4 Shot Off The Presses (2 page)

It only took me about five minutes to get from downtown Mount Clemens to the scene of the crime. The directions my editor had given me indicated that the shooter had used the bridge over I-94 and Cass – which meant I could access the action by driving down Gratiot – a big highway with several lanes to ease unruly traffic congestion.

When I made the turn onto Cass, I was surprised to see the number of emergency vehicles congregating under the freeway bridge. Between the sheriff’s department cars, two ambulances and three fire trucks – there weren’t a lot of places to park. I pulled into the parking lot of the small Polish restaurant on my right, rummaged through my glove compartment for a reporter’s notebook, and then exited my car.

I walked about five hundred feet, until I got to the hastily erected police tape line, and glanced around. There was a group of people milling about on the same side of the tape as me – away from the action. Most of them looked appropriately horrified – and equally curious. Essentially, people feign horror at violent crimes, but they also want to know the gritty details.

The onlookers were focused on the bevy of police officers and emergency personnel who were working on extricating injured passengers and dazed drivers from no less than five crumpled vehicles. I turned to the woman next to me for answers.

“I thought this was a freeway shooter?”

“It was,” the woman, a pretty brunette with a pixie cut, replied.

“Then why are there so many crashed vehicles?”

“I guess the driver of the car, the woman that was hit, crashed into one of the other vehicles and it caused several collisions.”

“There was a woman driving?”

“Yeah,” the brunette nodded. “I saw the ambulance load her up and take her away.”

“Were you involved in this?” I asked, flipping my notebook open and jotting down a few notes.

The woman eyed my notebook curiously. “Are you a reporter?”

“Yeah, for The Monitor,” I said. “I was downtown when I got the call to come out here. I’m still catching up.”

“I wasn’t in the accident,” the woman bit her lower lip. “Can I still be in the paper?”

I didn’t see why not. I took the information she had to give – which was unexpectedly plentiful.

“Can you describe where the female driver was hit?” I asked.

“It looked like it was her upper chest or shoulder,” the woman replied. “That’s the area they had bandaged when they loaded her into the ambulance. It was a mess, though. It’s hard to be absolutely sure.”

“Was she awake?”

“Yeah,” the woman widened her brown eyes. “She kept asking about her kids.”

“Her kids? I quirked my eyebrows in surprise. “She had kids in the car?”

“Yeah,” the woman nodded. “They didn’t look like they were injured, though. The sheriff’s deputies loaded them in another ambulance and took them away. They were both screaming their heads off, but I think they were just scared. I don’t think they wanted to keep them out here if they didn’t have to.”

That made sense.

“What about the injuries for the other drivers? I’m sure there were a lot of scrapes and bruises, but did you see anyone hurt really badly?”

“No,” the woman shook her head. “They just seemed more angry and shook up than anything else.”

I got the woman’s name and then slipped underneath the police tape. The woman seemed impressed with my bravado, but I figured the cops had more to worry about than a reporter on the wrong side of the police tape. Or, maybe I just hoped that.

I moved closer to the accident scene, pulling my phone out of my purse to shoot some video as I did. I had gone unnoticed for a full ten minutes before I heard a voice behind me – and it wasn’t a voice I was particularly glad to hear.

“Get your ass back behind the yellow tape!”

I swung around, plastered a fake smile on my face, and greeted my cousin Derrick with as much faux enthusiasm as I could muster. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You’re such a liar,” Derrick grunted, running his hand through his black hair angrily, when he saw me. Despite the fact that we had been practically inseparable as kids, we had taken different paths as adults. He had followed his heart into law enforcement and I had joined the one profession that made cops want to turn into violent criminals – a reporter.

“I don’t think it’s nice to call your favorite cousin a liar,” I sang out jovially.

“Who says you’re my favorite cousin?” Derrick countered.

“Of course I’m your favorite cousin,” I waved off his statement. “Who else would it be?”

“Mario,” Derrick crossed his arms over his chest triumphantly and fixed me with a pointed stare.

“Mario? He’s hilarious, I’ll admit it, but he’s not exactly someone you spend a lot of time with.”

“I don’t spend a lot of time with you either, thank God,” Derrick pointed out. “At least I’m in a bowling league with Mario.”

“You’re in a bowling league? That’s just embarrassing.”

“How is that embarrassing?” Derrick narrowed his brown eyes. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“That’s an ugly thing to say.” Notice that I didn’t say he was wrong.

“Get on the other side of the tape,” Derrick ordered again.

“What? I’m not doing anything,” I protested.

“You’re bugging me,” Derrick replied. “And this is my crime scene.”

I pursed my lips. That could be both good and bad for me. “Well then, deputy, why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”

“We’ll have a press conference when we know more,” Derrick said sternly.

“Oh, just give me something,” I protested.

“I’ll give you a fat lip,” Derrick growled.

“You can’t hit a civilian,” I smiled widely.

“I can if she’s my cousin,” Derrick replied angrily. “Plus, you’ve earned it. Remember when you gave me a black eye when we were kids?”

“That was an accident,” I pointed out. “You were the one that put your eye down to one end of a pipe that we were sliding a broom handle through to entertain ourselves. That was really your fault.”

Derrick chewed the inside of his lip in aggravation. He knew I was right. He needed to let that black eye go. We were kids. Cripes. He had done equally horrible things to me. I was almost sure of it.

“I’m not telling you anything,” Derrick finally said. “And because you’re such a pain, I might even bar you from the press conference.”

“You can’t do that,” I scoffed.

“I can so.”

‘You can’t. I’ll file a complaint.”

Derrick looked incensed and he snorted through his ski-slope nose to indicate just how irritated he really was. He looked like an angry little bull and I was waving the red flag right in front of him.  “You wouldn’t dare.”

“If you try to bar me from a press conference, you have no idea what I’m capable of,” I warned him.

Derrick gripped my arm angrily. “I wouldn’t advise that if I were you.”

“Why? What are you going to do, tell my mom?”

Light glinted in Derrick’s eye. That was precisely what he planned to do. I watched, fascinated and terrified at the same time, as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. I was still frozen in fear as he scrolled through his contacts and frowned when I saw him pull up my mother’s name.

He smiled at me as his finger hovered over the little phone symbol that would connect him with my mother and her never-ending bag of grief. “If you do that, I’ll call your mother and tell her you had sex with your high school girlfriend in her bed when she was out of town.”

Derrick cocked his head and smirked. “She already knows. Lexie told her when she was mad at me a couple of years ago.”

Crap.

“Did Lexie tell your mom about the time you stole her car when you were only fourteen and did donuts on the front lawn of the principal’s house?”

I didn’t have to ask the question because I knew the answer. No one knew about that. No one but me, that is. And how did I know? Technically I had been with him.

“That will get you in trouble, too,” Derrick pointed out.

I considered the statement and then shrugged it off. “I don’t care. I’ll just tell my mom you made me go.”

“She won’t believe that.”

He had a point. “Well, I don’t care. I’ll still tell on you.”

Derrick blew out a frustrated sigh. “What do you want to know?”

“What do you have?”

“Not a lot,” Derrick conceded. “We have a young mother and two small kids in the car. We have no idea if she was targeted or if she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Did anyone see the shooter?”

“No,” Derrick shook his head. “Someone did see a white van parked on top of the bridge, though.”

“License plate?”

“No, not even a partial.”

“Any description of the driver of the van?”

“No.”

“Man? Woman?”

“There was no description.”

“What kind of a gun was used?”

“We’ll have no idea about that until the doctors get the bullet out of the victim,” Derrick said. “Even then, we probably won’t make the caliber of weapon public.”

“Was more than one shot fired?”

Derrick shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. It’s going to take us a long time to sort this mess out.”

I glanced behind him and couldn’t help but agree. “Anything else?”

Derrick wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“When is the press conference?” I was enjoying messing with him.

“We’ll send a press release to the paper when we decide.” He liked messing with me, too.

He was done talking, though. That much was obvious. I didn’t know what else he could give me anyway. “Thank you for your professionalism,” I said snottily. “Have a nice day.”

I started to walk away, back towards the area where my car was parked, but Derrick stopped me. “Are you going to family dinner tomorrow night?”

Crap. “Is it Thursday?” Time flies when you don’t want to go to family dinner.

“Yep.”

“Well, then I guess I’m going to family dinner tomorrow,” I sighed. “I hate family dinner.”

“Who doesn’t?” Derrick didn’t exactly look thrilled with the prospect of spending time with our relatives either.

“No way out of it, though,” I said. “I think the only excuse is death – and I’m not sure if I’m willing to go that far.”

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Derrick said.

“One way or the other,” I agreed.

It only took me a few minutes to get back to the office. The Monitor is located on the outskirts of Mount Clemens – the county seat – and was erected on a piece of land that had once been a dump. It has a white trash flea market on one side and a series of low-income apartments on the other. A local river that slices throughout the county has beach access across the road, and one might think that would be a nice feature. Unfortunately, though, the river is so polluted that it sometimes smells like rotten fish (and the occasional dead body). Yeah, it’s not a great area.

When I entered the building, I used the fob on my keychain to access the departmental sections and offices behind the locked glass door that separated the reception area from the rest of the business. As I made my way to the editorial department, I cut through one of the conference rooms to get to the newsroom faster – and avoid the publisher’s office. He wasn’t a fan of the way I dressed and I wasn’t a fan of just about anything he did.

I made my way down reporters’ row, dropping my new
The Walking Dead
purse in my cubicle and joining my co-workers as they gossiped in the middle of the aisle. When the cubicles were constructed, it was in an effort to cut down on our incessant chatter. That’s why we had tall walls instead of short walls – like a normal newsroom. The effort was in vain. It just forced us to stand when we gossiped instead of sitting.

“What’s up?”

Marvin Potts, one of my best friends at the paper, turned to me with a wide smile. “We’re just talking about Duncan,” he said.

“What did Duncan do?” I grimaced. Like everyone else in the building, I hated Duncan. He was the office tool. If you looked up douche on Wikipedia, you would find his photo. I’m not joking. I uploaded it myself.

“Duncan has taken it on himself to hold a seminar,” Marvin replied giddily.

“On what?” I asked blithely. “How to be the office asshole and still keep your job?”

“No, but he should do that,” Marvin agreed. “That’s his only talent.”

“Oh, come on,” I replied. “He’s also a pathological liar and emotionally vacant. He has a lot to officer to the journalism profession.”

“There’s that, too,” Marvin agreed.

“What’s he hosting a seminar on?”

“Cultivating contacts,” Marvin said succinctly.

“Like he would know how to cultivate a contact,” I scoffed. “He’s alienated three police stations in as many weeks. He’s got a personality like a rabid dog – only not as friendly.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Marvin said. “He has no self-awareness. That’s why he writes about bird diseases and historic speeches, stories that no one would ever want to read. He has no idea what real news is.”

“He’s just lazy,” I countered. “He’s a one-source wonder. He’s incapable of writing an actual news story.”

“So, I hear you got the freeway shooter?” Marvin changed the subject.

“Yeah.”

“What did you get?”

“Not much. Mother shot with kids in the car. She’s at the hospital. No one saw the shooter. There was a chain reaction crash after the initial gunshot. The investigation is ongoing.”

“Is the sheriff’s department having a press conference?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I have no idea if it’s going to be today or not, though.”

I left Marvin to continue making fun of Duncan and wandered down to my editor’s desk. Fred Fish is not what you expect when you envision an editor. Sure, he wears the tailor-made suits and the patent-leather shoes that go with being a successful businessman that has to be out in the public on a regular basis. He also wears enough jewelry to be confused with a pimp – or Burt Reynolds in the 1970s.

I leaned over his desk, trying to get a glimpse of what he was typing on his computer – just in case it was a memo about another dress code crackdown – and then waited for him to acknowledge me.

“What do you have?”

I told him about what I had witnessed at the scene and waited for further instructions. Fish glanced up at the clock and shrugged. “I doubt they’re going to have a press conference today.”

“No,” I agreed. “It will most likely be tomorrow morning.”

“This is yours,” Fish said. “It’s going to be a media circus.”

We didn’t get a lot of freeway shooters – only two that I could remember in my five-year tenure at the paper – but I knew he was right. “It’s bound to drum up a lot of frantic people.”

Fish grunted. “What else is new?”

“We should start outlining some angles now,” I suggested.

“Meaning?”

“After we get the identification of the woman that was shot, we’ll need to try and set up an interview with her or her family,” I started. “If she dies, then we’re going to need to do the puff piece on what a great person she is. We should also be prepared for all the gun control talk.”

“Gun control?” Fish raised his eyebrow in query.

“It’s bound to happen.”

Fish nodded. “Yeah. We’ll have to send someone out to the gun range and then talk to that anti-gun group out in Romeo.”

“MAG?” I raised my eyebrows dubiously. “Mothers Against Guns? They could have thought of a better name.”

“They’re nuts.”

I was surprised by the new voice interjecting itself into our conversation. I slid my face around and regarded one of The Monitor’s newest employees – Brick Crosby – standing by the copy machine and regarding me coolly.

I didn’t know a lot about Brick. He’d only been with the paper about two months. He worked nights, laying out the pages for the sports department. From what I had heard, he was kind of a weird guy. He brought a four-course meal into the paper every night to cook in the kitchenette – usually that included some sort of game animal as the main dish – and he was a rabid Pittsburgh Steelers fan. That was enough for me to dislike him without even speaking to him.

“You don’t like MAG?” I directed the question to Brick warily. Seriously, what were his parents thinking when they named him Brick? I had to wonder if that was his real name. One of the other reporters had tried to adopt a penname of Turk a few months ago – but he was laughed at so much he had dropped it relatively quickly. Maybe Brick had done the same thing?

“That group’s whole goal is to make sure that no self-respecting man can own a gun,” Brick replied bitterly.

“Man? Or person?” I didn’t like his tone.

“Does it matter?”

Apparently not to Brick. “I thought they were only against assault weapons and large magazines,” I finally said, mostly to fill the uncomfortable silence. I wasn’t sure what my stance on gun control was, and I wasn’t really in the mood to discuss it with a guy named Brick.

“That’s an invasion of my privacy,” Brick said angrily. “I have a right to protect myself. The Second Amendment gives me that right.”

“Do you have an assault weapon?”

Fish looked up curiously. “Yeah, Killer, do you have an assault weapon?”

“That’s none of your business,” Brick said coolly. “As a law-abiding citizen – and a veteran – I have the right to arm myself anyway I see fit.”

I glanced down at Brick’s camouflage pants and combat boots and then let my gaze wander up to his broad shoulders and aggressive stance. He was actually pretty short – only about two inches taller than me – which put him around 5’7” tall. I had a feeling his aggressive people skills had something to do with Little Man’s Syndrome. I was used to dealing with it when I interacted with Derrick, so I was familiar with the sudden fits of rage that accompanied the malady. I realized, pretty quickly I might add, that I had no inclination to argue with Brick – even if I thought he was probably a prime example of someone that shouldn’t own a gun.

“Yeah, it’s your right.”

Fish smirked at me and then focused on Brick. “You said you were a veteran?”

“Yeah,” Brick nodded. “Now you have a thing about veterans?”

“No,” Fish shook his head quickly. He was clearly nervous around our new employee. It was interesting – and something I was going to file away for future reference (or blackmail material when I didn’t want to cover a specific story). “I was just wondering if you know any snipers?”

“Why?” Brick was obviously a guy that didn’t trust anyone. He had a certain air of paranoia wafting around him.

“Because someone just took a shot at a driver from a freeway bridge over on Cass,” Fish said. “I’m assuming, with your knowledge of weapons, you would know how hard of a shot that was.”

Brick visibly relaxed. “Oh, yeah, I would think that’s a pretty hard shot. How open is the bridge?”

I described the area to him and waited.

“It’s wide open?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it depends,” Brick said finally.

“On what?”

“Whether it was a specific target or not.”

That actually made sense. “Say it was a specific target. Say the shooter picked out a specific person in a specific vehicle.”

“They you’re probably looking at someone that either has military training or has spent a lot of time practicing.”

“What if it was random?”

“Then you probably only need someone with a basic knowledge of how a gun works and a little bit of luck,” Brick replied matter-of-factly.

Well, that opened up the suspect pool drastically.

“So, basically, you’re saying we need to know how many shots were fired,” I sighed. “And how far away the shot really was.”

Brick smiled smugly. “Yeah. I know it’s probably hard for you, but you’re going to have to get some actual information before you start going after gun owners.”

I waited until Brick had disappeared back around the far side of the cubicles and turned to Fish. “Nice hire.”

“He’s not so bad,” Fish said. “He brought me some venison jerky.”

“Yum,” I said sarcastically.

“It was really good. He’s a master smoker.”

“That’s what she said.”

“What?” Fish looked confused.

“Never mind.”

I made my way back to my desk and booted up my computer. I Googled freeway shootings, hoping I would find some statistics, and was surprised to find that this wasn’t the first freeway shooting in the area over the past few days. There had been one in Oakland County, too, less than a week ago. Now that I read the story, I vaguely remembered hearing something about it on the nightly news. The Oakland County police had attributed the shooting to bored teenagers – mostly because the shot was believed to have originated from a footbridge by a nearby park. It hadn’t been solved, and the investigation had apparently stalled. Oakland County was notorious for hiding crime, though, so I had no idea where that investigation stood. I would have to try and reach out to a few reporters I knew across town – ones I could tolerate – which meant it was a short list. I printed out the story and took it to Fish’s desk.

“What’s that?”

I handed the story to him and waited for him to read it. When he was finished, he turned to me. “This could be a coincidence.”

“It could be,” I agreed. “We have no way of knowing yet if the two cases are related. One was a single businessman named Malcolm Hopper and one was a mother. They were in two different counties. It could be a copycat, too.”

“It could be,” Fish furrowed his brow. “Mention this shooting in your story, but don’t focus on it. We don’t want to create a panic if they’re not related. That will just make us look like jerks.”

Since the media was often regarded as jerks as it was, I didn’t disagree with him. “I’ll call over to the Oakland paper and see what they have. I’ll dig into that shooting and see what else I can unearth.”

“That’s a good idea,” Fish said. He glanced up at the wall clock. “You probably won’t be able to get anyone until tomorrow, though.”

“It’s just another angle,” I said absentmindedly.

“It’s a good angle,” Fish said. “Just don’t press it yet. We don’t want to do anything that’s going to come back and bite us.”

As a reporter that had witnessed many a story come back and bite me – or try to kill me – I had no problem acquiescing to his demands. I would wait. For now. I needed more information before I picked a direction to go.