The Reporter Read Online Free PDF Page B

Arena game, then I
     kissed her and told her to have a great time at Daddy’s and I’d call her tonight. Then I went into my room to wait until she
     left.”
    “You didn’t want to see your daughter off?” Cabello asked.
    “No. Unless we had something specific to discuss, I didn’t like being around when Jack arrived. To avoid any possible unpleasantness,
     for Gia’s sake. And Gia understood that.”
    “Okay”—from Cabello again—“so you were in your bedroom when your ex-husband arrived. Then what happened?”
    “I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the house. Then I heard another. I was frantic. I called nine-one-one. The person
     who answered told me to stay on the line, the sheriffs would be there in minutes, and I said, ‘But my little girl—I have no
     idea what’s going on!’”
    “Then what?”
    “Then I heard the deputies arrive, so I went out of my room and down the hall to open the front door—we always keep it locked—and
     I followed them into the living room, and through the dining room, then to Gia’s room, and there he was… on the floor.”
    “And where was your daughter?”
    “In the kitchen with Bessie. She’d been eating her lunch. And Bessie was hanging on to her. They were hanging on to each other.
     They didn’t know what happened.”
    “We’ll be talking to Gia—” Cabello started.
    Debra instantly reared up. “Marvin, can they do that? Gia is having dreadful nightmares with this. I have her shrink practically
living
at my house.”
    Samuels put a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps you can hold off on that,” he said to the officers, “see what falls together
     without questioning the ten-year-old, at least for now.”
    “What else can you tell us?” Cabello asked Debra. He saw her hesitation—clearly something was on her mind—and he added, “So
     we hear it from you, and not from somebody else.”
    “Maxi was there,” Debra said quietly.
    “Who?” Johnson and Cabello echoed in chorus.
    “Maxi. Maxi Poole, his last wife. She was there, I think.”
    Cabello jumped all over that. “She was where? When? What do you mean, you
think?”
    “When I opened the front door for the deputies… I think I saw Maxi’s car driving away. I’m not sure, but I
think
I did.”

8
    W hat evidence led to the arrest of Debra Angelo?” Maxi asked into the phone.
    “Sorry, we can’t divulge that.”
    “Are there any other suspects?”
    “Can’t divulge that.”
    Working the story, Maxi was talking to L.A. County Sheriff’s Homicide detective Mike Cabello, head of the unit assigned to
     the Jack Nathanson murder case, and leader of the team who arrested Debra Angelo at the cemetery the day before. Maxi was
     getting no information out of him.
    Not that she’d expected much—law officers rarely gave anything up to the press unless it was something they wanted leaked.
     Still, she expected to learn
something
from the conversation—a tone, an attitude, a feeling that they were really on to something, or not. This guy wasn’t even
     friendly.
    “Can you tell me anything at all that will help with the story, anything besides the who, what, where, and when that we already
     know?” she asked him.
    “You were once married to the victim, weren’t you, Ms. Poole?” Cabello shot back.
    There it was. “Yes,” she replied.
    “Well, isn’t it unusual that you would be covering this murder? Too close to home, conflict of interest, something like that?”
    “I don’t see a conflict,” Maxi offered, feeling her way. “We’ve been divorced for more than a year. He had remarried.
Should
I see a conflict?”
    “That’s not for me to answer. What does Capra say?” Peter Capra was her managing editor, a hard-nosed newsman who had been
     around the L.A. crime beat for twenty-five years. Every law enforcement officer in Southern California knew Pete Capra.
    “Pete hasn’t said anything,” Maxi returned carefully. Actually, Pete didn’t know she was digging into the