is my command, Detective.”

As they watched Jennifer make her way through the crowd, Speers turned to Kendall.

“Nothing but trouble, that one,” he said.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Kendall concurred.

Speers shook his head and began to walk away.

“One more thing, sir,” Kendall said tentatively. “Ms. Malone said a man in the crowd saw a grey Volvo parked on Elm Avenue at 6:45. He said a white male was behind the wheel.”

“Have Mario take a statement and follow it up. I’m going to talk to the press and then head to Barker’s house to see if we can figure out why he was here in the first place.”

Jennifer half-jogged back to The Telegraph and made a beeline to Mitch Carson’s office.

“I’m onto something really big. The only thing is I can’t tell you what,” she said, out of breath.

“What do you mean you can’t tell me? I’m the editor-in-chief!”

“Time’s a-wastin’, Mitch. Trust me on this. It’ll only be for a few hours.”

“Fine. Now if time really is a-wastin’, what are you doing here?”

“I have to take a little trip and won’t be back until noon at the earliest.”

“Are you kidding?” Mitch protested. “You’re my best reporter. That’s why I didn’t hesitate to give you this thing. Now you want to bail?”

“All I need is someone to cover the crime scene—you know, take notes of times, talk to witnesses. One of the interns could do that.”

“You really can’t tell me where you’re going or why?”

“Right.”

“All of a sudden, I’m thinking I’m the crazy one.”

“It’s 8:00 now. I’ll call you later this morning, say 10:30, with an update.”

“You’d better. ’Cause if I don’t hear from you I’m going to give the byline to Girard.”

“That hack?”

“I heard that, Malone,” Arnold Girard said with a smirk as he passed the doorway.

“I meant ‘hack’ in a positive way,” Jennifer called after him.

“Now that’s settled, do you need anything for this secret journey?”

Jennifer thought for a few seconds.

“Got a hundred bucks for expenses?”