The Guilty - Jason Pinter [109]
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tomorrow if you have time to make it into the national
edition."
"I'm sorry, did Ted Allen put you on the payroll without
telling me?" Paulina asked. She took a bite of her bagel,
washed it down with pineapple juice. That combination
couldn't taste good.
"I have a once-in-a-lifetime lead. But Wallace won't let me
run with it. He said it'd stir up a ton of controversy and he
doesn't need more of that from me right now. He wants me
to lay low."
Paulina's eyes lit up at the word controversy.
"So why come to me?" she said. "Why not take it to a
magazine?"
"It needs to run as soon as possible. There's a maniac out
there and I think this could smoke him out. And if Wallace is
too scared to run it, it's my duty to make sure it runs somewhere. I'm a journalist. My duty is to the truth first, my paycheck second."
"It has to do with this Billy the Kid angle," Paulina said.
"That's right."
"Do tell."
"Does the name Mark Rheingold ring a bell?"
She thought for a moment, tapping her nails against the
tabletop. "Religious guy, right? Had some big church down
South."
"Close enough. Do a little digging and you'll find out just
how big this guy was."
"So what's your point?"
I told Paulina what I'd discovered. Every word of it. I told
her how the Roberts family had died in that fire, along with
Pastor Rheingold. I told her how William Henry Roberts's
body was never found, and the county covered it up. How
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Roberts had been presumed dead for four years, and was continuing the bloody legacy of his ancestor, Billy the Kid.
Paulina listened transfixed. Yet there was fear in her eyes.
She knew I'd done enough digging so that this wasn't some
half-baked concoction. She could tell from my eyes that the
closest thing to a real demon this city had ever seen was currently walking the streets, had killed David Loverne and three
others and tried to kill Mya. I told her all of it.
"I still don't understand," she said, her voice much softer,
the confidence gone. "Mark Rheingold, why was he at that
house? If William Roberts really did..." she paused before
she said it "...kill his whole family, why kill Rheingold, too?"
I told her about the rumors of Rheingold's affairs with his
congregants. I told her about the photo I'd unearthed.
"I think Rheingold was having an affair with Meryl
Roberts, William's mother. I think William's father knew
about it. That's why Roberts killed Rheingold. He was killing
the man who brought disgrace to his family, Billy's family."
"Jesus," Paulina said. She looked like she'd aged ten years
in the last ten minutes. "And you want me to print this?"
I reached under the table and unzipped my knapsack. I
handed her dozens of pages of documents. Copies of all the
research I'd done, the photos I'd unearthed. Everything
proving Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy the Kid, and that
William considered himself heir to the throne.
"Between William and Billy they've killed almost thirty
people." I looked at Paulina, her face grave. "You got into this
business for the same reason I did. At least at first. You wanted
to tell the truth. You wanted to find the stories that matter.
Well, here's one that will rewrite history, and with any luck
save some lives. I don't want a byline or any credit. You can
take that. But it needs to run tomorrow. And if anything I said
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gets on the record in my voice, I swear to God I will make
you pay for the rest of your life. I've lost my girlfriend. I've
lost Mya. There's nothing more dangerous than someone
with nothing to lose. Right now all I have is my integrity. You
take that, I will make your life a living hell. I will sue you and
Ted Allen and the Dispatch for printing that shit about Mya
and me. I will lie through my teeth and tell people I fucked
you and then dumped your ass and that's why you're so
spiteful."
"What happened to the truth?" Paulina said sarcastically.
"Just this once, I'll not only stoop to your level, I'll wave
hello from six levels lower."
"I'll run