Murder at Willow Slough Read Online Free PDF Page A

him alone. When he hired Jamie, we turned into a real newspaper. I started going into the office every day, business really picked up. We bitch at each other constantly, it’s fun. I like him, and I know he respects me. He’s very sensitive and caring sometimes, when he’s not being a spoiled brat.”
    Having softened his subject up, the Clarion reporter went for the kill. “He’s very well-known in New York. You admit he has the looks of a supermodel. Multiple sources indicate he was, or is, Calvin’s lover.”
    “Then your sources are full of it! I can name the exact day Jamie lost his virginity and with whom—Rick Lawson. Jamie came swaggering in the next day like he’d just invented sex. As for New York, he went to journalism school at Columbia, where he learned to be a Pulitzer Prize finalist, not some gossip-mongering queer in La-La Land.” Louie punched off, click!
    He fumed. It was a hatchet job, all right, the guy didn’t even ask about the Strangler. Once again Jamie was right.
    But Calvin’s lover? Not even Jamie could pull that off. Louie laughed all the way to the bar.
    He parked his new black Cadillac. What’s the use of owning the #1 Gay bar if you can’t have your own spot next to the door? “Make it a double, Miss Thang,” he called, hoisting himself onto his stool with the Don’t Even Think About Sitting Here sign.
    The boy behind the bar with his tits hanging out scurried. Like an employee, for once. If Louie wasn’t careful, he’d even break out in a smile. But he was careful enough to notice that everyone in the place had his nose buried in the latest issue of The Ohio Gay Times, where they couldn’t help but be exposed to ads for the #1 bar in town. Damn smile broke out anyway. Nippleboy brought his drink, “What are you so happy about?”
Louie growled, “I’m raising the price of beer ten cents.” ***
    His passions were beer prices and porn stars; Casey had other things to worry about—a reporter’s sexual magnetism versus a killer’s sexual violence. Dear Christ, why did we print something so inflammatory? But the libel lawyer vetted the piece, and Casey fought hard for Jamie’s incendiaries.
    A week later an unsigned note arrived from Indianapolis. It said, “I know who you are, too.”

4  
    Counties
    A year and a half of scoops passed, eighteen months of pain and death; a time of increasing accomplishment, though Jamie didn’t catch the Strangler and neither did anyone else.
    Labor Day weekend, via I-70, Jamie headed west for Indiana and his mother’s house. He was fine until he hit the Quincy County line. Then the green highway sign reached inside the Acura and slapped him.
    Since Schmidgall died, he hadn’t had to think about it so much; no new victims. Now he could think of nothing else: “E NTERING Q UINCY C OUNTY .”
    He drove on, stunned at first, then angry. He found himself glaring at a lush cornfield. Beyond, scrubby oaks marked a ditch separating the field from a pasture, where a dozen lazy Angus grazed. Damn cattle, why didn’t they tell the cops what they saw?
    Through Dayton he’d enjoyed Sheryl Crow on the CD player, but now he couldn’t stand her cynical ennui. He hit Stop so hard his finger burned.
    The A/C suddenly wasn’t putting out enough. He cranked it up a notch, then another. Cool air rushed his face to make amends.
    Ahead of him an old lady in a K-car full of pre-schoolers poked along. He slammed down his turn signal, lurched into the passing lane. Kids squealed out the windows like a farrow at its first trough of slop.
    The strangulations started when Jamie was in junior high, so the Strangler’s 15-year run wasn’t his fault. Still, he and Casey bore a singular guilt, which they could not absolve with a Pulitzer nomination. They failed to follow up on a tip a year earlier; two men died as a result.
    There is power in journalism, power to uplift or to destroy. Jamie and Casey learned their lesson the hardest way. Once they finally