The Guilty Page 15

  “Later,” Wallace said. The doors opened. “Let’s go.”

  My stomach surged upward with the motion of the elevator. I wondered if the feeling in my gut was what prisoners felt like before their execution. We got off on the eighteenth floor. I’d heard about the eighteenth floor, but had never been there. Unless you were nominated for a Pulitzer or were about to have the rug pulled out from your career, you never came up here. And I sure as hell wasn’t up for a Pulitzer.

  The digital counter stopped at 18. The doors opened.

  Everything looked newer up here; the wood paneling dark and freshly polished, the newspapers in the waiting area folded, and even the receptionist looked like she spent a little more time at the gym than those on the Metro floor. She guarded a narrow hallway with one set of double doors at the end. The office of Harvey Hillerman, chairman and CEO of the New York Gazette.

  Wallace nodded at the receptionist.

  “You can go right in,” she said.

  “Thanks, Gloria.” Gloria went back to typing.

  The doors swung open as we approached. Harvey Hillerman was standing in front of us, holding the door open, an unlit cigar in his mouth. The end was sopping wet and looked like a gangrenous limb that could detach at any moment.

  His sleeves were a little too long for his wrists. His jacket seemed to billow out. On the wall was a framed portrait of Hillerman standing next to Bill Clinton, Hillerman’s pants just a bit too baggy, as if the clothes he wore belonged to a larger man.

  Harvey Hillerman’s office was startlingly clear of any sort of clutter. Lining his walls were several dozen framed page ones from various Gazette editions. I scanned the headlines while Harvey and Wallace exchanged awkward pleasantries.

  April 4, 1996. Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, is arrested at his remote cabin in Montana after his brother, David, notifies authorities.

  February 5, 1997. O.J. Simpson is found liable in civil court for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman and ordered to pay $33,500,000 in damages.

  August 18, 1998. During Grand Jury testimony, President Bill Clinton admits to an “inappropriate” relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

  July 17, 1999. John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife are killed after the plane Kennedy was flying crashes into the Atlantic Ocean.

  December 14, 2000. Democratic Presidential nominee Al Gore concedes the presidential election to George W. Bush, over a month after election day.

  September 12, 2001. The day after terrorists killed nearly three thousand Americans.

  March 3, 2002. The launch of Operation Anaconda, the first large-scale battle during the United States’ war in Afghanistan since the Battle of Tora Bora in December, 2001.

  March 13, 2003. Elizabeth Smart is found alive nine months after being kidnapped by two Morman fundamentalists.

  December 14, 2003. United States military forces capture Saddam Hussein.

  December 27, 2004. An earthquake measuring between 9.1-9.3 on the Richter scale occurs in the Indian Ocean, triggering massive tsunamis over South and Southeast Asia killing over 180,000 people.

  “Murder, calamity and scandal,” Hillerman said. “They’re usually the first things people look at.” My eyes leapt from the frames to the chairman.

  Harvey Hillerman was a tall man, gray neatly-coiffed hair, with round tortoiseshell eyeglasses and a Montblanc sticking out of his shirt pocket. His desk was covered with shiny things: trophies, awards, metallic pens and things encased in glass.

  He motioned to the framed editions. “Each of those represents the bestselling newspaper of that calendar year.” He gazed at them for a moment, reflective, then motioned to the oversize chairs positioned at forty-five-degree angles in front of his desk. “Wally, Henry, please sit,” he said. We both did so.

  “Sir,” I said, “before you say anything can I just say things didn’t happen the way the Dispatch said they did. Paulina, she—”

  “That’s enough, Parker,” Hillerman said. “Mind if I ask where you’ve been the last few days?”

  “New Mexico, sir.”

  “New Mexico!” Hillerman exclaimed. “What in the bloody hell were you doing in New Mexico, vacationing?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I was following the lead Jack and I touched on in today’s paper. The gun angle. It goes deeper—”

  “Did you know about this trip to New Mexico?” Hillerman asked Wallace.

  “O’Donnell made me aware of it last night,” he said, looking at his shoes.

  Hillerman squinted his eyes as he stared at me. I didn’t know whether to stare back or let the visual beatdown continue.

  “So, Parker,” Hillerman finally said. His voice wasn’t reprimanding, it was…interested. “Tell us what you found in New Mexico.”

  I did a double take.

  “Sir?”

  “You went there for a reason. I’m hoping you didn’t come up empty-handed.”

  “Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “I was able to identify the murder weapon as a Winchester rifle, model 1873. That model is extremely rare, considering Winchester discontinued the gun a hundred years ago. There are barely a few dozen still in working condition.”

  Hillerman’s eyes widened.

  “I figured the gun had to have been stolen from either a private collection or a museum. Had a gun with that value been stolen from a collector, they would have filed the requisite insurance claims. There are less than twenty museums in North America with records of a Winchester 1873. Every museum still had the Winchester in their possession, except for one.”

  “Let me guess. It was in New Mexico,” Hillerman said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And did you find this museum?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. The Museum of Outlaws and Lawmen in Fort Sumner.”

  “And?” Hillerman said.

  “After getting railroaded at first by the manager, he eventually confessed that the model they were currently displaying was a replica, that the real one had been stolen several years back. They couldn’t afford the insurance or security measures and couldn’t risk losing tourist dollars by simply closing the exhibit.”

  “So the weapon this man has been using was stolen from a New Mexico museum and then brought to New York where it’s killed four people,” Hillerman said. “That’s an awful long schlep, just to use a certain gun.”

  “Not for this killer. He stole that gun for a reason,” I said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because the gun he stole used to belong to Billy the Kid.”

  Hillerman sat back in his chair. The cigar was still hanging from his mouth, but he seemed to have forgotten about it.

  “What you’re saying is, this killer is using Billy the Kid’s old gun—as in the Billy the Kid—shoot-’em-up Billy the Kid—to kill people in New York City.”

  “Not just random people. He’s got a motive, a pattern. The killer has some sort of connection to either the gun itself or the Kid.”

  Hillerman cocked his head and looked at Wallace. The editor-in-chief hadn’t said a word in minutes. Wallace was between a rock and a hard place: attempting to keep control of his paper while having to account for his reporter being eviscerated in articles by their biggest competitor.

  “Wallace,” Hillerman said. “What do you think?”

  Wallace seemed to come to life. “We’ve already gotten three calls from Louis Carruthers’s office about Jack’s ballistics article. Apparently they knew about the similarities and were hoping to withhold information until further notice.”

  “But you’re saying Henry beat them to the punch.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this new information, the possible link between the killer and the Kid, what have you heard on that?”

  “Complete silence from the NYPD,” Wallace said. “And they haven’t been silent about anything.”

  “Which likely means they weren’t aware of it,” Hillerman added.
/>
  “That’s right.”

  Hillerman again leaned back in his chair, gnawed on the end of his stogie, then threw the soggy mess into a trash can.

  “Here’s what we do.” His voice was angry, passionate. My heart was beating faster, my resolve growing stronger. “We report the living hell out of this story. Henry,” he said, “I want you to chase this down like a goddamn shark smelling blood. I want you to get Lou Carruthers’s office on the line and get the NYPD’s cooperation. Since you seem to have scooped them on this, they’ll give you a big wet one in return for the intel. I want copy for tomorrow’s national edition about both the stolen Winchester and link to Billy the Kid. Just imply there might be a relationship, I don’t want anyone jumping to conclusions, but we need your museum manager to go on the record. You got me?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Right. Parker, get yourself home and clean up. You look like you just got mugged in the Gobi desert or something. Hell of a fucking job, Henry.”

  “What about Paulina Cole’s story?” I asked.

  “Fuck Cole,” Hillerman said. “Good, honest, unbiased reporting beats out tabloid bullshit any day of the week. You give our readers something new about this case the Dispatch doesn’t have, Paulina can pen hatchet jobs until her cooch defrosts, we’ll sell more newspapers. Now get to work.”

  Wallace and I were out the door before he could fish out another cigar.

  CHAPTER 29

  I got out of the subway and walked toward my apartment. The last hour had been a whirlwind of debriefing, notes jotted down with the penmanship of someone born without opposable thumbs, and the sketches for what I knew would be a terrific and stunning article.

  Jack filled me in on David Loverne’s murder, which was nearly unbearable to listen to. I had to distance myself, look at the situation objectively, try not to think that the murdered man we were discussing had once hugged me, shook my hand, even told me he expected great things from me. Had things turned out differently, the man might have been my father-in-law.

  I tried not to think about how it would leave Mya without a father.

  I tried not to think about Paulina’s article, written before Loverne’s death. The two had to be related. I was still stunned by the audacity and hatred steaming from Paulina’s article, but Wallace assured me that I would face no repercussions from Gazette management, and if need be they would defend me, publicly. I declined. They’d done enough of that already. After the debriefings, Wallace and I met with the Gazette’s legal team to draft a response for any reporters looking for a quote.

  The letter was brief. It said that Paulina’s story was careless and inflammatory, and any more attempts by this allegedly balanced news organization to libel without facts would be met with legal reprimands from the Gazette, and moral reprimands from readers who wouldn’t tolerate muckraking. That part was BS. Readers loved muckraking and, as much as it pained us, we knew Paulina’s article would sell newspapers.

  The details of David Loverne’s murder were gruesome in both their brutality and efficiency.

  After Paulina’s story ran in the Dispatch, in which she alleged that Loverne’s history of infidelity would soon come to light, the press corps descended on the man’s apartment building eager to take photographs of drawn curtains, berate cleaning ladies and doormen, and try to scrape up the scraps Paulina had left under the table. When a person was accused of wrongdoing, people didn’t try very hard to photograph their good side.

  Around five o’clock, Loverne left to attend a previously scheduled fund-raiser. He was swarmed by dozens of reporters. In what would be viewed as a colossal blunder, Loverne had no private security, and the elderly doorman was easily overmatched. As Loverne attempted to push his way through, a lone rifle shot shattered the commotion, blood splashed against the glass doors, and David Loverne died.

  The photographers spent their entire rolls shooting Loverne’s body, the blood pouring from his chest, as well as the rooftop where it seemed the shot had come from. Several photographers even tried to bully their way into that very building to either catch the culprit or take photographs of the crime scene before the police arrived. Thankfully that doorman was a former cop, realized what was going on and locked the doors.

  The shooter was long gone. But by the time the police arrived, hundreds of photos of Loverne’s body were circulating among newsrooms, tabloids and the Internet.

  I called Curt Sheffield to get the lowdown. He told me one of the investigating officers mentioned that another note had been left by the killer, but it was being kept quieter than a mouse fart. He didn’t find it amusing when I asked him if he could hold a megaphone to the mouse’s ass to hear it better.

  “Doesn’t matter if I tell you,” Curt said. “Guy’s as vague as my little sister when I ask her how a date went.”

  “He didn’t leave a note with Jeffrey Lourdes. Now he changes his tune and leaves one with David Loverne. This is my ex’s father, man, cough it up.”

  “Again,” Curt said, “you use this before it’s made public, I’ll string you up to a lamppost. The note was just one line. It read, ‘Because I had the power.’ That’s it.”

  “‘Because I had the power’? That’s pretty vague. What’s it mean?”

  “You’re the reporter,” Curt replied. “You ask me, this guy’s been watching too much David Lynch.”

  As soon as I hung up with Curt, I did a search for that quote, only adding “William H. Bonney” to the search field.

  What came back was most certainly not vague.

  In 1878, corrupt sheriff William Brady arrested Billy the Kid under the auspices of helping the Kid arrest John Tunstall’s killers. When a reporter asked the lawman why he would arrest Bonney, a seemingly innocent man, Brady replied simply, “Because I had the power.”

  The connection was no longer a secret. This killer wanted us to know he had a foot in the past. The notes and public executions were garnering more media attention than anything I’d seen since coming to the city. Only not exactly in the way I expected.

  The country was captivated by these murders, and the obsession had grown with every shot. Internet sites receiving millions of hits a day were all but praising the murderer. Paradis, many said, was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of popular culture, and, many said, morals and ethics, as well. David Loverne had long claimed to uphold traditional family values, only in reality he had more sexual partners than the average Mormon. Mayor Perez—the intended target—another empty suit full of insincere promises. Jeffrey Lourdes, once a respected visionary, had been reduced to common gossip and smut peddler.

  I couldn’t believe these attitudes were so prevalent, that murder was being looked at by some as a reasonable means to an end. But they were. Somehow the man destroying lives was actually endearing himself to the public, by eliminating those deemed to be making our society ill. When I read those articles, shook my head at the stories, I knew what the link was. Why the man was killing who he did.

  He was an avenger. A Regulator. Killing those who needed to be killed for the greater good.

  Could there really be such a large portion of the population convinced that these murders were a good thing? Was it just cynical ghouls who would never know what it was like to lose a daughter, a father, a husband? That the person committing these crimes was not someone to erect a statue for, but rather a gallows?

  I thought about Rex. Something was still troubling me about our conversation, but in my rush to return to New York I hadn’t been able to follow up. Before I left, he mentioned a name. Brushy Bill. It sounded familiar for some reason, and I made a mental note to follow up with Rex later on. I had a full night ahead of me. I wondered when Amanda would be home. I missed talking to her, and hoped to God that everything Jack told me the other day could be chalked up to the ramblings of an old, lonely man. That just because he was going to die alone didn’t mean I would. Amanda had saved my life; was my life. And I wouldn’t give that up without one h
ell of a fight.

  But then I rounded the corner to my apartment and saw the one thing I never expected to see. I stopped on a dime. Couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. Whether to go forward and confront it, or to turn and run. The anger inside me rose up, threatened to consume everything, but her tears, the misery etched on her face, they drowned it all out.

  So when I saw Mya Loverne standing alone in front of my building, wearing an old sweatshirt, her eyes bleary and red from crying, I didn’t know whether to scream at her, or to gather her in my arms and tell her everything would be all right. Like I should have done the night she got hurt. Like I hadn’t done for her since.

  “Henry,” she sobbed, taking a tentative step toward me. I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at the woman who’d shared my bed so many nights, whose hand I’d held and caressed, who just the other day had thrown me under a bus driven by Paulina Cole. A girl who had just lost her father to a heartless monster. I didn’t know what to say to this girl. But then I found myself taking a step forward.

  “Henry,” she said again, the sobs now racking her small body. Mya looked like she’d lost at least twenty pounds since I’d last seen her, and she was a slim girl to begin with. She looked malnourished, pale, like she had given up on herself. “Henry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to say all those things, they just happened. Henry, I’m so sorry. Please, my father, I don’t know what to do.”

  My heart broke as I watched this, this shell of my former love. I took another step toward her, and she did the same. “My dad,” she cried, her voice interrupted by staccato sobs, “my dad was killed. Oh God, Henry, please say something.”

  I took another step. I could feel her breath, caught the faint whiff of perfume sprayed on long ago and never washed off. Her hair was a ragged mess, her eyes streaked and bloodshot.

  “Mya, I’m so sorry for your father…I…he was a good person.”

  “I know he was good,” she shouted. “So why did he have to die?” She came toward me, didn’t hesitate, and suddenly Mya was leaning against my chest. Not in an embrace, but for support. There was no strength in her. If I moved she would collapse.