Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 22

  Gina flipped through the pictures. The bed was unmade. Newspapers and magazines were piled haphazardly on a table in the living room. Toiletries were stacked on the vanity in the bathroom. Dishes were in the sink. A Kentucky Fried Chicken bag was on the kitchen table next to a half-empty vodka bottle. Four empty vodka bottles, a plastic water bottle, and three Diet Pepsi cans were on a corner of the kitchen counter. It looks like she was behind in taking out the recycling, Gina thought to herself.

  “Is there anything else you see that sways your opinion one way or the other?” she asked.

  Rigler thought for a moment. “Gina, do you own a terry-cloth bathrobe?”

  Surprised by the question, she answered, “Yes, I do. Why do you ask?”

  “Because most women do and most women are remarkably consistent in the way they commit suicide. They choose a comfortable place, typically at home. They care a lot about how they’ll look when they’re found. That’s why it’s rare for women to use a gun or anything that will leave them disfigured. That includes bruises around the neck. Women who use a rope or electrical cord usually put a towel around their neck first to avoid leaving marks.

  “If I were the investigator on the scene, I would have gone through her closet. A terry-cloth bathrobe sash would have been her first choice. It would have left fewer marks than a silk sash.”

  “Is it too late to check her wardrobe?”

  “It is. With the exception of the bathrobe, the sash, and any undergarments she might have had on, the police by now will have released all personal property to her family.”

  “Is there anything we can do to have the police reopen the case?”

  “I still know the guys on the detective squad, but we have an uphill climb ahead of us.”

  “Why?” Gina asked.

  “Because we just put together a theory of what we think happened,” Rigler explained. “Somebody else could look at these pictures and insist that everything we’re looking at is consistent with a suicide.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a little confused,” Gina said.

  “Let me be devil’s advocate and argue the other side. There was no forced entry into the apartment, no signs of foul play, no indication of a struggle. Was the victim a substance abuser, alcohol, drugs?”

  “A neighbor who knew her well told me she had a drinking problem,” Gina said quietly.

  “That tips the scales even more toward a suicide conclusion.”

  “Although not this severe, I’ve seen similar marks on necks that did not result from homicides,” Smith added. “Some people take a perverse joy in having their lover almost fatally strangle them during sex acts.”

  “De omnibus dubitandum,” Rigler stated.

  “All is to be doubted,” Gina replied.

  “I’m impressed,” Rigler said.

  “I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, mandatory two years of Latin.”

  “That phrase was told to me by an old detective who helped train me. If you’re going to have an investigator’s mind-set, you have to enter the scene with an open mind. If you don’t, you’ll only find stuff to support your preconceived notion. It looks like that’s what happened here. They rugged it.”

  “Rugged it?” Gina asked.

  “The police came in believing this was a suicide, found ample evidence to support that, and anything that didn’t fit was swept under the rug.”

  “There’s got to be something. The bathrobe and undergarments. Might there be DNA evidence they can follow up on?” Gina asked.

  “Possibly,” Rigler answered. “But that’s expensive and time-consuming. The cops on the Durham force do a good job. But remember, this did not appear to be a crime scene. It was an apparent suicide. It’s been about four months.”

  “I want to speak to the family,” Gina said quietly.

  “I can help you with that,” Smith said as he began typing on his laptop. A few seconds later the printer ejected a sheet of paper that he handed to Gina. “This is the contract with the funeral home in Nebraska. It includes the family contact information.”

  Rigler insisted on driving Gina back to the hotel.

  “I’m sorry to make you work so hard on your first day as a grandfather,” Gina said.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Rigler said while reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a cigar with a little pink ribbon tied at the end. “Do you like cigars?”

  “No,” Gina laughed. “But I’ll take one for my dad if that’s okay.”

  “Absolutely,” he said, handing it to her.

  “If you were at the hospital all night, you must be exhausted.”

  Rigler smiled. “No big deal. I’ll catch up on sleep tonight. I love what I do. It’s like solving puzzles. It’s a challenge to figure out how all the pieces of a case fit together.”

  Without naming REL News, Gina gave him a more detailed account of her investigation into Cathy Ryan’s death than she had shared at the funeral home. She told him about the email that had suggested she look into Paula’s death. He listened intently before responding.

  “As I said earlier, Gina, I’m going to try to get the PD to take a fresh look at the Stephenson case. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime I want to give you some advice. Be careful. If you’re right about the two victims, and I think you are, the killer is smart and has access to resources. Stephenson would have been easy to track down and kill. As to the Ryan girl, he found out when she was vacationing outside the country, where she was staying, and what activities she was doing, before making his move. You don’t look like the type to commit suicide, but I don’t want to find out that you’ve become the victim of a tragic accident.”

  77

  Michael Carter spent the balance of the afternoon at his computer trying to learn as much as he could about Gina Kane. Wikipedia gave references to the fraternity branding iron story and several other pieces she had written for Empire Review. He had originally intended to quickly scan through the fraternity article. Captivated, he had carefully read all twenty-nine pages. In addition to being an excellent writer, she was a formidable investigator.

  In the section about her education he noted her undergraduate years were at Boston College. The late Cathy Ryan had gone to BC and would have been on campus two of the years Kane was there. Coincidence? Maybe not.

  He went to the CBS website and pulled up the 60 Minutes interview she had done. If Kane had been nervous, it didn’t show. She exuded confidence as she answered Scott Pelley’s questions.

  He had overcome his initial reluctance to call his friend at the credit rating agency. Spying on the records of private citizens is not that big of a deal, he thought. But doing it to a reporter ups the ante. They’ll all scream bloody murder and go hunting for scalps if word of this leaks out. The answer was to make sure there were no leaks.

  The email he was waiting for arrived with attachments. He printed out the last several months of Gina Kane’s MasterCard and American Express records. Almost all of the activity was on the MasterCard. Using a yellow Hi-Liter, he began to go through the transactions.

  She’s quite the traveler, he thought, as he came across numerous charges related to a trip to Nepal. I wonder who she went with, he asked himself.

  “Oh God,” he said aloud as he put a line through the airline reservation from JFK to Aruba. Any possibility that was a coincidence was nixed when he saw that Kane had stayed at the same hotel as Ryan.

  The trip to Naples could be relevant or maybe not. He made a note to try to find out where Cathy Ryan’s family was from, or more precisely, where her parents were living now.

  Carter reviewed to the end of the statement. Either Kane had not used her credit card over the last two weeks, which was unlikely considering that she used it at Starbucks almost every day, or his friend had sent him the previous monthly bill without updating the record to the present. He fired off an email requesting the extra information. Knowing his “friend,” Carter was certain he would charge again for going into the system and
conducting another search.

  He thought of the catch and kill idea Sherman had suggested. What would happen if money, lots of it, were offered to Kane to walk away from this story? Carter asked himself. She was only thirty-two. A couple million bucks could make a big difference at that stage of life. There was an outside chance she would accept it, pocket the cash, and bury the story. But that was a long shot and a risky one at that. Millennials were notoriously “me-oriented,” he thought, recalling the younger soldiers he’d served with. At the same time they were also oddly idealistic. They hadn’t had the life experience that teaches some hills aren’t worth dying on.

  Was there more than one way to kill this story or at least delay it for a while? Intrigued by the possibility, Carter called up the Empire Review website and searched for the name of the editor in chief. After finding the name, he checked into the background. “Maybe Geoffrey Whitehurst is a bloke I can do business with,” he said aloud in an attempt to mimic a British accent.

  78

  Gina stretched as she sat at the desk in her room, her laptop open in front of her. She had welcomed the opportunity to eat alone at an Irish bar and grill that was walking distance from her hotel. The handful of notes she had scribbled on a pad while eating had expanded to three typed pages on her computer.

  She had texted Geoff, who had agreed to meet with her the next morning. Again she would go straight from the airport to the Empire offices.

  In addition to Geoff, there was someone else she needed to update on what she had learned in Durham. That was Meg Williamson’s contact who had suggested she look into Paula Stephenson’s death. “Deep Throat” was the nickname Gina had assigned to her mystery source, borrowing the moniker of the FBI agent who had secretly aided the two young Washington Post reporters in the early stages of the Watergate investigation. After opening Deep Throat’s previous email, she hit REPLY.

  Found strong evidence that Paula Stephenson’s death may have been a homicide. Will continue efforts to get Durham police to reopen the case. Am concerned that I still don’t have enough to convince my publisher to confront REL. Need names of other victims.

  Gina searched for the right words to encourage Deep Throat to come out of hiding.

  Victims may be in grave danger. If we meet, I can go faster. I guarantee your identity will be kept confidential.

  Unsure what else to add, Gina tapped SEND.

  79

  Pulling her wheeled suitcase behind her, Gina stepped off the elevator at Empire Review. As usual Jane Patwell was waiting to greet her. “I’ll take that for you,” Jane said, taking hold of Gina’s suitcase. “Pick it up at my desk on your way out.”

  While riding in the cab from the airport, Gina had read that one of the magazine’s largest advertisers, Friedman’s, a department store chain, had just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

  Jane knocked on the editor’s door and pushed it open slightly. When he saw Gina, Geoff gave her a quick smile and directed her to the familiar conference table. Jane closed the door behind them and pulled the suitcase down the hallway.

  Geoff sat down opposite her and opened a manila folder he had brought to the table. He glanced at it for a few moments and then said, “So tell me, Gina, was it a good decision for me to pay for you to go to Durham?”

  Gina was taken aback by the question. A round-trip to Durham and one night in a hotel was hardly a budget buster. Had the loss of Friedman’s really put that big a chill in the air? So much for the editorial being separate from the business side of the magazine. I’m glad I’m not here today pitching the Aruba trip, she thought, wondering if that would come up later in the conversation.

  “As far as the REL News investigation goes, yes, it was an excellent decision.” Gina recounted her interviews of the neighbors at Paula Stephenson’s apartment complex. He listened, but then began what Gina felt was an interrogation.

  “So Paula told the other neighbor she’d found ‘a way to get back on track financially.’ How do you know that wasn’t a new boyfriend with another foolish investment?”

  “I seriously doubt that,” Gina said evenly. “Somebody who just lost most of her money in investment number one is hardly in a good position to back investment number two.”

  “A fair point,” Geoff conceded. “When Stephenson said, ‘they’re going to pay up,’ why are you so convinced that the ‘they’ she was referencing was REL News? How do you know she wasn’t planning to sue her former boyfriend and the other members of his company? Is it possible that’s who she was referring to when she said, ‘they’?”

  “Possible, but unlikely,” Gina said, her frustration building.

  “Oh, and I once choked on a cucumber. According to you, that’s good news. I’m an unlikely candidate to hang myself.”

  He laughed loudly at his own joke. Laughter is often contagious, but not this time. When he settled down, Gina said evenly, “Should I continue?”

  Geoff’s hand gesture suggested the affirmative.

  Occasionally glancing at her notes, Gina walked him through what had been discussed when she met with the detective and the mortician at the funeral home. Even as she was talking, she found herself mentally preparing for the zingers that would be fired at her when she concluded. When she was a teenager, her mother often said, “Gina, when you’re stuck and no one will help you, you always find a way to blow into your own sail to keep going.”

  But now she felt vulnerable. Working alone was hard; even harder when the fruits of one’s labor were scoffed at by a presumed ally. She considered whitewashing or eliminating entirely Wes Rigler’s contention that another detective could look at the evidence around Paula’s death and confidently conclude it was a suicide. But facts are stubborn things. When you start discarding them because they don’t neatly fit your narrative, progress is always faster, but toward the wrong conclusion.

  Gina concluded her summary of the meeting at the funeral home by repeating verbatim Rigler’s belief that Paula’s death could have been a suicide. The editor was sitting back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. Gina got the impression he was patiently allowing her to finish, his mind long since made up. His opening words confirmed her suspicion.

  “Gina, I know how hard you’ve worked on this REL News piece. But as journalists, sometimes we have to face the fact that we’re seeing things that simply are not there. You put together an interesting case that the girl in Aruba was murdered. But it’s equally plausible that she drank too much, panicked, and the crash that killed her was an accident. Same with the Paula Stephenson case. Possibly a murder, but just as likely a suicide. If you were writing the story as a novel, it would make a good read. I’m sure a lot of publishers would be interested. But we’re not in the fiction business.”

  “What about Meg Williamson?” Gina protested. “We know she got a settlement.”

  “Probably true, but isn’t that the same Meg Williamson who is refusing to talk to you anymore?”

  “I’ve reached out to the source who told me to look into Paula Stephenson. If she provides additional leads, what then?”

  “I’ll tell you what then. As editor, I have to allocate our precious resources to stories that I believe will one day appear in the pages of our magazine. I still have confidence in you, but we’re not going to waste any more time or effort on REL News.”

  Gina wondered if she looked as stunned as she felt. How could events have turned so quickly? A story she felt so strongly about was being cut loose because some big advertiser folded? I never even liked their clothes, she thought to herself.

  “What am I supposed to say,” Gina sighed, “but okay?”

  Geoff’s climbing to his feet announced the meeting was over. “I’m sorry it ended this way, Gina. I don’t have time to go into it now, but there’s another project that I want to assign to you. I’ll be in touch.”

  Gina nodded. Without saying anything, she got up and headed for the door. For the second time in the last few weeks she was leaving this office
feeling shell-shocked. The first time was in the early stages of an investigation so electrifying that she was willing to risk losing the love of her life to pursue it. Now Ted was gone, and along with him, the REL News story.

  80

  Dick Sherman felt his stomach in a knot. One of the expressions he had often used to instruct underlings was: Some people when they’re in a hole climb out of it; others ask for a bigger shovel. It was becoming clear that he had failed to follow his own advice. Given the chance, he would turn the clock back to the Saturday morning Carter had called him at home. Who knows? Maybe he could have survived with an apology for dropping the ball and failing to take action after the email about what Matthews did to that woman Pomerantz. But he’d chosen to go along with Carter’s plan and now, two years later, there was no turning back.

  The previous evening he had stayed late, until after Matthews completed his evening newscast. The anchor was a creature of habit. When his program was over, Matthews would go back to his office, pour himself a Scotch, and watch the half-hour broadcast from start to finish. On-air reporters and their producers who did an exceptionally good job received emails lavishing praise. Similarly, he felt no qualms about providing quick feedback to those correspondents whose work disappointed him. He also paid scrupulous attention to the work of the two cameramen who were responsible for the close-up shots of him. He believed it was his duty to the millions of Americans who watched him every weeknight to look his very best.

  Sherman had waited until Matthews’s longtime secretary had left. He knocked on the anchorman’s closed door, pushing it open as he did so. A bizarre thought had leaped into Sherman’s mind at that moment. What would he do if Matthews were in his office molesting another young woman? Fortunately, that was not the case. He was seated behind his desk, tie loosened, Scotch in hand, watching himself on a flat-screen TV affixed to a wall. On the wall behind his desk were portraits of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. The two appeared to be smiling down on their worthy successor.