As the Wicked Watch(25)

“Tanya, I am so grateful to you for calling me this morning,” I said, maintaining my focus on her, “just as I was grateful for your help the other day. You’ve been wonderful. Thank you so much.”

Then I eased into my questions. “I’d like to interview Ms. Robinson, your aunt, and a few of the other speakers before the vigil, if that’s possible. Will there a pre-gathering? Are you hosting the speakers at your home? Would it be possible to sit down with a few members of the council and Pamela? At your house? In the living room, maybe?”

“Um, I mean, I don’t know,” she said. “You have to talk to my aunt and Ms. Alonzo about that.”

So, your aunt tells your mother what to do in her own house?

“Well, I’m pretty sure Pam will be okay with it,” I responded, dropping her name casually. “I talked to her yesterday. I’m interviewing her today at three o’clock.”

I’m not the outsider you think I am. But damn it, why hadn’t Pam told me about the vigil?

Apparently, while I was having brunch with the Sex and the City crew, Pamela was busy getting representation and amassing a coalition bent toward justice for Masey. It included a community-based organization, a fiery activist, a venerable pastors’ coalition, furious residents, and at least one broadcast journalist who was eating out of her hand. It wouldn’t surprise me if Pamela had been convinced that she needed to retain a lawyer. For now she has Tanya McMillan acting as her de facto publicist.

I admired Tanya’s savviness, working the local media reps without any media training, and keeping it real, with a little attitude cherry on top. But there’s no time for such pettiness. A child is dead. A killer is on the loose. Fuck decorum.

Then it struck me: these three women—Tanya, Pam, and Louise—coming together as they have in such a short time is one helluva coincidence. I thought back to the way Tanya had lost it during her live interview. “I bet it’s that girl,” she said. I sensed her concern, but I never would have made a connection between her and Pamela. How old or new is that connection?

Did Tanya know Masey?

I thought to ask but decided not to, at least for now, focusing on orchestrating tonight’s media event.

“It’ll probably be fine, but let me confirm with my moms and my aunt first,” Tanya said.

“Great,” I said, hopping off the couch to grab a pen from the kitchen counter and a napkin to write on. “What’s your aunt’s number?”

By the time we got off the phone, my coffee had turned cold and I’d lost my appetite, but my heart pumped adrenaline. I took stock of the day. I have an interview at twelve-thirty with police superintendent Donald Bartlett. He feigned reluctance to speak to me on-camera, but I was confident he’d relent. Bartlett, unlike his top lieutenant Fawcett, adores me. He’s the exact opposite of the stereotypical police chief. He’s so bighearted that at times I wonder how long he is actually going to be able to survive in this job. But I take nothing for granted.

“There really isn’t anything more that I can tell you, Jordan,” he responded in an email this morning at 6:45.

“Superintendent Bartlett, I understand,” I typed. “But there’s a community in pain that needs reassurance from you that this investigation will remain a priority until Masey James’s killer is found.”





DELETE


“Superintendent Bartlett, until a few days ago, this was a missing persons case. Now that it’s a homicide investigation, I think the community would like to hear from senior leadership in the police department. Don’t you?”





DELETE


“Superintendent Bartlett, understood,” I typed. “I would just like to spend some time with you on the record discussing what police know thus far. I think the community will appreciate hearing from you in a more intimate setting than a news conference.”

“Spend some time with you” should resonate.





SEND


Now, on top of Bartlett and my interview with Pam at Masey’s aunt Cynthia’s house at three o’clock, I must try and squeeze in community firebrand Louise Robinson and pull together an impromptu roundtable of community leaders with Pamela in Tanya McMillan’s living room by six o’clock. I live for days like this. The stakes were rising by the minute, and I was ready to go in hard, to be more than just a reporter relaying a story. Instead I would be acting as an investigator looking for clues and connecting dots. Days like this are why I chose this profession.

I wasn’t surprised that Pamela had agreed to participate in the vigil. Yesterday she was emphatic that finding her daughter’s killer had become her life’s purpose. Still, I’m annoyed, even a little hurt, actually, that she hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe she didn’t tell me about the vigil because she didn’t have to, now that Tanya McMillan and Louise Robinson are representing her. This frees her up to focus on other important things, like keeping her loving arms at the ready for her six-year-old son, Malcolm, enveloped in grief at the loss of his big sister, and managing her lupus, the chronic illness, exacerbated by stress, that killed her mother at age fifty-nine.

Pamela wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had expectations of a source, and I should’ve known better. Still, as much as I have beaten myself up about getting too close to Pam, the potential downward shift in our relationship dynamic was just as troubling. After the hours I had spent cultivating that relationship, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is Pam pulling away?