The Guilty - Jason Pinter [84]
planning to stop.
37
"Last time we spoke," Paulina said, "you told me you were
closer to Henry Parker than, let's see if I recall, 'white on rice.'"
James Keach loosened his tie and thanked God he was
wearing a suit jacket because he was sure the pit stains on his
blue Oxford were visible from across the street. "There's different kinds of rice," he stuttered. "There's brown rice,
chicken fried rice. It's not all white."
"You said white. White on rice. So why the fuck is this
Billy the Kid exclusive in the Gazette and we're sitting with
another Britney crotch shot on page one?" Paulina's face was
red, but James couldn't tell if it was from rage or more Xanax
than usual. He hoped it was the latter, but doubted it.
"Parker was attacked in his apartment," Keach said, trying
to regain his confidence. "The cops have assigned two protection details, one for Parker and another for this Amanda
Davies girl. I tried waiting down the street from his apartment,
outside a bagel shop, but one of the cops spotted me and
started walking toward where I was standing. He was looking
at me, Paulina! So I pretended I was buying a bagel and got
the hell out of there. Better that than they knew who I was,
right?"
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Paulina closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead with her hand.
"And so Parker finds this crackpot Vance, and he snags the
story while you're slurping cream cheese. James, do you
know how close we are?"
"How close we are in what?"
Paulina rifled through some papers on her desk, pulled out
a white sheet with a bunch of indecipherable numbers.
"These are the latest circulation figures for all five major
New York newspapers, along with rates for the top twenty
newspapers in the country. The latest numbers show the
Gazette' s circulation lead over the Dispatch at less than five
percent. Five percent. That's less than yearly inflation these
days. One major story can turn the tide, my rice-loving friend.
So I don't care if you have to channel Houdini himself, you
shadow Henry Parker like your life depends on it. Because I
can sure as hell make sure your job does. That is all."
38
Icould sense the men following me even though I couldn't see
them. I knew they carried guns, had their eyes glued to my back,
and sized up every person who came within five feet of me.
I told the cops the killer had already done what he came
to do, that their efforts would be better used fighting terrorism or searching for the killer himself. They disagreed. I told
them the guy who cut up my hand wasn't stupid enough to
go after me in broad daylight, that he had actual targets. He
had a motive, a purpose, wasn't some fly-by-the-seat-of-hispants, run-of-the-mill murderer. He picked the Winchester for
a reason. Stole it from that museum in Fort Sumner for a
reason. Came to my apartment and tried to scare me off the
story for a reason.
In the days since, I wondered why he didn't just kill me.
The man had already killed four others. He clearly wasn't
averse to murder. There was a story he wanted to stay buried,
and leaving me alive was just one more shovel that could keep
digging. I guessed he just didn't know how driven--or
stupid--I was.
To uncover more about the legacy of Brushy Bill Roberts,
I had to start at the end. Roberts had lived in Hamilton, Texas,
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and died in Hico. Roberts had since become Hico's only
claim to fame, bringing in thousands of dollars in tourism
every year. If Fort Sumner lived and breathed the legend of
Billy the Kid, Hico lived on the whiff of conspiracy brought
on by their most famous former resident.
I had to get out of the office and do research away from
the madness that had become the Gazette newsroom. With the
increasing battles between the Gazette and the Dispatch, I
could tell Hillerman had come down hard on Wallace to make
sure his reporters knocked this story out of the park. And if
that was the case, I was his Babe Ruth, stepping to the plate
and calling my shot, hoping for a moon rocket rather than a
whiff.
The New York