Into the Dark

10

Commerce, California

“I’m Mark Harding, here to see Detective Joe Tanner.”

The receptionist at the Homicide Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department greeted him with a weak smile and a cool assessment.

Harding stood just over five and half feet tall and was sensitive to his height and slight overbite.

“Good morning, Mark. And you’re with…”

“I’m a reporter with the AllNews Press Agency.”

Charmed, her smile broadened. “Are you British?”

“Yes.”

“I love your accent.”

The receptionist typed on her keyboard, spoke softly into her headset then looked to Harding. “You’re a bit early. Please have a seat. Detective Tanner will be here shortly.”

The lobby’s cushioned chair gave a vinyl squeak as Harding pondered how he’d come to be here to see Tanner. He didn’t know the guy and had never heard of him until a few days ago when Tanner called him.

“We understand you’ve been inquiring about doing a feature on homicides for your newswire service. Would you be interested in talking about some older, unsolved murders?” the detective had asked.

Tanner had been cryptic during the brief call, declining to get into details over the phone. Still, Harding had said yes because any reporter worth a damn knows that when a homicide cop invites you to a meeting, you don’t say no. At the very least, he might leave with a new source.

God knows I need new sources and a kick-ass story.

He’d been working at the L.A. bureau for a few months, but in that time the pressure to break a major exclusive was mounting. Since he’d relocated back to California, he hadn’t hit anything out of the park.

You blink and nearly all of your life goes by.

Harding was thirty-seven and grew up in Birmingham. He’d worked for several tabloids in London before getting a green card and landing a job with the Los Angeles bureau of Rumored Today, a despised but top-selling U.S. supermarket tabloid.

If reporters failed to break huge, shocking stories, they were fired. Harding hated every bit of it and got the chance to leave the sleaze behind when he broke a huge story about corruption in Hollywood. It resulted in a job with the AllNews Press Agency, the global wire service, first at its head office in New York.

Then Harding was forced to go to the dreaded Los Angeles Bureau, where he was expected to deliver huge stories.

So here I am in L.A., months without scoring a big story.

Harding rubbed his chin.

He had the idea of trying to pull off an exclusive, looking into homicides for any new breaks. In the past couple of weeks he’d put in calls, even sent letters with his card, to the LAPD, L.A. County, the FBI fishing for leads.

Nothing happened until now, when he got a call from Tanner.

Harding had to land a good story.

Sure, other people had it harder and he’d faced worse. He was reflecting on a few of the tense moments he’d had on assignments over the years when something vibrated near his heart.

He reached into his jacket for his phone and checked his messages. He had an urgent one from his boss, Magdalena Pierce, the L.A. Bureau Chief. She’d told him earlier that she disdained gritty crime stories and was reluctant to give him the morning for this meeting with an L.A. County detective. Her new text said:

We’ve just learned that a studio is under investigation for tax evasion. We need you here, pronto.

Harding rolled his eyes. Same old, same old. Magda just didn’t get it.

“Excuse me, Mark Harding?”

“Yes.”

He put his phone away, shook hands with a man he’d pegged at his age but about six feet. He was wearing a crisp shirt, tie, sidearm.

“Joe Tanner. Thanks for coming. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Sure. Look,” Harding said, “forgive me, I don’t mean to sound rude, but my bureau chief’s yanking my chain. Could we do this another time?”

“You have to go? You just got here.”

“Yes, I apologize.”

“I see.” Tanner was taken aback. “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, I suppose I could always call the Associated Press or Reuters.”

No, Harding could not let that happen.

“Hold on, wait. Can you give me a bit more so I can get my editor off my back, something to convince her this is more than a local Crime Stoppers type of cold case, something that holds national interest?”

“This concerns a number of homicides,” Tanner said.

“Homicides? Plural?”

“That’s correct and only one other person outside this building knows what I’m going to tell you.”

“Who’s that?”

“The person who committed them.”

“Jesus,” Harding said. “Let me call my desk.”