Perfect Grave

Chapter Eight

T he Mirror ’s newsroom was empty when Jason Wade returned.

There was no way he would get the nun’s murder into any late edition, as the last staffers on the night shift had left for home. The presses had long since completed their last run. The delivery trucks were gone and all over the metro area today’s Mirror was already plopping on doorsteps.

The newsroom’s silence was punctuated by the solitary clicking of his keyboard as he wrote about the murder for the Mirror ’s online edition, to assure readers- and his editor -that he was on it. The Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer would be doing the same. TV and radio would be hammering on it all day today. And the Associated Press would surely move something soon.

He could not fall behind.

Jason made calls to Grace and the precinct to confirm the murdered nun’s name. And ask her what was going on out back.

No luck at the precinct. And no luck with Grace. She probably wouldn’t talk to him anyway. Well, he’d play it safe. He’d leave Sister Anne’s name out of print until he was certain it’s her, he advised himself while pounding out a tight item with bare-bones facts. And he held off using the exclusive stuff he’d gotten from Bernice Burnett. He didn’t want to help his competition. He’d offer it all up later today when the Mirror put together a fuller story for tomorrow’s paper. As he read it over, his cell phone rang.

The number was blocked.

“Wade.”

“You the reporter who was asking about the murder by Yesler tonight?”

Jason didn’t recognize the voice.

“Yes, who’s calling?”

At the scene he’d floated his card to a group of young men gathered near the tape. Most were teens in hooded sweatshirts, watching and talking quietly. He’d figured they’d be good for knowing something and suspected that one of them was on the line now.

“You hearing if police got a suspect?” the caller asked.

“Nope, nothing. I didn’t catch your name?”

“I got some information for you but first I want a deal, all right?”

“First, I want a name. Who are you?”

“Tango.”

“Tango? That a real name?”

“As real as you need. You going to take this to the next level, or do I end it?”

“What do you want?”

“We trade. I tell you what I know, you tell me what you know, and we don’t tell nobody where it’s comin’ from. Deal?”

Jason was interested, but guarded against giving up anything. “All right, but I’ve got nothing at this point.”

“Come on, man, police always give you guys the inside track.”

“All I know is what everyone knows: a woman was murdered.”

“Yeah, but you got that she was a nun, right?”

“Really? What was her name?”

“Sister Anne.”

“Sister Anne who?”

“Don’t know, but word is she was stabbed and they found the knife out back. They were taking pictures and doing their CSI thing.”

A knife. That was new. Jason made notes. “Anything else? What kind of knife? What kind of questions are the detectives asking neighbors?”

He was answered with silence.

“Got anything more for me, Tango? Anybody see anything? This connected to any other cases?”

“It might be something to do with a thing the Sister did a long time ago.”

“Like what?”

“A gang thing. I can’t say right now for sure, but this might be some kind of revenge thing.”

“Revenge thing?”

“Payback.”

“Payback against a nun?” Jason’s grip tightened. “Payback for what? Tell me?”

“No. Can’t do that yet. What’ve you got to trade with me?”

“Like I said, I’ve got squat. But you’ve got to give me your word you won’t talk to other reporters.”

“I’ll try you out, that’s the deal.”

“Can I get a number?”

“No number, I’ll call you, that’s how it’s got to work.”

“What’s your concern? Does this have something to do with you?”

“The sisters do all the good in the hood. Anyone thinks they can invade and hurt one, like what happened tonight, is going to pay. Vengeance is mine, understand?”

Jason understood.

On the crime beat you get strange calls. Whackedout people claiming to have information. Or people claiming to be psychic. Disturbed people who confessed. Pathetic types who needed to feel important. And sometimes, people with the truth.

They all called.

Jason wasn’t sure about this one. Tango offered possibilities on why Sister Anne was murdered. A gang thing? Maybe. Or maybe he was trying to play him for information.

Or maybe Tango was the killer?

There was no way for Jason to know.

It’s why he had a habit of taping his calls. After the line went dead, he checked his microrecorder and replayed a bit. Good. He had it. He would follow up later. It might be useless. It might be gold. He returned to polishing his story. Once he finished, he e-mailed it to the Mirror ’s web staff, who worked 24/7 in Redmond, a few miles east of Seattle.

It would be posted online within minutes.

Then he sent the morning assignment editor an e-mail with contacts and suggestions for the day side staff to follow when they got in, a few hours from now.

Leaning back in his chair, he finished the last of his potato chips, downed his Coke, and considered Tango’s tip. The nun’s murder was payback for something she did. What could that be? He ran a quick check of the Mirror ’s databases but it didn’t yield much.

His body ached for sleep and he contemplated things as he started his Falcon and headed home. Ever since the Brian Pillar fiasco, he’d embarked on a selfassigned special project. He’d been randomly mining old stories as candidates for anniversary features. Missing persons, unidentified corpses, unsolved murders and robberies.

Some went back for decades.

He’d learned the value of revisiting old files-most cops welcomed attention to their coldest cases. It often resulted in a fresh lead, a good read, and a new source. He’d also learned that it was critical to check all details of a fast-breaking crime story for links to previous cases.

But as for tonight-nothing had come up when he searched the scant details he had on the nun’s murder. Other than a few urban-life features on the Sisters of the Compassionate Heart of Mercy and their work, there was nothing that would point to anything gang related. The shelter helped down-and-out types, people from the street, some with criminal records. Maybe the link was there, he thought, heading northbound on the Aurora Avenue Bridge.

He wasn’t sure.

He found a soft-jazz station and glanced at the lights of Gas Works Park as he drove over Lake Union. He liked to come to the bridge to watch the sailboats, or the ships navigating the Ballard Locks and the Lake Washington Ship Canal on their way to the Pacific.

He looked in his rearview mirror at the twinkling lights and the skyline and his thoughts went beyond the city’s beauty to a cold, hard truth he’d learned as a crime reporter. Death was his beat and for him metro Seattle was a burial ground. Cases like the Green River killer, Bundy, the mall shooter, the firefighter’s arson, the unsolved hooker killings, the deadly heists, and the baby abduction marked its history like headstones.

And now we have a nun, slain near Yesler Terrace.

It would never stop.

It was Jason’s job to understand it, write about it, to try to make sense of it while finding the nerve to ask a grieving mother, father, husband, wife, sister, brother, daughter, son, or friend for a picture of the victim.

“ All of Seattle shares your loss. ”

Contrary to what most people thought of reporters, he hated that part of the job. It took a toll on him, too. Keeping his emotional distance from a story never, ever got easier, no matter how many tragedies he’d covered. It was always a struggle to keep from numbing himself with a few beers, because a few beers would lead to a few more.

Which would lead to…

Forget it.

He was exhausted and hungry as he came to the edge of Fremont and Wallingford, where he lived in a huge nineteenth-century house that had been carved into apartments. His one-bedroom unit was on the third floor.

He’d moved here when he was still in college and wanted to be on his own-for a lot of reasons. The big one being that he’d needed to put some distance between himself, his old man, the brewery, and the crap that had permeated their lives.

Since moving in, he hadn’t changed the place at all. He had the same two secondhand leather sofas discarded by a dentist who was closing his office. They faced each other over the same low-standing coffee table, which was covered with newspapers. At the far end of his living room, a giant poster of Jimi Hendrix, his beloved god of rock, overlooked a thirty-gallon aquarium.

Jason was hungry and grabbed his last can of baked beans.

He loathed this, the loneliest time of his day. He put a spoonful of cold beans in his mouth to kill his self-pity and sat before his tank. It cast the room in a soft blue light. His tiny tropical fish gliding among the coral, the sunken ship, the diver, and bubbles soothed him as he chewed on his thoughts.

Had he been too hard on Grace? What was up with her, anyway? She seemed to want to call a truce. He wanted her to know that he was still pissed off at her. Still wounded.

And how long was he going to sulk?

She still drove him wild. He’d never met anyone like her and he couldn’t believe she’d ended it with him. He couldn’t get her out of his system. Maybe he should try to talk to her? God knows, he was going to need all the help he could get on this homicide.

After finishing his beans, he tossed the can, brushed his teeth, went to his bedroom, undressed, then fell into bed.

Tango.

And his line on payback for something Sister Anne did. What the hell was that? Could be something to it? He had to follow up on it, maybe even take it to Grace. Proceed with caution. Maybe that was the way to approach things with this story.

And with Grace.

He couldn’t sleep. He was thirsty from the beans and went to his fridge. It was empty but for a halfeaten can of ravioli and an unopened beer. The bottle stood there as a personal test to prove that he was stronger than the temptation.

He settled for a glass of water from the tap.

See, he was not like his old man.

His father.

Cripes, he’d forgotten about his old man, getting the bar to call him when all he was doing was sitting there. Alone, staring into his glass. And that nasty cut on his hand. “ Jay, you have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here. ” Something had been eating his father, something that was going to push him off the wagon, something that compelled him to call for help.

Guilt pricked at Jason’s conscience and he glanced at the time. Why had he been called away just when his father needed him? He’d have to try him later. Man, he prayed it wasn’t too late, that his old man had been able to hang on.

Jason rubbed his hands over his face, took in a long breath, then slowly let it out before picking up the printouts of the old stories he’d retrieved on the nuns with the Compassionate Heart of Mercy. He found Sister Anne’s face in a group shot that accompanied one of the stories.

He stared at it.

She was smiling, but her eyes seemed to hold a measure of sadness.