“Oh, Jesus, you fucking bitch!”
Now, time to scream.
She inhaled deep. But before she could cry out he tackled her hard, driving a shoulder into her solar plexus. She fell to the ground, pain radiating from her gut to the bridge of her nose. Tears streamed.
Oh, Josh . . . Josh . . .
She grappled with the phone. Mets Man ripped it from her hand.
“Why did you do that?” he whispered. “It could have been so good. Why?”
She tried to crawl away, but the blow had virtually paralyzed her.
He seemed disgusted, as if this were all her fault. He shook his head and looked around.
For what?
No, no . . .
He was plucking a large rock from a garden beside the sidewalk. He walked slowly to her. Elly Morgan closed her eyes. She was numb. She could think of nothing, she could hear nothing, she could sense nothing . . . except the aroma of the soup, crab soup, lovely soup, spreading in a pink pool only inches from where she lay.
“What . . . My God. What’ve you done?”
As he looked down at the body of the young woman, her head bloody and crushed, Peter Tile was aware of a scent: Maryland crab chowder. A dish he would never eat again in his life.
“It was an accident.” His boss doffed his Mets cap and wiped his brow.
“It wasn’t an accident. You fucking killed her. And you’re still fucking holding the murder weapon.”
His boss looked down at the bloody piece of stone. He dropped the hunk of jagged granite, now rich with DNA and fingerprints. He whispered, “She was going to—”
“Stop you from raping her? The hell did you think she was going to do?”
“It just got out of hand. She was flirting.”
“I was in the bar. We both were. We were watching you. You came on too strong.”
“She hit me.” He pointed to his jaw. “I think I lost a tooth.”
Tile looked up and down the sidewalk. No one present. And no security cameras. One of the reasons Tile had picked this hotel.
Tile took a deep breath. He made a phone call.
“’Lo?”
“Head to the South Wing. Now. We’ve got a problem.”
Sixty seconds later, Eddie Von appeared. He was five-ten and stocky, muscle-stocky. His thinning black hair was combed back with sweet-smelling lotion. He was blunt in appearance and blunt in manner. His dangling hands drew naturally up into fists.
“Shit,” he grumbled. Not horrified, just thinking of how to deal with this inconvenience.
Tile: “Get her into the bushes.”
Tile and Von gripped her feet and tugged her out of sight. Tile picked up the bloody rock with an untucked tail of his dress shirt and dropped it beside the body.
“What are we going to do?” His boss wiped his brow once more. “You have to figure this out. You have to do something.”
He was furious with the man, but, yes, Peter Tile absolutely did. It was his job to make sure that nothing—even murder—was going to derail the career of the man standing before him: John C. Heller, governor of the state of New York, and the man virtually guaranteed to lead his party to victory in the presidential election in November.
IV
JULY 15, PRESENT DAY
16
At eight a.m., Dottie Wyandotte walked into the Examiner newsroom and could see something was terribly wrong.
Police were in Gerry Bradford’s office and the editor in chief’s face was stricken. He’d misbuttoned his shirt. Five staffers were standing together, their arms crossed or dangling at their sides, their faces dismayed. Pam Gibbons, Dottie’s assistant, had been crying.
Bradford looked toward her and rose, saying something to the police. He stepped outside and walked to her.
“What?” she blurted. “Tell me.”
“It’s Fitz. He was killed last night.”
“Oh, God. No, no!” Dottie’s hands were shaking. She set down her Starbucks tea, sloughed her computer bag, let it slide to the floor. Tears welled.
Gibbons noticed her boss and made a beeline. They embraced.
“Pam.”
The women separated and, lassoing the emotions, Dottie said in a low voice, “What happened?”
Bradford nodded to the police. “They said it was meth cookers. That story he was working on? They shot him . . . And then burned his house down, destroyed all his files, notes, contacts. They found meth on the front doorknob and stair railing. A fentanyl patch by the curb. I mean, they’ll investigate, but we knew those tweakers were dangerous. He was . . .” Bradford’s thought caught. “Fitz was dead before the fire. You want to sit down?”
“No.”
“Fuck. I can’t believe it.”
The first time the pristine editor in chief had ever used an obscenity, to her knowledge.
“He has family,” she said.
“A son. They called him, the police did. He and his wife’re on their way here.”
Dottie had noted a picture of Fitz, his wife and an athletic-looking teenage boy. It was in the center of the wall behind his desk here. She could turn and look at it now. She didn’t.
“Dottie?” Bradford asked.
She looked up from the floor.
“Did you know that he had cancer?”
“Fitz?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t. But the coughing. And the lozenges. I should have guessed.”
“No, that was pollen. He was allergic. It’s pancreatic. It’d spread. I just thought I’d tell you. Not that it makes any difference.”
“Not a bit of difference,” Dottie said angrily.
Bradford nodded. “I better go back. They have some more questions. They’ll want to talk to you too, the police.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“I’ll come up with an obit. We don’t have anything in the morgue on him.”
The “morgue”—the file cabinet, or digital folder, containing obituaries written about individuals while they were still alive. Upon their deaths, the articles would be updated and dropped into the paper.
She nodded, numb, and started back to her cubicle.
Bradford said, “Oh, Dottie?”
After a moment, she looked up.
“Corporate wants a piece on influencer animals.”
“Animals?” she asked, not comprehending.
“They liked your last piece, on the body painting. You know Christiana, the supermodel, LA?”
Fitz was dead. A man she’d just been talking to last night. Sipping chamomile and whiskey.
Just not together . . .
“Dottie?”
Her attention returned. “Animals?”
“She’s got a cat. He’s got his own blog and YouTube channel. Christiana does the voice-overs but the cat’s in the video with the products and people she’s promoting. Millions of hits. And millions of dollars. There’ll be others out there.”
“Influencer animals?”
“Right. Chet Grant wants you to do a series.”
Head of OOMC at the company. Not the boss of bosses but close.
“And they need the first piece ASAP. Chet’s worried about losing the exclusive. Apparently the subject’s trending.”
“All right,” Dottie said. “I’ll get on it.” Numb, she turned toward her computer.