C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Accompanying Aubrey’s stories on Sunday would be an editorial imploring the Hannawa police to reopen the case.

Monday, July 10

I came in at eight and went straight to Aubrey’s desk. A felt-tip pen was sticking out of her mouth like a cigar. Her fingers were draped across her keyboard like ten sleeping salamanders. Every few seconds a few fingers would twitch awake and a string of words would race across her computer screen. Several diet Coke cans were in her wastebasket. Several Milky Way wrappers, too. “I hope you didn’t work all night,” I said.

She tilted her head back until she was looking straight up into my face. She yawned noisily, like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. “I should have,” she said.

So I let her work and went to my desk to collect my mug. Had it only been four months since Aubrey McGinty first called me Morgue Mama to my face? Asked to see the files on Buddy Wing? It seemed more like four years-one of those officially packaged four years, like college or a presidential term, with a distinct beginning, an endlessly horrifying but exhilarating middle, and an abrupt end.

And it was going to end abruptly, in less than forty-eight hours. Once those big presses downstairs started rolling with that big story splashed across the top of Page One, the journey that put Aubrey and me in the same wobbling canoe would be over. Her life would go in one direction and mine in another. We’d talk, when there was something to say. We might even reminisce if the opportunity arose. But things would not be the same.

At ten-thirty I heard Aubrey yell, “Who has time for this crap?”

She yelled that after getting a call from the police department’s PR guy, informing her that Chief Polceznec was going to hold a news conference at eleven. Tinker sent Doreen Poole to cover it. She came back at noon with the lead story for Tuesday’s paper:

Beleaguered police chief says he’ll retire early

Sylvia Berdache hurried to a one o’clock press conference at City Hall, providing a sidebar to the story:

Sad to see his “old amigo” step down, mayor appoints Ted Duffy interim chief

I just knew Lionel Percy sent one of his flunkies out for cake and ice cream. Ted Duffy was a well-known paper-pusher in the safety director’s office, in Sylvia’s words, “a real marshmallow who wouldn’t even rock the boat in his bathtub.”

A little after two, Eric Chen appeared at my desk with a grin on his face. He handed me a printout, the way a boy hands a doctored report card to his mother. Eric wanted nothing to do with Aubrey these days, not after that night in Meri, but I was still his boss. I’d told him to keep checking the computer files for information on the various people connected to the Buddy Wing story, especially Annie Bandicoot.

When I read the printout I clutched my throat, in case my heart had any idea of escaping. “Good job,” I said.

I took a long, steadying drink of my room-temperature tea and trotted to Aubrey’s desk. “Eric just brought me this,” I said, sliding the printout into her hands. It was a short story, written months earlier by religion editor Nanette Beane:

HANNAWA -Right after serving their own families Thanksgiving dinner, the wives of six local ministers left for eastern Kentucky Thursday night, their cavalcade of minivans and station wagons loaded with food, clothing and toys to make this Christmas a little brighter for families in that economically ravaged region.

“It’s a little thing for us to do,” said Joy Brown, wife of the Rev. Donald Brown, pastor of Culver Ridge Methodist Church, “but it’ll be a big thing for the families down there.”

Brown, coordinator of the trip, said the women would spend Friday and Saturday visiting homes in Lee and Owsley counties and then attend Sunday morning worship services at the Baptist church in Korbin Knob, a small mountain town approximately 80 miles southeast of Lexington.

Other women making the trip were Ellen Hopsen, wife of the Rev. Ernest Hopsen, Tamarack Episcopal Church, Hannawa Falls; Jennifer Moeller, wife of the Rev. Richard Moeller, Greenlawn Reformed Church, Greenlawn; Sophia Wildenhein, wife of the Rev. Ralph Wildenhein, St. Marks Lutheran Church, Brinkley; Annie Bandicoot, wife of the Rev. Tim Bandicoot, New Epiphany Temple, Hannawa; and Cynthia Short, wife of the Rev. John Short, Spire Hill United Church of Christ, North Hannawa.

Items for the mission were donated by members of the six participating congregations.

I pointed to the date the story ran, which is included in the computer file of every story that we publish, along with what page it appeared on, which editions it ran, and who wrote it.

Aubrey stared at the story. “Wonder boy couldn’t have found this a week ago?”

“At least he found it,” I said.

She let the story float to her desktop. “Thanks, Maddy.”

“It’s not going to mean a lot of rewriting, I hope.”

“Couple of paragraphs.”

I went back to my desk. The news that Annie Bandicoot was on a mission trip to Kentucky the night Buddy Wing was murdered would only take a little rewriting, just as Aubrey said. She was not, after all, identifying possible suspects and their whereabouts that night. She could just mention it in passing: For Annie Bandicoot, who was in eastern Kentucky the night of the murder, distributing food, clothing and toys to the poor, the arrest of Sissy James must have been especially distressing… Aubrey would just have to write something like that.

Yes, the rewriting would be easy for Aubrey. A quick cut and paste. Rewiring her brain would be harder. She’d been certain, I’m sure, that when the police reopened the case, their investigation would uncover all the evidence they needed to put Annie Bandicoot in that cell now occupied by Sissy James.

Aubrey left the newsroom a few minutes after four. I left at five. I didn’t feel like cooking so I had a quick bowl of miniature shredded wheats. Then I opened a package of Fig Newtons and turned on the TV 21 news. They led with a fatal truck-car accident on the interstate and then covered Chief Polceznec’s surprise retirement. Then they went live to Disney World, where Tish Kiddle had apparently fled after the windows of her Lexus were smashed out. It was the first part of her week-long series on Vacation Fun in the Florida Sun. “Tish, my sweet little lamb,” I said to the TV screen, my teeth gooey with fig, “you are no Aubrey McGinty.”

Tuesday, July 11

I went to bed Monday absolutely certain I’d call in sick the next day. Aubrey’s series on the Buddy Wing murder was starting on Wednesday and that meant Tuesday would be frantic, like the day before a space shuttle launch or a military invasion. There would be a million last-minute changes. There would be unavoidable arguments and ugly fits of egomania. All day long the twin demons of anticipation and dread would be going at each other like a couple of barnyard roosters. Yet the second my eyes popped open, I knew I’d not only be going in, I’d be going in early and staying late. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

When I got to the paper Aubrey was already at her desk. Tinker was already in his office. I collected my mug and headed for the cafeteria. Eric was already there, drinking Mountain Dews with a couple of the boys from sports. I took my tea back to the morgue and started marking up the paper. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Aubrey. Her hair, not washed for a day or two, was pulled back into a ponytail. Her knees were propped against her desk and her keyboard was on her lap. She’d type a bit, then think a bit, and then yawn and take a sip of coffee, and then check her watch.

At noon I went to the cafeteria and stared at the vending machines for a while, coming pretty close to buying one of those dreadful ham and cheese sandwiches wedged in the slot like a warped piece of drywall. I went to Ike’s instead. “Morgue Mama, what’s wrong with you today?” he asked when I walked in. “You look like you’re going to corkscrew yourself right out of your pantaloons.”