Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [29]
The anchor’s laugh was dismissive and degrading. “Come on, Roberta,” he said, “that’s ridiculous. Kaporis was killed by somebody at the Trib, pure and simple.”
“Oh? Maybe the person at the Trib is a serial killer,” Roberta said. She was tempted to repeat what her father had said, but didn’t. But she had called MPD’s public information officer earlier that afternoon to raise the possibility.
• • •
“Jesus,” the IO had replied, “we don’t need the press creating a soap opera, Roberta. The Kaporis and McNamara murders are two separate cases, with two separate assailants. Please, don’t start a rumor like this.”
“I’m not intending to,” she’d said. “Just thought I’d ask whether you people are considering the possibility.”
“Well, we’re not.”
“Gotcha.”
• • •
“I raised the question with the IO over at headquarters,” she told the anchor. “He responded the way you have.”
“Of course…” the producer said.
“Of course what?” the anchor asked.
“Maybe we could raise the possibility. Maybe we could—”
“Not on my newscast,” he said in his familiar stentorian voice. “Let’s not sink to speculation. I have to get to makeup. Ciao!”
With the anchor out of the room, Roberta told her producer about what her father had hinted at.
“Your dad thinks it could be the same killer?”
“He didn’t say that, but it’s obviously on his mind.”
“Your father’s one of the best crime reporters in the city. If he thinks it’s a possibility, I—”
“He’s just blue-skying,” Roberta said, returning her attention to the editing screen. “He does it all the time. Let’s get this piece finished. I’m tired of looking at it.”
• • •
Bernie Evans sat in the First District’s squad room with eight detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit, all of whom reported to him. Four others were missing: two had called in sick; the remaining pair were in the field working the initial investigation of a domestic homicide that had occurred only hours earlier when a woman, who walked in on her husband in bed with a neighbor, knifed the neighbor to death.
“She should have done the husband,” a detective said after Evans had explained the absence of the two detectives.
“He’d better keep his jock strap on,” said another. “Right, Edith?”
She ignored him and suggested to her boss that they get on with the meeting.
Evans had initiated these regular get-togethers in an attempt to ensure an exchange of information. The intelligence debacle that had consumed Washington since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks wasn’t lost on him, and he was determined that a failure to share information among his detectives wouldn’t happen on his watch. While it was rare that findings from one homicide investigation proved useful in another, there had been times when it had.
“Okay, what do we have?” Evans asked the detective seated to his right.
“Not much at this stage,” he said, consulting a pad. “Deceased was McNamara, Colleen, white female, age twenty-six, employed as a TV producer. Death occurred in Franklin Park, approximate time of death between eight and nine P.M. Manner of death strangulation, although not firm yet. Crime scene search revealed nothing so far, except for footprints in dirt surrounding the bench on which she was found. Prints might be the assailant, but maybe not. That’s about it, Bernie.”
“Edith?”
Vargas-Swayze, one of two female detectives in the room, flipped open her notebook and gave a rundown on the interviews they’d done that day, including the admission by Mary Jane Pruit that she worked as a paid escort.
“What’s she look like?” a male detective asked.
“Dynamite,” Dungey said. “But dumb.”
“Since when do brains matter with a hooker?” the male detective said, laughing.
“Let’s stay on topic,” Evans said. “The IO told me he’s gotten queries about whether the Kaporis and McNamara murders might be linked in some way.”
“Doesn’t compute,”