The First Commandment

CHAPTER 8

Mark Sheppard was a big fan of zombie movies. Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later—you name it and chances were that Sheppard had not only seen it, but owned it. There was something about death that had always fascinated him.

It was a strange preoccupation, but one that had served the tall, sandy-haired twenty-seven-year-old reporter well. He had begun his career at the Baltimore Sun writing obituaries. It was a probationary assignment designed to allow editors to evaluate the writing and copyediting skills of their cub reporters. Most young journalists hated their time on the obit desk, but Sheppard had reveled in it.

From there he moved to the crime beat. Legendary crime reporter Edna Buchanan had once said that the crime beat “has it all: greed, sex, violence, comedy, and tragedy,” and she was right. Though it was a high-turnover, sink-or-swim position where editors continued to test their journalists’ mettle before promoting them to more glamorous beats, Sheppard fell in love with it and made it known that he had no intention of ever doing any other sort of reporting.

To his credit, Sheppard was an exceptional crime reporter. He had an eye for detail and a propensity for sourcing, and he knew how to tell one hell of a story. Over his years on the beat he had developed a wide array of contacts — on both sides of the law. Both police captains and mob captains respected him for his integrity. His sources always knew that he never went to press unless he had gotten all of his facts straight.

Because of his reputation for being a straight shooter and always protecting the anonymity of his sources, news tips flowed in Sheppard’s direction on a regular basis. They rarely proved newsworthy. The key was to know which ones were worth running down. Hemingway had once said that a writer needs to have a “shockproof bullshit detector,” and Sheppard couldn’t have agreed with him more. He found that the amount of energy he put into investigating a tip was often commensurate with how solid its source was. Of course, for every rule there was always an exception.

For Sheppard, the more outrageous the claim, the more his interest was piqued. At the moment, his interest was quite high.

Driving toward the Thomas J. Gosse funeral home on the outskirts of the city, headlines were already forming in his mind. There was no question he was putting the cart way before the horse, but Sheppard’s gut told him that if this story panned out, it was going to be huge.

That meant the headline had to be huge as well. And it had to be sensational. This had the potential to be a front-page story. Hell, it might even be an explosive investigative series.

As Sheppard pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot, he settled on his headline. It was campy, but once people began to read his reporting the title would take on a whole new meaning. It would be shocking — not only because of the crime itself, but because of its alleged perpetrators.

Locking his car, Sheppard ran the headline through his mind one more time. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It was one hell of an attention-grabber. He just hoped the man who’d called him with the tip wasn’t wasting his time.