Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“It wasn’t me!” My yell ricocheted off the walls of the small stairwell. One of the cops actually flinched.

“Iz,” Maggie said in a stern voice, a hand on my arm. “Quiet. Don’t say anything else.”

I shook off her hand. I leaned forward so that Vaughn’s face and mine were about two inches apart. “I’m telling you. It. Wasn’t. Me.”

He didn’t flinch like the other cop. He didn’t even blink. “So if it wasn’t you, who was it?”

“Maybe Zoey. Zac’s ex, who he’s dating again. He said that Jane knew Zoey, that they were sort of friends. He said Jane was fine with Zoey being around their lives. Maybe that’s because she and Zoey had something going on?”

I didn’t like throwing out accusations when they might not be true, but I was scrambling to think of what woman Jane might have been involved with. And then, I wasn’t scrambling. My fury drained away, the swirling questions and suspicions disappeared. And they left in their wake only the image of one face.

M aggie and I sprinted toward her car, leading a trail of shouting, scrambling reporters.

“Go!” I yelled when we were in the car.

A minute ago in the stairwell, I’d asked Vaughn if he was going to arrest me. When he’d said, “Not yet,” I grabbed Maggie and propelled her down the stairs with me.

Now she peeled away from the curb in her little Honda.

I turned around and saw Vaughn coming out of my building. He stood on the front step watching us, while most of the media ran back to him, holding up microphones and pointing cameras.

I had the fear, familiar now, that Vaughn would make a statement, that he would say something horrible about me. But the damage had been done, I realized. There was no reason to struggle against that damage. Just a reason-my life-to fight it.

“So where are we going?” Maggie looked in the rearview mirror. “I think I lost the press.”

“Trial TV.”

She sped up Sedgwick, then glanced at me. Maybe she could see me thinking, maybe she could tell that there was nothing, as a lawyer or a best friend, that she could do now. Except drive.

I ran through it all in my head. “What do I need to do to establish chain of custody in a criminal case?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If we find something incriminating, how do we make sure it’s admissible later in court?”

Maggie thought about it. “Make sure other people see you find the evidence. Be careful that it doesn’t look like it’s planted.”

“How do I do that?”

She turned onto Clybourn and floored the Honda. “Well, the best way would be to let the cops find it.”

“So they’d need a warrant.”

“Right.”

“And Trial TV is already listed on the search warrant,” I said, excited.

“That’s true.”

I stared at Maggie. “So basically, you’re saying that I should make Vaughn work for me?”

She shrugged. “If you can.”

I pulled out my cell phone, called the Belmont police station and got his damned message again. I called back and spoke to the dispatcher, telling her I was sure Vaughn would want to call me back if she could reach him.

A minute later, my phone rang with a 773 area code.

“It’s Izzy,” I answered.

“I got that much,” Vaughn said dryly.

“Meet me at Trial TV. And bring that search warrant.”

I hung up. He called back. I let it go to voice mail. Ten minutes later, we pulled into the Trial TV parking lot. I knew Vaughn would be heading there. He wouldn’t be able to resist.

Maggie barreled up to the curb and put her hazards on. She scampered behind me as I went into the building and sweet-talked the security guard so he would give Maggie a visitor’s pass.

It was Sunday and a quiet news day, so the hallway was deserted. I’d been told that a skeleton crew manned the network on the weekends, showing mostly pretaped shows. It dawned on me that the executive offices were probably going to be locked, especially the one I wanted to get in.

But when I reached the door, it was open, the lights on inside.

I stood in the hallway, Maggie behind me. I looked at my watch. Vaughn probably wouldn’t be here for at least five minutes.

“Izzy?”

I turned. It was Faith Lowe, the producer who’d come into the Fig Leaf with her bridesmaids.

“Faith, hi,” I said. “What are you doing here on a Sunday?”

“I’m working overtime so I can take time off for my honeymoon. But, uh…what are you doing here?”

Faith had nearly blown my cover when I was at the Fig Leaf, but maybe like Vaughn, she could help me now.

“Faith,” I said, “did you just see me walk in here?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I have a favor to ask you. Could you wait here with us for a few minutes? The cops are coming. It has to do with Jane’s death. I just don’t want to do anything without them here.”

“I guess,” she said slowly, as if she was thinking. “We’re running tape. Won’t be done for twenty minutes or so.” She glanced around the hallway and seemed to realize we were alone, that she was alone with a “person of interest” and her friend.

“Faith,” I said. “I didn’t do anything to Jane.”

“Right. Sure. It’s just that…” She looked around the hall again. Muted sounds trickled in from the set, but otherwise all was quiet. There seemed to be no one around. “This is kind of weird.”

“Who else is here today?” I asked. Maybe we should get whoever was at the station out here with us. I didn’t want this woman to be frightened.

“Uh…let’s see. Well, C.J. is in an editing suite.”

“C.J. is here?” I couldn’t help the alarm from creeping into my voice.

“Yeah, she’s working with an editor on a tribute to Jane. They’re going to run it this week. Anyway, I should probably tell her you’re here.”

“No, let me tell her. Which suite is she in?”

“Number eight, but…” Faith’s eyes narrowed, as if she was unsure what to do. She looked around again.

“Faith, let me ask you something,” I said. “How long have you been in the news business?”

She looked at the ceiling for a minute. “I left the law three years ago.”

“Do you remember when Jane won an Emmy Award for some story about a vice cop?”

Ever since Vaughn had looked at me in the stairwell and said, So if it wasn’t you, who was it? I hadn’t been able to get C.J. from my mind. I glanced in the office now-C.J.’s office. The moving boxes were still there, still unpacked-full of office crap and personal mementos. And awards. I could see that box, the one with the plaques and trophies sitting right there by C.J.’s desk. I itched to look inside.

I kept thinking of C.J. telling me that the story about Jackson Prince was one that could win an Emmy. I thought about how, during that same conversation, I’d mentioned that Jane had won an Emmy. C.J. told me then that she had worked on the story with Jane. There had been a moment when she had sighed and looked over my shoulder, and her face had been awash with grief. It hadn’t been a surprise. After all, C.J. and Jane had been a team for years. Everyone knew how close they were-C.J. often wrote Jane’s stories, while Jane did the interviewing and the research. Working with them, I’d once thought their professional relationship was almost symbiotic. But now I wondered if their relationship had been more than that outside the business world. I wondered if that grief of C.J.’s was because she had loved Jane. And she had killed Jane.

“Oh, yeah,” Faith was saying, “everyone remembers the Emmy Awards from that year. It was right after I started at Chicagoland TV.”

“C.J. was the producer on that story, right?”