Jan Burke - Bloodlines

Instead, I said, “You little shit.”

Lydia’s eyes opened wide, and Ethan’s chin came up.

Mark said, “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you who’s the looter here-he is. He stole a story.”

“I did not!” he protested hotly.

“Hailey was asking me about this very subject this morning.”

“Irene,” Lydia said reasonably, “don’t jump to conclusions. Ethan came to me with this idea-”

“Hailey!” I called.

The muted clickety-clack of keyboards all across the newsroom came to a halt. It was like disturbing crickets that you hadn’t noticed until they stopped singing.

She sauntered over. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you talk to Ethan about your story idea, the one about the cemetery?”

“No,” she said hesitantly.

“Did you say anything about it within earshot of him? Leave notes about it out on your desk?”

She looked over at Ethan, who stared back at her defiantly. “No,” Hailey said quietly.

I glanced at Mark, saw him studying the two of them.

“Irene,” Lydia said. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“I’m sure Lydia’s right,” Hailey said. “You’re the only one I’ve spoken to, and when I talked to you about it this morning, Ethan was talking to Lydia. I remember because-” She seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say. “I remember because he made her laugh.”

“That’s right!” Lydia said, with obvious relief. “Ethan was telling me about an old roommate, one who works for the Bee up in Sacramento.”

“Satisfied?” Ethan said.

“Not by a long shot. Hailey, Ethan has just happened to discover cases of burials being moved and looted in Municipal Cemetery.”

There was a moment, just a brief moment, when Hailey’s sense of hurt and betrayal showed on her face. She hid it quickly and said, “Cool. I’ll tell my friend who mentioned it to me. You might want to talk to him about it for follow-up.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said.

Hailey murmured, “No big,” and hurried away from the city desk-and out of the newsroom.

“You see?” Lydia said to me.

“Oh yes, I see all right.” I walked away before I gave in to a desire to throttle someone.

I logged off my computer, thought about how close Ethan’s desk was to mine, then logged on again and changed my password.

I decided to try to talk to Hailey again. I called the security desk. Geoff said she hadn’t left the building. That being the case, my guess was that she had gone into the women’s bathroom.

I got up from my chair and walked through the Express’s warren of hallways. As I made the hike, I kept thinking that in the course of two decades, it should have occurred to someone to spend a little money to put a women’s room closer to the newsroom, and a men’s room closer to features, but Wrigley claimed that all the funds available for updating the building had gone into earthquake retrofitting.

As recently as two years ago, features would have been jumping at this time of day, but Wrigley had decided to pick up the vast majority of our features content from wire services-the result being massive layoffs in this department. The room was completely deserted-a journalistic ghost town.

As I stood near an abandoned desk, Hailey came out of the bathroom. She froze when she saw me.

“You and I need to have a little talk,” I said, sitting down in a big rolling chair, and motioning her toward another.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she was going to deny everything, run back into the bathroom, or try to make it past me. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sat down in a nearby chair. “I’m not going to try to take that story from him.”

“The way he took it from you?”

“Past experience tells me I won’t be able to prove that. He’s very slick when it comes to computer stuff. Besides…you don’t know Ethan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She bit her lower lip, looked toward the door, then said, “He’s a troublemaker.”

“No shit.”

“I mean-he makes trouble for people who cause him problems. In school? He had the chair of the J-department completely by the balls.”

“How?”

“He starts by kissing up. But he does research-finds out things about people.” She paused, then said, “It’s so weird. He can do good work, really good work. But he’s lazy. And I think he has problems with…”

I waited. When she didn’t say more, I said, “Problems with what?”

“He likes to party, that’s all. I don’t know if it’s that,” she added quickly, “so I shouldn’t be saying that about him. Besides, I don’t think it’s the biggest reason he acts like he does. I mean, he has all this talent, right?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “When he focuses on something, that’s apparent.”

“But the problem is, he spends more time covering his butt and playing games than he does working.”

“Maybe if you told Lydia-”

“Forget it. I told you. He kisses ass. He’s already done it here. Mr. Wrigley thinks he has a new hotshot.”

“So why would you cave in to him, the way you did today?”

“Just trying to stay on his good side, I guess. You don’t want Ethan to think of you as anything but a friend.”

I sat thinking for a moment, then said, “Have you filed your story for today?”

“Yes. Not that it’s going to set the world on fire or anything.”

I smiled, remembering saying something like that about the first stories I covered.

“What’s so funny?”

“I won’t bore you with tales of my life on the frontier.”

She looked at me curiously. “Is it true that you were the first woman reporter here?”

“No. No, there were others before me. You want to meet one of the first women reporters?”

“Sure,” she said.

I laughed. “I was going to suggest that you interview Helen Swan, but not if you’re just being polite.”

“No, I wasn’t just being polite.”

“You’d better be telling the truth,” I said, “because Helen’s one tough old lady. If you are just being polite, she’ll make you cry for your mommy before the dust settles.”

She swallowed hard.

“Go down to the morgue-I mean, the library-and ask for microfilm of the Las Piernas News from around 1936-”

“Microfilm! It’s not on the computer?”

“Don’t try my patience. Now, get this straight-you want the film for the News and not the Express. We were two papers back then, and Helen worked for the morning paper. Read a few issues before you talk to her. I have a feeling this assignment will help you. Helen has a way of inspiring people.”

She left a few minutes later. I stayed in my ghost town, thinking up ways to trap a troublemaker.

“M OVING INTO THE GUEST ROOM?” FRANK ASKED. HE WAS SURROUNDED by two adoring dogs, who pressed up against his legs while our cat, Cody, yowled a greeting.

“No,” I said, standing up and stretching over the menagerie to give him a hug. “Just going over some papers from O’Connor’s childhood.”

“His childhood?” He hugged back. Still had his gun on. His face had been chilled by the night air-and felt wonderful.

“Yes. Believe it or not, he was keeping a diary when he was eight. He started writing little stories for Corrigan around that same time. You should read a few of them-they’re hilarious. He was such a bright kid. And Corrigan obviously had a gift for teaching-O’Connor was learning how to identify reporters’ work by their style. He made a game out of it.”

“That’s wild. I hate to think what I would have been writing at that same age.” He gave me a kiss.

“I saved some chicken for you,” I said. He had phoned at five to say he had caught a new homicide case, and might be delayed. I glanced at the clock on the desk. “Only eight-you got out of there faster than I thought you would.”