LOVING HER SOUL MATE (46 page)

But she still couldn’t get him on
the phone.
 
Just his
voice mail at home, at work, and on his cell.
 
He obviously wasn’t available to talk.
 
Or, she feared, available to talk to her.

She leaned back on her lounger,
sipped wine, and tried to recapture that feeling of euphoria she felt when the
judge announced Glazer's release.
 
That
felt so special then.
 
As if it was the
crowning achievement of her entire career.
 
But she couldn't recapture it.
 
She kept seeing John, being there for Pamela, taking care of Pamela,
while totally ignoring her.
 
She was a
big girl, she could take care of herself, but still.
 
He could have at least given her a call.
 
She had vastly underestimated how strongly he
felt about the Glazer case, that was clear to her now, but that still, she
felt, didn’t give him a license to ignore her.

And she refused to let it give her
a license to feel bad about herself.
 
She
did her job.
 
The evidence dropped into
her lap and she knocked it out of the ballpark.
 
And it was a darn good hit, too, she decided.
 

But even as good as she felt about
the job well done, it was still a shock to her when Paige phoned and asked her
to come over to the office.
 
It was after
six at night, and kind of late to be at the office, but she gladly agreed.
 
The last thing she wanted to do was lounge
around her house sulking.

When she parked her VW and walked into
the Brady Beast newspaper building, she was pleased to see a group of her
colleagues, all of whom had been able to tolerate her new dominance at the
paper.
 
They sat around laughing and
talking at a big table in the back that consisted of two small tables pushed
together, and Paige asked everyone assembled to lift their glasses of beer,
soda, juice, or water in a toast.
 
When
everyone complied, she stood up.

"As you all know we now have
a brand new edition to our staff,” Paige said.
 
“She’s an investigative reporter of the first caliber who has
single-handedly tripled our circulation in just three months on the job.
 
And whose very first day of employment netted
her what could only be described as the interview of the year.
 
A long sit down with Willie Glazer.
 
As Marlon Graham, that venerable scion of the
English language has called
her,
we now call her, too:
here's to our very own Wonder Woman!"

The reporters laughed as they
raised their glasses in toast to Shay.
 
Only until now had Shay heard about this remarkable increase in
circulation, which made her feel vindicated too.
 
It was, in fact, a wonderful feeling.
 
If John could have been there it would have
been a remarkable feeling.
 
She even
stole away and phoned him again.
 
She
left a message on his voice mail, telling him where she was and inviting him
over, and then she went back to her festive colleagues.

While she was partying it up at
the Beast, however, John's Silverado was flying through the streets of Brady,
his inside siren blaring, as he arrived at an abandoned building in the heart
of Dodge.
 
He jumped from his truck and
hurried to the back of the building.
 
Police cars were already camped out in back, and police tape was being
gathered to cordon off the entire building.
 
Yannick came out of the building and met him where the body lay.

John bent down on his haunches and
uncovered the body.
 
Young,
black woman.
 
Yannick bent down
beside him.
 

“Same m.o.?”
John asked his second-in-command.

“One-hundred percent the same, even
down to that v-cut in the duct tape that wasn't public knowledge.”

John exhaled, his heart ramming
against his chest.
 
All he could think of
was this poor woman and what her death was going to do to Shay.

He stood up.
 
"Haul his ass in for questioning."

"We’re already on it.
 
But seems our boy Glazer is nowhere to be
found.”

"Ah, geez, don't tell me
that, Yannick."

"Wish I didn't have to, but it's a fact."

"Put out a warrant for his arrest,
got
dammit.”

“That’s been taken care of, too.”

Then John saw something in his peripheral vision.
 
He looked and saw what he knew could be
gold.
 
“Is
that camera
live
?” he asked.

Yannick looked across the field where John was looking. There was
a dry cleaners with a camera installed just above the back awning.
 
It was barely visible.
 
“Don’t know,” he replied.

“Find out who owns that joint and get him down here now.”

“Yes, sir,” Yannick said and hurried to take care of it.

John shook his head.
 
“What
a mess,” he said as he bent down again, not to look at the victim’s body again,
but to keep from passing out himself.

They were finishing their last round of drinks when Paige got the
call.
 
Nobody paid her any attention,
least of which Shay, who was listening intensely to another reporter go on and
on about the plans she had for her own career.
 
But when Paige hung up, and Shay met her eyes, she knew immediately that
something was terribly wrong.
 
"What
is it?" she asked her.

“There's been another murder," Paige said and the entire
staff fell silent.

“What do you mean?” Shay asked.

“There’s been another murder completely fitting the description of
the other thirteen murders.”

Shay frowned.
 
“But that
doesn’t make sense.
 
How could---”

“And there’s more, Shay,” Paige said.
 
“They have a video
from a
dry cleaners
that was across from the crime scene.
 
They have Glazer on tape committing this
crime.”

Shay leaned back, her heart in her shoe.
 
What
have I
done
,
she thought inwardly, unable to say another word.

She looked at Paige, but Paige was already hurrying to her office
to contact the publisher.
 
Some of the
reporters followed Paige.
 

And when Shay stood up to leave, nobody stopped her.
 
Nobody comforted her and told her not to
worry.
 
Nobody told her that everything
would be all right.

The hero, their silence seemed to suggest, was now the goat.

Shay grabbed up her purse and keys and headed for the exit.
 
She expected her remaining colleagues to at
least tell her something, but they were too stunned, still too busy wondering
if their readers would turn on them, to give Shay another thought.
 
Shay’s goose was already cooked as far as
they
was
concerned.
 
Because they knew, like Shay knew, that it would be Shay who the public
would blame first.
 
It was the blowback
that they were concerned about.
 
How,
they wondered, would this mess affect them?

And John’s words came true.
 
Be careful, he told her.
 
The
Brady Beast had a way of eating its’ own.

Shay made her way out into the parking lot, ready to get in her
car and make a quick getaway.
 
But she
faltered.
 
She kept thinking about a dead
woman, about how that woman would still be alive if she would not have wrote
that story, and she leaned against her Beetle.
 
She covered her face in shame.
 

She didn’t even hear John’s truck drive up.
 
She didn’t even hear him hurry across the
parking lot to her side.
 
All she knew
was that he pulled her into his arms, lifted her into his truck, and took her
away from there.

John’s heart was hammering as he drove a sobbing Shay home.
 
He knew she would take it hard.
 
He knew as soon as word leaked that that
douche bag Glazer had killed another girl that Shay would be devastated.
 
Just as he also knew that that same adoring
public, who just hours earlier were singing her praises, would be excoriating
her now.

“Where are we going?” she asked him between sniffles, as he drove
past the turn that would carry her home.

“To my place,” he said.
 
“The press won’t look for you there.”

Shay looked at him.
 
He
looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
 
She looked so wounded to him.
 
“You think the press will be looking for me?’ she naively asked him.

“Honey, of course,” John said, and then, seeing that distraught
look on her face, regretted saying it.
 
He placed her hand in his.
 
“It’s
okay, babe,” he said.

“And you’re sure it was Glazer?
 
On the video, I mean?”

He wanted to appease
her,
he truly did
not want to upset her any more than she already was.
 
But there was no way around it tonight.
“Yes,” he said.
 
“It’s him.”

Shay looked out of the window of his truck again.
 
And he took her to his home.

Two hours later and they were still seated in his living
room.
 
Shay was curled up in a chair, a
cup of hot chocolate in her hands, and John was lying prone on the sofa, his
suit coat off, knowing that he had to get back to the office.
 

But he wasn’t about to leave her right now.

And then the doorbell rang.
 
“Who could that be?” Shay asked as John got up.

“Probably one of my men,” John said, knowing that the Glazer case
was unfolding faster than even he could contain.
 
And he was right.
 
He opened the door and Yannick was standing
there.
 
He let him in.

Yannick glanced at Shay.
 
He
could barely contain his anger.

“What is it?” John asked him.

Yannick exhaled.
 
“We caught
Glazer.”

“Thank God!” John said, walking in to grab his suit coat.
 
“Where is he?”

“Downtown, waiting for you.”

“Good man.”

“And there’s more,” Yannick said as John began putting on his suit
coat.

“What is it?” John asked, and both John and Shay looked at
Yannick.

“That Channel 9 broadcaster never mentioned Glazer’s middle name,
they didn’t even know Glazer’s middle name.”

John began pulling down the sleeve beneath his suit coat, his
heart pounding.
 
“But why would that
police chief lie like that?”

“To save his cousin’s
hide
,” Yannick
said.
 

Shay’s heart dropped.
 
“His
cousin?” she said.

“They are distant cousins,” Yannick said, “and Glazer’s mother
begged him to help them.
 
It took them
weeks to concoct this scheme about the middle name.
 
Glazer and this cop were both named after
some other relative named Cletis.
 
So
they knew they could begin there.
 
Claim
that’s how he remembered Glazer because they had the same odd name.”

“Geez,” John said, rubbing down his hair, looking at Shay’s
reaction.
 

“Chief Cobbler,” Yannick continued, “cooked his own books to make
it look like Glazer was in his jail cell, and then he contacted the one
newspaper they knew would give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“The Brady Beast,” John said.

“There ya’ go,” Yannick said.
 
Shay could hardly believe her ears.
 
“When this police chief found out that his cousin Willie Glazer was on
film killing another girl, he was mortified.
 
When we contacted him, he was ready to talk.
 
He broke down and admitted everything.
 
That fool actually thought Glazer was
innocent, that’s why he agreed to help him.
  
He never dreamed any kin of his could be a murderer.”

John shook his head.
 
“Haul
his ass in too,” he said.
 
“His lies
helped to spring Glazer and now another young lady has been killed.”