editor and editor of the paper, even cared whom he sent where as long as they got good stories. This was a good story. Glenn was full of shit and he knew it.
“Okay, I’ll just take vacation time and do it myself.”
“You used everything you had after the funeral. Besides you’re not going to run around the country saying you’re a Rocky Mountain News reporter if you’re not on an assignment for the Rocky Mountain News.”
“What about unpaid leave? You said yesterday that if I wanted more time you’d work something out.”
“I meant time to grieve, not go running across the country. Anyway, you know the rules on unpaid leave. I can’t protect your position. You take a leave and you might not have the beat when you come back.”
I wanted to quit right there but I wasn’t brave enough and I knew I needed the paper. I needed the institution of the media as my access card to cops, researchers, everybody involved. Without my press card, I’d be just some suicide’s brother who could be pushed aside.
“I need more than what you’ve got now to justify this, Jack,” Glenn said. “We can’t afford an expensive fishing expedition, we need facts. If you had more, I could maybe see going to Chicago. But this foundation and the FBI you could definitely do by phone. If you can’t, then maybe I can get somebody from the Washington news bureau to go over there.
“It’s my brother, my fucking story. You’re not giving it to anybody.”
He raised his hands in a calming manner. He knew his suggestion was way out of bounds.
“Then work the phones and come back to me with something.”
“Look, don’t you see what you’re saying? You’re saying don’t go without the proof. But I need to go to get the proof.”
Back at my desk, I opened up a new computer file and began typing in everything I knew about the deaths of Theresa Lofton and my brother. I put down every detail I could remember from the files. The phone rang but I didn’t answer it. I only typed. I knew I needed to start with a base of information. Then I would use it to knock apart the case against my brother. Glenn had finally cut a deal with me. If I got the cops to reopen my brother’s case, I’d go to Chicago. He said we’d still have to talk about D.C., but I knew that if I got to Chicago I would get to Washington.
As I typed, the picture of my brother kept coming back to me. Now that sterile, lifeless photo bothered me. For I had believed the impossible. I had let him down and now felt a keener sense of guilt. It was my brother in that car, my twin. It was me.
9
I ended up with four pages of notes which I then synthesized after an hour of study and thought to six lines of shorthand questions I had to find the answers to. I had found that if I looked at the facts of the case from the opposite perspective, believing Sean had been murdered and had not taken his own life, I saw something the cops had possibly missed. Their mistake had been their predisposition to believe and therefore accept that Sean had killed himself. They knew Sean and knew he was burdened by the Theresa Lofton case. Or maybe it was something every cop could believe about every other cop. Maybe they’d all seen too many corpses and the only surprise was that most didn’t kill themselves. But when I sifted through the facts with a disbeliever’s eye, I saw what they did not see.
I studied the list I had written on a page in my notebook.
Pena: his hands?
after—how long?
Wexler/Scalari: the car?
heater?
lock?
Riley: gloves?
I realized I could handle Riley by phone. I dialed and was about to hang up after six rings when she picked up.
“Riley? It’s Jack. You okay? This a bad time?”
“When’s a good time?”
It sounded like she had been drinking.
“You want me to come out, Riley? I’m coming out.”
“No, don’t, Jack. I’m okay. Just, you know, one of those blue days. I keep thinking about him, you know?”
“Yes. I think about him, too.”
“Then how come you hadn’t been around for so long before he went and . . . I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bring things up . . .”
I was quiet a moment.
“I don’t know, Riles. We sorta had a fight about something. I said some things I shouldn’t have.