LOVING HER SOUL MATE (9 page)

By now his hangover wasn’t
excruciating anymore, except in the sun when even his shades didn’t stop his
head from throbbing.
 
But he was out of
the glare of the morning sun.
 
He took
off his shades to prove that point.
 
And
as he walked into the City Hall press room, he walked, instead, into the glare
of the media.
 
And even in that media’s
glare, where a battle-weary, jaded cop like John Malone had seen it all, he
didn’t see Shay Turner coming.
 

He had been standing beside the
podium for nearly twenty minutes.
 
He
stood with his legs spread eagle and his muscular arms akimbo as he held fort
beside his boss, the chief of police Walt McNamara.
 
They were answering the usual questions by
the usual reporters about the usual cases.
 
Until Shay raised her hand.
 

John hadn’t seen her in three months
and the last time he saw her they had agreed to go their separate ways.
 
He had wanted a sexual relationship with her,
but she wasn’t having it.
 
Which, in truth, he was glad to know.
 
He would have been mighty disappointed if
Shay, like so many other women in his life, would have given him that kind of
leverage.

He still vividly remembered his
first encounter with her, when he was deciding whether to haul her ass in on a
DV.
 
More than seeing that backside of
hers, or even hugging her and fucking her, he remembered the emotions she
invoked in him.
 
It was so unnerving that
he still couldn’t work out what was that really all about.
 
And that body of hers, and the way she so perfectly
went down on him, had at one time given him wet dreams more befitting an
adolescent than a man his age.

This time, however, it wasn’t
about them.
 
It was all business with
her.
 
She, in fact, stood up and asked
the chief of police, a well-respected and feared man with twenty-eight years of
experience, if he was a racist.
 

The shock reverberated around the
press room and took on a life of its own.
 
Reporters, seasoned veteran journalists, looked at this newbie as if she
had just grown fangs.
 
Did she just ask
Chief McNamara if he was a racist?
 
Seriously, did she really?
 
Nobody
spoke to the great Walt McNamara that way.
 
Even Ronnie Burk looked embarrassed.
 

But, to the kid’s credit, John
thought, she did not back down.

“I ask the question,” she said, a
slight nervous quiver in her voice, “because of the number of murders in Dodge
the past few months and the fact that you and your department seem to be the
only human beings on earth who refuse to see a connection.”
 

McNamara frowned, his hands
outstretched.
 
“Who the hell are you?”

Some of the reporters
laughed.
 
But again, John thought, she
held her ground.
 

“I’m Shanay Turner, crime reporter
with the Brady Tribune.
 
Three women,
sir, have been brutally murdered in the last few months.
 
All three were African-American, all three
were prostitutes, all three were found in very close proximity, mere blocks,
from each other.
 
Yet you keep insisting
that those deaths aren’t related.”

“That’s because they aren’t
related!” McNamara shot back with anger in his voice.
 

John looked at his boss.
 
He usually handled tough questions with his
beloved smile, as if no question could possibly unhinge him.
 
But Shay, John knew even if nobody else in
the room did,
had
hit a nerve.
 

And Shay wasn’t about to let
up.
 
“But the backgrounds of all three
women are so similar, sir,” she went on.

“Three murders on the north side
of town is bad news, yes, I’ll grant you it’s a horrible statistic,” McNamara
pointed out.
 
“But our town is growing,
young lady.
 
Lots of
outside agitators coming in.
 
We’ve had eleven murders in total this year, which considering our
growing population, is a very good statistic.
 
Two of those deaths were white victims from the south side of town.
 
But that doesn’t mean I’m connecting those
murders to the same perp, either.
 
Crime
is crime, and unfortunately the bulk of the crimes always occur in depressed
areas.
 
That’s not unusual and that does
not denote any racial animus or underhanded dealings by my police force.
 
It simply denotes the facts of the
matter.
 
How long have you been a
reporter, Miss Turner?”

It was the old trick: turn the
tables on the questioner.
 
Make her the
issue, rather than her question.
 
Every
reporter John had ever known usually slithered away once that happened.
 
Nobody wanted McNamara’s glare on them.
 
John stared at Shay, wondering if she would slink
away too.

She was a fighter, John knew that
much about her already, a woman who had to scratch and claw for everything she
ever earned.
 
And today was no
exception.
 
Only now she seemed more of a
reluctant fighter to John, a woman, this early in her career, already well
acquainted with taking blows.
 

He wondered how long she could
endure McNamara’s legendary punches.

Shay wasn’t exactly immune to the
fact that she could become the chief’s punching bag.
 
But what was the point of being a reporter,
she reasoned, if she wasn’t going to ask the tough questions that needed to be
asked?
 
She had waited for some other
seasoned journalist to ask it, and was astounded when nobody would even broach
the subject.
 
It was as if this was some
exclusive club and all of the reporters in the room were careful not to lose
their membership.

“I’ve been a reporter for four
years, sir,” she proudly answered the chief, “and with the Tribune for
three-and-a-half months.”

“Three months,” McNamara said
snidely and reporters laughed again, making Shay feel like the lone wolf she
always managed to become.
 
And McNamara,
pleased to pit new reporter against the old school vets, kept the fun
going.
 
“Three long months,” he continued
with a sneer in his voice.
 
“Just got on
the stage and she’s already demanding the mike.”
 

John noticed how his boss
overlooked the fact that she’d been on that so-called stage for four years
prior to her stint here in Brady.
 
But he
also knew that such a fact was beside the point these days.
 
McNamara, a man John used to respect, no
longer cared about the facts of the matter.
 
In this election year sideshow what the chief cared about was the
appearance of the matter.
 
And making that
snide remark about her experience was for appearances sake.
 
It was all about making her seem small to
further elevate
himself
.
 
Which, in John’s eyes, made
McNamara the small one.

“But in answer to your insulting
question, Miss Turner,” McNamara continued, “no, I’m not a racist, never was
and never will be, and I’m offended that you would suggest such a thing.
 
But that’s what unprepared, incompetent
reporters do.
 
They play the race
card.
 
They take a few murders and just
because the victims were of the same race and from the same side of town, they
automatically scream
Connection!
Cover-up! Racism!
 
What I suggest you
do is learn more and speak less, like your colleague Ronnie Burk has always
been prone to do.
 
You can learn a thing
or two from him.
 
But you have a long way
to go, Miss Turner, to be half the reporter Ronald is.
 
And with an attitude like yours I’ll be
damned surprised if you make it.”
 

Then he looked away from her,
certain that he had put her back in her place.
 
“Next question?” he asked.

Hands shot up, but the kid, to
John’s admiration, refused to back down.
 

“The fact still remains, sir,”
Shay yelled out, to the room’s shock and growing annoyance, “that all three of
the victims were poor, African-American prostitutes, and all three of the
murders took place in Dodge.
 
Not just on
the north side of town as you suggest, but specifically in the poorest of poor
neighborhoods known as Dodge.
 
All of the
victims were tied by the wrists, had duct tape over their mouths, and all were
attacked late at night.
 
Yet instead of
sounding the alarm that a serial killer might be on the loose and citizens
fitting the victim profile should be more vigilant, you and your force shrug it
off as a coincidence.
 
As
three
coincidences.”

“We don’t shrug off any murder,
Miss Turner.”

“But there’s been such lax
investigations, sir-,” she started to say, but could feel Ronnie Burk’s hand
touch her on the elbow.
 
Because she was
new and still on probation, Ronnie was a team leader with the power to
recommend termination.
 
But knew she was
only
doing
 
her
job.
 

She jerked her elbow away from him
and continued to address the chief.
 
“If
other prostitutes understood the risk, sir, then they might take more
precautions at night.
 
They might---”

“They might all become nuns and
live happily ever after,” McNamara said to laughter from the room.
 
“Now if you interrupt this press conference
one more time, Miss Turner, you’ll be barred from coming back.
 
Get a handle on her, Ronnie, or I’ll lock out
your entire newspaper.”

“Yes, sir, and I apologize, sir,”
Ronnie Burk said with some degree of his own anger and this time not only took
Shay by the elbow, but escorted her from the press room altogether.

He sat her on a bench in the
corridor outside of the room and began to rip into her for ignoring his
advice.
 
Shay leaned her head against the
wall and listened, but she wasn’t buying it.
 
It was the job of a journalist to be confrontational.
 
Journalists were supposed to seek the truth
from city officials, not their favor.
 

But Ronnie went on and on, for
nearly ten minutes he lectured her.
 
And
she listened, but she still wasn’t buying it.

As the press conference ended and
other reporters began to peel out of the room, Shay noticed that Ronnie’s voice
became even more animated.
 
It was as if
her refusal to go along to get along had put his reputation on the line and he
wanted his colleagues to know how definitively he disapproved.
 
Shay understood the game, so she let him have
his say.

And then John Malone came out of
the press room, and began heading toward the exit doors, which meant he had to walk
pass them.
 
Ronnie, seeing this as his
opportunity, Shay supposed, immediately rose to his feet.

“Sorry about that, Captain
Malone,” he said as John approached.
 
“It
won’t happen again.”

John looked past Ronnie and at
Shay instead, who remained seated on the bench.
 
He was so proud of the way she comported herself in that press room,
despite McNamara’s bullying, that he wanted to kiss her.
 
But his face revealed nothing.

“Keep up the good work, Turner,”
he said and kept on walking.

Shay looked as John walked on
by.
 
Although she was floored by his vote
of approval, she couldn’t help but smile.
 

Ronnie, however, frowned.
 
He was dumbstruck.
 
“What good work?” he wanted to know.

FOUR

That same afternoon, within the
busy Brady Tribune newsroom, Ed Barrington, Shay’s boss, walked over to her
cluttered desk.
 
He was a tall man with
pasty skin in bad need of some sun, a receding hairline, and always wore
clothes so rumpled and stained they looked as if he had slept in them.
 
Often he forgot what day of the week it was,
sometimes he forgot what month.
 
But he
was one of the best instinct editors in the business.