"The Poet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Connelly Michael)

14

The Law Enforcement Foundation was on Ninth Street in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the Justice Department and FBI headquarters. It was a large building and I assumed other agencies and foundations funded from the public trough were housed here as well. Once I was in through the heavy doors I checked the directory and took the elevator to the third floor.

It looked like the LEF had the entire third floor. From the elevator I was greeted by a large reception desk behind which sat a large woman. In the news business we call them deception desks because the women they hire to sit behind them rarely let you go where you want to go or see whom you want to see. I told her I wanted to speak to Dr. Ford, the foundation director quoted in the New York Times article about police suicides. Ford was the keeper of the database to which I had to get access.

"He's at lunch. Do you have an appointment?"

I told her I had no appointment and put one of my cards down in front of her. I looked at my watch. Quarter to one.

"Oh, well, a reporter," she said as if the profession were synonymous with convict. "That's entirely different. You have to go through the public affairs office before it is even decided that you may speak to Dr. Ford."

"I see. You think there's anybody in public affairs or are they out to lunch, too?"

She picked up the phone and made a call.

"Michael? Are you there or are you on lunch? I have a man here who says he is from the Rocky Mountain News in-No, he first asked to see Dr. Ford."

She listened a few moments and then said okay and hung up.

"Michael Warren will see you. He says he has a one-thirty appointment so you'd better hurry."

"Hurry where?"

"Room three oh three. Go down the hall behind me, take your first right and then it's the first door on the right."

As I made the trek I kept thinking that the name Michael Warren was familiar but couldn't place it. The door to 303 opened as I was reaching for it. A man of about forty was about to step out when he saw me and stopped.

"Are you the one from the Rocky?"

"Yes."

"I was beginning to wonder if you took a wrong turn. Come on in. I only have a few minutes. I'm Mike Warren. Michael if you use my name in print, though I prefer you don't use it and talk to the staff here instead. Hopefully I can help you with that."

Once he was behind his cluttered desk I introduced myself and we shook hands. He told me to take a seat. There were newspapers stacked on one side of the desk. On the other side were photos of a wife and two children, angled so that Warren could see them as well as his visitors. There was a computer on a low table to his left and a photo of Warren shaking the president's hand on the wall above it. Warren was clean shaven and wore a white shirt with a maroon tie. The collar was frayed a bit where his afternoon whiskers rubbed against it. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair. His skin was very pale and set off by dark sharp eyes and straight black hair.

"So what's up? Are you in the Scripps D.C. bureau?"

He was talking about the parent company. It maintained a bureau of reporters that fed Washington stories to all papers in the chain. It was the office Greg Glenn had suggested I go through earlier in the week.

"No, I'm out from Denver."

"Well, what can I do you for?"

"I need to talk to Nathan Ford or maybe whoever is directly handling the police suicide study."

"Police suicide. That's an FBI project. Oline Fredrick's the researcher handling that with them."

"Yes, I know the FBI is involved."

"Let's see." He picked up the desk phone but then put it back down. "You know, you didn't call ahead on this, did you? I don't recognize the name."

"No, I just got into town. It's a breaking story, you could say."

"Breaking story? Police suicide? That doesn't sound like deadline stuff. Why the hurry?"

Then it struck me who he was.

"Did you used to work for the L.A. Times? The Washington bureau? You that Michael Warren?"

He smiled because he, or his name, had been recognized.

"Yes, how'd you know?"

"The Post-Times wire. I've been scrolling it for years. I recognized the name. You covered Justice, right? Did good stuff."

"Until a year ago. I quit and came here."

I nodded. There was always a moment of uneasy silence when I crossed paths with somebody who had left the life and was now on the other side of the line. Usually, they were burnouts, reporters who grew tired of the always-on-deadline and always-need-to-produce life. I once read a book about a reporter written by a reporter who described the life as always running in front of a thresher. I thought it was the most accurate description I'd read. Sometimes people got tired of running in front of the machine, sometimes they got pulled in and were left shredded. Sometimes they managed to get out from in front of it. They used their expertise in the business to seek the steadiness of a job as a person who handled the media rather than was part of it. This is what Warren had done and somehow I felt sorry for him. He had been damn good. I hoped he didn't feel the same regret.

"You miss it?"

I had to ask him, just to be polite.

"Not yet. Every now and then a good story comes along and I wish I was in there with everybody else, looking for the odd angle. But it can run you ragged."

He was lying and I think he knew I knew it. He wanted to go back.

"Yeah, I'm beginning to feel it some myself."

I returned the lie, just to make him feel better, if that was possible.

"So what about police suicides? What's your angle?"

He looked at his watch.

"Well, it wasn't a breaking story until a couple days ago. Now it is. I know you only have a few minutes but I can explain it pretty quickly. I just… I don't want to be insulting but I'd like for you to promise me what I say here is in confidence. It's my story and when it's ready, I'm going to break it."

He nodded.

"Don't worry, I understand completely. I won't discuss whatever it is you are going to tell me with any other journalist unless that other journalist specifically asks about the same thing. I may have to talk about it with other people here at the foundation or in law enforcement, for that matter. I can't make any promise in that regard until I know what we are talking about."

"That's fair."

I felt myself trusting him. Maybe because it is always easy to trust somebody who has done what you have done. I also think I liked telling what I'd learned to somebody who would know its value as a story. It was a form of bragging and I wasn't above it. I started.

"At the start of this week I began working on a story about police suicide. I know, it's been done before. But I had a new angle. My brother was a cop and a month ago he supposedly committed suicide. I-"

"Oh, Jesus, I am sorry."

"Thank you, but I didn't bring it up for that reason. I decided to write about it because I wanted to understand what he had done, what the police in Denver said he had done. I went through the routine, pulled clips on a Nexis search and, naturally, I came up with a couple references to the foundation's study."

He tried to surreptitiously look at his watch and I decided to get his attention.

"To make a long story short, in trying to find out why he killed himself I found out he didn't."

I looked at him. I had his attention.

"What do you mean, he didn't?"

"My investigation has so far determined that my brother's suicide was a carefully disguised murder. Someone killed him. The case has been reopened. I have also linked it to a supposed cop suicide last year in Chicago. That one also has been reopened. I just came in from there this morning. The cops in Chicago and Denver and I think that somebody might be moving around the country killing cops and making it look like suicide. The key to finding the other cases may be in the information collected for the foundation's study. Don't you have all the records on cop suicides for the whole country over the last five years?"

We sat in silence for a few moments. Warren just stared at me.

"I think you better tell me the long story," he finally said. "No, wait."

He held up his hand like a crossing guard signaling stop, picked up the phone with the other and pushed a speed-dial number.

"Drex? Mike. Listen, I know this is late but I'm not going to make it. Something's come up over here… No… We'll have to reschedule. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, bye."

He put down the phone and looked at me.

"It was just a lunch. Now tell me this story of yours."

A half hour later, after he had made some calls to set up a meeting, Warren led me through the labyrinth of the foundation's hallways to a room marked 383. It was a conference room and already seated there were Dr. Nathan Ford and Oline Fredrick. The introductions were quick and Warren and I sat down.

Fredrick looked like she was in her mid-twenties with curly blond hair and an uninterested air about her. I immediately paid more attention to Ford. Warren had prepped me. He said any decisions would be made by Ford. The foundation director was a small man in a dark suit but he had a presence that commanded the room. He wore glasses with thick black frames and rose-tinted lenses. He had a full beard of uniform gray that perfectly matched his hair. He didn't move his head as much as he did his eyes when he followed our movements as we entered and took seats around the large oval table. He had his elbows on the table and his hands clasped together in front of him.

"Why don't we get started," he said once the introductions were over.

"What I'd like to do is just have Jack tell you both what he told me a little while ago," Warren said. "And then we'll go from there. Jack, you mind going over it again?"

"Not at all."

"I'm going to take some notes this time."

I told the story in pretty much the same detail as I had with Warren. Every now and then I would remember something new and not necessarily significant but I would throw that in anyway. I knew I needed to impress Ford because he would be the one to decide whether or not I got Oline Fredrick's help.

The only interruption during the telling came from Fredrick. When I spoke of my brother's death, she mentioned that the protocol from the DPD on the case had been received the week before. I told her she could now toss it in the trash can. When I was finished reciting the story, I looked at Warren and raised my hands.

"Anything I missed?"

"I don't think so."

We both looked at Ford then and waited. He hadn't moved much during the telling. Now he raised his clasped hands and gently bumped them repeatedly against his chin as he thought. I wondered what kind of doctor he was. What do you have to be to run a foundation? More politician than doctor, I thought.

"It's a very interesting story," he said quietly. "I can see why you are excited. I can see why Mr. Warren is excited. He was a reporter for most of his adult life and I think the excitement of the story remains in his blood sometimes, possibly to the detriment of his current profession."

He didn't look at Warren as he delivered this blow. His eyes stayed on me.

"What I don't understand, and therefore the reason I don't seem to share the same excitement as you two, is what this has to do with the foundation. I'm not clear on that, Mr. McEvoy."

"Well, Dr. Ford," Warren began, "Jack has to-"

"No," Ford cut him off. "Let Mr. McEvoy tell me."

I tried to think in precise terms. Ford didn't want a lot of bullshit. He just wanted to know how he would benefit from this.

"I assume the suicide project is on a computer."

"That is correct," Ford said. "Most of our studies are collated on computer. We rely on the great number of police departments out there for our field research. Reports come in-the protocol Ms. Fredrick mentioned earlier. They are entered on the computer. But that means nothing. It is the skilled researcher who must digest these facts and tell us what they mean. On this study, the researcher is joined by FBI experts in reviewing the raw data."

"I understand all of that," I said. "What I am saying is that you have a huge data bank of incidents of police suicide."

"Going back five, six years, I believe. The work was started before Oline came on board."

"I need to go into your computer."

"Why?"

"If we're right-and I'm not just talking about me. The detectives in Chicago and in Denver are thinking this way, too. We've got two cases that are connected. The-"

"Seemingly connected."

"Right, seemingly connected. If they are, then the chances are that there are others. We're talking about a serial killer. Maybe there's a lot, maybe a few and maybe none. But I want to check and you've got the data right here. All the reported suicides in the last six years. I want to get inside your computer and look for the ones that might be the fakes, that might be our guy."

"How do you propose doing that?" Fredrick said. "We've got several hundred cases on file."

"The protocol that police departments fill out and send in, does it include the victim's rank and position in the department?"

"Yes."

"Then we first look at all homicide detectives who killed themselves. The theory I'm working with is that this person is killing homicide cops. Maybe it's a hunted-turns-on-the-hunter sort of thing. I don't know the psychology of it, but that's where I'd start. With homicide cops. Once we have that breakout, we look at each case. We need the notes. The suicide notes. From-"

"That's not on computer," Fredrick said. "In each incidence, if we even have a copy of the note, it's in the hard-copy protocols in file storage. The notes themselves aren't part of the study unless they have some allusion to the pathology of the victim."

"But you've kept the hard copies?"

"Yes, all of them. In file storage."

"Then we go to them," Warren chimed in excitedly.

His intrusion brought silence. Eventually, everyone's eyes were drawn to Ford's.

"One question," the director finally said. "Does the FBI know about this?"

"At the moment, I can't say for sure," I said. "I know it is the intention of the Chicago and Denver police to retrace my steps and then, once they are satisfied that I am on the right path, they are going to call in the bureau. It will go from there."

Ford nodded and said, "Mr. McEvoy, could you step out and wait in the reception area for me? I want to talk to Ms. Fredrick and Mr. Warren privately before making any decision on this matter."

"No problem." I stood up and headed to the door, where I hesitated and looked at Ford. "I hope… I mean… I hope we can do this. Anyway, thanks."

Michael Warren's face told the story before he said anything. I was sitting on a lumpy vinyl-covered couch in the reception area when he came down the hallway with downcast eyes. When he saw me he just shook his head.

"Let's go back to my office," he said.

I followed silently behind him and took the same seat I had before. He looked as dejected as I felt.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he's an asshole," he whispered. "Because the Justice Department punches our ticket and the FBI is the Justice Department. It's their study-they commissioned it. He's not going to let you walk through it without telling them first. He's not ever going to do anything that might knock the gravy train off the tracks. You said the wrong thing in there, Jack. You should have said the FBI was made aware of this and took a pass."

"He wouldn't have believed that."

"The point is, he could've said he did. If it ever blew up on him that he was helping a reporter to information before the bureau, he could have just put it on you and said he thought the bureau passed."

"So what now? I can't just drop this."

I wasn't really asking him. I was asking myself.

"You got any sources in the bureau? Because I guarantee he's in his office calling the bureau right now. Probably going right to Bob Backus."

"Who's that?"

"One of the big shots down there. The suicide project belongs to his team."

"I think I know that name."

"You probably know Bob Backus Sr. His father. He was some kind of supercop the bureau brought in years ago to help set up the Behavioral Science Services and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. I guess Bobby Jr. is trying to fill his shoes. The point is, as soon as Ford's off the phone with him, Backus will shut this thing down. Your only way in will be through the bureau."

I couldn't think. I was totally backed into a corner. I stood up and started pacing in the small office.

"Jesus Christ, I can't believe this. This is my story… and I'm getting pushed out of it by some dopey guy in a beard who thinks he's J. Edgar Hoover."

"Nah, Nat Ford doesn't wear dresses."

"It's not really that damn funny."

"I know. I'm sorry."

I sat back down. He made no move to dismiss me, even though our business was done. It finally occurred to me what it was he expected me to do. I just wasn't sure about how to ask. I'd never worked in Washington and didn't know how it worked. I decided to do it the Denver way. To be blunt.

"You can get into the computer anyway, right?"

I nodded at the terminal to his left. He looked over at me for a moment before responding.

"No fucking way. I'm no Deep Throat, Jack. This isn't about anything other than a crime story. That's the bottom line. You just want to get there ahead of the FBI."

"You're a reporter."

"Former reporter. I work here now and I'm not going to jeopardize my-"

"You know it's a story that has to be told. If Ford's in there on the phone with the FBI, they'll be out here by tomorrow and the story will be gone. You know how hard it was to get stuff from them. You were there. This ends completely right here or is published as some half-assed story in a year or maybe longer with more conjecture than facts. That's if you don't get me on that computer."

"I said no."

"Look, you're right. All it is a story that I want. The big scoop. But I deserve it. You know I do. The FBI wouldn't be coming around if it wasn't for me. But I'm getting shut out… Think about it. Think if it was you. Think if it was your brother that this happened to."

"I have and I just said no."

I stood up.

"Well, if you change your-"

"I won't."

"Look, when I leave here, I'm going to check in at the Hilton. The one where Reagan got shot."

That's all I said as I left him there and he didn't say another word.