Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [123]
“Yes.”
“And he killed some girl?”
“Right again, Carlos. But I’m afraid I had the wrong slant on it. Look, I’ll fill you in later, okay? I have to finish looking at this, and I have an appointment across town. Great job, my friend, as usual.”
After speaking with her father, she’d had every intention of sharing with her boss the startling revelation that her own father, the Trib’s crack cops reporter, had forged the letters from the alleged serial killer and had sent them to himself. But as she considered that course of action, she decided to hold off, at least for a day. At best, the story wouldn’t surface for at least twenty-four hours, and she wasn’t anxious to be the one to break it. She knew the minute she’d hung up on that call that her posture as the hard-bitten investigative TV journalist would take a back seat to family. That her father had invited her to do her job, no matter how destructive it would be for him, hit her hard. Be a daughter, she told herself—at least for a day.
That same sense of humanity was behind her call to Michael.
She laughed out loud at how misguided her assumption had been. She was convinced that Michael had written the serial killer letters, which meant by extension that he was probably the killer. If that thesis had been correct, she was in the front row of a sensational story, not only the first reporter to be privy to the inside facts, but the person who’d solved the crime, heady stuff for a journalist her age. Awards galore. A book contract. A movie. A correspondent on 60 Minutes. Fame and fortune.
But she’d been wrong. Her father had obviously used Michael’s typewriter to write the letters—which raised a question not so easily answered. Why had he done it?
The obvious answer was that he wanted to enhance his career, be the center of attention. It had taken her a few introspective minutes to conjure the other possibilities. Had he done it because he had evidence that Michael was indeed the serial killer, and hoped to choreograph his apprehension on his own terms, control the investigation, benefit from his involvement?
Or was he attempting to frame his brother?
That second possibility raised issues worthy of a psychology textbook. Could her father’s hatred for Michael, based upon what he’d done more than forty years ago, been so pervasive that he would deliberately hand his only brother up on a sacrificial platter to society, punish him again for his youthful act? She couldn’t accept that, no matter how deeply seated its origins might be. That her father had kept Michael a secret from her for all these years spoke volumes of his sense of shame. And while that might have been the wrong approach, it was understandable. He was flawed in some ways—and who wasn’t?—but was not a man who would do such a thing. Impossible. No. He’d sought the sort of recognition that had eluded him over the course of his career, and had erred in how he’d pursued it. That had to be it. No other answer was possible.
She owed Michael an explanation, and an apology, and intended to deliver it to him that day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Vargas-Swayze met with her boss, Bernie Evans, and laid out for him what she’d learned about the letters allegedly written by the so-called serial killer, and the background of Joe’s brother, Michael Wilcox, aka Michael LaRue.
“Wilcox—Joe Wilcox—acknowledges he wrote them?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What the hell was he looking for, his fifteen minutes of fame?”
She shrugged. “Either that or he was trying to frame his brother.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know—unless—”
He cocked his head.
“God, I have trouble even saying it—unless he was trying to shift focus from himself to someone else.”
“Meaning he might be a murderer?”
“He had nothing to do with the McNamara murder, that’s for sure. He was with me that night. But Jean Kaporis at the Trib? I just don’t know, Bernie.”
Evans rubbed his eyes and moved his mouth against the tightness in his jaw.
“Bernie,” Edith said, “Joe Wilcox might have really screwed