Buried (Hush collection)

9

He awoke, trading pure dark for lesser dark.

Trading peaceful oblivion for despair.

Jasper Coyle recalled where he was.

Shivering, he crawled to the hole he’d pounded in the brick and peered into the other room. All he could see was another brick wall about fifteen feet away. But there would have to be a door or window, because of the light.

Get back to work.

Six bricks were done.

The more bricks Jasper Coyle removed, the more easily the surrounding ones could be pounded out.

He had air but the thirst was growing worse.

Though the chamber was cold, he was sweating from his effort. Dry-mouthed, he found his muscles cramping and he grew disoriented even with the air streaming in from the next room. That had to be the thirst.

What if he found standing water there? Would it be safe to drink? The smell, though. The fumes. Any puddles would be contaminated with oil, or diesel. But they’d rise to the top, wouldn’t they? Maybe he could swipe the surface and suck up a fast sip or two before the toxic scum flowed back.

Or would the water itself be tainted? Would he poison himself and die, screaming in agony?

What the hell’re these crazy thoughts?

Forget water. Dig.

Another brick down, then another.

Almost big enough.

Coyle, slim by nature and slim from exercise, thought: Go for it. Hands and arms first through the hole, then the head. If you could get your shoulders through an opening, he’d heard, you could squeeze your body through too. A little squirming, pushing.

But what if you got stuck?

The worst way to die.

Panic rose.

No...

He managed to tamp down his horror.

Concentrate... Push, push.

Then finally he tumbled into the next room, and collapsed on the floor, breathing hard. He rolled onto his back and looked toward the light, a horizontal slit high in the brick wall — like a narrow cellar window. Now he just needed to find a door...

He rolled to his feet and looked around.

Oh, Jesus Christ! No, no!

Jasper Coyle had just escaped into a fucking jail cell.

The chamber was small, about fifteen by fifteen. Brick on three walls, thick iron bars on the fourth. The window? It measured eighteen inches across and six inches high.

He staggered to the door and found what he knew he would: a rusted lock, frozen tight.

Dropping to his knees, Coyle uttered a low howl.

He rose and stumbled back to the wall he’d broken through, reached in and retrieved his caveman ax. He’d remove more bricks; light would flow into the first room and maybe he could see a way of working open the wooden door he’d found yesterday.

He began pounding.

One brick out, then another.

A third.

Which is when the entire wall collapsed, bricks the color of dried blood cascading down upon Coyle, compressing his lungs, breaking bones. He struggled for breath.

He gave a futile scream, soft as a whisper. Complete darkness returned.

10

Pounding pavement.

Trying to find the anonymous witness Trask had mentioned.

Hard work. Pain radiated through Fitz’s feet and legs. His breathing was labored, and the damn coughing gripped his chest from time to time.

Journalism is a young man’s game.

He laughed. A young person’s game, picturing Dottie Wyandotte’s tattoos and piercings.

Baby goats in pajamas...

Then he forgot his body’s complaints. The hard work paid off.

He found a contractor working on a building directly across from where Coyle’s car had been parked. The tradesman was on the job the day of the kidnapping but hadn’t been back to the site since, so the investigators hadn’t spoken to him. He hadn’t seen the Gravedigger or Coyle but he had seen a man sitting outside a café for an hour or so around lunchtime. He pointed out the table; the man lunching would have had a good view of Coyle’s car.

Had this contractor seen the witness who’d called 911? Maybe, maybe not. But something definitely worth following up on.

Fitz asked, “Did he look like anyone famous, an actor, a politician, musician?”

This was Fitz’s form of the Identi-Kit — the device used by police to render images of suspects based on witnesses’ observations.

“Oh, I’m not sure...” Then he was frowning. “Well, there’s an actor... Yes, you know... Training Day. The movie?”

Fitz had never seen it.

“I can’t think of his name... The young guy.”

Fitz looked up the movie on his iPhone.

Ethan Hawke.

The worker looked at the screen. “Yeah, yeah, that’s him.”

He downloaded the picture, thanked the man, and suggested he contact Special Agent Trask.

Back to pavement pounding. A cough. Lozenge. They didn’t do much good. But they tasted nice.

Up and down the street, showing his press credentials and flashing the picture of the actor. No sightings.

Around noon, though, Fitz got a lead: a hot dog vendor glanced at the red carpet photo and said that he’d seen him going into a nearby hotel — and just a half hour ago.

Which meant it was time for coffee.

Fitz knew desk clerks wouldn’t give him any information; they might even call the police, reporting that a fat, balding old man in a dusty, wrinkled suit was asking about guests — which had happened several times during his career. So he’d simply surveil. He bought a large Starbucks, black, and wandered into the lobby, sipping coffee and browsing the gift shop and pretending to talk into his cell phone, looking for the Hawke look-alike.

When he had no luck, he sat on a couch that overlooked the lobby. And waited.

Years ago, Fitz had been told he resembled a spy. He was doing a story on a former CIA officer who had become a thriller writer. The man had said that the best assets — the name for undercover agents in the field — were nondescript, never flashy, dull, actually. They blended into the woodwork. Fitz would be a good one, the former secret agent had said.

He wasn’t sure whether he should consider that a compliment or not.

Time passed. The coffee grew cold, as Fitz would eye the lobby and check on his phone for updates on the case, of which there were none.

At around two p.m., the elevator door opened and Hawke — as he thought of him now — passed through the lobby. Fitz took a last sip of coffee and rose, never looking the fellow’s way. The man was focused and walked in a determined manner. He radiated the confidence of a successful salesman or public relations man. His suit was expensive and cut perfectly (amusing Fitz, who had to debate long and hard about splurging on a suit at Macy’s).

Fitz didn’t approach the man now; he needed more information: his name, a license plate, the identities of other people he might meet. If Fitz approached him, he might bolt, check out of the hotel and be gone forever.

He was hoping the man didn’t take a cab or car service. Long gone were the days when you jumped in a yellow taxi and shouted, “Follow that car!” If those days ever existed at all.

But Hawke just kept striding down the street, as if on the way to close a big sale. He kept looking at his phone. His body language suggested he wasn’t reading texts but was following a pedestrian route on Google Maps.

Breathless, Fitz struggled to keep up.

Fifteen minutes from the hotel the man glanced up and noted a dive of a bar. He stopped.

Please let this be where he’s headed. I can’t take much more.

And, yes, Hawke turned inside.

Fitz rested for three minutes or so, extracted a fisherman’s cap from his inside jacket pocket and pulled it on — every inch the spy. He stepped inside and, eyes on the floor, made his way to a table directly behind where the man sat at the bar. Fitz ordered a bourbon from the server, a slim gray-haired woman. Hawke ordered a cola.

Next steps? Try to steal the name from his credit card receipt? Listen carefully when the person he was meeting arrived?

Just a name, all I want is a name...

The man made a call on his mobile. He tilted his head, as one does when the callee picks up.

“Is he available, please?... Well, tell him it’s Peter Tile.”

Ah, striking gold...

After a brief conversation about some travel plans to Ohio, Tile disconnected. Fitz picked up his drink and joined him.

“Peter Tile?”

The man blinked, frowning.

Fitz showed his press credentials and explained who he was. “I know you were the witness who told the Violent Crimes Task Force about the Gravedigger’s second victim.”

This was a bluff, of course.

But when the man blurted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the performance fell flat.

Tile knew this himself, it seemed, and appeared dismayed. “How?”

“Talked to some people who saw you at the site of the kidnapping around the time it happened. I followed you here and heard you on the phone just now.”

The man’s lips tightened. “Look, mister, I have a family. That psycho’s still out there.”

Fitz lifted a hand. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I haven’t told the police or anyone else.”

“I’m not saying anything to the press. I told the cops everything I know. It was all over in ten seconds. This guy’s getting in his car and somebody comes up and hits him over the head and drags him into the bushes, then leaves a note on the windshield. There’s nothing else.”

“You’re in a hotel. You’re not from here.”

“No. I’m... I’m here on business.”

Fitz smiled at the evasion. “You know, Mr. Tile, I’ve been interviewing people for close to forty-five years. And one thing I’ve found is that there’s always something else, some little fact, a tidbit that people can remember about an incident.”

“Well, there is nothing.”

“Tell me again what happened. You’re obviously a Good Samaritan. You wanted this guy caught.”

“Yeah, right, you have my name,” he said bitterly. “You going to threaten to release it publicly if I don’t help?”

Fitz responded immediately. “I have never once revealed the name of a source who wanted to stay anonymous.”

This was true and Tile apparently sensed the sincerity. He sipped the soda and wiped his hand on a bar napkin. He seemed calmer. “God, I’m claustrophobic. I don’t even want to think what that guy’s going through. Underground. What’s his name again?”

“Jasper Coyle.” Fitz did the silence trick again.

“He was white, tall, blond hair. Jeans and a dark shirt. Sunglasses.”

“What kind?”

“Sunglasses? I don’t remember the brand or anything. Who knows anyway?”

“What did he do, exactly?”

“Coyle was walking to his car and this man steps out of the bushes and hits him over the head.”

“With what?”

Tile paused a moment. “It’s funny, you know. I didn’t think about what he used before. But I can kind of picture it now. It was dark, maybe cloth, almost like a sock. There was something in it.”

Fitz had once written about guards abusing prisoners. One of their tricks was to fill a sock with bolts or washers or coins and use that as a cudgel. It hurt like hell, but left no marks. Maybe the Gravedigger had done jail time.

Tile’s eyes were focused on a stain on the table. Then he blurted, “Oh, wait. He’s left-handed.”

Memory is such an odd creature.

“Definitely left-handed.”

Fitz took his notebook out slowly, as if approaching a dog he didn’t want to spook. He opened it and jotted down the two new facts. “Go on.”

“Then he took something out of his pocket, a plastic tube. It’d be the needle, the syringe, you know. I read he injected them with a drug.”

“That’s right. Which pocket?”

“What?”

“Of the jacket?”

“Oh. Inside.”

“What color was it?”

“The jacket? Light blue.” Then he laughed as if surprised that he hadn’t remembered earlier.

More jottings.

“Did it seem that they knew each other?”

“No.”

“Did he struggle pulling Coyle into the bushes?”

“No, not at all. Didn’t think about that either. He was really strong. Probably works out. Or has some job that keeps him in good shape.”

Another note.

Tile closed his eyes, as if he were witnessing the incident once more. Then he said, “Really that’s about it.”

“You did fine.”

Tile asked, “Why do you think he’s doing this?”

“Always the key question. Motive.” Fitz finished the bourbon. “I’ve done a few serial killer stories. I’ve never seen anybody like this one. Men kill for sex. Women for money. He doesn’t want either.”

This individual does not fall into any of the generally recognized categories of serial perpetrator...

Fitz continued: “I’ve got a theory he’s doing it for the publicity.”

“Publicity? You mean like he gets off being on the news?”

“Maybe. A kidnapping’s going to get a lot of attention in the first place. But he wants more, so he leaves clues that get the whole country focused on him. I’m going to check with some criminal psychologists, some cops. See what they think.” He closed the notebook. “I’d encourage you to talk to the police.”

“No way. You’ll tell them what I told you, that’s enough.”

“Your choice.” Fitz paid. He rose to leave and handed Tile one of his business cards.

“They might subpoena you for my name,” Tile muttered darkly.

“Then I’ll refuse.”

“You’ll be in contempt. You could go to jail.”

“Then I go to jail.”

11

On the way to the Examiner, Fitz called the FBI and was patched through to Special Agent Trask. He gave her the new information.

“You found the witness?” Her voice was higher than he remembered. Maybe she was surprised. She didn’t seem like a woman who reacted to the unexpected. “How?”

He explained.

“Ah, a construction worker just called our tip line. He said that he’d seen someone who looked like Ethan Hawke. You behind that?”

“I encouraged him.”

“You going to give me the witness’s name?”

“No.”

Fitz braced for a fight.

“Okay. We’ll find him.” She thanked him and hung up.

Jail was not, apparently, looming large.

Once in his office, he spread all his notes out. He began to plan a profile piece. The theme would be a serial killer (well, kidnapper, thus far) whose motive was publicity.

Odd reason to commit such terrible crimes.

But then, Fitz thought, what was normal when it came to taking a life?

He would, as he’d told Peter Tile, find some experts and get their opinions: a criminal-psychology professor, a homicide investigator in the Sheriff’s Department.

Another idea occurred. He would look over other stories about crimes around the same time and in the same place as the kidnapping; maybe the Gravedigger had made some other attempts to capture the media’s awareness, which might have failed to generate the attention he craved. But he could have been caught on security tape or seen by witnesses.

He reviewed the coverage in the local Maryland papers around the time of the Shana Evans kidnapping: domestic batteries and one parental abduction; a bystander killed in a gang-shootout cross fire; a food processing plant under investigation in a salmonella outbreak; your typical robberies; a hate crime or two; a serial killer preying on prostitutes (his MO was very different from the Gravedigger’s); a brutal assault at a rally outside the national political debates; a West Virginia businesswoman killed in a mugging outside a restaurant not far from her motel.

As for the kidnapping of Jasper Coyle, Fitz had only to skim recent or planned Examiner stories: the governor’s interview; the coal-company executive’s death, thanks to the timid guardrails on Route 29; the downtown renovation project; the meth and opioid crisis; a domestic murder; and another parental kidnapping in a custody dispute. Some minor police blotter pieces like DUIs, vandalism and low-level drug busts.

He snagged a piece of 8 ½ by 11-inch paper from the printer and charted these stories. Visual aids helped him focus.

Fitz gazed at it for a while. But none of the pieces had the Gravedigger’s signature. Either they involved no crime at all, or known or local perps were the ones involved.

Dead end. Still, though, his reporter’s instinct told him there was more to the kidnapper than what appeared; he couldn’t dismiss the idea of publicity as a motive.

He’d have to think about it.

And think he would.

But not quite yet.

The police scanner crackled, made him jump. “Be advised, all units, we have probable location of Jasper Coyle. Proceed to corner of Thirteenth Street and Arthur Road.”

12

The backhoes and jackhammers sat idle.

Worried the machinery might entomb Jasper Coyle with brick and stone, the authorities had the rescue workers dig by hand.

Fitz jockeyed for position among the other journalists, print and broadcast, behind the yellow tape barricading off the construction site where an old building was being demolished.

This was an old portion of town, filled with redbrick and limestone buildings dating back at least one hundred years. A grassy park was across the street, with an ancient cannon pointing westward, a direction from which no enemy had ever approached the town of Garner.

City Hall and other administrative offices were nearby, as was police headquarters. A full complement of law enforcers too — city, county, state and fed, all under the calm direction of Special Agent Sandra Trask.

A supervisor called to one enthusiastic pick-axer, “Careful. If he’s down there, we don’t want to knock something down on him.”

The worker shot back, “If he’s down there, he needs fucking air.”

Fitz approached a broadcast reporter he knew, a veteran ABC and NBC reporter now with National Public Radio. Fitz had little use for TV journalism, now that Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley were gone, but he respected NPR for the depth it brought to stories. He asked the man how they’d found Coyle.

“Well, that’s a story and a half,” the man said, laughing. He explained:

Agent Trask had given a statement about cracking the code. A woman in the Shetland Islands, the United Kingdom, who was “rather addicted to crosswords,” had figured out the limerick.

Mrs. Sophie McMillan, eighty-seven, was quoted as saying: “I noticed he said the bar, not a bar. A bar would be like a bar where people drink or a bar like a girder for building. But I thought the bar meant the law. Barristers and solicitors, as we say over here. And then there was the word ‘trial.’ So I decided that that poor bloke was buried under a lawyer’s office or courthouse.”

Investigators had located a courthouse from the early twentieth century, presently being torn down. Nearby a team found footprints that matched those of the Gravedigger and a hose disappearing underground. Rescue excavation began immediately.

Mrs. McMillan had heard about the puzzle on an Australian website devoted to games and puzzles. Fitz supposed that the only way she’d have seen it was because of Dottie Wyandotte.

Potentially, forty, fifty million...

Dust from digging wafted his way. Coughing, lozenge. Coughing, lozenge.

Then, heads turning to the site, the collective sound of human voices rose. No discernible spoken words, just a murmur of an emotional reaction at the discovery of a missing human being. Or a corpse.

Medics ran forward, carrying a stretcher.

A moment later they surfaced, bearing a pale and bloody but very much alive Jasper Coyle.

13

Fitz wrote and filed the piece about the rescue.

He’d managed to get a short one-on-one with Special Agent Trask and, in a scoop, had also interviewed the limerick solver.

“The trick is to keep an open mind,” the elderly woman had said in her melodious accent. “Don’t start solving the puzzle right away. Let it sit. Sometimes your first impression locks your mind; you can’t get past it.”

Not a bad rule for life, Fitz reflected.

He dug through the drawer and withdrew his bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He found a chipped ceramic mug. On the bottom was dried coffee crust. The restroom and watercooler were inconveniently three minutes away. He poured a slug of the honey-colored liquor in. He sipped.

No harm to the flavor.

The Gravedigger story was by no means finished and he had the motive angle to explore. Not knowing this continued to bug him. Why was the last of the five Ws — the questions that every piece of hard news was supposed to answer: who, what, when, where... and why.

But the hour was late; he was tired. He’d continue working from home. He stuffed all the notes and printouts of the Gravedigger case into his leather bag, a gift from Jen forty-three years ago. His birthday. A group of friends and family over. She’d made Guinness beef stew and soda bread, his favorites. They had sung songs until all hours, a challenge because the piano’s middle C and the nearby F were not working. Also, a G in the upper atmosphere made an unearthly sound.

A good night.

A happy night.

Taking another hit of whiskey, he noted a light across the newsroom. It came from a cubicle, occupied, he could tell, because of the moving shadows. Picking up the bottle and mug, he walked across the newsroom and through the glass doors of the ExaminerOnline.

Dottie Wyandotte was leaning forward toward her massive monitor. Why didn’t staring at the busy surface all day make her dizzy? Maybe it did.

Every so often her fingers, with their black-tipped nails, would move in a frenzy on the keyboard.

“What’s one of the most common punctuation mistakes?” he asked.

Her head rose fast, surprised someone was present. She looked up at Fitz. Her face was unsmiling, her expression neutral. She was still angry.

The only thing I don’t need is your condescension...

“Come on,” he rasped. “Give it a shot.” Coughed for several seconds.

She looked at the screen, tapped return and sent something somewhere. “My sister’s five years younger. I don’t think she’s ever apologized in her life, not to me. And she’s got a long list of things to apologize for. What she does is she ignores me for a day or two or three and then calls and says something out of the blue. Completely irrelevant. ‘You hear about the new farmers’ market?’ ‘Jim and I are going to see Hamilton!’ That’s what passes for an apology to her.”

“I’m sorry. Not about your sister. About what I said.”

Now, looking his way. Her eyes still weren’t smiling, but the edge had softened. And quite the edge it had been. Impressive. Like his, when he was confronting a corrupt politician or philandering CEO.

He asked, “You drink whiskey?”

She said nothing for a moment. Then, glancing at the bottle: “Does it have wheat in it?”

“Does it have... what?”

“Wheat. I’m gluten intolerant.”

“Whiskey’s made out of corn.”

“Corn’s okay,” Dottie said. “Is it all corn?”

“I don’t know. Maybe rye.”

“Can’t do rye. Mostly I drink cosmos. Gluten-free vodka.”

“That’s a liquor? That they make?”

She nodded.

“Well, whiskey is all I have.”

“I’ll stick with this.” Lifting a Starbucks cup. “Nothing wrong with chamomile and whiskey.”

“Just not together.”

They tipped mug and cup toward each other, then sipped.

“You might’ve been the one who saved him,” Fitz told her.

“How’s that?”

“The woman who solved the riddle? She was overseas. Maybe one of your forty to fifty million.”

“Really?”

He couldn’t tell if she was pleased or not. Looking at the four studs in her cheek, he tried again to figure out what constellation they might represent. Came up with nothing. He’d never done science writing.

“You wrote that story fast,” she said.

“Had to make the deadline. Seven p.m.”

“What do you mean?”

“The print edition, the Examiner? Always been the rule. The copyeditor needs the copy by seven p.m. You get it one minute late and it’s bumped to day after tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s the rule. Nobody’s ever missed it.”

She seemed perplexed; with online publication, of course, you didn’t have to worry about typesetting and printing and getting the papers to the trucks and to newsstands and doorsteps. You hit the return key and, poof, there it was, for the world to read.

“Coyle’s okay?” she asked.

“Okay-ish.”

“Not a word that you’d use in a story.”

“Only in a direct quotation.”

Dottie gave a smile. “‘Quotation.’ A noun referring to a direct statement attributed to a speaker. The word ‘quote’ is a verb.”

He nodded, acknowledging she was correct. He poured another whiskey and downed it.

She was sipping her tea. “I knew who you were before I joined National Media.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“A professor at Northwestern? She mentioned you. She told us to read some of your pieces.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Well, I didn’t look up baby goats in pajamas.”

“You should. They’re really cute. Why do you hate us?”

“Us?”

“Online, new media?”

Fitz set down his drink and popped a lozenge. “Because it doesn’t play by the rules. Real journalists dig, they background, they research. They’re fucking pains in the ass, hounding subjects for statements. They get double attribution — at the minimum — talk to multiple sources... They report facts. Not alternative facts, not sort-of, kind-of facts.”

He was riled up. But no stopping now.

“The social media mafia? No time for mining. They pass off rumors and opinions as news. Half the time they just plain make shit up. And people believe it because it’s in their feed. I read it, so it has to be true.” He lifted the mug and he drank. “Fake news used to be an oxymoron. If it was reported, it couldn’t be fake.”

“Oh, excuse me, Fitz.” Dottie was laughing. “You think this is new? What about yellow journalism? The 1890s, William Randolph Hearst and Pulitzer competing for newspaper circulation in New York? Look at the lies they published.”

She had him there. The two publishers lowered their papers’ prices to a penny, to reach as many people as possible, and then slapped outlandish — and completely false — stories on yellow newsprint to draw attention. Historians still believed that phony dispatches from Hearst’s journalists in Cuba started the Spanish-American War.

Fitz parried: “It’s just so much easier to spread lies when you can reach, well, forty or fifty million people by pushing a button.”

She said, “It’s not the medium. Men still shave but they don’t use straight razors. We still listen to music but not on eight-track tapes.”

“How do you know about eight-tracks?”

“I walked down to the public library and looked it up in the Encyclopædia Britannica.”

He snorted a laugh, coughed a bit.

“You okay?”

“Pollen.” Another sip of whiskey got downed. After a moment he said, “I miss the... relationship.”

“Relationship?”

“A newspaper — a paper newspaper — is like a friend knocking on your door and sitting down with you at the breakfast table or desk. It’s a traveling companion when you’re on the train or plane. It’s a thing you can touch, you can hold, you can smell. It’s big, it’s real. That’s what I miss. Okay, enough crap. ’Night.”

He started back to his office.

“Wait.”

Fitz turned.

“What’s the mistake?” Dottie said. “The punctuation?”

“Oh. Using an apostrophe s for the plural; it’s always for the possessive. Never for plural. Irks me to see sentences like ‘There were three Frank’s at the party,’ Frank apostrophe s.”

“You’re wrong.”

He cocked his head. “What?”

“You can use apostrophe s for the plural.”

“No, you can’t,” he grumbled. Now that the apology was a matter of record, he could be curmudgeonly.

She said, “Dot the i’s. Without the apostrophe the word becomes is and the reader’s confused. Do’s, the same thing. Do’s and Don’ts.”

“Goddamn.”

“This make me a young whippersnapper?”

“I’m going home.”

“Fitz, you can’t drive,” Dottie said. “I’ll get you an Uber.”

“The hell’s an Uber?”

He tried, but he just couldn’t keep a straight face.

14

Once home, Fitz walked into his den, which he’d turned into an office. The ten-by-ten-square-foot room was more congested than his space at the Examiner.

He cleared the top of his desk — no easy task — then dropped into the creaky chair and happened to glance up at his wall, covered with clippings of articles he’d written over the years, encased in cheap plastic frames.

There were many more. He’d been an investigative journalist for more than forty years.

He smiled to himself at that thought: his journalism professor — the J-School at University of Missouri — had given him a failing mark for writing, “He had been a professor for over ten years.”

“Mr. Fitzhugh. It should be ‘more than.’ When you have individual items, the adverbial phrase is ‘more than’; when you have a single quantity, ‘over’ is proper. ‘He did well over the course of his tenure as professor.’ Though I would recast the sentence to say, ‘During his tenure as professor, he did well.’”

Ah, the battles we writers fight... All in the name of helping our readers best understand what we’re saying to them.

Now, let’s look at what makes you tick, Mr. Gravedigger. What is your why?

He opened Jen’s bag and extracted his notes, spread them out on the desk before him. To a bulletin board next to his desk he pinned the chart he’d created earlier, when he was exploring his publicity theory.

Fitz glanced at the whiskey bottle sitting on a table nearby, beside a relatively clean glass. But he wanted no more. He needed to think straight and there was still much research to be done.

But then: What the hell? He dug through two drawers until he found a pack of Marlboros. He tapped one out, lit it and gazed at the chart, then flipped through his notes. He smoked half the cigarette down, amused that he didn’t cough once.

What’s your motive? What’s your why?

He thought of the British woman who’d solved the Jasper Coyle kidnapping limerick.

The trick is to keep an open mind. Don’t start solving the puzzle right away. Let it sit...

Which is exactly what he did.

Scanning the chart. Publicity as a motive?

That made no sense.

Another drag...

Or did it?

“Oh my God,” he whispered. Then barked a sharp laugh. He believed he had the answer. It would take some work to verify, but that was a reporter’s job, after all. He booted up his computer.

Pounding the digital pavement.

A nice turn of phrase. He’d share it with Dottie.

An hour passed, two hours. Hunched over the computer keyboard, index digits hard at work. Fitz thought of Dottie’s fingers, tipped in ebony nails, flying over the keys. He wished he’d learned to touch-type.

Around two a.m., he paused, as he felt cool air stirring at his feet. Had a door blown open?

No, he’d locked them all, he was sure.

He typed a few more keystrokes, hit return, then logged off and rose, turning.

Standing in the doorway to his office were two men. One was Peter Tile, from the bar that afternoon. The other he didn’t recognize: a big, swarthy man with a belligerent face. Both were wearing blue latex gloves. Tile held a large plastic gas can. The other man, a pistol, with a silencer.

Fitz sighed. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and took it from his lips, stubbing it out in a crystal ashtray with a chip in the side. A present from Jen years and years and years ago.