Down to the Wire, page 7
In any event, Chris hoped it was too early for Lawrence to make him drink scotch.
As soon as Chris entered his office, Lawrence said, “There are two FBI agents on the way over to talk to you. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“How do you know that?”
“When the call came in, the operator put it through to me. It’s standard procedure.”
Chris barely had time to reflect on the surprising fact that there was a “standard procedure” at the paper as it related to phone calls from FBI agents. “What do they want?”
“To question you about the bombing. They claimed it’s routine.”
“So?”
“So you’re a journalist. Talking to the FBI is never routine.”
“Can’t I just tell them what happened?” Chris asked.
“Does telling them include betraying your source?”
“Lawrence, I don’t have a source, not on the bombing. I was just there to meet a guy.”
“A guy who turned out to be your source on another story. Be careful here, Chris. There’s a lot at stake.”
“I don’t even know his name, or how to reach him. I couldn’t give him up even if I wanted to.” He saw Lawrence look up quickly at him. “Which I don’t,” he added.
“You want me to sit in on the interview with you?” Lawrence asked. “Or maybe one of our lawyers?”
“Honestly, Lawrence, I don’t think it’s necessary. I’ll be fine.”
Lawrence did not seem fully convinced. “Okay, but if you start to feel uncomfortable, or unsure about anything, you stop the interview and call me.”
“Will do,” Chris said.
“Someday remind me to tell you about the run-in your father had with the FBI.”
“You already have, Lawrence. At least ten times.” Edward Turley had broken a story about the inside machinations in the Reagan White House regarding the bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon. The FBI was assigned to find the source of the leak, but they ran head-on into Edward, who would rather have enlisted in the Lebanese army himself than reveal a source. The Justice Department tried to have him jailed for refusing to cooperate, but negative publicity made them back down.
Lawrence grinned a little ruefully. “I never do get tired of telling those stories.”
The intercom in Lawrence’s office buzzed and he picked it up and listened for a moment. Then he hung up and turned to Chris. “They’re here.”
Chris went out to the reception area and brought Agents Nick Quinlan and Frank Serrano back to his office. “Will this be okay?” he asked.
Quinlan, who seemed to be the one in charge, said, “Fine. This won’t take long.”
“Take as long as you need,” Chris said. “I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”
Quinlan nodded. “Thank you, we appreciate that. How did you come to be in the vicinity of the medical center when the explosion happened?”
“I was meeting someone in the park across the street.”
“Who might that be?” Quinlan asked.
“I actually don’t know his name. He called and said he had some information for me.”
Serrano jumped in at that point. “Information about what?”
“Another story I’m working on.”
“So he contacted you anonymously, and you agreed to meet with him?” asked Quinlan.
“Yes.”
“Do you often do that?”
“It depends on the situation.”
“Who chose the location?” Serrano asked.
“He did.”
“Was it a place you were familiar with?”
Chris nodded. “Yes. My orthopedist had an office in the building that was destroyed. He was killed in the blast.”
“Did you actually meet the man that day?” Serrano asked.
“No, just as I arrived the bomb went off .”
“Have you heard from him since?”
“Yes,” Chris said, then added pointedly, “On the other story.”
“We’ll need to be in touch with him.”
“Good luck,” Chris said. “I don’t know how to reach him, but the truth is I wouldn’t tell you how to do so even if I could. Not unless he authorized it. He’s a source that I am obligated to protect.”
“So your willingness to ‘cooperate in any way you can’ has its limits?” asked Quinlan.
“Not many, but this is one of them,” Chris said.
They spent the next twenty minutes taking Chris through his actions, minute by minute, from the time the bomb went off. He answered their questions truthfully and completely; there was no reason not to.
They thanked him and left, and Chris was surprised at how nervous and shaken the interview had left him. Talking to the FBI could be a little scary and intimidating, even if you had nothing to be afraid of.
It was just another example of how Chris was not, and would never be, his father. Not even close.
P.T. WATCHED THE FBI agents leave the Bergen News building.
He was not at all worried about what was said; Turley couldn’t have betrayed him even if he wanted to. But he wouldn’t have in any event. P.T. knew that people like Turley had a warped sense of morality; they had no reservations about destroying someone’s life, but then they would turn around and pretend to take the high ground by vowing to protect their sources at all costs.
P.T. went home, turned on his computer, and routed a call through to Chris’s office. His computer brilliance, he knew, was not a sign of any special genius, but rather evidence of years spent preparing for this moment. He had willed himself to become an expert in many disciplines, knowing each would be needed for the task ahead.
From this computer he felt that he could rule the world.
“Hello, Mr. Turley. You are well this morning?”
“I’m fine, thank you, P.T.,” Chris said. “How are you? It’s good to hear from you.” Chris spoke deferentially; he instinctively felt the man needed to be treated with kid gloves.
“I’m ready to take you to the next level.”
Chris thought that was a strange way to put it. “You mean give me the additional information?”
“Yes.”
P.T. told Chris that he would meet him at 7:00 the next morning at a parklike area just off the Palisades Interstate Parkway, near exit three. “Please come alone,” he said. “I don’t want anyone else to see me.”
Chris wasn’t sure why it had to be so early, but getting the documents was the primary goal, and he didn’t want to do anything to scare P.T. off. He readily agreed to the arrangement, and P.T. again hung up abruptly.
Chris stayed at the office doing work for the rest of the day. None of it was newspaper work; rather, it was answering fan mail. Between e-mail and regular mail, more than twenty thousand people had attempted to contact him in the last week. It was mind-boggling.
At about five o’clock, Dani came to the door of his office. “Quick question,” she said. “I was out last night from about eight until eight-oh-five. My phone machine was on, but it doesn’t always work. Any chance you called during those five minutes to ask me out?”
Chris laughed and nodded. “I called at eight-oh-three, but it rang three times, so I gave up.”
She snapped her fingers. “Damn. I knew it.”
He closed the door behind her. “Dani, I’ve always thought it was a bad idea to have a relationship with someone in the office. And the reason I’ve thought that is because it is definitely a bad idea to have a relationship with someone in the office.”
She nodded. “I can see that, so how about this? We go out, but we never have sex.”
“That’s your idea of an acceptable solution?”
“Actually, it’s me trying to lure you in,” she said. “I’ve never gone out with a real hero. By the time I was old enough to date, Davy Crockett was dead.”
“You two would have made a great couple.”
“So what do you say?” she asked. “Dinner tonight? I mean, what’s the big deal? I’m already having your ‘love child.’ ”
He started to say no, but it didn’t come out quite the way he intended. “I’d love to” is what he actually said.
She made the reservation at an Italian restaurant in Ridgewood that was the closest thing New Jersey had to a “hot” restaurant, and for which Chris knew it was very difficult to get reservations. Chris picked Dani up at her house, which was only about a mile from his, and they drove there together.
When they pulled into the crowded parking lot, he asked, “How did you get us in on an hour’s notice? Do you know someone?”
She nodded. “Yup. You. I said it was for you.”
As they entered the restaurant, Chris could feel everyone staring at him. It was a sensation he was experiencing frequently, but wasn’t quite used to yet. Two people came over during the meal and apologetically asked for autographs, allegedly for relatives.
“Are you dealing with all of this okay?” Dani asked. “I mean, it must be a shock to the system.”
“That it is.”
“But you’re enjoying yourself?”
He thought for a few moments. “There are definitely some aspects of it that I could do without, like those people coming over and interrupting our dinner. But basically, yes, I like it a lot. Does that say something bad about me?”
“Chris, I’ve dealt with a lot of famous people. And in my experience there are two kinds. The ones who like it and admit it, and the ones who like it but pretend not to.”
They talked for two hours and he realized that despite working together for a couple of years, they knew very little about each other. Dani revealed, with some apparent embarrassment, that she had earned an MBA from the University of Virginia.
After graduation she went to work for a brokerage house, but “I walked in the front door and out the back. Everybody was just too serious. They acted like they were saving the world when all they were doing was buying it.”
“How did you wind up in the newspaper business?”
She shrugged. “I saw an ad for a job as a copy editor on a weekly paper in New Haven. From there it’s been a meteoric rise to the top. How did you get here?”
“According to my former shrink, I wanted to emulate my father.”
“Was he right?”
“Maybe, but it’s probably a little more complicated than that, because as soon as he said that, I made him my former shrink.”
They closed the place down, and it was almost midnight when Chris drove her home. “You want to come up?” she asked.
“Would you believe me if I told you I had to be up really early in the morning?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“It’s true. Remember that guy who called in the office that day, when you answered the phone? He was the guy who tipped me off about Mayor Stanley. Anyway, I’m meeting him at seven tomorrow morning for round two.”
“Seven?” She looked at her watch. “That gives us plenty of time.”
He leaned over and kissed her. “You know something? It sure does.”
CHRIS SET HIS PHONE alarm for 6:00 A.M., which gave him three hours of sleep.
He got out of bed and got dressed, and when he was almost finished, Dani opened her eyes for the first time and saw him.
He smiled at her. “You going to get up and make me breakfast?”
She said, “Not in this lifetime,” and closed her eyes again.
He went over to the bed and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I had a really nice time.”
“Then get back in bed.”
“I wish I could. Believe me, I wish I could.”
He left and drove towards the George Washington Bridge, turning off just before he got there onto the Palisades Interstate, a road that runs parallel to the Hudson River, with the first five miles in New Jersey and then on into Rockland County.
When he reached exit three, he got off and drove down towards the area where P.T. said they would meet. He parked in a rest area and walked down a winding path towards the eastern end of the park. There were no other cars around.
There was also no sign of P.T. or anyone else, but Chris was a few minutes early, so it didn’t concern him. He continued on the path, turning a corner while looking back. He thought he heard a noise, which could mean that P.T. was behind him, since that was the only direction he could be coming from.
Not seeing him, he turned forward and let out a scream so loud that if anyone was nearby, they would have come running. But the only person around was hanging from a tree, right in front of him, and that person would never do any running, or talking, or breathing, ever again. He was encased in plastic—it almost looked like Saran Wrap—and it was wrapped so tightly around him that it contorted the man’s face into a weird grimace.
Chris instinctively ran back down the trail; he just had to put some distance between himself and that horrible sight. He tried to regain his composure and think what action he should take next, but thinking was difficult.
Cutting through the shock was Chris’s fear that whoever had done this might still be nearby, and that therefore he was in grave danger. He stopped on the trail halfway back to the rest area and called 911, trying to calm himself down so that he could explain coherently where he was and what he had seen. The operator promised to send officers immediately.
Though he thought that perhaps he should not leave the area where he made his grisly discovery, he felt too vulnerable there, and he ran back to his car. The parking lot was where the police would arrive, and he could lead them back to the hanging body. And that way, if he felt in danger before their arrival, he could get in his car and flee.
Once back at the car and thinking a little more clearly, Chris realized with some horror that whoever P.T. was, he had to be behind this. Either that, or he was the one hanging from the tree.
But if P.T. had murdered that man and brought Chris to this place to discover it, what else had he done? Had he blown up the medical building, after bringing Chris to the scene? And how did the mayor’s liaison figure into it?
Two squad cars arrived seven minutes after Chris’s phone call, though to him it felt more like seven hours. After confirming that Chris was the one who had made the emergency call, they asked him to describe what he had seen. Based on that description, they called for more backup before asking Chris to lead them back to the body.
He took the four officers down the trail, hoping that the body would no longer be there, perhaps a disgusting figment of his imagination brought on by lack of sleep. It would be embarrassing, but he’d deal with it. Anything so that he wouldn’t have to see it again.
But it was still there, swaying slightly with the wind. The officers stopped walking as soon as they saw it, not wanting to get too close and possibly contaminate what was obviously a crime scene.
Two of the officers waited there, while the other two escorted Chris back to the cars. All four had their guns drawn, in case the perpetrator was still in the area. They instructed Chris to sit in one of the police cars; he wouldn’t be questioned until the homicide detectives arrived.
Within minutes, the area was swarming with police cars, two ambulances, and a coroner’s van. The highway was closed off, even though the body was found at least a quarter of a mile from the road. If the killer was somehow still around, they didn’t want him blending in with traffic.
Chris sat in the car for more than an hour, with nobody paying any attention to him. He was okay with that; being out of the spotlight for even a few moments felt like a welcome relief. He dreaded when they would finally come over and draw him back into the ugliness.
The car was running with the heat on and Chris cracked open the window to get some air. He was able to overhear a few conversations among the officers, which was how he became aware that they thought the victim was Thomas Oswald, the executive believed to have been abducted from his car at the Paramus Park mall. He had no idea whether that was true, but hoped that it was not. He wanted it to be P.T., since P.T. was all that connected him to this horror.
The door opened and an enormous man, wearing a suit about three sizes too small, sat down on the seat next to Chris.
“Mr. Turley, my name is Detective Duane Wilson, homicide division. Obviously, we’re going to need to talk with you, but it would be easier down at the stationhouse. Would you be okay with that?”
“Yes, of course. Whatever you say.”
Detective Wilson was a large man at six three, two hundred and twenty pounds, yet he spoke incongruously softly and slowly. “Fine, thank you. You’ll drive with me, and one of the officers will follow us in your car.”
Wilson got into the driver’s seat and told Chris to get into the front, as well. Once he did so, they drove off, and Wilson said, “You have certainly been a busy man these last couple of weeks.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You sure there isn’t more than one of you?” Wilson asked, and then smiled silently at his own joke. He was the only one in the car who was smiling.
After driving for no more than five minutes, Wilson received a phone call. He listened for a few moments, said “but, sir” a couple of times, and then hung up. “Change of plans,” he said to Chris, obviously not pleased by whatever it was.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re going to talk to the FBI instead.”
Chris was brought to the FBI’s Newark office and an agent who didn’t identify himself took him into an interview room. Detective Wilson seemed to melt away, not an easy maneuver for a man that large.
As Chris waited in the interview room for an interrogator to make an appearance, he briefly considered Lawrence’s suggestion that a newspaper lawyer be present when he talked to the FBI, and whether that would be a good idea here. He decided against it. He could not have been a suspect and certainly nobody had read him his rights.
