Patton hadn’t seen the shooter, was questioned and released. Apart from Patton and Vanya, there had been no witnesses to the shooting, no suspects. Police found a half kilo of heroin taped under the dashboard of Roccio’s Subaru Forester.
The news crawl resumed, and this time Cindy read it from the beginning.
Chicago drug dealer shot in execution-style murder at 10:30 a.m. on Monday.
Cindy sat still for a moment and let the connection sink in. Roccio was shot on the same day and at the same time that the Barons had been shot.
She called her boyfriend, Rich Conklin, who she knew was still sleeping.
“Sorry, Richie, but I’ve got something to tell you. It’s hot. Yeah, I’d call it very damned important,” Cindy said.
CHAPTER 24
ON DIRECT ORDERS from the man she loved, Cindy waited two excruciating hours, so as not to wake Lindsay, and then she called her.
“Lindsay. It’s Cindy.”
“Everything okay? I’m trying to get out of here. I still need to press a shirt and dry my hair—”
“What time is it, Linds?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m asking you. What time is it?”
“Uh. Eight thirty.”
“That’s right, Lindsay. At this time yesterday the Barons were killed, and at this same time yesterday Albert Roccio, smoke shop owner in Chicago, was shot between the eyes. Cops found a hefty bag of heroin taped to the underside of his dash.”
Silence on the phone.
“Lindsay? Linds, you there?”
“I hear you.”
“Good. Richie told me that I had to tell you that I want to run with this drug dealer–time of death connection, which, as you know, Lindsay, is what the Chronicle pays me to do. Chicago dude and Barons, all holding significant drugs for distribution, all shot at the same time, each struck by a single kill shot.”
“I gave you information about the Barons in your car and off the record. Do you remember?”
Lindsay’s voice was thrumming with badass. She’d seen Cindy make headlines from invisible ink before.
Cindy loved Lindsay and wouldn’t betray her, but frankly, she’d just made a connection that spelled more than a coincidence; it was some kind of collusion. TBD. Which was the difference between writing “What to do this weekend in San Francisco” and investigative journalism. She was onto a gangbuster front-page story.
Cindy said, “I know. I know you told me off the record. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking for your permission.”
“Calm down, Cindy.”
“You, too, Lindsay.”
Henry Tyler, the publisher and editor in chief of the Chronicle and her “rabbi,” knocked on her glass door, then came into her office and sat in the side chair. He held up his hand, mouthed, “I can wait.”
Lindsay was saying, “I understand this is some kind of sacrifice, but I’m going to give you another off-the-record tip as compensation. Hear me?”
Cindy scoffed. “Yes. What is it?”
“Here’s another dot to connect. There was a shooting in LA yesterday, 8:30 a.m. But as of now, nothing about drugs.”
Cindy nodded to Tyler, held up a finger, Just a minute, and said to Lindsay, “Can you officially confirm that?”
“No. It’s an anonymous tip. Find out some other way. You can’t quote me or say sources close to the police or anything like that, and do not link that up with the Baron murders—”
“Or what? Roger Jennings was my story, by the way.”
“Don’t do it, Cindy. I’ll give you the go-ahead with a quote soon, but I need to see if there really is a connection before you take it public and warn off the shooters.”
“Okay. So no problem with the LA piece?”
“Just don’t mention the time of the shooting.”
Cindy exhaled her exasperation, said, “Okay. Talk to you later.”
She clicked off and said hi to Henry Tyler, her publisher and editor, a kind man who’d backed her wild notions and promoted her to senior reporter on the crime desk.
He said, “Sorry to interrupt. Look. Do me a favor, Cindy. Take McGowan under your wing, will you? He’s a good writer, but he’s new to us. He could use some help getting into the swing of things around here.”
“Sure, Henry,” she said.
Tyler thanked her and left her office. He had just left when McGowan stepped in, without knocking, and sat down in the chair.
“So, Cindy. What’s the inside scoop on the Baron killings? Tyler wants us to work together on the story.”
CHAPTER 25
I ARRIVED IN the squad room an hour and a half late that morning.
I was still rattled from the fit Julie had thrown because Joe couldn’t take her to the pre-K school bus, and was sick with worry about Claire’s heartbreaking news. Cindy’s phone call had scrambled whatever cognition I had left after my sleepless night, and a traffic detour on Bryant had made me frustrated and bad tempered.
All I said to Richie was, “Life kneecapped me this morning.”
He gave me a long look, pointed at my jacket.
I looked down at the dribble of white down my jacket lapel. Even the toothpaste was out to get me. I shrugged off my jacket, hung it on the back of my chair. I noticed that someone had messed with my desk.
“What happened here?”
“Brady happened,” Conklin said. “You were still floating on the wine country afterglow. He’s a little compulsive.”
“Ya think?”
I sat down, wheeled the chair up to my desk, and started returning articles to where they belonged. Lamp, notepad, picture of Julie and Joe. I stared at my mug, now full of pens, and said, “Any progress on the Barons?”
He said, “Clapper called. The bullets were recovered, but they’re soft points. One was deformed by the inside of Paul’s skull. The other went through Ramona, smashed into a wall.”
“So much for ballistics,” I said.
Richie went on. “I spoke to Sergeant Noble, LAPD. They have nothing yet on the Peavey shooting, but they want to work with us. And here’s the name of the primary lead detective on the Chicago shooting. I left a message. No call back.”
Conklin passed me a sticky note over the narrow gulch separating our desks. It read, “Det. Stanley Richards. Victim, Albert Roccio, smoke shop dude.”
It was 11:50 in Chicago. I made the call, was passed around the police department until Detective Richards picked up his phone.
I introduced myself, said that my partner was also on the line, and told the detective that I’d read about Albert Roccio. I said, “We’ve had a couple of similar shootings here.”
Richards said, “What can I do for you?”
I couldn’t keep the stress out of my voice as I gave the detective what we had: the “rehearsal” at the Taco King and the Baron shootings. I also told him about Fred Peavey, the LA dealer who’d dropped his kid off at school and taken one through the forehead. Richards was aware of only the Barons, who’d made the national news.
I said, “The Barons and Peavey happened at the same time, 8:30 a.m. Monday morning Pacific Standard Time.”