Blank Page by Linda S. Maclaren (Mackie)
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Act II
The second crime scene bore disconcerting similarities to the first: a large, nearly empty parking lot flanked by a small copse of trees, the facade of a nightclub looking rather tawdry in the unforgiving grayness of the afternoon, and the street-side cluster of police vehicles that had brought the various investigative branches to the scene.
Jim parked behind the M.E.'s wagon and climbed out. A news van pulled up across the street, and he scowled at it.
"I wonder who called the vultures?" Blair said softly, his distaste obvious. He had an understandable antipathy toward reporters.
"We'll find out," Jim promised as he and Blair ducked under the yellow tape. He paused by the uniformed officer manning the entry point. "Do you know you called them?"
"No, sir." The officer nodded down the street. "But here comes another one."
Irritated, Jim headed toward the center of activity, a point midway through the large parking lot near the edge of the trees.
Rafe didn't look happy to see them and didn't hesitate to voice his displeasure. "This is crap, Jim."
To his credit, Jim didn't rise to the potential confrontation. "I know it is, Rafe, and I don't like it any better than you do. The Captain ordered me to take over, and you know as well as I do that meant he got the order from higher up the food chain." He gestured toward the distant news crews assembling their equipment by the crime scene tape. "It probably has something to do with that."
Redness crept up Rafe's neck, but it was embarrassment, not anger. "Sorry, that was probably my doing."
Jim flipped to a clean page in his notebook. "Okay, show us what you've got."
Rafe led them a short distance into the trees. "Body of a young man, age twenty. His driver's license says he's Dwayne Newsome, and he has student ID for the U."
An assistant M.E., a different man than they'd seen earlier in the day at the Carpenter crime scene, had been preparing to move the body. The arrival of a second set of investigators made him sigh in frustration. Without being asked, he recited, obviously not for the first time, "White male, age twenty according to his ID, time of death between midnight and 2 a.m. Rigor's well established. We'll know more when we get him on the table."
Blair winced as he looked down at the battered body of the young man. "Beaten to death?"
The M.E. shrugged. "That's my guess. Fists, maybe more than one set from the look of him. There are indications of major internal bleeding. He could've laid here hidden by the trees for several hours prior to death, so it'll be tough trying to pinpoint when the initial assault took place. Analyzing the bruises might help."
As with the Sherry Carpenter murder, a crime scene team was diligently going about the business of documenting everything, however minute or irrelevant it appeared, that might prove pertinent to the investigation.
Jim gave the area a careful examination, but it looked as if all the evidence had been marked for collection. He didn't spot anything the team had missed. He turned back to Rafe. "You said you're responsible for the press being here?"
Rafe sighed. "Yeah, sorry. I found an emergency contact card in Newsome's wallet. When I called the number, I ended up talking to someone named Reed Bartlett. He's head of the Gay Youth Alliance at Rainier."
Jim winced. "Newsome was gay?" No wonder the vultures were circling.
"Yeah."
"The Alliance is the most radical gay group on campus," Blair said. "If there's political mileage to be made out of this killing, Bartlett will find a way to exploit it."
"You know him?" Jim asked.
"Vaguely. He took a seminar from me a few years ago. One of those loud-mouthed, flagrantly gay activists who thinks you're a homophobe if you tell him you're not interested in a lecture about his sexual orientation." Blair shook his head slightly. "But he can be charismatic. The press will listen to him."
"Shit, that's all we need." He brightened a little. "I'll make sure you do the interview."
"Thanks a bunch, partner."
"We'll also check out his school records and talk to his instructors." Jim glanced back toward the nightclub. "This isn't a gay hangout."
Henri Brown had been crouched by the body completing the unenviable task of searching through the victim's pockets. He dropped a set of keys into a plastic evidence bag, sealed and signed the label, then stood up as he peeled off his latex gloves. "It's not, but it's not hostile toward them either." He joined them. "The club has some really good, live jazz on Friday and Saturday nights. It attracts a lot of people. Most of the time, the attitude is live and let live."
"Most of the time?"
"Yeah. Occasionally you'll get some loud-mouthed redneck, or some obnoxious gay will try to provoke a fight. Mostly, none of the regulars tolerate that sort of behavior from either side."
Blair smiled. "You sound like the voice of experience."
"Like I said, they have some good jazz bands on the weekends."
Jim closed his notebook and looked at Brown and Rafe, who appeared to have gotten over his irritation at being usurped in the investigation. "Okay, we're heading over to the U to check out Newsome. You two track down whoever was in charge here last night. Learn all you can about who came in -- hell, you know the drill. Get a warrant for the credit card slips, even if the manager agrees to give them to you. I can't imagine some bottom-feeding lawyer making a successful case for expectations of privacy, but I'm sure someone will try." With a grimace, he added, "Will you handle the next-of-kin notification?"
Rafe nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, we'll handle it."
Jim looked toward the knot of reporters gathered just beyond the crime scene tape. "And get Simon down here to deal with that."
Jim had hoped to slip quietly away from the scene, but it wasn't to happen. Instead, as he and Blair ducked under the tape at the entry point, the gaggle of reporters descended upon them, pens, recorders, and video cameras poised. At the front of their formation was a small, ascetic-looking young man with a goatee bobbing at the end of his pointed chin and a definite mince in his stride.
"Jesus, don't tell me that's Reed Bartlett," Jim whispered in a cautious aside to his partner.
Blair kept his expression neutral and his voice quiet as the cameras approached. "Yeah, and all that hip-swaying is an affectation for the press. Normally, except for the Gay Rights Now assortment of T-shirts he wears, you'd never know he was gay."
Jim smiled sourly. "Think if I wore a Heterosexual Pride sweatshirt he'd call me a bigot?" It was a sore point with him that the laws requiring "tolerance" seemed only to flow in one direction.
"He'd call you a raging homophobe, one of his favorite phrases. He's an embarrassment and a political set-back to gays everywhere."
The horde finally surrounded them, all but pinning them to the front of the pickup. Jim might have been inclined to step back and let his partner field the questions, especially now that Blair was a cop. But the circumstances surrounding Blair's arrival on the Force were still too recent, his resentment toward the press still too raw, to thrust him back into the limelight. So Jim moved forward, almost colliding with two camera operators. Everyone took a step backward, unconsciously giving him the space he demanded.
"Detective Ellison, we understand you've taken over the case from another detective team, is that correct?" one beady-eyed woman demanded, thrusting a microphone toward his face.
"Is that because someone thinks they can't handle the investigation?" another wanted to know.
And overriding that question and all but smothering it: "Is it because their attitude toward gays might taint their objectivity?"
It was one of those "Have you stopped beating your wife?" sorts of questions that Jim hated, so he ignored it just as he ignored the others. He looked at Reed Bartlett. "Mr. Bartlett, I'm Detective Ellison, and this is my partner, Detective Sandburg. We need to ask you a few questions about the deceased."
Bartlett's upper lip curled in a well-practiced sneer. "I notice you haven't answered any of the questions put to you, Detective."
"They don't pertain to the investigation," Jim answered smoothly. "Captain Banks is on his way to answer any questions anyone has about the administrative decisions in his department." He tried to steer Bartlett away from the reporters, but he knew it was a lost cause. "In the meantime --"
"In the meantime, I'll tell you all you need to know about Dwayne Newsome." Bartlett forged on, playing to the cameras. "He was twenty years old, a sophomore at Rainier. He knew he was gay from the time he was fifteen, but he kept it hidden, as if it was some dirty little secret to be ashamed of. With the Gay Alliance, he found the support and encouragement he needed to realize he wasn't some freak of nature. He was able to hold his head up and announce his sexuality with confidence and pride. And now some homophobic bigots have robbed him of his future."
The whole thing was a circus, so Jim merely nodded. "We have your number, Mr. Bartlett." Yeah, he definitely had Bartlett's number. "We have some other interviews to complete with people who might have some information bearing more directly on our investigation, so we'll be in touch." When hell freezes over or you climb down off your soapbox, whichever comes first.
Ignoring a multitude of shouted questions, he led the way around to the driver's door of the pickup, let Blair slide in first, then climbed in and shut the door. "Don't say anything yet," he said quietly, his head down as if he were fumbling to put the key into the ignition. "One of those bastards might be a lip-reader."
The engine fired to life, and he backed away from the group, made a sedate U-turn, and headed up the street.
When they were well clear of the reporters, Blair mopped imaginary sweat from his brow. "Man, they really are a bunch of vultures."
"Bartlett was playing to them, and they were lapping it up."
"Yeah, but we do have to question him, right?"
Jim shot him a sideways glance and grinned. "I'm betting he'll beat us to the University. No way he wants to be left out of this, and if we can cut through his line of bullshit, he might even tell us something useful."
Blair nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think Newsome might have gone into that jazz club looking to make some sort of gay-rights statement?"
"It's too early to say. We need to know a lot more about him first. Do you think we'll find anyone on campus on a Saturday?"
"Yeah, there are a lot of labs and seminars held on Saturday. We might get lucky and find a couple of Newsome's professors teaching today. If not, there will still be someone in the Administration offices who can give us his class schedule and address."
"Okay, we'll start there." Jim sighed almost theatrically. "Then we'll both tackle Bartlett and his Gay Youth allies."
"Thanks." Blair punched him lightly on the arm. "I knew you weren't going to let me beard that particular den of lions on my own." He slouched in his seat and stared out the side window. It had started to rain heavily, and he smiled to think of the cluster of reporters caught in the sudden downpour. The smile turned to a frown. "I'll bet you a twenty the media bring up the whole dissertation thing again."
"Probably. There's a Rainier connection, and reporters will be looking to fill column inches. Someone's bound to dredge it all up."
"Yeah." Blair didn't sound happy at the prospect, but at least he seemed to accept it without it stirring up all the old emotions. "I hope this rain lasts for a while. I really want those reporters to get soaked."
The broad, verdant expanses of Rainier University were deserted when Jim pulled into a nearly empty parking lot in front of the Administration building. He found a good spot, killed the engine, and leaned back in his seat. "See what you can find out about Newsome, then we'll decide where to start."
Blair shot him a look common to junior partners everywhere, then jumped out of the cab and dashed through the downpour toward the main doors.
Jim idly watched rainsnakes streaming down the windshield and pondered the unsettling empathy he felt for Sherry Carpenter. He hadn't felt it at the crime scene, or at least it had been no more pronounced than his reaction to other homicide victims. No, he'd first felt it in Sherry's apartment. There had been something deeply disquieting in her compulsive orderliness, a familiarity that touched him in ways he really didn't want to acknowledge.
Could he find traces of his own childhood traumas buried in his compulsion for neatness?
Through the rain-streaked windshield, he caught a glimpse of his partner sprinting toward the truck and smiled. Whatever his deep, dark motivations, his compulsion had pretty much collided with spontaneous chaos and lost handily.
Cold air and rain swirled around as Blair tumbled into the cab and closed the door. Droplets sprayed everywhere as he pushed back the hood of his jacket. "I got Newsome's class schedule. None of his professors are on campus today, but I got their addresses and phone numbers."
Dismissing thoughts of Sherry Carpenter for the moment, Jim started the truck. "Did you find out where Newsome lived?"
"Yeah, he shared a dorm room with another sophomore named Ramon Santiago. I'll give you directions."
Blair hesitated as he raised his fist to knock on Dwayne Newsome's dorm-room door. "Here we go again."
Jim looked at him oddly. "Again?"
"Trying to piece together the last few hours of a victim's life to find out why he died."
Jim briefly placed a hand on his shoulder. "This is getting to you, isn't it?"
He nodded. "A bit." He shook off the mood and knocked. "I'll be okay."
A young Hispanic man opened the door.
Blair held up his badge. "Ramon Santiago?"
The man nodded. "Yeah, that's me." He stepped back and gestured for them to come in. "You're here about Dwayne?"
They entered a neat but cluttered room. Both sides of the room were nearly mirror images of bed, dresser, bookcase, and desk. A small refrigerator spoiled the symmetry of one wall, and an expensive stereo system shared center stage between both halves. Except for being tidier than some, it looked very much like dorm rooms everywhere.
"We'd like to look through his stuff," Blair said. "The Admin office said it was okay, but we can get a warrant if you prefer."
Santiago shook his head and sat down on one of the beds. He gestured toward the other side of the room. "That was his side. Look through whatever you want."
"Had you been roommates long?" Blair asked as he perused the titles on the bookshelves. They were grouped by subject: human sexuality, clinical texts on homosexuality, a section covering various aspects of the gay lifestyle, and several volumes of what Jim usually described as self-help psychobabble. They showed a progression toward self-acceptance that brought a rush of sadness, which interfered with his efforts to remain objective.
He pulled his gaze away from the bookcase. Newsome's textbooks were piled on the floor beside the desk. A closed laptop was plugged into the phone jack, so Newsome had been active online.
"Since our freshman year," Santiago answered.
"Were you friends?"
Santiago took a long time forming an answer. "Friends in the sense that we were comfortable as roommates, we shared notes if we had the same class, and we'd go out occasionally to grab burgers. Things like that. Other than the normal, courteous things that made us good roommates, we didn't have a lot in common. We didn't like the same movies or music. I'm a social animal. Dwayne wasn't."
Jim came back after examining the tiny bathroom. "How long have you known he was gay?"
"He told me the start of this quarter, when he decided to come out."
Blair pulled out the chair to Newsome's desk and sat down to go through its drawers. "How did you feel about it?"
"Well, at first I was kind of freaked out, you know? Like wondering if I could catch AIDs by accidentally touching his toothbrush or something." Santiago looked embarrassed. "But I got over it. I realized Dwayne hadn't suddenly become a different person or anything. He was the same shy, quiet, sorta lonely guy who did your laundry or restocked the sodas in the fridge without being asked."
"Do you know if he was seeing anyone?" Jim asked, starting a search through the pockets of the clothes in Newsome's small closet.
"No, in fact I think he was still a virgin. But he said he was looking." Santiago shifted uncomfortably on the bed. "He promised if he found someone, he wouldn't bring him back to the room. So I promised I wouldn't try to sneak in any girls. It seemed fair, you know?"
Blair wrote out a receipt for a few things he'd taken from Newsome's desk. He hadn't found anything revealing, but bank statements, phone records, and address books could sometimes provide important clues. Turning around in the chair so he could study Santiago's face, he said, "You mentioned Dwayne didn't become a different person, but did you notice change in him after he admitted he was gay?"
"Well, yeah, he was more relaxed. Once we'd gotten over the initial awkwardness when he told me he was gay, he was more comfortable to be around. I guess I was the first straight person he'd told."
Jim had finished his search and come up empty handed. "Do you know where he went last night?"
"Yeah. I mean, I didn't know last night, but I heard his body was found outside the jazz club. He liked jazz, so it makes sense." Santiago's calm facade crumbled a little then. "I can't believe someone killed him just because he was different. It's such a damn waste."
It was 5:30 and dark when they finished their rounds of Rainier and went back to the truck to compare notes. One thing was immediately obvious:
"Dwayne wasn't into making political statements," Blair said with certainty. "He didn't want Reed Bartlett turning him into cause celebre." It was about the only fact he'd brought away from their otherwise fruitless interview with the militant gay-right's activist. It turned out Bartlett hardly knew Newsome and had foisted the emergency contact card on him "just in case."
"That's the same impression I got," Jim said. "Newsome was friendly but shy, excited but still nervous about finally admitting his homosexuality."
"So he probably didn't go into that club with the intention of inciting some sort of confrontation."
"Which leaves us with a young man who liked good jazz."
Blair stared at the filled pages of his notebook. "We have an approximate timeline of who saw him when. We should be able to trace his movements pretty accurately right up until the time he left campus." He closed the notebook and tucked it into his jacket pocket, then ran his hands across his face.
"What's wrong?"
He shrugged. "Just tired."
Jim nodded. "Yeah, we've been on the go for over nine hours."
"It's not that." He slouched in the seat. "Sherry and Dwayne were two isolated, lonely people we never would have heard of if they hadn't been murdered. Sherry was driven by some sort of compulsion. We're only guessing about its cause. I can't help but wonder if she ever had any happiness in her life." He shook his head sadly. "Dwayne was alone for a different reason. I get the feeling he was just starting to accept himself, and maybe then he might have found contentment."
Jim started the truck. "You're tired because you're letting yourself get emotionally involved with the victims."
Blair shot him an exasperated look. "'Check your emotions at the door.' Yeah, I know all about your philosophy. But even you can't follow it all the time; I know Sherry got to you. Don't deny it."
"Maybe you're right, but I don't have time to analyze it right now." Jim put the truck in gear. "We made a lot of phone calls today and put a lot of balls into motion. It's time to head back and see if we've scored any baskets."
Blair knew it was true, although he hated to admit it. Justice and the law were two separate entities, and sometimes it appeared neither was in service of the other. Jim maintained that the only chance a victim had for justice came from the way they solved a crime: obtaining the necessary warrants; locating and legally gathering evidence; maintaining the chain of that evidence; and compiling a detailed and logical report of the investigation so that it led inevitably to the criminal. Everything after that -- the pre-trial wrangling and the trial itself -- was no more than a test of the rules of law, an examination of the investigative methods to make certain everything had been done by the book. Lawyers and judges had little to do with justice; mostly, their actions were dictated by expediency, not a sense of right and wrong. It was a brutal, over-burdened system forced to churn out verdicts at a mind-numbing pace, and it all too frequently lost sight of the victim in favor of the criminal's rights.
There was a vast amount of documentation associated with a homicide investigation.
"If we're gonna stay on top of the paperwork, we're gonna have to split the jobs," Jim said as they left the elevator and headed for the bullpen.
"Okay, you want to take Sherry Carpenter?" Blair knew his partner was more attuned to the nuances of that case and would want to focus on it as much as possible before the juggernaut of popular opinion compelled him to concentrate on the murder of Dwayne Newsome.
Jim hesitated, but finally shook his head. "No, I'd better be the official lead on the Newsome case."
Secretly, Blair was relieved. The Newsome murder was too big a political firecracker to make him feel comfortable as the primary in the investigation. Jumping in at the deep end was one thing; wrapping an anchor chain around his neck was a different proposition altogether. He didn't think he was ready yet to sign his name in the lead investigator's signature block on such a high-profile murder.
"Okay."
They reached their desks, and Blair sat down to boot his computer. He looked up at his partner, who was staring toward the door of Simon's closed and shuttered office.
"Someone in there?"
Jim nodded.
"Know who it is?"
"Unfortunately, yeah." With an expression that looked as if he'd bitten into something sour, Jim started to sit down, only to freeze mid-way when the door to Simon's office opened.
The Captain beckoned. "Jim, come in here a minute."
Jim sighed and straightened. Like a condemned man walking toward his execution, he headed for the office.
Frowning with concern, Blair watched until the office door closed behind his partner. There was nothing he could do for Jim at the moment, though, so he turned his attention back to his desk.
There was already a stack of paperwork: preliminary reports from forensics, crime scene photos, ancillary interviews and findings that all needed to be sorted, entered into the computer, and filed in their respective case folders.
It was definitely time to get caught up, but Megan Connor and Joel Taggart were hovering around his desk to bring him up-to-date on their own parts of the investigation.
"I spoke to Sherry Carpenter's mother." Megan consulted her notebook. "She's remarried, and her name is Helen DeSalvo. She won't fly out to identify or claim the body."
Blair shook his head sadly. Sometimes, it was hard for him to keep his emotional distance. "I can't say I'm surprised."
Megan shrugged. "She didn't sound healthy, which might help explain her reluctance, but she did say, and I quote, 'That girl was always causing trouble, making all sorts of wild accusations to get attention.' Does that make sense to you?"
"Yeah, we have a theory about that," he said, thinking of his earlier speculation with Jim that Sherry might have been a victim of childhood sexual abuse. "We may have more when we talk to her therapist. Joel?"
Taggart slid a printed page onto the top of the pile. "That would be Betty Crewson, Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She's out of town until Wednesday, and her office assistant wouldn't tell me a thing without a warrant. I'll push it if you think it's important."
"Not yet." Blair looked through his notebook, transferred some information to a blank page, and tore it out to hand to Taggart. "Here's a couple of phone numbers. The first is Mary Burns, owner and manager of the place where Sherry worked. She was listed as Sherry's emergency contact. The other number is Mrs. Rose Evanston, one of Carpenter's co-workers. See if one of them is willing to come in and identify the body. The M.E. will want that taken care of ASAP."
"I'll get right on it," Joel promised. "I'm also finishing up that list of credit card customers who were at the nightclub last night."
"Thanks."
Joel headed back toward his desk.
Blair sifted through more of the paperwork. "Good, Megan, you managed to find out about Sherry's will."
"Yeah, her attorney was one of the numbers you gave me. She'd made out a simple will leaving everything to one of the private animal shelters. The attorney is the executor. Also, in addition to the health benefits she had through her employment, she had a small life insurance policy designed to cover funeral expenses." Megan sighed. "At least she won't be bulldozed into a pauper's grave."
Blair was relieved. "Be sure to have someone notify us of the funeral arrangements once the M.E. releases her body, okay? That info will probably come from the lawyer or Mary Burns. Other than that, we haven't found more than a couple of people who gave a damn about Carpenter." He finished looking through the stack of information.
With a glance toward Simon's still-closed door, he shifted his attention to a second stack of reports. "Maybe I can get some of Jim's stuff organized. Do we have anything yet on Dwayne Newsome?"
Megan went back to her handwritten notes. "Rafe and Brown made the next-of-kin notification. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Newsome, an address here in Cascade." She tore the page out of her notebook and handed it to Blair. "Here it is. Rafe and Brown haven't been in yet to type up their paperwork, but H called in about an hour ago. He says the parents are devastated by the news, suspected for several years that their son was gay, and couldn't think of anyone who might have had a grudge against him. H says it looks like a dead end at the moment. He and Rafe are putting addresses to the credit card receipts they collected from the jazz club, and they're going back there tonight to talk to the regulars."
Blair sighed. "All right, thanks, Megan. I guess that's it for now. It's about time I started catching up on my own reports." He punched a few keys on his keyboard and glared with distaste at the form that obediently appeared on his monitor. With a grunt of determination, he started flipping through his notebook to find the information to fill in the blanks.
Jim leaned nonchalantly against the door after Simon ushered him inside his office and closed it. Keeping his expression carefully neutral, he looked at the man seated in the visitor's chair.
The visitor, a well-groomed black man in custom-tailored clothes, gave him a thoughtful appraisal in return.
Simon returned to his chair behind his desk. "Assistant District Attorney Brian Flint, I'd like you to meet my lead detective, Detective James Ellison."
The two men made no effort to shake hands, and Simon's gaze traveled between them. His eyebrows quirked down, as if he was getting the first inclination that perhaps this meeting wouldn't go as smoothly as he'd expected. "I take it you gentlemen know each other?"
Jim smiled slightly. "We met several years ago, Simon. I'd be surprised if Mr. Flint even remembers."
"Oh, I remember, Detective," Flint assured him with icy politeness. With a dismissive look, he turned back to Simon. "Captain Banks, although I'm certain Detective Ellison is an excellent investigator, I'm not sanguine about him being placed in charge of such a sensitive case."
Simon's expression tightened with barely restrained annoyance. "Detective Ellison and his partner, Detective Sandburg, don't just have the best record of arrests leading to successful prosecution in this department; they have the best record in the entire Pacific Northwest. The District Attorney --" your boss was implied but not spoken, " -- wanted my best men assigned to the case. The Chief concurred. I gave them what they wanted."
Jim raised an eyebrow innocently. "I think Mr. Flint may be referring to my lack of political finesse," he said. "After all, cliches like 'moral outrage,' 'public outcry for justice,' and the promise to 'expend every effort to apprehend the perpetrators of this heinous crime,' don't roll glibly from my lips." He was quoting verbatim from one of Flint's press conferences that he'd caught earlier on the truck radio.
Beneath his dusky mahogany skin, the Assistant DA flushed angrily. His tone, however, remained coolly polite. "As you can see, Captain Banks, Detective Ellison may not fully appreciate the political ramifications of this investigation."
Simon wasn't fazed. "That's why he has me, Mr. Flint. I can spout political correctness with the best of them."
Bless you, Simon, Jim thought, aware his Captain had deliberately shifted Flint's annoyance away from him. But he wasn't willing to push aside his animosity toward the ADA just yet. "By the way, Captain, I have twelve active cases and two fresh homicides. Which one are we talking about?"
If looks were gunfire, Jim would have gone down in a hail of bullets fired by both men.
"You see, Captain --?" Flint began in an outraged tone.
"Rein it in, Detective." Simon's bark overrode even Flint's protests.
Jim straightened from his slouched position. "Sorry, sir."
Flint stood up and reached for his expensive overcoat. "I see I'm going to have to make my reservations about Detective Ellison's role in the investigation of this tragedy a part of the official record."
Jim's eyes flashed coldly. "You're right, Mr. Flint. The death of Dwayne Newsome is a tragedy, but not because he was young with a life full of possibilities ahead of him, or because he was a gifted student, or because he was gay, or because he was loved by his friends and family. The tragedy is that he was murdered. And I will find his killer. Just like I'll find the killer of Sherilyn Carpenter."
Flint looked startled. "Who?"
"Sherilyn Carpenter was a young woman who was murdered last night outside a different nightclub in a different part of Cascade. Unlike Dwayne Newsome, whose death will become a rallying cry for special interest groups across the country, she's just one of the dozens of women who die every year because they had the misfortune to leave a bar with the wrong person. I'm sure she's barely a blip on your politically sensitive radar."
Simon's sigh of exasperation sounded loud in the ensuing silence. "That's enough, Jim," he said quietly.
Flint put on his coat and stepped closer to Jim. "I see we're destined to always be on opposite sides, Detective."
"Only for as long as you rate cases based on how well they can boost your political ambitions."
Flint glanced at Simon, who had come around his desk as if worried the two men might come to physical blows. "I think Detective Ellison is referring to my vigorous prosecution last year of Lewis Blackwell, who murdered his wife with a handgun legally registered in his name. The Detective's testimony favored the defense more than the prosecution."
Jim's veneer of calm control snapped. "Only because you tried to blame the tool and not the tool user for the crime."
Flint shrugged dismissively. "The same flawed argument used by gun advocacy groups everywhere."
Jim's smile was predatory. "Not at all. I'll accept your views on gun control the day you apply the same logic to a ban on cars because some people drive drunk."
His comment was followed by a moment of frigid stillness, then Flint pushed roughly past him to open the door. It slammed in the wake of his angry departure.
"Christ, Jim." Simon's annoyance was almost buried beneath his evident weariness. "I could have used a little support on this one."
"I'm sorry, Simon." Jim was sincerely apologetic. "Flint just has a way of pushing all the wrong buttons."
The Captain leaned against the side of his desk. "I take it you two have a history."
Jim nodded, his mouth curved in a bitter smile. "Yeah. I arrested him for drunk driving when I was a rookie."
"Isn't that just wonderful?" Simon closed his eyes briefly. "What happened?"
"Flint was already on the fast track in the DA's office. His top brass called my top brass, and I ended up listening to a lecture on how vigorous police work needs to be tempered with common sense and a dose of good judgment."
Simon smiled. "That's good advice, Detective, but you didn't heed it then so I won't bother repeating it now."
Jim returned the smile. "Much appreciated, Captain. Can I get back to work now?"
Simon waved a hand in the direction of the bullpen. "Go. Give ulcers and headaches to your suspects. I'm going home."
The bullpen was quiet except for the steady clicking of Blair's keyboard as he rapidly entered data into the growing case files. Rafe and Brown had stopped in briefly to drop off their notes and give him a quick progress report, but they'd headed back out with plans to interview patrons at the jazz club where Dwayne Newsome had been murdered. Many of the other detectives had already gone home. Only Joel Taggart remained, talking quietly into his telephone and jotting notes on a rapidly filling sheet of paper.
Blair glanced up when he heard the office door open, and winced at the reverberating slam that followed the angry departure of an elegantly dressed black man.
He searched his memory. Flint. Assistant DA. Rumored to be aiming for higher office, perhaps even a governorship. Butted heads with Jim last year in court. Oh, yeah, that Flint. Major pain in the ass. Jim would not be a happy man.
A minute later, Jim left Simon's office. As he strode to his desk, his expression lived up to Blair's prediction.
"Flint got his shorts in a knot over the Newsome case?" he asked softly.
"What else?" Jim sat down and booted his computer with angry motions.
Blair finished his last entry, hit the print command, and closed down his terminal before standing up. He wasn't quite sure where to begin, not when Jim was obviously in such a bad mood, but he was determined. "Uh, Jim, it's getting late."
Jim glanced at his watch to confirm what he already knew. "Seven-thirty. You need a ride home?"
"No." He was frustrated by his reluctance to say what was on his mind, so he just took a deep breath and plunged. "There's going to be a candlelight vigil for Dwayne Newsome at eight at the U. I thought I'd go." The baffled look he got from Jim was almost enough to kill his resolve.
"Why?"
"It's just something I want to do." It would be useless trying to explain how he needed to find a release for all the negative emotions churning inside him after a long day of seeing and hearing the worst of what the human species had to offer. "It's important to me." That should have been enough for Jim.
It wasn't. "What, a bunch of people holding candles and swaying in time to a verse from 'We Shall Overcome'? Listening to self-serving speeches from people like Brian Flint or Reed Bartlett? Your presence won't accomplish anything except add weight to their rhetoric and make a greater visual impact for a ten-second sound byte on tonight's ten o'clock news."
Blair struggled to keep his own temper in check. "Jim, I know it looks like a meaningless gesture to you, but I think it's important to show community resolve and unity."
"Sounds more like your old line of liberal bullshit to me."
Although he knew Jim's outburst was caused by his earlier confrontation with Brian Flint, Blair couldn't hold back his anger any longer. "Look, Jim, I didn't become a different person just because I picked up a badge and a gun."
Jim's dismissive gesture cut through him like a knife. "Go, then. Light your candles." With that, he turned his attention to his computer screen.
Blair bit off a retort and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. He let Jim have the last word because now wasn't the time to push a confrontation. Maybe later, after they'd both calmed down, he'd be able to explain how he needed a way to dissolve all the negativity swirling around him. Head pounding, he walked out the door.
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This page last updated 2/28/01.