Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [10]
His meeting earlier that morning with Paul Morehouse had gone poorly.
• • •
“Look,” Morehouse had yelled once Wilcox and Rick Jillian, a new reporter assigned to the Kaporis story, had settled in chairs across from him, “they’re eating our lunch. Jesus Christ, she gets killed right here off our own newsroom and we’re last on the MPD food chain. Come on, Joe, you used to be sourced over there, better than anybody on the beat. What’s happened? How come all of a sudden they’re stonewalling you?”
“They’re not,” Wilcox responded. He resented a need to go on the defensive. As far as he was concerned, he’d been working the case hard. “Nobody’s eating nothing. All the other outlets have is speculation, and they make that sound like inside info. It’s all BS.”
“Even your daughter?” Morehouse asked.
“What about her?”
“She claimed on the tube that an interview she did with Jean’s mother revealed possible suspects and motives. Was she right? What did the mother say?”
Wilcox didn’t respond.
“You interviewed the mother. Right?”
“Right, and she didn’t say anything that would point to a suspect or motive.”
“Maybe you didn’t ask the right questions.”
“I asked the right questions. Paul, the decision was made upstairs to not turn Jean’s murder into a tabloid circus, not here at the highly respected, above-the-fray Washington Tribune. Remember?”
The younger reporter turned in his chair to physically look away from Wilcox’s sarcasm. Morehouse pretended to take in something interesting in the airshaft outside the office’s single window before slowly returning his attention to the reporters. “Rick,” he told the younger one, “run another check on visitors who signed in the day Jean died. I know, I know, we’ve been over it a hundred times but do it again.”
Jillian and Wilcox stood.
“Stay a minute, Joe,” Morehouse said.
The door closed, Morehouse said, “Come on, come on, Joe, lay it out for me.”
“Lay what out?”
“What’s eating you.”
Wilcox started to respond but Morehouse pressed on.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. You’ve been walking around lately with a chip on your shoulder, or looking like you swallowed one. That doesn’t do me any good, or the paper. You’re the best cops reporter I have, or am I talking past tense?”
Again, he didn’t allow Wilcox to reply.
“I met with Mary yesterday. She’s greenlighted a task force for the Kaporis story: you, Rick, a couple of researchers, a graphic artist, and that computer whiz, Kahlia, from Research. I want you to spearhead it—but not if you’re about to go off the deep end and start seeing a shrink five times a week.”
When Wilcox said nothing, Morehouse asked, “Are you?”
“No.”
“Good. As long as we’re leveling with each other, what’s going on at MPD?”
Wilcox shrugged. “They’re working the case. That’s all I know.”
“They’re not talking to you?”
“Yeah, they’re talking to me, but they don’t have a hell of a lot to tell me.”
“Because of Roberta? They punishing her old man because of the stuff she did on them?”
“No. That’s not happening.”
“How do you know?”
“I just—know.”
“How far did you get talking to people here?”
“Staffers MPD questioned?”
“Yeah.”
“I hit most of them, I think, at least those I know about.”
“You think there are others? You think the cops talked to someone we don’t know about?”
“It’s possible.”
“Get the list from MPD.”
“They won’t release it.”
“Jesus, Joe, I don’t care about it being released. Get it off the record. They spent days here interviewing people.”
“And they still think she was killed by one of us.”
“If that’s true, then everybody upstairs would be very happy if we solved it in-house. Jean’s murder is still high profile a month later. Still hot, and will continue to be. There are actually people out there who think the world would be better off if all reporters got whacked. Maybe we can’t play Sherlock and bust the case ourselves, but we should at least be out front with coverage. We’re it. Come on, Joe, suck it up. Get your team together and pull out all the stops. You