Strangled - Brian McGrory [81]
“Justine, in turn, felt it important to alert Mara Laird about the existence of this new correspondence. I agreed with her on that. We got pummeled pretty hard in the Traveler today, I believe unfairly so, about not being cooperative enough with police. We want to make sure we look like we’re doing everything in our power to help them catch this killer.”
At this point, Martin was slowly easing into that Zen-like tone that he gets, the one with the exaggerated sense of calm. Justine listened to him intently. Mongillo finished the first half of his submarine sandwich and lit into the rest. I sat in still silence, starting to get slowly pissed off, though why, I wasn’t quite sure yet.
Martin continued, “Justine, do you want to fill us in on your conversation with the mayor?”
It all sounded rehearsed. Justine nodded, looked from me to Mongillo and back to me again, and said, “She’s not thrilled with this — or with us. The conversation was brief. She put me on a conference call with Hal Harrison, and the two of them said that if we publish that letter, as the writer of it wants us to do, we will push the city of Boston into a state of what they called ‘unwarranted chaos.’ ”
As she said those last two words, she looked down at a sheet of notes she had in her hand.
She continued, again looking down. “They said we would be ‘seriously impeding’ their investigation — again, their words. They said they need another day or two to” — she gazed down again here — “ ‘fully develop some promising leads.’ And in no uncertain terms, they said that if we go ahead and print that letter, we should never again expect to receive help on breaking stories from Boston PD, or, for that matter, from city hall.”
Mongillo guffawed. Or maybe he was choking on his mortadella. Either way, he said, “How could you tell if Boston PD becomes unhelpful?”
A good question, or rather a point. Martin nodded; Justine said and did nothing. Martin broke a brief but strained silence and said, “Jack, give us your take.”
So I did. I gave him exactly what he expected to get.
“I’ll be honest with you,” I began. “First, I understand that we had to turn that letter over to the cops; I just wish I had been consulted on it. Second, I didn’t realize we were consulting with the acting mayor on editorial policy and decisions. From here on in, should I plan to run all my stories past Mayor Laird to make sure they meet with her approval?”
Steele frowned. Martin was about to interject, but I continued before he got the chance.
“Third, as the Phantom Fiend points out, that blood he’s talking about will be on my hands, so I’ll be up front by saying I’m in favor of getting this thing into print as soon as possible, tomorrow being barely soon enough. Maybe we ought to even consider putting it out on the website today, though he didn’t ask us to do that, so that could screw things up.
“And fourth, there’s already blood all over the floor — Bob Walters’s blood, Kimberly May’s blood, Jill Dawson’s blood, Lauren Hutchens’s blood, Joshua Carpenter’s blood. This thing broke on a Monday. It’s Friday now. Boston PD has had a week on this, with a stream of clues provided by us. You really think another twentyfour or forty-eight hours is going to change the scope and direction of their investigation? Or do you think they’re just worried about the additional pressure?”
I paused and looked from Peter Martin to Justine Steele, then added, “And let’s assume for a moment that it’s the latter. Is it really our job to take pressure off the cops, or is it our job to put pressure on them?”
There was a moment of silence. Well, not entirely silence. Mongillo chomped on the last few potato chips, then noisily balled up the sandwich wrapper and let it sit on the table.
Finally, Steele asked, “Who’s Bob Walters?”
I explained his former position, then I shared the details of my Las Vegas trip