8

AS I WALKED BACK into the newsroom, I could feel some tension, but no one came anywhere near me. I sat down at my desk and tried to shake off the cloud of depression that threatened to settle on me. There were three phone message slips waiting for me. The first was from a Julie Montgomery. No message, no number – would call back later. Monty Montgomery’s wife was named Nina. He had three daughters and a son. I pulled up a file on him on the computer. Yes, one of the daughters was named Julie.

The second was from Jacob Henderson. Will call back later.

The third was from Sammy Garden. Same routine.

Damn. While I was in the morgue listening to Stacee, half of Las Piernas High School was trying to get in touch with me.

I wondered if Sammy had tried to reach me at home. I’d been too distracted that morning to check my messages. I called my home number and entered the code to get the machine to play back to me.

“Miss Kelly? Are you there?” The voice on the tape sounded frightened. “This is Sammy. Look, I’ve got to talk to you. I’m leaving the shelter. Something awful has happened. I’ve got to go. I’ll try calling you at work tomorrow.”

I had a feeling in my bones that the “something awful” was the murder of Mrs. Fremont. If Sammy wasn’t in danger before, she probably was now. Where on the streets could she hide out? What place that other runaways wouldn’t know about?

I paced around my desk. I couldn’t leave – I couldn’t afford to miss a call from any of these kids. I started thinking about Julie Montgomery. She was about seventeen or eighteen. I remembered Jacob’s blush when I had asked him about his source inside the Montgomery campaign. Could Jacob and Julie be friends? More than friends? Considering the bitter rivalry between the two candidates, it didn’t seem likely. But it wasn’t impossible.

My thoughts were interrupted by Lydia, who was walking toward me with a piece of paper in her outstretched hand. “Have you seen this?” she asked. “It’s being hand-delivered to the homes of most registered voters today.”

“Stop Satanism in Las Piernas,” I read aloud, sinking into my chair. There was a dim photo of Jacob Henderson, dressed in black, his face lit by firelight, talking to a woman in a dark robe – she looked like Sammy, from what I could see. They were in a circle of other robed figures. The spiel below the photo was pretty much as Jacob had predicted. It didn’t look good.

“The phones have started ringing off the hooks,” Lydia was saying. “Looks like Henderson has had it. I think it’s going to get worse; the Fremont murder story has been on the radio, and Wrigley wants to tag it ‘The Satanist Murder.’”

I could see Mark Baker, who covered crime stories, starting to make his way over to me. The phone on my desk rang. I picked it up.

“Irene?” It was Pete Baird, Frank’s partner.

“Yeah, Pete.”

“I’m worried about Frank. You have a fight?”

“Not really. He’s upset – look, let me call you later, okay? I’m in a crowd here.”

“Okay, but let me call you instead. We’re on our way out.”

I hung up, noting the expression of extreme curiosity on Baker’s face.

“Was that Frank?”

“No,” I said, glad to be able to tell the truth. “What’s up?”

“It looks like there may be some tie-in between the D.A.’s campaign and the murder of the Fremont woman. You got anything that might help me?”

I was spared answering by John Walter’s booming “Kelly!”

“If I’m alive when I leave his office, I’ll find you, Mark.”

He nodded in sympathy, and I walked toward John’s office. Even though I could see John turning red, I stopped by Lydia’s desk on the way.

“Lydia, there are three people trying to reach me.” I handed her the message slips. “If any of them call, please get me out of John’s office.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Please, Lydia.”

I must have sounded desperate, because she nodded her head.

“Don’t let me interrupt your busy day, Kelly!” John bellowed.

I straightened up and said, “I appreciate your understanding, John.”

He turned on his heel and I made haste to follow.

I closed the door and sat down. He glowered at me.

“You know what, Kelly?” He held up a copy of the Montgomery flyer and waved it back and forth. “I’ve got an itch somewhere that tells me you knew something about this hit piece of Montgomery’s yesterday.”

“Almost right, John. Jacob Henderson met me yesterday morning, asking to talk to me off the record. He told me he had heard from someone in the Montgomery campaign that this was going out. He tried to explain why he was at this gathering in the photo. I spent yesterday morning trying to find out if there was going to be a hit, but although it was pretty clear some kind of mudslinging was going on, I couldn’t get anyone to confirm the nature of the piece. I spent the afternoon trying to confirm Jacob’s version of the story. He claims that he was there to talk a friend into leaving, and that he’s not part of the coven. I talked to the friend, and she backs him up.”

John stewed for a minute or two, then apparently decided that I had done my job. “You believe the kid?”

“Yes. I’d like to talk to other kids in the coven, but it’s going to be hard. My connection to them – -Jacob’s friend – has run away. She left a message on my machine saying she’d call me again. I don’t know if she will, but I asked Lydia to come in here and get me if she calls.”

He scowled. “This is all a bad business. I suppose you know our esteemed editor’s ideas on tagging the Fremont murder ‘Satanist.’ I don’t like the idea of playing right into Montgomery’s hands.”

“Wrigley’s just thinking of how many newspapers he can sell. It will help him sell them all right – at the expense of the Henderson campaign.”

“You’re going to write something up about the Henderson kid’s version of the story?”

“As much as I can. It will probably be pretty thin unless I can find somebody else who was there.”

He grew pensive again. He was watching me in a way that made me uneasy.

“Irene, what was wrong this morning?”

I looked away from him. “It’s a list of things, John.”

He waited.

“Mrs. Fremont was Frank’s next-door neighbor. He found the body. I was right behind him.”

“Jesus.”

“Frank really liked her, and it was pretty rough on him. It wasn’t too much easier for me. I had talked to her a couple of times yesterday. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I walk in here and Wrigley sneers at me, then Stacee runs past me in tears. I just wasn’t in the mood to take any crap about Frank from the laughing boys in the newsroom.”

“You okay now?”

“Not really, but I’ll survive.”

“You say you saw the body?”

I could see the wheels turning in John’s mind. I nodded.

“Cops wouldn’t let anyone past the door last night. But you were inside the house?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of the pool of blood.

“Tell me what you saw.”

I could feel my hackles rise.

“Go to hell, John. If I can’t cover crime stories, fine. But don’t turn around and try to get me to be a spy for you or to compromise Frank. One way or the other – not both.”

“Goddammit, Irene, I’d ask any witness the same thing.”

“I’m not any witness.”

He was back up to the boiling point. “You’re biting the hand that feeds you, Kelly! You’d better give some thought to who signs your paycheck.”

“I’m not ready to make a whore out of myself for the lousy sum on that check.”

“Get out of here!”

“Gladly.”

I stormed out, only to be met by Lydia frantically waving me over to the phone. Would there be no relief?

“Kelly,” I snapped into the phone.

“Irene Kelly?” It was a young woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“My name is Julie Montgomery. I’m Monty Montgomery’s daughter. I need to talk to you. Can I meet you somewhere?”