Friday Edition, The (6 page)

Sam knew what it was. “Judie said you would show it to me. It’s not something I’m really ready to read yet, Jonathan.”

He slid the paper across the desk in her direction.

“You’ll have to at some point,” he said.

She picked up the paper slowly, reading as she brought it closer to her. She could see that the ink from some of the words on the page was smeared, as if Robin had been crying as she wrote the letter to Sam.

Dear Sammie,

I never wanted to become a burden. Since you're reading this now, a burden is exactly what I've become. I am sorry.

Please don't be too angry with me for having done this, for I feel this is as far in life as I have the strength to go. I so wish I could explain to you what it is I've been going through, but I can't seem to find the words to put on paper. I am no longer thinking clearly enough to explain how I feel.

You're a writer and I know you probably can't understand what that means, but what was it Thoreau said?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

What else do I know but that I am there among them. It is all I know. Forgive me for leaving you in such a cruel, selfish way. It is so heartless for someone who has always, always been there for me.

That was it.

There was no signature—none of the usual and familiar
‘Ciao, Sis’
that the sisters always put at the bottom of their letters and cards to each other. Sam read the note several times before Jonathan spoke. “You heard about the autopsy?”

“From Judie. Last night,” Sam said, not bothering to keep the irritation from her voice. “She’s on vacation, but she made a point to call me.”

Jonathan knew the source of her anger. “Sorry, Sam, I should’ve called. Robin died because of the fall,” he said slowly. “But it was inconclusive if she had jumped or was pushed.”

Sam nodded mutely.

“Now maybe you’ll believe me and stop your foolish thinking that someone killed her,” he said.

“That’s bullshit. This note is, too,” Sam said and before she could stop herself, she wadded the piece of paper into a tiny ball and threw it at Jonathan. The paper sailed easily over his shoulder, hit the blinds and fell to the floor. “How do you know she wrote it?” Sam asked.

He tried to stifle a small sigh. “Sam, you sound so foolish. It’s her handwriting for God’s sake!”

She ignored him. “You didn’t say how you found the note.”

“I didn’t find it,” he returned. “The detectives who searched her place found it. It was right there on the kitchen table, plain as day.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came. She looked vaguely from the letter to him. Suddenly she felt as weary as if her head weighed a thousand pounds. Her vision seemed cloudy and it was hard to focus. She rested her forehead in her palms.

“Will you accept it now? Please,” Jonathan said and his voice had yielded to a lower, softer pitch. “Robin killed herself. For whatever reason, she decided she couldn’t go on. She was tired of life. There wasn’t anyone else in her place when she went out on the balcony, Sam. And there wasn’t anyone else there when she wrote the note. She was alone when she died.”

Sam didn’t move, she didn’t respond.

“Sam?”

“Yeah,” she said and looked up quickly.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. You’re right,” Sam said as she got up to leave. “I wanted to believe Robin had been murdered. But I was wrong. Maybe she was as fed up with life as I am.” She walked to the door.

“Sam, wait.”

She turned to look at him. He was looking at her. Robin’s suicide note still lay crumpled on the floor beside him. She was sorry she had thrown it away and hadn’t thought to keep it.

“You said Robin would never take her life on Christmas and that you both made a promise to each other. Why haven’t you ever told me that?”

She quietly weighed his question. “The bathroom door was unlocked when I tried the handle,” Sam started by saying.

“The bathroom door?” Jonathan asked, confused. It took him a moment to realize what she was saying. Then his face went smooth in recognition.

“Robin had been waiting outside the bathroom door because mom was taking a bath. I walked by several times before I finally asked Robin what she was doing just standing there. She said she was waiting to open Christmas presents.”

Sam felt her emotions from that fateful day shift into neutral.

“I called to mother twice outside the bathroom door,” Sam went on. “But she didn’t answer. I knew Robin had been standing there for a long time, but she didn’t. What does a five-year-old know about the concept of time? What did she know about hours, minutes and seconds and what it meant to put it all together?

“Mother had said she would be in the bathroom ‘a while.’ We knew when she said ‘a while,’ it meant she did not want to be disturbed. I was happy to oblige. The less I had to talk to her, the better,” Sam said.

Sam shifted her weight to her heels, and pressed her back against the wall and, as Jonathan settled in his office chair, she told him what had happened on that fateful Christmas day.

Robin wanted things to be different, at least on that day. It was, after all, Christmas. Robin wanted to open presents when her mother finished in the bathroom. She never liked dolls much. But there had been one in particular she often saw on television this holiday season. It had caught her attention. Each time she saw the commercial, she wanted the doll more. The one and only time Robin sat on Santa’s lap, she had asked for that doll.

Robin was excited for Christmas to come because Santa Claus had promised her that she would get her doll. This was also the first Christmas the sisters had put up a real Christmas tree. Robin remembered her mother saying at other times that there wasn’t much money. But this year, much to Robin’s delight, things were different. There were presents beneath a tree.

Robin had waited at the bathroom door long enough, and finally called out to her mother just as Sam was walking by. She didn’t want Robin to get in trouble for disturbing their mother, so Sam put her hand on the knob and turned it. The door popped open.

“Mommy?” It was Robin’s voice. No answer.

The sisters hesitated before stepping into the bathroom. They knew their mother’s temper and didn’t want to make her angry, at least not on Christmas morning. All Robin could think about was the package with her name on it, waiting under the tree. It was big and pretty, with a large white bow centered neatly on bright red paper.

They stayed at the door, thinking her mother had not heard them.

“Mom?” Sam called hesitantly.

They waited, but heard nothing. Robin poked her head inside the bathroom, her blue eyes darting from side to side, surveying the small room. It did not seem hot and steamy the way it always did when mommy took a shower. Sam looked in over her shoulder.

From their angle at the door, they saw their mother’s foot, dangling slightly over the edge of the bathtub. It was one of those old fashioned bathtubs that stood so high off the floor that little Robin couldn’t see all her mother’s body. Except her foot.

“Mommy?” Robin called again. Her eyes were riveted on her mother’s foot, which hung as still as a mannequin. Robin started to enter the bathroom, but Sam stopped her.

“You wait here,” Sam said and she mustered the courage to walk into the bathroom.

Robin ignored her sister’s command and followed her. They hedged toward the tub. The stocking feet of Robin’s black and white polka-dot pajamas felt sticky. She lifted her right foot from the floor and saw that the sole had turned a different color, a color that Robin had seen only once before. She had cut her finger badly on the rim of a coffee can that summer. She remembered watching as the blood oozed from her middle finger and dripped on her shorts. There was a lot of blood. She cried and screamed when her parents took her to the emergency room, and even more when the man at the hospital put stitches in her hand.

Their mother had scolded Robin for bleeding on the carpet. Then she scolded Sam for not watching her sister. Robin had been grateful her mother hadn’t slapped her. She didn’t want a beating to go along with the terror of cutting her finger.

But summer was all gone now. Robin tugged on her sister’s nightshirt. “Look,” she said to Sam, pointing to her stocking foot. Sam’s attention dropped to the bathroom floor and followed the trail of blood with her eyes until it came to a stop at the bathtub. Robin saw it too.

Their mother’s left hand dangled over the rim, dripping blood. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slowly, steadily, one drop after another formed at the tip of her mother’s finger and fell to the floor. Robin stood in the middle of the bathroom floor behind her sister. The sisters tried to measure what they were seeing. But it was too much for such young, fresh minds to see, much less to comprehend.

“Stay here,” Sam said in a firm voice that Robin knew to obey.

Sam placed her hands on the bathtub rim. It was cold to the touch and the stark feel of it made her shiver. Her mother’s body was nude. There was as much blood in the tub as on the floor. Sam looked at her mother. She had a funny fixed stare on her face, but wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Her mouth was relaxed and open, as were her eyes. Sam thought it was strange that her mother would sleep with her eyes open. Then it came to her. Quickly she pulled Robin from the bathroom.

The sisters didn’t remember much about the rest of that Christmas Day, only that a lot of men and women, some in police uniforms, others in dark suits and ties, stayed in their mother’s bathroom a long time. They would both remember one sentence. “The mother bled out in the tub.”

But they would never know who said those words, only that it belonged to one of the men in the dark suits, with faces they couldn’t see. They stood over the girls like redwoods. Sam would remember the feel of her sister’s small hand in hers. They stood at the top of the stairs and watched as the men took their mother’s body out of the bathroom and away, covered in a dark bag.

Sam looked at Jonathan. The look on his face registered no emotion.

“Robin had one last memory from that Christmas Day,” she told him. “The present. The doll she wanted. It remained beneath the Christmas tree, unopened.”

There was a long silence between them. Jonathan leaned forward in his chair and rested his hands on the desktop

“Now you know,” Sam said.

“And the promise between you two? When did that happen?”

“A few years later, when Robin was old enough to understand. We were at Nona’s ranch for Christmas, sitting by the tree. We talked about that morning we found mom, really¸ for the first time in detail. We made our promise to each other then that no matter how bad our lives got, we would never do to each other what our mother did to us.”

Sam stopped a moment and said firmly, “So, please don’t ask me another thing about it. It’s not something I like to spend a lot of time talking about as you can see.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She ignored his comment. “Thanks for the info on the drugs. It helped.”

“What about the article?” he asked.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said with a reply that was distant and empty of conviction. She opened the door and left the office.

Outside the police station, a raw, stiff wind greeted her, cold enough to make her shiver. The near-gale force pushed her back against the building. On the way toward her car, she thought of the information she found searching Robin’s office.

As Sam drove from the Grandview Police Station, she could see the digital number in Robin’s pager in her mind’s eye. She was angry with herself for being too scared and too nervous last night to dial the number.
What was the matter with me?

Sam visualized the pager still clipped to the waistband of her sweatpants, which she took off the moment she had arrived home. She pictured it lying in a heap of clothing on the floor in front of her bedroom dresser. She drove past her office and headed for the apartment. She would not let her fear consume her any longer. She would do nothing else until she called that number.

But the pager wasn’t the only thing on her mind. She couldn’t help thinking of Robin’s suicide note. Something about it just didn’t make sense. Henry David Thoreau for one thing. Robin wouldn’t quote Thoreau. Shakespeare maybe. She liked him, especially his sonnets. But nothing Thoreau had written impressed her. And the writing wasn’t Robin’s style.
Maybe she was forced to write the note.
Maybe someone held a gun to her head and made her write the note.

The thoughts pounded against her head like a sledgehammer. She drove on, trying to concentrate on the road. But she couldn’t keep from thinking of the lines in Robin’s note that stood out from all the rest ...

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What else do I know but that I am there among them.”

Sam went directly to her bedroom and looked through the pile of clothing that lay in front of the dresser. Her sweats weren’t there. She frowned as she sifted around another pile of clothes in front of her bed, shaking her head in disgust at the way she kept house.

She found the pager and was oddly happy, as if she had reached into the darkness and pulled out a treasure.

Sam found her cordless phone stuffed between two pillows on the couch. She felt nervous as she forced herself to dial the number. Calling from her home phone didn’t present the best option. The weight in the center of her chest making it hard to breathe told her what she was doing could be dangerous, but she dialed anyway. It wasn’t as if she had a wealth of options from which to choose. She tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat as the phone rang once, then twice before connecting.

The woman’s automated, mechanical voice spoke quickly, but clearly. “You have reached an interlink pager. Please touch tone your numeric message after the tone.”

The voice stopped and Sam heard a series of beeps. She quickly programmed in her telephone number and disconnected the call.

It was 6 p.m. when Sam made the call and now it was eight and she had heard nothing. She considered sending a second page but talked herself out of the idea. The apartment was so quiet that she heard the furnace rumble. When she jumped it made her realize how intently she had been listening and waiting for her phone to ring.

By 10 p.m. Sam knew there would be no call tonight. She would try again tomorrow evening. It would be New Year’s Eve, but didn’t matter. She had no plans.

Sam’s nerves were frazzled waiting out the evening for the phone to ring. She would just have one drink. It would calm her. On the way home from work she had stopped at the liquor store and purchased a bottle of scotch. The clerk greeted her by name when she entered the store. She wondered how he knew her. She bought scotch because she couldn’t remember the last time she had scotch and thought it was time to change to something different.

Sam made the purchase thinking that she would not have a drink until after she made the call. She held up her end of the bargain. She made the call, but no one called back.

It was 10:30 p.m. when she opened the bottle over the kitchen sink and poured a glass. She drank quickly. It burned a little going down. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply as the liquid began to warm her insides. She poured another glass, but added water. She went into the living room and turned on the television. She had the cordless phone next to her, resting on the arm of the couch. Just in case it might ring.

The phone rang, sounding like a megaphone in Sam’s ear. She jumped and the empty glass between her legs crashed to the floor. She blinked several times to gain her bearings. She was still in the living room. The bottle of scotch, half gone now, was on the coffee table in front of her. She frowned, uncertain how it got there. The phone rang again. She answered it noticing that sunlight was falling on her balcony.

“Hello?” Sam said. Her voice sounded excited, questionable and hopeful that it might be the call she had been waiting for.

“Are you coming in to work today?”

Sam squinted as she became aware of an intense throbbing in her head and it took her a moment to register who was calling. Once she did, she recoiled at hearing the sound of her editor’s voice. She liked the publisher of the
Perspective
the first moment that she interviewed for the job, but not the editor, Nick Weeks. Sam knew before the interview was over he didn’t like her and did not want to hire her.

She landed the job in spite of him. But he made her life at work miserable, giving her assignments meant for cub reporters or ones that senior reporters didn’t want. She had covered more night meetings and had more weekend assignments in the past ten months at the
Perspective
than she ever had at the
Post
.

“In case you’ve lost track of time, Sam, tomorrow is New Year’s Day, not today,” Nick Weeks said. “We’ll be closed tomorrow, not today.”

Sam could hear the sarcasm in his voice. She stretched long and hard while looking at the television. It was on a cable news station and she realized she had left the set on all night.

“Sam?”

“I’ll be in soon,” she said in a short clipped tone.

She heard his remark about already starting to celebrate the New Year as she disconnected the call. “Bastard,” she said. She had no idea of the time and squinted in the direction of the clock on the mantel. “God! It’s almost nine,” she said and jumped up from the couch.

The sudden movement caused a rush of dizziness that made her nauseous. She sat on the couch and waited for the feeling to pass. She looked at her hands. They were shaking. She felt as jittery as though she already consumed a pot of coffee.

She headed to the kitchen for a clean glass. She hated herself, but couldn’t help it. She felt like a robot as she poured the last remaining bit of scotch left in the bottle. Sam put the pager in the drawer by her nightstand. She would call again tonight.

It was after 10 a.m. when Sam arrived at the
Grandview Perspective.
The newspaper was housed in a two-story brick building on Wadsworth Boulevard on Denver’s West Side. The logo and name of the newspaper were written in large gold letters against a dark wooden sign that hung down from the building.

Advertising, administration and production were located on the upper level. The editorial staff occupied the entire bottom level where they lovingly referred to themselves as the ‘people under the stairs.’

Keeping a low profile, she didn’t greet anyone as she walked to her desk. Nick Weeks was standing at his office door when he saw her come down the stairs and enter the newsroom. Their eyes met and locked briefly, but neither offered a greeting. Sam shifted her attention to her desk and remembered how tidy Jonathan’s and Robin’s were. She made a mental note; in the new year she would do a better job with her desk. Call it a New Year’s resolution. She decided she would not only clean up her desk, but her life.

Nick Weeks waited for Sam to settle at her desk before launching his attack on her. He came and looked at her over reading glasses that he kept permanently perched on the end of his nose. She noticed that his body already seemed to have lost its battle with gravity. She couldn’t help thinking of the Pillsbury Dough Boy whenever she looked at him. She knew him to be about forty-five, but he looked ten years older. His dark hair, loosely curled, collected around his soft, round face like a storm cloud.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Big time apartment fire. It happened before midnight. Total loss. Give me about eight, ten, inches...”

Nick’s voice dropped off as he paused to look at the calendar on Sam’s desk. She looked with him. The paper, a large weekly, published on Friday. Nick looked at Sam. “By the time your story comes out, no one will give a shit, ’cause it’ll already have been on our Web site and in the dailies three times,” Nick said. “I’m assigning another reporter to do an aftermath of the fire. You just give me the facts.”

That’s all Sam ever did, the basics. The who, what, where, when and why. She never did features, profiles or in-depth articles, like she did at the
Post
. Just eight, ten, twelve inches of copy.

“Make it a two-day lead,” Nick said and turned to leave.

“A two-day lead,” Sam grumbled under her breath as she watched him walk away from her desk. “He acts like I don’t know a thing. Bastard.”

Sam made a few phone calls to gather the information, thinking of those now without a place to stay.
What a way to end the old year and start the new, homeless.
She disliked her apartment, but at least it was hers. And it was a safe, warm place where she could go each day after work.

Sam had a difficult time concentrating. Her mind kept drifting to the number on Robin’s pager. It made her angry that no one had called back. She tried to keep focused on the fire story. It was useless. As she left her desk to head for the water cooler, her cell phone buzzed.

She checked the number: 555-1618.

She frowned. The number looked familiar, but she didn’t immediately recognize it. Then it came to her. It was the number in Robin’s pager she had called last night. “How’d they get my cell?” she whispered softly, shaking her head.

Sam quickly returned to her desk and made the call. She was greeted by the same electronic voice. “You have reached an interlink pager, please touch tone your numeric message after the tone.”

She responded promptly, wondering if another ten hours would pass before her call would be returned. Within five minutes, the receptionist buzzed her with a call holding. Sam closed her eyes for strength. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She grabbed a pen and reporter’s notebook and punched the only line blinking. She cleared her throat and said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Sam Church.”

“I’m returning your page,” the voice said.

It was a male voice. Her first impression was that he was Hispanic. “How’d you know my cell?” she asked. “I punched in my home phone number last night, not my cell. How’d you get this number?”

“Your sister gave it to me.”

Sam said the obvious, too shocked to say anything else. “Robin?”

He did not respond. Sam heard his soft breathing on the other end of the line. She suddenly felt giddy with fear and excitement and had to make a conscious effort to keep her voice to a minimum. She knew taking this call that she could share Robin’s fate, but she had no choice. She had to find out what happened to her sister even if it meant losing her own life.

“How did you know my sister?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why? I’m trying to help her. I need to know what happened to Robin.”

Sam stopped talking and glanced surreptitiously around the newsroom. There were no reporters within earshot, but still she whispered. “They say my sister committed suicide. But she was murdered wasn’t she?”

“Why did you call me? Robin wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about our relationship. She assured me it would be kept secret,” the caller said.

“She never said a word,” Sam said quickly. “She wouldn’t. Not even to me. When someone trusted her into silence, she never broke that confidence. I was searching her office when I came across the pager with your number.”

“Where was it?”

“In her desk drawer.”

“What the hell was it doing there?”

“Is that how you two communicated, by pager?”

There was a weighty pause. “Yes.”

“You’re an informant, aren’t you?” Sam said and her tone was accusatory.

“No,” he said quickly.

“Then help me. What happened to Robin?”

She was greeted by extended silence.

“Hello?” Sam said.

“I’m here.”

“Do you know what happened to Robin?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?” Sam asked, disliking the caller for his reluctance.

“I have a family to think about and I don’t want to end up like her.”

Sam closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead hard between the tips of her fingers. “At least tell me if she was murdered.”

“You’re persistent.” There was a slight pause. The caller cleared his throat and said, “It wasn’t an accident.”

Sam bit her bottom lip. “Did Robin know something?”

“I said I can’t tell you. I didn’t return your call to help you. I only called back to tell you not to call again. I can’t help you.”

“At least tell me your name,” Sam said, trying desperately not to sound as though she were pleading.

There was a long pause.

“It’s Rey,” the caller said finally.

Sam wrote his name in her reporter’s notebook.

“That’s Rey, not Ray. It’s R-E-Y. People always get it wrong,” Rey said, as if he knew she was writing down his name.

“I promise, Rey, I won’t get it wrong,” Sam said and scratched out Ray and rewrote it correctly.

“Does Rey have a last name?” Sam asked. She was immediately sorry she had asked for a surname and apologized.

“I can’t help you. Please don’t call back,” Rey said.

Sam opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the line went dead. She sat for a moment with the phone against her ear. Fuming. She did have one solace, however small. One consolation; whoever this Rey was, he had confirmed her suspicions.

Sam was unaware that Nick Weeks had been standing over her. She didn’t notice him until she had returned the phone to the receiver. If he had heard her conversation, he gave no indication. “What have you got on the fire?” he asked.

“Just the basics,” Sam replied.

“Good,” Nick said and nodded. He turned and walked away and she watched until he disappeared into his office. How she managed to get through the rest of the day, she wasn’t sure. She wanted a drink so badly, her mouth watered every time she thought about it. It was New Year’s Eve and the office would close early. She overheard some of the staff talking about a New Year’s Eve party. She had not been invited.