Rick Mofina - If Angels Fall

Reed cleared his throat and went to the next clipping:

SUNDAY SCOOL TEACHER COMMITS SUICIDE…“HE WAS INNOCENT”:WIDOW…REPORTER BLAMED FOR TEACHER’S DEATH…WIDOW SUES S.F. STAR…TANITA’SKILLER “IS OUT THERE”: POLICE…

Reed removed his glasses, burying his face in his hands.

The day after she buried her husband, Rona Wallace held a pressconference. It was on the same doorstep where Reed had questioned FranklinWallace moments before he locked himself in his daughter’s bedroom and firedboth barrels of a shotgun into his mouth.

“My husband was a decent man, and a loving father,” Rona Wallaceread from a prepared statement. “He took successful counseling for hisproblems, which occurred more than a decade ago when he was clinicallydepressed over the death of his mother. The San Francisco Police and the FBIhave told me today, to my face, that my husband was initially checked andquietly cleared as a possible suspect in the death of Tanita Marie Donner. Heknew and loved that little girl.” She sniffed.

“I attribute his tragic death to the allegations raised in theabhorrent and false reporting of The San Francisco Star and have beguncivil action. Thank you.”

Rona Wallace took no questions. When she finished, she asked if TomReed was present. “Right here.” Reed raised his hand.

Cameras followed her as she walked to him, her reddened eyes findinghis. Without warning, she slapped his face. “You know what you are and you knowwhat you did.” She said, then walked away.

Reed was stunned.

Reporters pelted him with questions. He was speechless. The TV gangloved seeing him get his comeuppance. The networks picked it up. Publiccriticism from police made him a pariah. The incident ignited editorials andcolumns across the country about press ethics. Reed couldn’t sleep withoutdrinking-he doubted everything in his life. He argued with Ann, screamed atZach, and was once on the brink of hitting him, squeezing his arm until heyelped in sheer terror.

“Wake up, Reed. I brought your medicine.”

A steaming cup of coffee was set before him, the aroma mingling withthe scent of Obsession. “Anything shaking, Tommy?” Molly Wilson settled in ather cubicle, next to his, her bracelets clinking.

“A drunk knifed by a whore.” He sipped the coffee. “Thanks.”

Wilson was hired four years ago from a small Texas daily. She had amaster’s degree in English literature. A relentless digger, she was a strongwriter. Her brunette hair was cut like Cleopatra’s, she had perfect teeth, andalways smelled good.

“Why are you here, Wilson? It’s your day off.”

She switched on her terminal, flipped open a notebook, and begantyping. “Got to finish a feature for Lana. She moved up my deadline.”

Reed grunted.

“Thanks for asking, Tom. It’s about men who kill, and the women wholove them. Hey, you’re being naughty. Can’t leave that Donner story alone.”

Reed said nothing.

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Tom?”

“Do what?”

“Forget the story. The police fried you because they screwed up andneeded a scapegoat. Benson suspended you because he needed a scapegoat too. Itwas only a week. Everybody knows he put the entire thing on your shoulders. Itwas a year ago. Forget it and move on.”

“I can’t.”

The muted clatter of the Star’s police scanners flared, thenfaded. Reed and Wilson glanced across the newsroom at the summer internmonitoring transmissions.

“Tom, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, but if that dipshit in homicide had explained how Wallace’sprints were on the evidence, like you begged him, you would have backed off.You wanted more time on the Sunday School teacher stuff, but Benson was hornyfor the story. They pushed hard, too. We will never know the truth, Tom.”

Wilson’s eyes were sympathetic. She resumed typing. Reed went backto the clippings.

“Why do you have the Donner file, anyway?”

“Anniversary’s coming up. I’m going to pitch a feature.”

Wilson rolled her eyes. “You really are nuts. This rag is not goingto let you do that. They’ll pass it to a G.A., or some dink in Lifestyles.Besides, isn’t Tanita’s mother in hiding?”

“I have an idea, but-“

The scanners grew louder.

They turned to the small office tucked way in the far corner of thenewsroom. The “torture chamber.” A glass-walled room with twenty-four scannersmonitoring hundreds of emergency frequencies in the Bay Area. The incessantnoise inspired the room’s name. Experienced listeners kept the volume low, butwhen a major incident broke, the sound increased.

“Something’s happening,” Wilson said.

Simon Green, a summer intern, was monitoring the radios. His facewas taut when he stood, jotted a note, then yelled at Al: “Child abduction offBART! Balboa Park! They’re stopping the trains!”

Booth grimaced at the newsroom. No one on, except Reed.

“Are you clear?”

Reed nodded.

“Take it. Wilson, stick around, you might get overtime.”

Across the newsroom, the weekend photo editor radioed a photographerroaming the city to rush to the Balboa Park BART station.

Reed slipped on his jacket, grabbed one of the Star’s cellphones. “I’ve got number three, call me with updates, Molly.”

“This is eerie. Balboa Park.”

Tanita Marie Donner was abducted from the Section 8 housing complexwhere her teenage welfare mother lived. In Balboa Park.

Sydowski and his father had good seats at the Coliseum. Thirty rows up from first. But the gamelacked zeal. Entering the eighth, with the A’s up by seven over the Yankees,was not exciting baseball.

Sydowski was stiff and hungry.

“Hey, old man,” he said in Polish. “I’m going to get something toeat. You want anything?”

“Sure, sure. Popcorn,” his father said.

Sydowski patted his father’s knee and headed for the concessionstand. Sydowski had not wanted to come to the game. He accepted tickets becausehis boss insisted. Sydowski’s old man loved seeing the A’s at the Coliseum, butwould never ask to be taken because he figured the job kept his son busy.

Standing in line, Sydowski reminisced about the old days. WheneverBoston played the A’s, he would drive across the Bay Bridge to Oakland to payhomage to Carl Michael Yastrzemski, a three-time American league battingchampion. Yaz took his third title by posting.301, in an era where pitchersdestroyed batting averages.

That was perseverance.

That was 1968. The year Oakland got the A’s and the San FranciscoPolice Department got Wladyslaw Sydowski.

Had it been that long?

“You know you can take your pension any time, Walt,” his boss,Lieutenant Leo Gonzales, often reminded him.

Sydowski couldn’t. Not yet. What would he do?

His wife, Basha, had died of Parkinson’s six years ago. The girlswere grown, had their own children, and had moved away. He had John, hiseighty-seven-year-old father, to look after. His old man was something. APolish potato farmer and barber he had kept his family alive in a work campduring the war by cutting hair for Nazi officers. Sydowski’s old man taught himhow to listen, how to read people. Now John lived happily alone at Sea BreezeVillas in Pacifica, tending a vegetable garden, following the A’s. He refusedto move in with Sydowski, who lived by himself in the Parkside house where heand his wife had raised their daughters and where he now raised championcanaries.

“Sir? That’s four dollars.”

Sydowski smiled, showing two gold-crowned teeth as he dug out somecash. The teenage girl smiled back. At six-foot-three, with a solidtwo-hundred-pound frame, dark complexion, and wavy salt-and-pepper hair,Sydowski was a handsome man.