He was about to switch off the TV when the local news station went live with a follow-up story. The Charleston PD public information officer had been asked if Britt Shelley was under arrest. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “Up to this point, there’s been no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Standard-issue statement, Cobb thought.
“Jay Burgess died in his sleep. That’s all we know at this time.”
Cobb doubted that. That wasn’t all they knew. They had something. Maybe nothing more than a hunch. But something had spooked Britt Shelley, or she wouldn’t have made a preemptive strike by calling the press conference to claim friendship with Jay Burgess and express her deep regret over his untimely death-in effect to profess her innocence.
The CPD were fools for letting her get the jump on them. They should have kept her under wraps, or issued a gag order. That was a giant blunder on their part, letting her use her media advantage to state her defense before it even became a criminal case.
Again he was about to switch off the set when a local reporter was shown standing outside the state capitol. If Cobb looked out his office window, he’d probably see the news vans parked along the boulevard.
This was exactly what he’d dreaded and had hoped to avoid.
“We’ve tried to contact Attorney General Cobb Fordyce this afternoon for a statement on the unexplained death of Jay Burgess, but Mr. Fordyce was unavailable for comment. As many of you may recall, Fordyce and Burgess were two of the four men who valiantly saved lives, at tremendous risk to their own, during the Charleston police station fire five years ago.”
Cut to file footage of the building in full blaze, surrounded by fire trucks spraying water on an inferno that had burned out of control. Then, appearing on the screen was a photo of himself, Jay Burgess, Patrick Wickham, and George McGowan, oxygen masks strapped over their smoke-stained faces, their clothing charred, hair singed, heads bowed, and shoulders slumped in abject fatigue.
That picture had made the front page of The New York Times in addition to every newspaper in the South. National magazines had printed it with stories that extolled their bravery. The photographer had been nominated for a Pulitzer.
“Attorney General Fordyce was working for the Charleston County DA ’s office at that time,” the reporter explained when they came back to him on camera. “The other three men were police officers. Jay Burgess is the second hero of that day to die. Patrick Wickham, tragically, was killed in the line of duty barely a year following the fire.
“Yesterday, I spoke with George McGowan, now a businessman in Charleston. I asked him to comment on his fellow hero’s death. He declined to appear on camera but told me that Jay Burgess was the best friend a man could ever hope to have and that he will be missed by everyone who knew him.”
The reporter then pitched it back to the anchors in the studio, who commented on the poignant and dramatic elements of the story. The segment ended on the legendary photograph, the studio camera going in for a close-up on Jay Burgess’s face, where there was a reflection of the flames in his eyes and tear tracks in the soot and smoke stains on his cheeks.
Cobb clicked the remote, and the image blinked out. He loathed that damn photograph. Because of the boost it had given his career, people expected a framed copy of it to be prominently displayed in his office. And that was precisely why he didn’t have one.
He left his desk chair and moved to the window. As expected, news vans were lined up along the curb; reporters from various stations across the state were doing stand-ups with the capitol serving as backdrop.
The police station fire. It was like a recurring nightmare. Every so often it would come around again. This time, Jay Burgess’s death had resurrected interest in it. Cobb wished for nothing more than that it would never be mentioned again. He wanted it kept out of the media, which seemed to relish replaying footage, retelling the story, showing that damn immortalized picture. He wished for voters not to be reminded that, were it not for that fire, he might not occupy this office.
Most of all, he wished not to be reminded of that himself.
CHAPTER 4
FOLLOWING THE PRESS CONFERENCE, BRITT SPENT THE remainder of the day at home.
She fielded telephone calls. Some were from acquaintances, others from reporters. All wanted the lowdown, the nitty-gritty on her night with Jay Burgess. Her acquaintances were only slightly more subtle in their approach than the brash reporters. They expressed shock over her situation and outrage that she was being placed on the defensive. But behind their commiserations she sensed a raging curiosity to know what had really happened. Weary of repeating herself, she stopped answering the phone.
The only person she wished would call was Bill Alexander, telling her that her urinalysis had revealed traces of Rohypnol, one of the very effective date rape drugs, which sometimes remained in the individual’s system for as long as seventy-two hours.
When the anticipated call did come, that wasn’t his message. “I’m sorry,” he said, cutting straight to the chase. “The urinalysis was negative for any of the suspected substances.”
Curled up in the corner of her sofa, cell phone in hand, she expelled a long breath. “I didn’t really expect otherwise. They act quickly, hit hard, and soon disappear. That’s the beauty of them for the son of a bitch who puts one in a woman’s drink.”
“Yes, well…”
He went on to say that he’d received a harsh dressing-down from the chief of police, as well as the district attorney’s office, for conducting the press conference. “They said I might have cleared it with them first. I reminded them that you are not a suspect of a crime, that, indeed, it hasn’t yet been determined that a crime was committed, and that you were exercising your First Amendment right to free speech.”
“Ooh. I bet that scared them.”
Apparently he knew she was being droll. “The point is,” he continued peevishly, “you’re not a favorite among officers of the CPD, especially Detectives Clark and Javier. They suggested to me, in very stern language, that you deliberately impeded their investigation.”
Calling the press conference had been a calculated risk. She’d realized it probably wouldn’t go over well with the police department. But she’d wanted to go on record-public record-that ingestion of a drug was the most plausible explanation for her lost memory of the night Jay died. Now that the urinalysis had come back negative, she was especially glad that she’d gone public with her suspicion.
“If I have to, I’ll submit to an MRI to prove I don’t have a brain tumor or some other affliction that caused me to black out.”
It was the lawyer’s turn to be droll. “There was the scotch.”
She started to ask him whose side he was on but decided not to waste her flagging energy. “Jay was my friend, and I grieve his passing. He had terminal cancer and died in his sleep, which many would consider a blessing. But because I’m a TV personality, and he was a hero, and we apparently slept together, his death has been turned into a media event. For his sake, I resent that. It dishonors his passing.”
“But you can understand the police department’s duty to determine exactly what happened to him.”
“Certainly. What I can’t understand is why that duty doesn’t extend to determining what happened to me.”
“The significant difference is obvious, isn’t it? You’re alive.”
That conversation left her feeling angry and dejected. If her own lawyer didn’t see her as a victim, how could she convince the police of it? Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to judge the motives of the friends who’d phoned her today. Perhaps their concern was genuine. Maybe she’d only imagined that their calls were ill-disguised fishing expeditions for salacious details.