Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [111]
Would prints on the second letter establish the same possibility?
The officers assigned to provide surveillance on the Wilcox home had claimed that no one had approached the mailbox aside from the mailman and Wilcox. Surely, the mailman wasn’t the serial killer.
“No, no,” she said aloud. “Not Joe.”
If so, to say she was shocked would be a gross understatement.
She went to Evans’s office. “Got a minute?” she asked.
“Sure, Edith. Pull up a chair.”
She handed him the report.
He looked up over half-glasses and smiled. “Do you think your buddy Wilcox is about to join that distinguished company of journalists who get too inventive?”
“I don’t know, Bernie,” she said. “If I were a betting person, I’d lay my money on Joe being the last person who’d do that. He’s a stand-up guy. He’s never lied to me.”
Evans leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Maybe he’s going through a midlife crisis,” he said. “I recently went through mine. So did my wife. I bought a red pickup truck, and she dyed her hair red. Happens to the best of us.”
Vargas-Swayze laughed.
“At least I didn’t put a gun rack in the back. Have you checked on the phone taps?”
“I will when I leave here. We have one on his home now.”
“Good. In the meantime, he’ll write another story that will run on the front page and sell a slew of papers.” He came forward in his chair. “If Wilcox has been writing these so-called letters to himself, where did he do it? Forensics says they weren’t from a computer printer. Had to be a typewriter. Does he have one at home?”
“I’ve never seen one,” she replied, “but that doesn’t prove anything.”
“If the second letter indicates the same result, maybe we should get a warrant.”
She winced. “I’d hate to do that, Bernie. He’s a friend.”
“You’ve never had a friend break the law under your nose?” he asked.
“No.”
“Look, all I can say is that if Wilcox has been writing these letters to himself, he’s not only dishonoring his profession, he’s committing a crime. Keep that in mind.”
“I will,” she said, getting up to leave. “Red pickup truck?” she said. “You have a red pickup truck?”
“Yes. A nifty little vehicle. Great for bringing home plants from the nursery, or sheetrock from the lumber yard.”
“Interesting,” she said to herself as she left his office and went to the communications room to check on the taps.
• • •
Roberta Wilcox’s mood was not as ebullient that morning as Vargas-Swayze’s had been. She and Tom Curtis had argued on the phone to start the day. He wanted her to join him that evening to meet friends from out of town who were in D.C. on a visit. She declined, claiming she needed every hour she could muster to work on a developing big story. He became angry at her constant unavailability, causing her to accuse him of insensitivity to her career needs. That was bad enough. But he ended the conversation by saying that not only was she married to her job—and he didn’t want to be married to someone wedded to something else—but that her chronic lateness was a sophomoric call for attention. The conversation ended abruptly when he hung up—forcefully.
She’d fumed about the call while showering and dressing, and over a breakfast of a limp bagel and brown water called coffee in a neighborhood luncheonette. But once she reached the TV station and was ensconced in her tiny office in the newsroom, angry thoughts about Tom Curtis were replaced by images of Michael Wilcox, aka Michael LaRue, and the page from his manuscript that now sat on the desk. Next to it was a clip of her father’s first article announcing that he’d received a letter from the serial killer, and in which the letter had been reproduced. She was no document expert, but her untrained, albeit critical eye, left no doubt that the manuscript page and the letter had come from the same typewriter. It was a startling, shocking conclusion. The problem was that she didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with her discovery.
The options were self-evident, but none seemed palatable. The sensible step would be to report her