20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(40)

Martha mouthed my hand. I assured her that I was on it, and quickly dressed in jeans and sweatshirt to take my good dog for a walk. I remembered something told to me by a stranger on a train. She was holding her baby, and she jerked on her dog’s leash to pull it under the seat.

She saw me looking at her, I guess with judgment in my eyes. She said, “Before you have a baby, your dog is your baby. When you have a baby, your dog is a dog.”

I stooped down to look Martha in the eyes.

“You know I still love you, don’t you?”

She wagged her tail, whined, and licked my face. I leashed my old friend, and we rode the elevator to street level.

It was still early morning. Other people walked their dogs, crossing the nearly empty street against the light. Martha wanted to play, but I gave her the next-best thing, a sprint to the corner of Lake and Eleventh and back.

All night my mind had flopped like a beached tuna. Claire. Dave Channing. Dead bodies in cold boxes awaiting burial and justice. My job.

We took the elevator up, and once inside our home, Martha cocked her head and whined, Feed me.

In the kitchen I filled a bowl for my fluffy old girl, brewed my morning joe, and flicked on the small under-cabinet TV to keep me company. The first morning show was in full swing when a bright-red breaking-news banner streaked across the screen.

What now? What the hell is it now?





CHAPTER 59





EARLY THAT MORNING Cindy was in her office, checking the East Coast news feeds, when her cell phone rang.

It was Serena Jackson, an old friend. They’d gone to Michigan together, and Serena had recently moved from Chicago to San Francisco for a high-profile job with KRON4.

“Cin, I’ve just heard that one of the snipers has issued a memo to the press,” she said. “Check your mail.”

With Serena on hold, Cindy scanned her mailbox and opened an email headed For Immediate Release.

Every word contained in its four paragraphs was a stunner.

She read it out loud to Serena, who said, “Get ready to break news, girlfriend. I’m in a satellite van less than ten minutes from the Chronicle’s front door.”

Cindy said, “I’ll call you right back.”

She read the email again.

It shook her as much on the second read and appeared to be every bit a blockbuster—raw, bloody, and ready to be splashed across TV screens everywhere. If it had been widely disseminated, the clock was ticking and the deadline was now.

She printed out the email and phoned Tyler to bring him into the loop, but at 7 a.m. her call went to voice mail.

What to do?

It was risky to go on the record with a story based on a totally blind lead, but it was done often enough. Unconfirmed at this time. Confidential sources say. And then there were the breathtaking Deep Throat leaks during Nixon’s last days.

Cindy thought over her options: take a moon shot, or go by a more cautious route. If she broke the news, she owned the scoop. If she waited …

She called Serena. “Give me ten minutes.”

Opening a new email file, Cindy wrote to Tyler, saying that a news bomb was about to drop, that she had judged the lead as authentic, and that she had moments to go live with the story before the competition broke it.

Cindy roughed out the story, and it was ready for edit in nothing flat. She gave it a headline, attached the unverified email, and, marking the package Urgent, fired it off to the publisher and editor in chief’s inbox.

Then she stuffed a copy of the email into her coat pocket, darted into a closing elevator, and rode it down to the street.

Serena was waiting for her on Mission, already set up for the interview.

The two friends and colleagues talked over the upside-downside ramifications while standing in the shadow of the Chronicle’s clock tower and agreed—the risk was worth taking. The business they were in, it was either go big or go home.

They took their seats in the tall director’s chairs facing the camera, their backs to the Chronicle Building, an umbrella shading their faces, the morning breeze messing with their hair.

The sound man tested the level. The cameraman counted off five seconds to go with his fingers, and then tape rolled. Serena introduced Cindy as the star reporter and head of the crime desk at the San Francisco Chronicle.

She said, “You have big news this morning, Cindy. A bombshell email that you’ve just posted on your crime blog, from someone claiming to have inside knowledge about the recent sniper attacks that have terrified people in five cities.”

“That’s exactly right, Serena. I received an email just minutes ago giving reasons for the sniper attacks and warning of future executions,” Cindy said. “I find the email credible. But viewers must understand that, like the Zodiac Killer’s letters to the Chronicle decades ago, the email is unsigned.

“I’ve weighed both sides of the argument carefully and have decided that it’s better to release this email than keep it quiet.”

“Cindy, is there a time stamp on that?”

“It landed in my inbox early this morning. The heading was ‘For Immediate Release.’”

“Can you read it for our viewers now?”

Cindy raised the sheet of paper from her lap and began to read the highlights.

“Quoting now: ‘This is a warning to all drug slingers, the pushers who sell grass, coke, meth, and Molly, the sickos who sell oxy, heroin, fentanyl, unprescribed pharmaceuticals, and designer drugs, or name your poison. Deaths from overdoses have risen to seventy thousand Americans per year, nearly half of those from opioids like fentanyl. It’s not okay. It’s not stopping. It’s getting worse.