“Vincent Battrelle also called John to ‘strongly suggest’ that he take you off the Fontaine story. John thinks Norman Klein should take over, because the chief likes him, and that our biotech reporter can handle Vitaleron’s financial fallout.”

  Katrina held her tongue until Linda was finished. “Okay,” she said as neutrally as she could, even though her stomach could’ve tossed a salad.

  “Then,” Linda went on, “Vincent called back—and he was shouting so loud I could hear every word. You called him, then you interviewed Michael, both of which I expressly told you not to do.” Pausing a moment, she asked her next question and drummed her fingers on the desk as she waited for a response: “Is that true?”

  Is she expecting me to cry or something? What a bunch of bullies.

  “Yes, it is,” she replied calmly.

  “Why, Katrina? Why would you disobey me like that?” Linda sounded as if she could barely contain herself.

  Because this newspaper is a big effing ethical train wreck. But I can’t say that, so I’ll try the less emotional approach.

  “Well,” she said. “Did John Palmer tell you that he, the police chief, the mayor, the entire Battrelle family, the Fontaines, the Vitaleron board of directors—and their family members—have funneled nearly $6 million in campaign contributions to Congressman Brandon Winchester, both directly and also through a PAC called Christians For Everlasting Marriage? Winchester, by the way, sits on a committee overseeing the FDA.”

  Linda’s shoulders rose as her head jutted forward, her eyes widening.

  “Or did Vincent Battrelle tell you that the reason I called him was because he tried to hire me as his personal investigator to find his son Alex, who has been missing for six months? Or that he invited me over to his house for a drink last Saturday and tried to impede my coverage of this story by asking me to sign an NDA prohibiting me from publishing anything I learned while I was searching for his missing son?”

  Linda shook her head, her mouth falling open.

  “Or did he tell you that the only reason he called John Palmer today is because I told him—for the third time, I might add—that this side job was a huge conflict of interest so I couldn’t do it? And then, when he threatened to fire me, I asked if he wanted me to call the Poynter Institute and the Advocate to report that he and the paper were trying to prevent me from reporting the story to save his family personal embarrassment and to hide their possible involvement in the Fontaines’ deaths.”

  Linda closed her mouth, her jaws visibly clenched, and shook her head again. “No, he didn’t,” she said quietly.

  “Did he tell you that Vincent forbade Michael from talking to me, but he did anyway, because he believes the police see him as a murder suspect? Or that both he and his brother were seeing Victoria, who called him Friday morning to break up with him, and that she didn’t sound well on the phone?”

  By now, Linda had stopped shooting visual daggers at her.

  “And did he tell you that Michael said a ‘neighbor’ called 911, not some anonymous person, and that he described the Fontaines’ deaths as a ‘double suicide,’ when the police have said none of that? He told me all of this on the record, by the way.”

  Barely able to contain a smirk, Katrina paused for a moment. “I should add that I did talk to Joanne about interviewing Michael, and she and I agreed that I should do it, even if it meant our jobs. So, I did have an editor’s authorization.”

  “Great, now the patients are running the asylum,” Linda said under her breath.

  Well, at least she’s got a baseline sense of humor.

  “Should I go on?” Katrina asked. “There’s more.”

  “God, no,” Linda said. Leaping out of her chair, she headed for the door. “Wait here.”

  But Katrina was impatient and couldn’t sit still. Standing up, she stood outside Linda’s office to watch the Metro editor stride into Joanne’s and shut the door.

  Katrina didn’t know what would happen next, but come what may. With a healthy inheritance, she didn’t really need the money; this job was more about following her passion than anything else. But she still didn’t want her career derailed by getting fired or by staying at a bad paper that had no ethical boundaries. She invested her soul in every important story, and this was already one of the biggest and most controversial yet. It was shaping up to matter as much, if not more than her mafia series, and, based on the recent death threat, it was just as dangerous.

  If and when reporting became simply a job to her, the adrenaline and intrigue stopped streaming through her body, or the calling she’d once felt became more of a burden than a joy, she’d promised herself she would quit the business.

  She’d come home to rekindle her parents’ cold case, and she wasn’t going to leave town again without doing that first. She hadn’t gotten this far by giving up or giving in.

  Surely Linda must know that, or she wouldn’t have hired me.

  At first, Linda gestured wildly as she stood above Joanne, who was seated in her chair. Then Joanne rose to her feet and animatedly engaged with Linda, who then flung open the door and marched toward John Palmer’s office. Joanne gave Katrina a thumbs-up.

  I’ve got to see this for myself.

  Katrina searched for a good vantage point among her colleagues, whose heads were all turned toward the executive editor’s corner glass fishbowl. They watched as the editor picked up his phone while Linda was speaking to him, grim-faced. When she turned to go, John held up his index finger and handed the phone to her.

  Linda listened as John shook his head, stared down at his desk, and blew air out of his lips like a fish. Visibly agitated, Linda barked out a few sentences, slammed the phone down, snapped something at John, then stormed out of his office and headed back toward Katrina.

  “I need a minute,” she said before closing her door, sitting down, and covering her face with her hands. After remaining motionless for several minutes, she called Joanne to come over.

  “This ought to be good,” Joanne said as she passed Katrina.

  Joanne was grinning when she emerged a few minutes later. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, motioning for Katrina to follow her into her office.

  “What?” Katrina probed. “So, we’re not fired?”

  “No, most definitely not. At first, Linda was pissed that I went behind her back and supervised you on this story, which is ridiculous because she put you on my team last week. After I explained why you came to me, Vincent sealed the deal by ordering her to take you off the story. Given everything you’d told her, she refused. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Vincent, you know I can’t do that.’

  “Linda dictated to John what would happen next, before we all end up on the Poynter website as a national disgrace. If he didn’t agree, she threatened to resign. So, I’ll be your editor on this story from here on out. You’ll be the only reporter unless we ask for help, say, if two big stories break on the same day. But she’s removing herself, because of her close friendship with the publisher’s family, and deemed, rightly so, that John’s conflict was even worse, because his campaign donation specifically violates newsroom policy. So, you and I will be reporting directly to Big Ed, the Nightside Metro and Page One editor.”

  “Wow. Go, Linda!” Katrina said. “She did the right thing. Good for her.”

  “Yes, she did. Shocked me too. Great work, Katrina,” she said, giving her reporter a bear hug.

  For the next half hour, they discussed the two stories that Katrina would knock out that night, which would be featured side by side with a banner headline on A-1 in the print edition.

  One would tell Michael’s side of the love triangle with his brother and Victoria and their respective struggles with addiction. The other would lay out the gifts, junkets, and nearly $6 million in campaign contributions to Congressman Winchester and the Christian PAC, accompanied by the photo of Winchester yucking it up over cocktails with Darren McMurphy and the female FDA official.

  “You’d better get writing,” Joanne said, “and don’t forget to call Goode, Winchester, McMurphy, the chief, and the mayor too. It’s probably too late for a comment from the new drug office in DC, but call and leave a message anyway.”

  Scurrying back to her desk, Katrina saw the red message light blinking on her phone. There were half a dozen messages, including one from Vincent, threatening legal action.

  “I thought you were going to help me find Alex,” Vincent said. “And now you’re going to plaster my family’s personal tragedies all over my newspaper? You’d better not use anything I told you in confidence or I’ll take you to court.”

  Because she still had no idea how Victoria or Simon Fontaine actually died, Katrina ended the story by posing several pending questions: Who was Victoria’s mystery man in Hawaii, and could he be the father of her baby? Was one of these men in her life so angry about a breakup—or the pregnancy—that he killed her and her father for it? Or was there another motive entirely?

  Katrina left messages everywhere, and again, gave Goode one last extra call. This time she caught him.

  “You want to tell me where Alex is now, or do you want me to find him for you too?” she taunted.

  “Soon, very soon,” he said.

  “You guys getting close to making an arrest or what?”

  “Not yet. Has Stone or the chief called you?” he asked.

  “Nope, although the chief tried to get me pulled off the story. So did Vincent. But I’m still on it.”

  “Of course you are. I’ll make sure someone gets back to you. Gotta run.”

  Chapter 38

  Goode

  Wednesday

  Relishing a vodka tonic at his kitchen table, Goode methodically went through the files from Victoria’s laptop and her Vitaleron computer.

  He’d been at it for over an hour when Stone called. “The chief says he never made a contribution to that PAC,” he said.

  “Whaat?”

  “Said he never even heard of it.”

  “Seriously? Katrina wouldn’t make up something like that.”

  “I know, I went to the federal website she cited, trying to confirm what the chief said, but she’s right. So, I told him that and conveyed a politically correct response to her—for his own protection. Even he knows he can be a loose cannon. I told him to keep his head down and hopefully this will blow over.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Goode said.

  Double-fisted with a cocktail in one hand and his phone on speaker in the other, the detective paced around his cramped living room. He thought better when he was moving, even if there wasn’t much room to maneuver around the coffee table into the short hallway with the built-in bookcase, which held a few cherished, framed family photos: his parents’ faded wedding portrait; his mother with him and Maureen as toddlers; he and Maureen as kids at their father’s ranch in Montana, where they spent a few summers before he died; and a variation of the shot he had at work, with him and Maureen play-fighting with their surfboards as Star Wars laser swords.

  “Did he explain why else the Vitaleron suits would commandeer our news conference in front of police headquarters?” Goode said.

  “He said that was all the mayor, who, by the way, isn’t denying his donation. But he’s a politician, so who knows,” Stone said. “Either way, the donations aren’t illegal.”

  “You sound just like them. Are you running for office now?”

  “Very funny. No, that’s the party line from media relations. But we all agreed that it’s messy. Maybe his wife sent the check and didn’t tell him?”

  “Who knows. But I don’t see this blowing over. More like blowing up. Super Special Agent Wattshispants seemed pretty interested when I told him about Katrina’s story. It should be online in a few hours.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to be a late one for me, doing damage control.”

  “Better you than me.”

  “So, we’re all set to question Alex Battrelle tomorrow afternoon? I’m going to tip off Rhona so she gets the exclusive. That way the pack will spend the next few days chasing her instead of this donation snafu.”

  “Yep. I’m looking for ammo for the interrogation right now in Victoria’s computer files.”

  “Call me if you find anything. I’ll be up for a while.”

  Goode poured himself another vodka tonic and a finger bowl of hard pretzels and peanuts. Sifting through Victoria’s files was tedious but important.

  Where is that memo to the board? I’m betting it has the answers we need, and it’s got to be somewhere on this laptop.

  Half an hour later, he found a file labeled “Dallas emails,” containing exchanges between Victoria and Dallas Fairchild, the biochemist from Vitaleron, which documented his claims about the stolen drug doses, security cameras, and password-protected locks.

  “What should we do?” Victoria wrote.

  Goode wanted to trust Fairchild, but he had to consider the possibility that the biochemist was lying.

  Victoria’s knowledge about the stolen doses is a reason for wanting her dead, so why is Fairchild still walking around alive? Was he playing her? And me?

  Still hungry, the detective made himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. The clock on the microwave read nine fifteen.

  Time to check the web for Katrina’s story.

  As Goode read about Michael’s love-triangle account, he felt annoyed, yet intrigued.

  Damn. How did she get all of this out of him? Sure would have been helpful if he’d told me some of this instead of lying to cover up his personal drama. It’s a touching story, but how much of this is true? He’s claiming now that Alex called him before leaving town? That means Alex could have gone to the house and killed the Fontaines, or he could have gone by after the fact, freaked, and fled. Where is that damned security footage? I need to watch it before the interrogation. No more excuses.

  Moving on to the campaign donation story, Goode was increasingly impressed with Katrina’s research skills, which helped him as well. Now that he had a PAC name, he scrolled back through Victoria’s files alphabetically.

  He’d previously ignored a file cryptically labeled “CFEM,” but clicked on it now that he realized it was an acronym for Christians For Everlasting Marriage. Created only a couple of weeks ago, the file contained screenshots from the FEC and the IRS websites, detailing many of the same donations cited in Katrina’s story, including the chief’s.

  What is the deal? Why doesn’t he admit it?

  Goode accidentally clicked on the column of file dates, which put the most recent files at the top, and kicked himself for not doing that sooner. He immediately identified the file labeled “Draft board memo,” which he’d missed during his previous searches, because he’d been looking in the B’s for board. It was created three days before Victoria died:

  “I regret to inform the board that we’ve had a security breach at Vitaleron HQ. Dallas Fairchild reports that portions of several batches of our new drug have recently gone missing from the lab. After discovering that the batches were missing, Dallas reviewed the phase-one test results, which will be submitted to the FDA next month, and said the numbers seemed exaggerated, i.e., ‘fraudulently padded.’ We discussed possible culprits and whether the two issues could be related. It has to be someone with access to our secure computer server, although it’s possible that an outsider hacked into it.

  “As you know, Darren McMurphy offered to help facilitate our marketing strategy to promote the drug to the conservative Christian community. He also approached Congressman Winchester about a fast-track approval with the FDA and sought guidance on how to overcome challenges with campaign-donation-limit restrictions.”

  Well, that’s interesting. So, was she in on it, or was she trying to stay on the legal side of things?

  “In that vein, I recently learned that $5 million in donations has gone to a political action committee called Christians For Everlasting Marriage. That seemed fine at first, until I discovered that the group gave that exact sum to a committee to reelect Congressman Winchester. This could get us into trouble with the FEC, although I’m not sure how much, because I didn’t want to raise red flags by inquiring about it. More importantly, public records show that Vitaleron staff, board members, and dozens of our investors, including Mayor Norton and Chief Baxter, are listed online as donors to this group, as well as myself and Dallas Fairchild.

  “The problem is, neither Dallas nor I ever made a donation. Someone apparently believed that Vitaleron investors wouldn’t object or find out, but that’s not the point. It’s fraud. When I confronted Darren about this last week, he denied making the donations without investors’ permission, but he admitted that he’d entered into an ‘arrangement’ with Winchester. He said Winchester asked for a lump sum of ‘bundled’ donations in exchange for a fast-tracked FDA approval, and a ‘token of appreciation’ for a female friend at the agency’s new products division. I didn’t mention the missing drugs from the lab so as not to escalate the situation. However, I did ask if he was crazy enough to bribe a congressman and an FDA official, and he replied, ‘It’s complicated.’ I’m writing this letter now because I told him to get out of this ‘arrangement’ and reverse the unauthorized donations within two weeks or I would notify the board, but he has completely ignored my demands.

  “In a related issue, Darren told me at the Hawaii retreat that he and several board members had invested millions with Alex Battrelle in the Caymans to hide money during their divorces, some of which has flowed back into Vitaleron. I told him that money needed to come back to the States to avoid tax complications or negative fallout from angry spouses that might harm our upcoming IPO. But he again dismissed my concerns, saying that would be ‘politically inadvisable.’

  “I didn’t report this at the time, because I thought I could handle it personally, but I feel I have no choice. During the retreat I was drugged and subjected to an intimate situation with Congressman Winchester and his fiancée, who is a Vitaleron employee. I have no memory of this, because someone spiked my pineapple juice with a roofie, but I subsequently received some photos that were obviously taken to compromise me. I believe Darren only told me about the Caymans investments so he could claim he disclosed it, confident that I wouldn’t report it to anyone because of the photos. This is all complicated by the fact that he’s been dating Esperanza, my father’s surgical assistant.