Silencing Sam (7 page)

“Any pictures? Give us a photo, I'm sure we could give you an ID.”

“No, that's the problem. But from the description, we're starting to wonder if the same man is walking the check in about a third of our downtown meal-theft cases.”

“So he's not just forgetting his wallet?”

He shook his head. “He's hungry, broke, or a jerk. Maybe all three.”

We laughed. And just as I was getting up to leave, the PIO
got to the other point of our visit. “We're kind of curious about where your buddy's getting all his information.”

“Which buddy are you talking about?” I asked.

“Your Texas buddy.” He meant Clay. I imagined the cops were annoyed that he had the inside track on the headless homicide.

“Why don't you ask him yourself?” I was curious, as well as envious, about which homicide detective he'd gotten tight with.

“I already did. Your new reporter referred us to your station lawyer, who referred me to the state shield law.”

I smiled. Minnesota's shield law protecting reporter sources is among the best in the nation. I'd hidden sources behind it myself more than once. After decades of debate, a federal shield law was still unresolved.

“Sorry, I can't help you,” I replied. “No idea who he's talking to. I'm just as interested.” I sure was, because Clay doing good made me look mediocre.

The PIO didn't respond, like he was trying to decide whether or not to believe me.

“Maybe you should warn your investigators about the perils of releasing unauthorized information to the media,” I said, smirking a little.

Such an admonition would be pointless. Sources have their own reasons for leaking stuff. Sometimes it's to curry favor with a reporter. Sometimes it's to screw a boss. Occasionally their rationale is more noble; they believe it's for the public good. I've broken stories with insider information for all those reasons and more. The best physical features for a source are keen eyes and a sharp tongue. If the chief caught this latest leak, somebody's career in law enforcement would be over.

I gave my thanks and left to go find sound and cover for my economy filchers story. Because gas stations have surveillance cameras, their thieves are generally easier to catch, unless
they've duct-taped over their license plates. The lunch larceners are the bigger challenge.

My afternoon turned out to include a fun interview with a restaurant owner complaining about dining-and-dashing miscreants who order steak instead of soup and wishing, if they truly were broke, they'd at least have the dignity to offer to do dishes.

I tried to firm up whether, like the cops suspected, one criminal might be responsible for many of the meal thefts, because one big bad guy is always more newsworthy than a bunch of little bad guys. But it was still too fuzzy, though I did get several food managers to promise to call me if Mr. Dine-and-Dash came back for seconds.

I stuck around after the news to run through my gossip suspect list again, loading the names into a spreadsheet. Bad haircuts. Party flirts. Cheating in the carpool lane. Those accusations were probably true. But that didn't mean the victims couldn't still be pissed at being outed by Sam.

I made a subcategory of more-subjective smears. A politician who yelled at her misbehaving toddler while shopping. Another politician who didn't yell at her misbehaving toddler while shopping. A department store Santa who hiccuped instead of ho-hoing.

I grouped others together who'd obviously been treated unfairly by the media, even though I hated to disparage the media by lumping Sam in with the rest of us.

A young actress belittled for leaving a meager tip when it was a case of mistaken identity. A world-renowned transplant surgeon about whom Sam repeated rumors concerning a hospital nurse and a supply closet. A judge whose reputation was hurt after his crazy ex posted doctored photos online. While the columnist didn't actually publish them, he directed readers
to the website that did and reported—truthfully, he'd noted as justification—that the judge was embarrassed about his inability to get them yanked off the Internet.

And this list didn't even count folks Sam had publicly teased with “I know what you're up to but I'm not telling.” That stunt was a regular feature in his weekend “Piercing Eyes” column.

I finally gave up trying to see through all the clutter. Nobody seemed to have a more compelling reason than anybody else for silencing Sam.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I was late meeting Garnett. Then I remembered what he had said about the killer hating me as much as the gossip writer and trying to frame me for the crime. Then it occurred to me that Sam's killer might not necessarily bear me malice but simply see me as a convenient scapegoat to deflect suspicion. Without even thinking, my eyes found the mystery woman's note, still pinned to my wall.

“Thanks Alot, Riley, Give Everyone The Disturbing Information Regarding That Bad Ass Gossip.”

Clay was also working late.

On my way out, I tried to coax the name of his informant by complimenting his coverage—one reporter to another. He just laughed and insisted a good journalist never reveals a source, especially not to a potential suspect.

“You must think I'm dumber than dirt, little lady.”

“Oh come on, cowboy,” I said, figuring two could play at Texas talk. “You don't really think I shot Sam?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “I don't expect you're capable of hitting the side of a barn. Heck, missy, you probably never even held a gun.”

Then he opened his suit jacket and flashed a shiny handgun in a shoulder holster.

“A gun!” I gasped. “Here at the station?” I looked around, but the newsroom was fairly empty and nobody seemed to be paying attention to us.

“Sure thing,” he said. “Handy as a pocket on a shirt.”

Clay winked and assured me that Texas gun-carry permits are reciprocal in Minnesota. Now I understood how he'd gotten so chummy with the local cops so fast. Waving a weapon likely helped him bond. So would arguing over who had more firepower.

“Go ahead and grip it,” he suggested, opening his jacket again and moving closer toward me. “Safety's on.”

I didn't tell him about my dead husband's gun. I'd declined to take it back from the police after their investigation because I didn't want to own a weapon that had killed someone—even though that particular victim deserved to die. I'd already regretted that decision once, but not enough to shop for a replacement.

Clay apparently noticed my hesitation. “You northern ladies afraid of guns?”

I ignored his taunt. My hand brushed against his chest as I pulled the Glock from his holster. I experimented with its heft. Favored by cops, it felt familiar. I stretched my arm, purposely holding the barrel even with my eye, before holstering the weapon behind his jacket.

He insisted on walking me out to my car. Maybe because it was dark, because he was armed, or because a crazy lady sent me pretty flowers with a confusing note, I agreed.

Garnett had his feet on my coffee table and a beer in his hand when I walked in carrying Chinese food and chopsticks. He'd checked with his old homicide buddies, who'd all denied being Clay's leak, as usual blaming the medical examiner.

“Yeah, well, you'd always deny it too if they asked you about me,” I said.

“They don't have to ask anymore,” he answered. “They can read about it in the paper. Oops, those days are gone.”

He raised his beer in a tasteless toast that I ignored as I opened fried rice and a chicken lo mein dish for us to share. Cops can be just as cynical as journalists.

“Don't joke about Sam being dead,” I said. “Or they might start speculating you killed him to defend my honor. You're lucky you were in Washington that night.”

He shook his head and laughed. “For a guy no one seemed to like, his murder certainly is getting plenty of attention.”

From a journalistic standpoint, Sam deserved the play. Newspapers are a dying industry. That's hardly news anymore. But dead newspaper columnists still deserve coverage. I didn't begrudge Sam his postmortem headlines.

“He seemed to relish being feared more than being liked,” I said. “I wonder why.”

“Well, you know what they say: if you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me.” Garnett patted the couch beside him.

“Olympia Dukakis in
Steel Magnolias,
1989,” I said as I sat down. “But she ripped it off from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt's socialite daughter.”

Garnett and I had a tradition of weaving famous movie lines into our conversations and guessing the film, actor, and year. I associated movies with major news events and recalled watching
Steel Magnolias
about the same time Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini was condemning Salman Rushdie to death for blasphemy.

I was used to viewers complaining about my stories—there'd even been occasional advertising boycotts—but at least I'd never been the subject of a fatwa.

A copy of
The Satanic Verses
sat on a bookcase in the other room, grouped with my collection of other controversial fiction like
Harry Potter, The Catcher in the Rye, Lady Chatterley's Lover,
and
The Da Vinci Code.

“An odd thing happened at the station today,” I said.

I ran my fingers through Garnett's graying hair as I told him about Clay's gun, but Garnett shrugged off the incident. He carried a Glock himself and didn't understand why more people didn't—as long as they weren't convicted felons. He figured Clay to be a show-off for flashing the weapon at me and probably not much of an actual shot.

From his résumé tape, Clay hadn't seemed much of a crime reporter, either. Noreen likely fell for him because he included standups on horseback and a news feature on why armadillos are adorable. He'd clearly researched and exploited her weakness for animal stories.

Noreen probably also jumped at the chance to add a man to the news staff cheap. Women outnumber men three to one when it comes to TV news résumé tapes because we're willing to work for less and put up with more to break into the business.

But when I'd gone to his former station's website and viewed some of his old stories online, I realized Clay wasn't the himbo I'd first thought. He'd broken some news on a school district bribery scandal. And he'd also landed a compelling interview with a death row inmate.

I hated to admit it, but Clay had the makings of a real newsman. I was beginning to suspect his cocky cowboy attitude just might be a ruse to get opponents to underestimate him.

Since both recent homicides—Sam's and the headless woman's—happened in the same jurisdiction, most likely he'd gotten close to one well-placed source.

“I got a couple of leads on his mystery informant,” Garnett said. He'd learned one of the Minneapolis Police homicide investigators grew up in Texas. Between the gun and that good-ole-boy fact, Channel 3's new reporter could have hit the jackpot in source development and murder timing.

“But there's an even stronger possibility,” Garnett said. “Your pal was in a closed-door meeting with the police chief the other day.”

“Chief Capacasa? He was probably screaming at Clay about the whole mess. He hates reporters.”

“Maybe not all reporters. Maybe just you.”

Minneapolis police chief Vince Capacasa and I had a history of creative skirmishes, so he was always snarly around me. But I could envision a scenario of him throwing some choice news
morsels to a rookie, like Clay, to make him indebted down the line, and maybe to make a veteran, like me, look like I was losing my touch.

“It's all making sense.” Understanding his source made his scoops less galling and my misses less vexing. I appreciated Garnett's input on his old career cronies.

These days, he wasn't sharing many juicy details about his new job at Homeland Security. Most of the time, he said, it wouldn't be stuff that interested me. But once he hinted that the folks running the operation weren't the brightest bulbs. And I wondered if he regretted his vocation change. Especially after two flashy party crashers infiltrated a White House state dinner and ridiculed the very idea of security on the federal level. Sometimes, I even got the impression the high-tech toys the feds had access to didn't interest Garnett as much as playing old-fashioned cops and robbers.

I wondered what he knew about cell phone bombs, so I brought up the wind turbine blasts.

“Do you think a terrorist ring might be behind them?” I asked. “Domestic? International?”

He shrugged. “Cell phone bombs sound sophisticated, but they're not all that difficult. Ingredients are easy to come by. Detonation is as simple as making a phone call.”

I filled him in on the tension between the sheriff and the FBI guy. Nothing new to him. Feds and locals often clash on the direction of investigations.

“One thing that sticks out,” he said, “is that nobody's been hurt. It's almost like your bomber is taking pains not to harm actual people. That's unusual in committed terror circles. Normally you'd see a body count.”

Since I knew some of the folks living within the wind farm acreage, that appeared to be a good thing. I'd have hated to see any of them as either victims or perpetrators. Like the rest of the rural neighbors down there, I was betting on an outsider. But
Garnett's observation of only property damage supported the theory that a peeved local might be behind it all.

“Can you see what you can find out?” I asked.

“No promises,” he said. Which was better than a firm no. Since our relationship had turned personal, there was less exchanging of professional information. Maybe it was because he had a new job. Or maybe it was because any scoop I broke might reflect back on him.

So I changed the subject back to his favorite topic. Murder. He had once been a top homicide investigator, and this seemed a good time to get his take on the headless body.