Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“Were there any stories about Prince?”

She shook her head. “But I don’t know what she was working on recently.” C.J. flipped her glasses up on top of her short black hair. “Now that we’re on this topic, we should talk about you starting to work your own stories. Not that it’s absolutely required when you’re riding the anchor desk, but it would be good if you had experience pulling in your own stuff. Especially if you want to stay in this business.”

I thought about this for a second. This business was nothing I’d ever envisioned for myself, nothing I’d ever considered even for a second. But I liked it. More than liked it. The minute-to-minute nature of it thrilled me. I loved how working in the news put me so squarely in the present, unable to think, at least for a while, about Sam, or Theo, or Zac’s accusations, or even Jane.

I wondered if Jane could somehow see me now. I wanted her to be proud of me. “If Jane was working on a story about Prince, would she have taken notes?” I asked C.J.

“Sure.”

“Where would those be? I’d like to pick up the stories where Jane left off. Would that be okay?”

“That’s great. But we might have a problem with the notes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Follow me. I’ll show you her desk.” C.J. and I walked through the set. The afternoon people were scurrying around, their anticipation ramped up. We crossed through the newsroom, making our way through the obstacle course of reporter and producer desks.

Finally we came to Jane’s. As lead anchor she had been allotted one of the nicer desks-large and tucked slightly behind a curving wall.

And it was a mess.

“The cops went through it last night,” C.J. said. “I came here after the memorial, and they were here.”

“Was it Detective Vaughn?”

“That’s the guy. He’s a bundle of fun, huh?”

“Yeah.” I looked at Jane’s desk. “Did he find anything?”

“No idea. Took a few things, like notebooks and her computer. Made me sign some chain of custody sheet. Then he left.”

“Is it okay to go through it now?”

“I don’t see why not. We didn’t get any instructions not to touch it, and to be honest, I’d love to know if Jane had any good stories that we could finish up for her.” She exhaled. “Except…”

“What?” C.J. crossed her arms over her clipboard and glanced at the desk. “Maybe I should do it. Jane had some…well, some personal issues, and I just wouldn’t want them to come to light now. You know, now that she’s…”

She and I studied each other. I thought I knew what she was talking about-Jane’s affairs. And her issues with Zac. I knew C.J. and Jane had been close. She probably knew about these things, but I didn’t want to blow any confidences Jane had trusted me with.

“I mean…” C.J. shrugged. “I guess the cops might have taken anything like that, but in case there is something…”

“I’m just looking for stories on Prince,” I said, “or other good leads Jane had. If I find anything personal, I’ll…” I’ll what?

C.J. shook her head. “It should be fine. Jane didn’t keep diaries. She never wanted a record of her personal thoughts or actions.”

Again, C.J. and I studied each other, and again, I think we both knew that we were talking about, without mentioning, Jane’s affairs.

“But if you find anything,” C.J. continued, “let me know, okay?”

“I will.” We gazed at the handwritten notes, newspaper clippings and printouts of Web pages that littered the desk.

“Find a story if it’s there,” she said. “Do it for her legacy.”

I spent the next four hours at Jane’s desk. At first I read everything-magazine articles on a missing person’s case in Tahoe, lists of people to interview in a large product liability case. But even after the cops had picked through her research, there still wasn’t enough time to read it all in one sitting. Jane might not have been writing her own stories for years, but she had clearly put in a lot of work in the last few months.

I decided instead to organize piles based on topics-the Tahoe case, the product liability one, the trial of a celeb in L.A. for domestic assault. No mention of Jackson Prince.

Had the cops confiscated anything like that?

I managed to shape the desktop into a field of small piles based on general topics. As I did so, I unearthed a large number of pages printed from Web sites, all of them about class action cases and how plaintiffs opted into certain lawsuits, particularly medical cases. This was the same topic Jane had been questioning Jackson Prince about. I felt a flicker of excitement as I found more and more material on the topic, most of it about how advertisements would target potential plaintiffs. But then I got frustrated. There was nothing specific about the King Pharmaceuticals case or about Prince. Again, I wondered if the cops had taken that stuff. Or maybe Jane had kept such notes in her computer. The one the cops had.

I opened the desk drawers and looked inside. In the top left drawer, I found a small photo of Jane and Zac. She was looking at him, her eyes adoring, while he was looking at the camera, his hand around her shoulder. The photo was encapsulated in a tiny red alligator frame.

I went through the other drawers, finding some cosmetics, an extra pair of shoes, some hair products, office supplies. But there was no more research. No notebooks telling me Prince had done something wrong. I decided to take home the information on class action cases and read it over.

I pulled open the drawer with office supplies, found a manila file folder and started putting the class action material in there. As I did so, I noticed some notes in Jane’s handwriting on the back of one of the pages.

I turned the sheet over. Fifteen names were written there in a list, toward the bottom of the page. The first was Carina Fariello. The next ones were Rick Dexter, Jerry Hay, Trace Ritson, Angela Hamilton-Wood. The list went on.

I took it with me to the cubicle Tommy Daley assigned me on Monday. Compared to Jane’s desk, it was barren except for the computer and TV monitors.

I looked up the names on the list on Google. I got nothing for Carina Fariello. I found entries for a number of different men named Rick Dexter. Jerry Hay was a physician. Same for Trace Ritson, who appeared to be a rheumatologist from South Carolina. Hamilton-Wood was also a rheumatologist. As I typed in the rest of the names, most appeared to be doctors. I found a physician locator Web site and typed in all fifteen names, one by one. With the exception of Carina Fariello, whose name I didn’t find, all were physicians. All rheumatologists.

I used the computer to look up rheumatology. Rheumatism is a term used to describe any painful disorder affecting the loco-motor system including joints, muscles, connective tissues, and soft tissues around the joints and bones. Basically rheumatologists, the site said, dealt frequently with arthritis and prescribed treatment for the disease-like the drug Ladera, the one made by King Pharmaceuticals.

I thought of Jane questioning Prince about whether he obtained medical records to learn if certain patients had taken the drug Ladera and, therefore, could be members of a class.

But there was nothing about Jackson Prince on this list.

I went back to Jane’s desk, picked up her phone and started to dial Grady’s number. Grady worked in the medical malpractice department of Baltimore & Brown, my old firm. He defended doctors and had represented some physicians as part of class action cases. He was the perfect person to ask about the topic.

But then there was the last time I’d seen Grady-at the Old Town Ale House. I felt strange now, calling only because I needed something.