As the Wicked Watch(104)

I ran the killer’s profile through my mind over and over again. It felt like I was in one of those infuriating dreams where I would attempt to dial a phone number but for the life of me could neither complete the action nor give up trying. I believed Masey’s and Tania’s killer and the man who attacked me were one in the same. When he was unsuccessful in his attempt to take my life and Bass’s that night on the parking deck, he found another life to take.

After I hung up with Justin, I texted Scott the address of the crime scene and asked him to meet me there. Then I called Ellen.

“Sorry to call so early, but it’s important. I just got a tip that another body was found overnight by a dumpster outside a restaurant . . . It’s Masey’s killer, I know it. He wants to steal his thunder back! I’m headed to the scene now.”

“Jordan, do you think it’s wise that this should be your first story just coming back to work?” she asked.

“Ellen, the kid gloves you and Peter are handling me with have got to come off at some point, so it might as well be now,” I said. “I’m back on the story.”

I showered in record time. To get out the door faster, I threw my makeup must-haves into my already tightly packed in-case-of-emergency cosmetic tote to apply on the way to the scene. The barbecue place floated in the middle of its ample parking lot like an island. A retaining fence in back separated the restaurant from a string of retail stores to the west, but the north and south entrances were accessible from the street, a four-lane boulevard with a wide concrete median. It wasn’t someplace where people hung out.

No witnesses.

It was a sobering thought that I could have ended up like poor Tania Mosley. The nineteen-year-old former high school track star had been one of millions of teenagers who faced homelessness on their own the past five or six months, trafficked by predators and working the streets. For that, her mother kicked her out of the house. Now she was angry and full of regret, insisting that she never stopped loving her daughter, pleading with the community to help find the killer. It was a repeat episode, only this time I scored an exclusive with her mother later that day, solidifying my place in the Chicago media lexicon as the reporter who landed the ratings-boosting tearful interview with the grieving mother.

The similarities between the condition of Masey’s body and Tania’s were too striking to ignore. I made the deduction even without the inside scoop from Dr. Chan. I missed him and wondered when he would return. After the last ill-timed call, I emailed him instead.

“Dr. Chan, how are you? So much has happened here. Another body was found, the MO similar to Masey James. When are you coming back? I was attacked last week. I think I was being watched. I’m fine now. But I think I got too close. Call me.”

I was prepared to deal with the damsel-in-distress treatment in the newsroom, where I had gained a kind of celebrity status that forced me to field the same types of questions over and over from my colleagues, oozing sincerity with their puppy dog expressions and pats on my shoulder. Their concern, I believed, was genuine. I just didn’t like being cast as a victim.

Two days later, Bartlett and Fawcett were still ignoring my calls, emails, and text messages, and I’d reached my limit. I drove over to police headquarters early that morning and stood outside by the employee entrance and waited for Bartlett to arrive at work. He got out of his car, red-faced and perspiring. Any attempt he’d made to appear like he was in control was long gone, the awful magnitude of what was unfolding breaking him into a thousand pieces.

“Jordan, you don’t have an appointment and I don’t have time to talk to you this morning,” he said, walking past me with his head down.

“Bartlett! Bartlett!” I said, walking alongside him. He wouldn’t even look at me. “So let me get this straight. You’re okay with three little boys sitting in jail after seeing that picture of Terrence Bankhead with Masey James?”

Without so much as a word, he swiped his badge to access the secure door. “Can I quote you on that?” I yelled after him facetiously. “What happened to you, Bartlett?”

When I got back to the newsroom, there was a note on my desk from Nussbaum: “Come see me.”

“Yeah, Peter, what’s up?”

“Jordan, you can’t go around harassing the chief of police,” Nussbaum said.

I’d never figured Bartlett to be the type to run and tell my boss on me.

“He called you?” I said, finding it almost comical. “And since when did stalking an authority figure to get a quote become harassment? I’m a reporter. It’s what I do.”

“Ellen should have handled this, so now I’m handling it. You came back to work too soon. Take another week off the air,” he said. “And stay away from Bartlett.”

“I don’t want to take a week off,” I said.

“It’s not a suggestion,” he said.

Off the air? Okay, fine. Off the story? I don’t think so.

*

My relationship with Joey was growing and changing. He started to see me as an equal and also as an asset, something of a role reversal for us. And thankfully he’d stopped lecturing me about backing off the case, but not about being careful.

“Morning, Jordan.”

About a week after my interview with Tricia Mosley, Tania’s mom, our two prime suspects appeared to have fallen off the face of the earth.