C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Aubrey and I trotted out the door like the hyenas we were. Tish Kiddle and her cameraman were right behind us.

“That sneaky bitch,” Aubrey fumed as we hurried to her Escort.

I was not sure who she meant. “Tish Kiddle or Annie Bandicoot?”

She fumbled through her purse for her car keys. “Try to keep the objects of my disdain straight, Maddy. Tish is the whore. Annie is the sneaky bitch.”

“Does it really surprise you they invited Channel 21, too?”

“This is my story, Maddy.”

“I think the Bandicoots consider it their story,” I said.

Aubrey glowered at me-as if I was guilty of something. “It’s because of my digging that they’re in this spot. You’d think they’d respect that.”

“I don’t think protecting your scoop is very high on their list of worries.”

Aubrey mellowed. She giggled at her own arrogance. “It should be.”

We sped past the church. The red Taurus station wagon pulled from the side street and followed us.

I understood why Aubrey was livid. It was her story. She’d spent weeks researching the murder, wheedling information out of one reluctant source after another. For weeks she’d seen that fat, black Page One headline in her head:

Did Sissy really kill Buddy Wing?

Now Tish Kiddle would be breaking her story on tonight’s TV news.

I did all I could to comfort her. “They’ll lead with it tonight-unless there was some terrible accident on the interstate-but they won’t have any details, or any background. After tonight they’ll just be reporting what you’ve already reported.”

Aubrey fished through her purse for her cellphone and thumbed in a number. “How do those TV people live with themselves… Tinker? Sorry to call you at home on Sunday.”

There was no time to drive me home. We went straight to the paper and Aubrey spent the next five hours writing her story. And while she wrote, Tinker, who’d rushed to the newsroom in musty jogging shorts and a Cleveland Indians T-shirt, lorded over the weekend skeleton crew on the metro desk. The story would run across the top of Page One. Tim Bandicoot’s confession to adultery would be the main thrust of the story, but it would state very clearly in the second paragraph that the public admission came in the wake of an ongoing Herald-Union investigation into the murder of Buddy Wing. We were going to be scooped by the local TV news, but we would push, and push hard, whatever advantage we had. We would let our readers know, and not in a shy way, that while TV 21 simply stumbled into the story, we uncovered the story, that Tim Bandicoot was confessing for one reason and one reason only, because of the Herald-Union ’s dogged journalistic excellence.

Aubrey’s photos came out pretty good. Tinker chose one of Tim and Annie hugging. He told the make-up editor to blow it up big. And run it in color. And crop it tight, so every wrinkle of agony on Tim’s face showed, so the wedding ring on Annie’s hand showed. The headline on the story was plain and powerful:

Preacher confesses to affair with convicted murderess

While Aubrey was writing, and frantically trying to get her sources on the phone, including Guthrie Gates, Tinker dragged me off to the cafeteria. We shared a piece of stale carrot cake from the vending machine. He asked me for my impression of Tim Bandicoot’s confession, not once but five times. He was pumped up about the story but also worried. Originally Aubrey was supposed to continue her investigation for another month, and then take another two or three weeks to write her stories. The stories would be run by the paper’s lawyers and discussed ad nauseam in editorial meetings. The graphics people were going to design a special logo to go with the stories, a Bible with a dripping cross.

But now, thanks to Annie Bandicoot, Aubrey would not only have to start writing her stories right away, we’d have to start running them right away. It was going to be a crazy couple of weeks.

Just as Tinker and I were playfully fighting over the little sugar carrot on the cake, Bob Averill poked his head in the cafeteria. He pointed at Tinker and motioned for him to follow. To me he said, “Enjoy your snack.”

At six everybody gathered around the television in the conference room to watch the news, 21 at Six. Tish Kiddle, reporting live from the dark and empty church, had almost nothing: “Members of the New Epiphany Temple remain in utter shock tonight following the unexpected confession by the Rev. Tim Bandicoot that he’d had a long sexual relationship with Sissy James, the confessed murderer of Bandicoot’s old mentor, nationally known evangelist Buddy Wing.”

After weekend anchorwoman Jamie Stokes said, “Oh my,” and weekend anchorman Bill Callucci said, “What more can you tell us, Tish?” Tish said, “TV 21 has learned-and TV 21 is the first to report this-that new evidence may have surfaced suggesting that Sissy James may not be the real killer.”

Jamie Stokes asked Tish to, “Keep us posted.” To which Tish promised, “I’ll be working through the evening on this exclusive breaking story and I’ll have the very latest on 21 at Eleven.”

“We’ll look forward to it,” Bill Callucci said. Swiveling in his chair to take advantage of a new camera angle, he said, “Speaking of confessions, I must confess my weakness for blueberry pie.” It was his segue into TV 21’s coverage of the Bowenville Blueberry Festival.

When Aubrey finished writing her story, Tinker and Bob took her upstairs for another two hours of planning. It was eight o’clock before she came down, sticky with exhaustion. She apologized profusely for stranding me at the paper all day. We drove to Lipini’s for pizza and then at nine started for my house.

When I drive home at night I always take West Tuckman. It’s wide and well-lighted and the neighborhoods for the most part are safe. Aubrey that night took West Apple, which, although a much straighter shot across town, slices through some very iffy neighborhoods. It even intersects with infamous Morrow Street, where the hookers Aubrey wrote about do their business.

While her old Escort looked a lot worse than it drove, I was still nervous and checked the door locks I don’t know how many times. That got on Aubrey’s nerves. “Will you just relax?”

That’s about when the flashing blue lights appeared in the rear-view mirror and Aubrey hissed the f-word. She slowed down until the lights were right behind us, then pulled into an abandoned gas station. We were just two short, dark, rundown blocks from Morrow Street. “Be careful,” I said. “Two years ago some nut pretending to be a cop raped six women before he was caught.”

Aubrey adjusted her mirror and studied the car pulling in behind us. “Looks like the real deal,” she said.

“So did the rapist’s car,” I said.

“Will you just stop it, Maddy? I’ve been going through red lights since we left the paper.”

Aubrey was reacting calmly, though I did notice that she still had the car in gear, to speed off, I suppose, if it wasn’t a real police officer-not that a Ford Escort is actually capable of speeding off.

The officer was suddenly at Aubrey’s door, rapping on her window with his knuckles. She opened her window about three inches. The jibber-jabber of the police radio on his belt calmed me a little, but I still kept my hand on the door latch in case I had to go running into the night and hide in a dumpster or something. “Sorry to say you went through a couple of red lights, ma’am,” the officer said. He was young and chubby and friendly looking. “May I see your license and registration?”

Aubrey dug them out of her purse. The officer thanked her and took them back to his cruiser.

“I’ve been through this routine a billion times,” Aubrey said, finally turning off her engine. “He’ll come back in three minutes and say, ‘Ma’am, this isn’t the best of streets at night, and I know you were probably nervous. So I’m going to let it go. Take West Tuckman next time.’”