20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(41)

‘A coalition of citizens across the country has had enough of ineffectual ad campaigns and political slogans. We’ve launched a new war on drugs. A real war. Nine scum dealers are dead so far and we’re just getting started. We have a list. If you’re part of the problem and value your life, stop selling drugs now, whatever it costs you. Destroy your product and get straight.

‘Or spin the wheel. You’ll never know when your number comes up.’”

Jackson said, “Cindy, correct me if I’m wrong, but until right now we have not known the motive for the shootings that have taken place here and in Chicago, LA, and, as of yesterday, Houston and San Antonio. Is that right?”

Cindy said, “There have been theories that there was a drug connection, but to my knowledge, this email is the first public communication from someone asserting a connection with the shooter or shooters and that their mission is to rub out drugs.

“We have to take it seriously.”





CHAPTER 60





CINDY WOVE THROUGH the maze of cubicles in the messy, crowded newsroom.

Artie Martini, sportswriter, called out over a partition, “Great interview, Cindy. I sent you the clip.”

“That was fast, Martini. Thanks.”

Cindy glanced through the glass wall of her office while fishing her keys out of her coat pocket. She had cleared her phone lines before the interview, and twenty minutes later, barely seven forty-five, all twelve buttons were in a blinking frenzy. She hoped that a cop friend, of which she had many, had called to confirm what she’d just told the entire freaking world.

And there was something else. The anonymous writer had said that nine victims were down.

She counted eight. If the writer was telling the truth, one victim had not yet been accounted for, or had not been connected to the others.

Either way, victim number nine was news.

Cindy retrieved her phone from her coat pocket, dropped into her chair, and turned on the Whistler TRX-1 scanner on the windowsill.

She started her beat check, again listened to the police radio, checked the wire services and network feeds on her laptop. Satisfied that there hadn’t been a big earthquake or a fire on the West Coast, that no terrorists were holding an airliner hostage, she checked incoming email.

Her interview with Serena Jackson had been widely covered.

There were bulletins on Google and Yahoo!, and a request from the New York Times for more information, and she saw that other journalists who’d gotten their own copies of the war-on-drugs email had released it far and wide—but not first.

To her great relief, nothing in her mailbox claimed that the email was a hoax.

Cindy pulled the office phone toward her and began punching buttons.

The voice of Brittney Hall, Henry Tyler’s assistant, came over the speaker: “Cindy, Henry wants to see you at eight.”

Why? Slap on the back, or had her impromptu interview with Serena Jackson put her in trouble of the job-threatening kind?

The next caller was Lindsay: “Cindy, I just spoke with Claire. She’s out of the ICU. Room 1409, doped up, but receiving visitors for a couple of hours a day. She sounded okay. Considering. Hey. I saw your interview. You were terrific.”

Another dozen messages followed—more compliments on her interview, an art department query, an editor asking for a call back, but nothing that shook her world.

She called Johnson Hughes Cancer Treatment Center and was relayed from operator to nurse’s station to Claire’s room, until she spoke with a nurse’s aide who told her that Claire was with her doctor and took Cindy’s number.

Cindy went back to work and was googling Warning to drug dealers when her phone rang. The number on the caller ID was from a local exchange, but she didn’t recognize it. She picked up, hoping it was Claire.

“Cindy Thomas?”

The caller was male, and Cindy got a sudden chill when she realized that he’d disguised his voice with a digital voice changer.

“Speaking.”

“You read my email. I saw your interview, and you’ve earned a reward. We just put down another dirtbag in Chicago. A perfect hole in one. Have a good day.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute.”

The line was dead.

She tapped Call Back, but the unidentified caller didn’t pick up. Shit. She looked up the phone number and there was no listing. Of course the caller was using a burner phone.

Cindy scribbled notes, a verbatim account of what the caller had said. The ninth victim had been shot in Chicago. She sent the memo to Tyler, even as she checked the Chicago PD blotter. There was nothing there about a sniper shooting. It was early yet. For the moment, she had what the caller had implied; her reward was an exclusive.

She left a message for Serena to call her and simultaneously opened the Chicago Trib website. There was nothing there about a new sniper shooting. Nothing, nada, zip. If her anonymous caller had told her the truth, a Chicago drug dealer was dead, and the Chronicle still owned the story.

The digital clock in the lower right corner of her computer screen blinked 7:57. Pulling a mirror out of her pencil drawer, Cindy fluffed up her hair, slicked on some lip gloss. Then, clutching her phone and her tablet, she took off for Henry Tyler’s office.

Tyler’s PA, Brittney, betrayed not the smallest emotion as she waved Cindy into the office of the publisher and editor in chief.