Down to the Wire, page 8
Quinlan and Serrano came into the room moments later.
“Well, you do get around,” Quinlan said, a comment Chris didn’t bother responding to. “You okay if we tape this?” Quinlan asked.
“Would it matter if I wasn’t?”
Quinlan shrugged. “Not to me.”
The interview was meticulous and painstaking, with Quinlan spending more than three hours taking Chris over every aspect of the story a number of times. Chris left out nothing, and told Quinlan about every contact he had with P.T. He did not give the fact that P.T. was a source a moment’s thought; this was no longer someone he had any interest in protecting.
“Why do you think he picked you?” Serrano asked.
“I don’t know. For all I know, he’s the one hanging from that tree. Maybe somebody found out what he was doing and killed him for it.”
“When did you speak to him last?”
“Yesterday,” Chris said.
“Well, unless you were at a séance, that’s not him,” Quinlan said. “That guy has probably been dead for a week.”
“So you think P.T. killed him? And brought me there to find him?”
“Did I say something to give you the impression we were going to question each other?” Quinlan asked.
“I don’t see what harm would be done—”
Quinlan interrupted him. “If P.T. contacts you again, try and arrange a meeting. In the meantime, with your permission, we’ll be tapping your phones and tracing calls into them.”
“I don’t know about that,” Chris said, unsure if he should be going along with it.
“We can also get a warrant and do it without your permission,” Quinlan said. He didn’t even wait for Chris to respond, he just stood up and said, “And I don’t want you writing about this yet.”
“Why not?” Chris asked.
“Because it wouldn’t be helpful to our investigation,” Quinlan said.
“I can’t make any promises; I have to talk to the managing editor.”
Quinlan frowned. “So maybe you can sell a few more papers?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You can go now. We’ll contact you if we need to speak to you again.”
With that, Quinlan dropped Chris’s car keys on the table, a signal that he could drive himself home. Then he and Serrano walked out, leaving Chris with about a thousand unanswered questions.
CHRIS TURLEY HAD NO idea that the FBI considered him a suspect.
It never entered his mind. He was focused on P.T. and his now-certain conclusion that the informant was at the center of this. P.T. had brought him to an obscure location where the body was waiting, just as he had brought him to the scene of a massive explosion moments before it happened.
But what could he have been trying to accomplish? His motive did not seem to be to cause Chris physical harm, since he could have done so easily. He could have lured Chris into the exploding building, or killed him in the same location where he’d left the body hanging.
In fact, one could easily and accurately argue that Chris had benefited from P.T.’s efforts. Certainly it had helped him achieve fame, and even respect.
It simply made no sense.
The fact that Chris was an FBI suspect was not in itself particularly significant, since Agent Quinlan believed everyone was a suspect until proven otherwise. To him, the salient fact was that Chris was at the center of three apparently unrelated acts: the explosion, the mayor’s arrest, and the Oswald murder.
To Quinlan, the connection of the bombing to these other two events, through Chris, was a positive development. The fact that it represented a puzzle he hadn’t yet solved was not particularly worrisome. The key point was that at least now he had the pieces just waiting to fit together.
The bombing investigation, though admittedly at an early stage, had been going nowhere. That it could now be linked to other events, and to P.T. and to Chris, was a monumental leap forward, even if nothing seemed clear at the moment.
“Everything revolves around Turley,” Quinlan said to Serrano in one of their frequent conversations. Quinlan liked to have an agent around who he trusted to bounce ideas off of and to talk things out with. In this case, like many others, Serrano filled that role.
“You think he could be dirty?”
Quinlan shook his head. “I doubt it. But I don’t think he just happened to be in the middle of this. He was chosen for a reason.”
Since there were three separate crimes so far committed in three separate jurisdictions, there were three law enforcement groups involved. The FBI had taken over the bombing investigation, but the mayor’s arrest and the Oswald murder were being handled by different local police agencies.
Agent Quinlan arranged a meeting that afternoon at FBI headquarters to bring the various investigations together. Detectives Novack and Willingham were there, since they were assigned to the mayor’s case, and Detective Wilson was there as the officer nominally in charge of the Oswald investigation.
The purpose of the meeting, as expressed by Quinlan, was a free flow of information between the groups, since on some level the three crimes were connected. The local cops viewed this with more than a little distrust, since in previous experiences with the FBI they had learned that the Bureau agents were interested in information that flowed in one direction only . . . towards themselves.
Quinlan opened the meeting by asking an agent to summarize a report that the Bureau had quickly prepared on Chris Turley.
“He earned a master’s degree in journalism and has been a newspaper reporter for nine years,” the agent said. “The last seven have been at the Bergen News. There has been nothing extraordinary about his career at all, though, of course, the last two weeks have been more than extraordinary.
“His father was Edward Turley, who I’m sure you are all familiar with. He’s never been married, dates a lot, definitely heterosexual. No steady girlfriend that we know of, though he seems to have started seeing a woman in his office named Dani Cooper.
“Mother has Alzheimer’s and is in a rest home and he visits her two or three times a week. He’s never been arrested and hasn’t demonstrated any previous behavior consistent with any of this. After the meeting, I’ll hand out the full report for you to have.”
Quinlan thanked the agent and said to the detectives, “Anything to add?”
Novack nodded. “He’s lights out inside twenty-five feet off the dribble and can drive to the basket and score with either hand.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I play basketball with him.”
“So why haven’t you removed yourself from the case?”
“Because he’s not a suspect. He’s an informant.”
Before Quinlan could respond, Wilson asked, “You mentioned he had a degree in journalism. Where did he go to school?”
Quinlan turned to the agent who’d prepared the report, who checked his notes and said, “Syracuse undergraduate, Northwestern graduate.”
“Why?” Quinlan asked.
“The night Oswald was murdered, the mall parking lot video showed a hooded man walking around. We can’t connect him to the car, because the cameras near the car were tampered with. And we couldn’t see his face.”
“So?”
“But we could see that he was wearing a Syracuse windbreaker.”
Quinlan turned to Novack. “Your basketball buddy is a suspect.”
Novack shook his head. “I understand why you think that, but it doesn’t fit. An apparently normal guy, never been in trouble, decides to go on a killing spree, but stops in the middle to make sure the mayor is caught getting his rocks off?”
“Look, I’m not saying he’s my first choice for this . . . not even close,” Quinlan said. “Right now I’m looking at this P.T. character. But Turley has turned up everywhere, which makes me suspicious. Now, you’ll all remain on your individual assignments, but you’ll keep this office informed of any information you develop.”
Quinlan could see the detectives starting to react; their natural antipathy to the FBI was kicking in. “Your respective superiors in your chains of command have already agreed to the arrangement, but feel free to confirm that with them.”
Confirmation would not be necessary, the detectives knew. No ranking officer in his right mind, when faced with the kind of crimes they were dealing with, would turn down an FBI request for cooperation.
It simply would look awful if there were more killings. And there was one thing everybody in the room could agree on.
There would be more killings.
P.T. WAS DELIGHTED WITH what he didn’t see on television.
While there was substantial coverage of the discovery of Oswald’s body, there was so far no mention of Chris Turley, P.T., or any connection between this murder and the bombing or the mayor’s arrest.
In fact, it was being reported that the body was discovered by a jogger, whose name was being withheld. P.T. wasn’t there at that particular moment, but he imagined the only jogging Turley did was in reverse after he saw the hanging body.
The fun part would be in seeing whether or not Turley would write the story himself, revealing his discovery of Oswald’s body. P.T. was betting that he would; the chance to stay in the spotlight would be too great to pass up. But either way, the truth would get out; P.T. would see to that.
So much of this was going to play out on television that P.T. wished he could just watch all day. But he had too much to do, and in the process he would create what they would be reporting. In that way, he saw himself as a screenwriter, or TV producer.
He was providing what TV people called “content,” and by the time he was finished he would draw a bigger audience than the Super Bowl.
This time Lawrence Terry had no intention of gently suggesting anything. From the moment he got the phone call from Chris telling him what happened, Terry decided to take a more aggressive role in dealing with what was becoming a very difficult and complicated situation.
Waiting for Chris when he got back to the office were Lawrence and Michael Stanton, the chief counsel for the newspaper. Chris was no longer resistant in any way; this bizarre situation had grown to the point where he felt he could use any and all help.
Chris gratefully took Lawrence’s offered scotch on the rocks, even though it was only three in the afternoon, and then brought Lawrence and Stanton completely up to date on all that had happened. They quickly came to the same conclusion he had.
“P.T. is dirty,” Lawrence said. “The question is, why is he bringing you into it.”
“I have no idea,” Chris said. “I can’t imagine who he is or why anyone would hate me that much.”
“Hate you? The guy is turning you into a star. You could hire ten agents and they wouldn’t do half this much for your career.”
“He’s a killer, Lawrence.”
“Of course, he’s a killer. And he’s a scumbag and a lowlife and a roach. But you know what else he is? He’s a newsmaker. Not only that, but he’s your newsmaker. He’s our newsmaker. When we get the Pulitzer, we’ll thank him from the podium.”
The lawyer, Stanton, asked, “Did you make any commitments to the police about what you would or would not write?”
“No. They asked me to keep a lid on all of this, but I didn’t promise anything.”
Lawrence nodded his approval. “Good. And I didn’t promise anything when the chief called me.”
Chris wasn’t surprised to hear that Lawrence had gotten a call, and certainly wasn’t at all surprised that Lawrence wasn’t impressed or intimidated by it. “You don’t think we have an obligation to hold off for a while?” Chris asked.
“We have an obligation to inform the public. Now, show me how someone is going to get killed because of what we report and I’ll hold back. But how does the public benefit in this case by being kept in the dark?”
Chris shrugged. “Maybe the police will have a better chance of catching the guy if we stay quiet.”
“And maybe they won’t. Or maybe they have their own agendas. Michael?”
Stanton thought for a few moments and then said, “There are no legal reasons to sit on the story. This is an event that happened to you, and you are free to write about it.”
“I agree that I’m free to do so,” Chris said. “The question is whether it’s the responsible thing to do.”
An agitated Lawrence started firing questions at Chris. “Every reporter worth his salt is going after this story, you think it’s not going to come out? Three different sets of cops know about it, you don’t think any of them will leak it? Why shouldn’t you be the one to write it? You want to get scooped on your own story?”
Chris certainly knew that Lawrence had a point. Somebody would dig out the story; it might as well be Chris.
Lawrence stood up, signaling that the meeting had reached a resolution and was over. “Good. Write the story, but only about finding Oswald’s body. Leave out P.T. and the connection to the bombing and the mayor.”
“Why are we holding that back?” asked Chris.
“Because you’re going to call this ‘part one’ of the story, and the rest will be in tomorrow’s follow-up piece,” said Lawrence, smiling. “Which I think we’ll call ‘part two.’ ”
“SON OF A BITCH” is what Agent Quinlan said when he saw Chris’s story. He had been told that a great deal of pressure had been brought upon Chris by the local authorities not to write it, obviously without effect. The fact that Chris didn’t make the connection to the bomber and the mayor was of small comfort; that would no doubt be included in the promised second part, to run tomorrow.
Not being able to control Chris is what annoyed Quinlan, since the truth was there was no great downside to the story’s appearance, at least not as far as tipping off P.T. was concerned. It was clear he could be certain that the police had made the connection between the three events, once Turley found the body. The only difference is that now the public would be aware, which would increase the pressure to catch the guy. It would have no real effect on Quinlan, though, since no one could put more pressure on him than he put on himself.
The other negative was that the story provoked another call from FBI Director Kramer, who was starting to get anxious that there were no breaks in the case.
“They’re getting nervous at the White House. You need to send me daily progress reports.”
“They’ll make for quick reading, because we haven’t made any progress,” Quinlan said. At this stage, Quinlan could easily fend Kramer off, but it would grow increasingly difficult the longer there was no arrest.
Other media outlets, again trumped by Chris on a big story, were starting to let their collective annoyance show. One commentator compared Chris to Zelig, the character in the Woody Allen movie of the same name, who kept popping up in notable historical events throughout the ages.
Chris had stopped watching any of the coverage and had avoided phone calls seeking interviews. He holed up in his office, even after he finished writing part two of the story. He was nervous about the effect it would have, and not completely comfortable about being the one to reveal P.T. to the world.
Dani stopped by his office. “You okay?” she asked.
He smiled. “Well, there’s quite a bit going on.”
“I know. The receptionist said she has a hundred and forty-one messages for you.”
“I told her not to put any calls through.”
“Isn’t it possible you-know-who will call?” she asked.
“He’s got my cell phone number.”
“How did he get that?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
She sat down. “Chris, I assume you’ve given a lot of thought to who this guy might be. Could it be someone you know?”
“That’s another thing I have no idea about.”
“Okay. Let’s change the subject. What are you doing for dinner?” she asked.
“ ‘No idea’ works for that one, also.”
“Then you’re coming to my house.”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“It’s just as easy to order in for two as for one. And you can be the boy and pay, if you want.”
The idea of spending the evening with Dani, and not alone, had surprising appeal to him. “You’ve got a deal.” He hesitated a moment, and then added, “Can we make a stop first? There’s somebody I really want you to meet.”
Chris said, “Harriet Turley, this is Dani Cooper. Dani, this is my mother.”
“Hello, Mrs. Turley,” Dani said, taking her not-offered hand. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
If Harriet had any idea who they were, she did not display it. Instead, she sat there quietly with a small smile on her face. Chris had long ago learned that the fact that the smile was always there removed any meaning it might have had. She was not amused. She was not happy. She was a blank slate.
Chris and Dani talked to her for twenty minutes in a manner that never revealed that Harriet was oblivious to what they were saying.
“Your son is famous,” Dani said at one point. “You should be very proud of him.”
Chris smiled. “But not as famous as Dad.”
When they were about to leave, Chris leaned over and whispered something in Harriet’s ear before kissing her. When they got into the car, Dani asked, “Why did you bring me to meet her?”
Chris thought for a moment before speaking. “I used to bring a lot of girls home to meet my mother, and afterwards she would ask me if that was the ‘special’ girl. I always said no, and Mom would tell me that when I found the ‘special’ girl, I should let her know.”
“Is that what you whispered to her before we left?”
Chris nodded. “Yes.”
Dani didn’t say anything for a while, and Chris looked over and asked, “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“Uncomfortable? Are you nuts? That was the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.” Then she laughed. “Even though you said it to her.”
