Julie Miller - Up Against the Wall

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This one is for me.

Because some years are harder than others.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Three years ago

Reuben Page knelt over the bloody corpse of his informant and cursed. “Damn, Dani.”

His stomach soured. Maybe he was getting too old for this type of investigative reporting. The kid had just started her Master’s degree. Couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Reuben’s own daughter. Danielle Ballard was still a government intern, filing papers for Kansas City’s economic development task force.

The symbolism of the young woman’s throat being slashed wasn’t lost on Reuben.

Keep her from talking.

Nor was the fact that he was alone near the rundown docks on the Missouri River just north of Kansas City’s City Market, long after midnight, hovering over a dead body. If Dani had been made, most likely Reuben’s investigation had, too.

“Sorry, kiddo. Has to be done.” Disturbing a crime scene went against years of training as a crime reporter, but Reuben needed the disk that Dani had promised to deliver tonight. It held names, numbers, bank accounts. Clear evidence of bribes. Enough information to turn Reuben’s suspicions into facts.

He bit down on his conscience and leaned over the body.

Even though Dani didn’t smoke, the scent of fine tobacco clung to her clothes, mixing with the salty, dank smells of blood and flesh. The night was dull, the autumn air chilled by a heavy dampness in the air that wasn’t quite rain. The wash of the river was a lonely sound as it swept past in the darkness beneath the empty docks. He should be calling the cops. Calling Dani’s family. Putting a blanket over her.

Instead, Reuben turned out Dani’s pockets and discovered he wasn’t the first to search the corpse that night. Even her raincoat had been ripped open—with the same bloody knife that had slashed her throat, judging by the dampness of the dark red traces at the seams. The only item on her was a ring of keys in her fist. Her open purse lay in a puddle beside her. Either the disk had been taken by the killer, or Dani never had it in the first place.

But on the phone that morning, Dani had sworn that she’d found evidence to prove a new breed of organized crime had come to Kansas City. Reuben had already pieced together a pattern—a rise in intimidation crimes, suspect investments that mimicked the money laundering schemes he’d written about on the police beat in Chicago, select, ruthless murders like this one. Dani’s insider evidence would connect the dots, and Reuben could expose the problem and win a second Pulitzer in the process.

“It has to be here,” he muttered. If the killer had it, then Reuben’s story was dead.

If the killer had the disk, then so was he.

His heart beat faster and Reuben hurried his search, silently apologizing as he ran his fingers over the body, nudging it from one side to the other with the same speed and determination with which he typed out his columns on the keyboard.

When he saw the bulge in Dani’s purse, he turned it inside out and dumped the contents at his feet. Though it wasn’t the right shape for a disk, he might find a note, or a clue to lead him to the disk’s location. “Tell me you were a smart kid.” Reuben froze. “What the hell?”

Money. Not just a couple of twenties, but hundreds, no…Reuben caught the bills before the misted breeze off the river blew them away. “There has to be ten thousand dollars here.” A plant. Had to be. Idealistic kids fresh out of college didn’t carry that kind of cash. “What’s this?”

Reuben held the tiny plastic bag up to the dim circle of light hanging over the rusted door of the warehouse behind him. He recognized the crack from his research into numerous drug-related crimes.

“A setup.” One look at her dewy skin and straight white teeth, and anyone who knew the signs could tell Dani didn’t use. A crusader like her wouldn’t sell, either. So why…?

Reuben peered over his shoulder into the night, trusting his reporter’s nose. He was being watched. But by human eyes? Or by whatever was scurrying beneath the trash bin beside him?

He breathed a measured sigh of relief when a rat darted past and disappeared through a hole in the building’s foundation. But it was warning enough for him to get his butt into gear and get out of there.

Reuben pushed to his feet, pocketing the cash, the drugs and the keys. The kid was a hero in Reuben’s book, and would earn a deserving mention in his next Kansas City Journal column. He wouldn’t let the thug who’d silenced her tarnish her reputation.

Reuben’s crepe-soled shoes squeaked on the damp pavement as he hurried toward the vintage Cadillac he’d parked on the street side of the warehouse. He emptied the drugs into the river, dropped the plastic bag into a trash bin, and stuffed the wad of cash into his jacket pocket. Then he sped away into the heart of downtown K.C., planning to dump the money in a foreign location where it wouldn’t be traced back to Dani Ballard. Maybe he’d donate it to a shelter, or leave it in a church’s mailbox. Maybe he’d head on south of the city and toss it into one of the landfills.

Reuben Page did none of those things.

One of the keys in the passenger seat winked at him as he passed beneath a street lamp. The game was still on. “Brilliant, kiddo.”

The rush of discovery fueled the story composing itself inside his head as Reuben swung the car toward the city bus terminal. He reached for the key to a bus-station storage locker and tucked it into his pocket. In the same motion, he retrieved a pen and notepad, turned to a fresh page and jotted a cryptic note.

Balancing the pad on his knee and writing as he drove couldn’t make his handwriting any worse. There was only one person left in the world who could decipher his illegible scrawl, one person who looked forward to reading his notes, one person he loved and trusted enough to share them with.

Dear Rebecca, he began.

Since his wife’s death a decade earlier, Reuben had started sending his story notes to his daughter. Once upon a time, his wife had translated them and typed them up for him. But now that Rebecca was away at the University of Missouri’s journalism school in Columbia, following in his footsteps as a reporter, she seemed to enjoy reading them as though she was keeping up with a journal of his activities. He supposed they replaced the letters he always intended to write, but never could quite get onto paper or into an e-mail. His scribbles connected them in a way that the dangers and demands of his job rarely allowed them to. Besides, with the number of computers he’d sent to their makers, it never hurt to have a backup copy of his current work in someone else’s hands.

As he sped through the fog-shrouded streets, Reuben briefly detailed Dani’s murder, skipping the more graphic elements. He wrote about the disk, listed abbreviations of the names he thought would be linked to the murder. He sent his love and promised to visit Mizzou for homecoming in a couple of weeks. He pulled an envelope from his briefcase, tucked the notepad inside and addressed the package. He stuck a wad of stamps onto one corner and dropped it into a mailbox en route.