Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Three

By the time I make it back through the yards and outside the crime scene tape, a sergeant from the Public Information Office is wrapping up his statement.

Melanie Strong, the Queen B of the TV reporters, sees me coming and decides to take a shot.

"Great timing, Blake. You always know when to make an entrance." Her friendly rivals laugh with her, and even the PIO smiles. Humor, as long as it isn't over the top, is often welcome at crime scenes. Otherwise, you'd have a gaggle of talkers and writers silently fighting off high blood pressure and the level of health-altering stress they use in medical school case studies.

I slow down just long enough to jab a finger into Tony's ribs and give him the look. He begins to pack and follow me.

"Thanks, Mel," I call over my shoulder. "And sorry I'm late. I had to run a column by your husband first."

It's a cheap shot, but she asked for it. Strong's husband, David, a prominent plastic surgeon whose clientele includes A-list Hollywood stars who figure they can hide their procedures in the Midwest better than in Los Angeles, found himself in a personal scandal recently when a secretary walked into his office and caught him naked and mid-coitus with Arthur Piniechero, the gossip columnist for our rival, the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Petty, bro."

Tony shakes his head as we walk quickly away, while the TV crews busy themselves staking claims to space to do their stand-ups and live shots.

We pause at the sidewalk to hoist and reposition his camera equipment for the three-and-a-half block walk back to my Jeep when a mousy call tickles our ears at the same time. Barely louder than a whisper. And then we see it, a gnarled hand gesturing to us from behind a healthy green Skip Laurel hedge.

An elderly woman, arms crossed tightly, peeks reservedly around the bushes. It's hard to tell if she's hugging herself against the morning breeze or the other kind of chill caused by the bad business that happened so close to her home.

She starts walking towards the rear of a fourplex, to the alley-facing side and we follow. Halfway she stops and turns to face us.

"You young men are with the news?"

"Yes ma'am, The Daily Midway," Tony says earnestly.

"I know someone died in that old building or else there wouldn't be so many police over there. But I don't know what happened. I just don't get it."

She drops her hands, frustrated, and we squirm uncomfortably, not sure what to say.

But she saves us the trouble. "Listen, I like the looks of you, so I'm gonna tell you this. There's a young girl sitting on my couch right now. She needs help. I'm not just sayin' it. She says so, too. And she says boys were in that building and that they are probably who went to be with the Lord last night and were her friends. She knows something about it, but she's scared and doesn't want to talk to the police. I don't think she was involved. But you know how these kids are. They get tunnel vision and don't see the bigger picture. She might just be 'fraid of having to explain to her folks why her tail wasn't home in bed last night!"

Tony doesn't get the potential enormity of this woman's claim as I do. He gets the gravity of there being a possible witness to a homicide. But he wasn't with me behind the crime scene. And I haven't had a chance to tell him what I saw.

The PIO has already emailed us the formal statement he read aloud to the press scrum. It references multiple victims but no other details, including number, age and gender. So this woman knows more in this moment than all but one reporter on the scene: me.

We follow as she turns and continues to walk toward her porch, and it takes everything in our power to not pick her up by her elbows and run with her suspended between us. But it wouldn't have mattered. As we stalk slowly up the stairs behind her, the front door is ajar.

"I closed my door," she says, befuddled. "I know it! Gotta get that boy to fix this handle, these locks."

She trails off, but we know why her door is open. It isn't the handle or the locks. The girl is in the wind. She probably ran the second the woman started talking to us. And with the size of the neighborhood and subway station less than four blocks away, she could be anywhere by now.

"Dammit!"

"Where to," Tony asks, still uncertain why I'm so amped about meeting this woman.

"We need to get something online quickly, but I don't want to throw the curveball quite yet. Not today. You drive, while I pull something together on my phone and send it to Calibretti."

"Not going back to the newsroom, then?"

"Not going back to the newsroom, my friend. Not yet. We have a doctor's appointment, first."