Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [23]
He looked through the glass separating him from the main newsroom and saw Joe Wilcox heading for his office.
“Yeah?” Morehouse said as Wilcox entered.
“I thought you’d want to see this,” Wilcox said, laying the article on the desk.
“What is it?”
“Read it.”
Morehouse removed the cover from his coffee and took a sip before picking up Wilcox’s pages. He leaned back, half-glasses on the tip of his nose, a scowl on his face. “Interesting,” he said, dropping the article on the desk. “A serial killer? Based on two murders?”
“Two similar murders, Paul.”
“This one worked for a TV station?”
“Right. I’m nailing down which one.”
“Same cause of death.”
“Right.”
“Who’s your source at MPD who says it’s possibly a serial murder?”
“A good one.”
“Your—your Spanish buddy?”
“No. Someone higher up.”
“Can’t get MPD to go on the record?”
“Not yet. They will. They’ll have to when this runs.”
“He talked to you on background?”
“Yes.”
There was a difference, Wilcox knew, between having a public official speak “off the record” and “on background.” In its strictest interpretation, “off the record” meant that whatever was said could not be reported, even without attribution. But speaking “on background” meant the official’s words could be reported without naming the source. Those distinctions had become blurred over the years. “Off the record” covered both situations in most journalists’ minds, and Wilcox wasn’t in the mood to honor such distinctions.
“Get the victim’s name and where she worked. The L.A. bureau is interviewing Kaporis’s ex out in California. Use what they come up with in the piece.”
“Shall do.”
As Wilcox turned to leave, Morehouse said, “What about the hooker angle?”
“What about it?”
“I want that run down.”
Wilcox nodded, but it didn’t represent what he was thinking. He said, “This serial killer angle is front-page stuff, Paul.”
“We’ll see. Nice work, Joe. By the way, how come you covered Franklin Park last night?”
“I was passing by.”
As Wilcox was about to leave, Morehouse said, “Joe, when you get something from MPD, see if you can get them to speculate that if a serial killer is loose, chances are Jean was murdered by somebody from outside the Trib.”
“That’ll be tough. I—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but it would help take the spotlight off us, poke a hole in the notion that we might be covering up for one of our own.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Wilcox spent the next few hours on the phone working his sources in D.C.’s broadcasting community. He struck oil with a friend at one of the TV stations, who told him the slain woman in the park had worked for a competitor. He called that station and received a reluctant confirmation that the victim had, indeed, worked there. He lied to the person on the phone: “We’re going with her name,” he said. “MPD has notified her next of kin.”
“Really?” the person on the other end said. “The McNamara family must be devastated.”
“I’m sure they are,” Wilcox said, noting the name on a pad and injecting empathy into his voice. “How old was she? Twenty-six?”
“I don’t know,” the TV station employee said. “Colleen never said, at least to me.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’re all terribly upset losing a colleague in such a brutal way. Thanks for your time.”
He inserted the victim’s name and the TV station into the story, and ran a computer search on Colleen McNamara. There wasn’t much, but there was just enough to help flesh out the piece. She’d come to Washington to take the job at the TV station. That was three years ago. Her name was mentioned in connection with a couple of investigative reports she’d produced for the station. Her address and telephone number were included in the computer-generated bio.
A man answered his call to her residence.
“Joe Wilcox from the Tribune. Is there someone I can speak with about Ms. McNamara?”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Yes. The Washington Tribune. My condolences to the family. I know this is a tough time