American Home Wrecker

Chapter Two

When a call comes in to the Anchorage Daily Standard news line, every reporter's phone rings. Whoever picks it up deals with the tip, the request, or the angry reader.
Before social media, this urgent ringing across the room was exciting. Now, Twitter alerts for two of the young guns in the newsroom beat the news line's call by ten minutes, and Stuart Murphy's old school desk phone also rang before the general alert.
Good contacts still rule.
A hysterical new resident to Alaska's largest city had reported a body.
"Whoa! Murder victim found on the Coastal Trail near Earthquake Park!" Only twenty-four, Rick Harris tracked a wide range of official and citizen Twitter feeds. He hunched his shoulders as he peered at his phone, the ubiquitous posture of his tech generation. He quickly scanned other tweets for more information.
"Hooker?"
Tom Harwood reached for his phone while he asked. Bitter about the rapid clip at which he was being technologically left behind, he impatiently scrubbed fingers through his gray hair.
"I'll call Andy." Harwood sounded put upon, such a burden to be the guy with a friend on the Anchorage police force that fed information. To Harwood it made up for the fact that he didn't use social media and 'cheep' or 'quack' as he liked to call it after several drinks.
"Not unless hookers are eligible for social security." Murphy dropped the receiver on the phone that had graced the left corner of his desk since 1979. "This woman was at least 75."
Murphy spoke without looking up from the notes he was jotting on the long pad gripped in his right hand, the left swiftly moving across the page. Stuart Murphy was as close to retirement as Harwood, but Murphy had cultivated much better connections through the years and still had a driving passion for news. He was decent, honest, and didn't burn his sources. Harwood was burned out and let whiskey do his talking too often.
The Daily Standard's managing editor Ed Brooks walked out of his office and into the newsroom. He looked directly at his newest hire, Zilla Gillette.
"Gillette? You and Walker take this." He turned back toward his office, knowing they'd follow. They did.
He spoke while staring out at the dark. "Some fuckheads worked this old broad over pretty bad." Even though she had been born a modest Midwesterner, Zilla was used to coarse language in newsrooms.
"Why send us?" Ray Walker wouldn't have asked that question a year ago, but he'd been re-assigned from the urban crime beat to work with Gillette on the main assignment she'd been hired for, covering militias and anti-government separatists.
Zilla knew immediately. "Wife or mother? What do you suspect, Ed?"
Brooks continued to stare out the window, as if the milky old glass was hypnotic.
"Don't know, but I'd guess mother. The anti-government crowd wants young chumps who like violence and don't ask questions. Their moms don't like any of it. There could be a link here to Burke's group of merry bastards."
Alex Burke wasn't a household name in the state, but to Gillette, Walker and Brooks, he had emerged as the leader of the Double Eagles Militia and a prominent figure behind the growing numbers of those who held smoldering resentment toward the U.S. Government.
The news veterans had been meticulous, documenting a widening circle of Burke's followers.
It was 6:20 in the evening and Zilla's plans for a workout and quick dinner went out the window.
Even through the closed glass door of Brooks' office, they could hear Harwood's voice, "...beaten, stabbed, no signs of sexual assault, but a brutal attack just the same. Dumped on the Coastal Trail. A runner saw two thugs drop the body and run."
Harwood wound down a bit as he quoted one of his most consistent and reliable sources inside the Anchorage Police Department. "Andy" wasn't his source's name, but rather than saying something that sounded silly like, "someone told me." Or sounding like an asshole and saying, "a little APD bird told me." Harwood had the practical habit of giving his sources fictitious names.
Zilla knew this because Ray Walker had told her. She looked up at Walker now, his well-muscled arms crossed. His lanky body leaned against the bland wall of his boss's office. Zilla caught his eye and he raised his eyebrows slightly in an "Oh, Andy," mildly mocking way. She smiled. Through the door, Harwood continued his self-important diatribe as if the weight of all terrible crime in the city rested on his shoulders because he had moles in high places.
Ray straightened up. "So, we'll head over there, Chief." He looked at his watch instead of Brooks. They turned and walked out, needing no other instruction from their boss. Ray Walker had worked with Zilla Gillette for 13 months and knew what came next.
"I'll head to the scene, you'll head to APD?"
She had moved to her desk and was grabbing her gear.
"Yep. Meet you back here, say 8:30?"
Zilla looked at him for a moment. "You want to come over for dinner? We can write up what we've got and file for the website, update tomorrow as we get more." Ray looked slightly shocked.
"Really? Does Harwood's talk of homicide make you hungry?"
"Hm. That is sort of a strange segue I guess." Zilla shrugged. "But I can't help it. Once I get done at the crime scene, I'll need to do something to wind down and cooking always helps."
"It's been a while since someone other than Ruby cooked for me." Ray was starting to get excited about the prospect.
"Look, I didn't say I was good at it, just hungry." Zilla looked straight at him, her face serious.
"Oh."
Ray's expression was so forlorn, she laughed out loud.
"I'm kidding, Mr. Walker. I know my way around a kitchen."
"Ok, great." Ray's big, friendly smile returned full watt. "What should I bring?"
"Stop and grab some wine after you've wrung all the information you can from the detectives. I've got everything else, chicken, rice, salad and some good bread. Sound ok?"
"Sounds great." He headed for the door.
"Walker?"
He turned at her voice. "Yeah?"
"Some ice cream would be good too."
He chuckled in that low, interesting way he had and shook his head as he turned back toward the newsroom door.
Zilla threw on her leather jacket, grabbed a notepad, pen and cellphone and crammed them all in various pockets as she left. She zipped up against the quickening gloom. It was 6:30.
As she walked to her car across the mostly empty parking lot, she had a sweet stab of remembrance for her dad and his cooking. She'd learned at age nine that if she wanted variety at mealtime, she'd have to learn how to cook, so she did. The memory came with the same confounding mix of comfort and happiness for a father who had been a good, kind man with the hollowed out feeling of knowing she'd never see him again. His funeral was two years back but still so fresh in her heart that the pain was raw in an instant. She focused on the meal regime he'd developed for them to overcome the sorrow of missing him.
He hadn't been a creative or adventurous chef, but his simple meals were packed with good nutrition. Brown rice, veggies, fish, chicken. Always something raw every day, whether it was fruit, salad or vegetables, sliced fresh or steamed lightly. He fed Zilla like a coach fed an athlete in training because that's what she was, that's what they were. Practicing Tai Chi Chuan and Kung Fu form every day, he worked her hard – running, weights, sparring. It was as if he'd decided he could drive off debilitating sorrow and depression over the brutal loss of Zilla's mother by driving Zilla to focus on training to control herself, to shield her inner and outer being from the self-destruction of pain and self pity.
He wanted her to be as safe as possible from bad people, especially men with ill intent toward his daughter. He wanted her to be able to break their nose if they attacked her, but he also wanted her to be able to exorcise the demon of horror that he knew was buried in her mind, rising in nightmares. He did the best he knew how to help Zilla live a life that kept her inner chemistry clean and her mind focused and sharp.
He had saved her.
Her mind flashed an ugly and unwelcome memory. A little girl's shoes, her shoes. Green and white and brand-new. She'd loved them but could now only remember them splattered with her mother's blood.
Zilla opened her car door and shook off the weird, heavy connection her mind had created from making dinner for a friend and colleague to the death of her mother. Must be the impending winter blues, she thought gazing up at the bruise colored clouds floating in the dark sky.
Focus on work, then dinner and let the past stay where it is.
Good advice when she could get herself to take it. She inhaled the cool evening air deeply and blew it out toward the Chugach Mountains, knowing those enormous old sentinels could easily handle a puff of grief-tinged breath. She smiled, gave them a grateful little nod, got in her old Willys Jeep and coaxed it into first gear. The steel sides shuddered as the engine coughed, then steadied. She pulled out of the lot and headed for the park and the glaring, portable lights and yellow crime scene tape, the grim hallmarks of these assignments.
Zilla recognized the black Chevy truck of Sergeant August Platonovich, the head of APD's homicide division, as she pulled in to the Westchester Lagoon parking lot. Platonovich was talking with three other officers as she walked up. A patrol car blocked most of the entrance. The intermittent blue wash of its rollers warned curious neighbors to stay back. Zilla held up her press badge.
"Giving statements yet, Sergeant?"
"Hello, Ms. Gillette. You're here quite fast." His Polish accent was still heavy after two decades in Alaska.
She shrugged. "I get the assignment, I go. What can you tell me?" She flipped her notebook open, jotted the time and started writing, knowing Platonovich would tell her what he could without excessive coaxing. After a year of reading her stories and watching her meticulous work with officer interviews, he trusted her. At least as much as any cop ever trusts a reporter.
"We don't know a lot yet. On background... she was killed somewhere else and brought to the trail. A jogger saw two men drop the body on the trail and run."
"Did she describe them?" Gillette didn't look up from her rapid note taking.
"No, they had hoods on and it was nearly dark."
"How does she know they were men?"
"Good question, but it's hard to imagine two women dragging a body that distance."
"How far?"
"At least 200 yards, from the upper parking lot to where they crossed paths with the runner." He paused, continued.
"Again, this is off record at this point. Probably they planned to dump the body in the inlet and let the tide erase their mess."
"Has anyone reported an elderly woman missing?" Still looking down, writing and flipping pages.
"Her son called, worried that she wasn't home. He's waiting for us to get done at the scene and move the body so he can ID her."
"God, where is he?"
Platonovich nodded his head in the direction of the car with the slow flashers.
She looked up, surprised.
"He's here? Anything else you can tell me right now?"
"No, I'm afraid not. There is much to be determined." His intense blue eyes, as usual, revealed nothing. She thanked him and walked to the patrol car, leaning down slightly to look in the window. The victim's son was in the front seat and looked distraught. Zilla immediately recognized him. Del Warner, small time drug dealer and known Double Eagle militia associate. Brooks' instincts had been spot on. This could be a way in to this group.
"Mr. Warner? My name is Zilla Gillette. I'm a reporter with the Anchorage Daily Standard. Could I talk to you for a couple of minutes sir?" She spoke in a low voice, hoping it would coax him into opening the car window. It didn't.
"I ain't talking to no reporters. My momma's dead! Can't you leave me alone?"
She pressed gently. "I'm sure you're worried, but how can you be sure this person is your mother?"
He stared straight ahead, a baseball cap jammed over unkempt graying hair. His voice was at first so quiet she barely heard him.
"Because I know." Then angry, "Now leave me the fuck alone!" He flashed a look at her, anguish and of note to the sharp reporter. Fear was in his eyes.
She reached in her pocket and tucked a card into the slot between the glass and the door. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
She walked back to Platonovich. "Is he a suspect?"
His lips tightened for an instant. "Everyone close to the victim is a suspect in a homicide Ms. Gillette, you know that. However, Mr. Warner has an airtight alibi in this particular instance."
"How so?"
"He's been in lock up since last night. Picked up for traffic tickets and a bench warrant for failure to appear on a drug charge from a year ago. We were hoping to work him for information about where he's getting the black tar he's been peddling, but he was uncooperative and desperate to get out to check on his mother. He was very worried about her. Obviously with good reason."
"Interesting." Zilla jotted a few more notes. "He didn't say why?"
"He did not. Would not"
"Thank you, Sergeant. I'll be in touch tomorrow."
"I expected you would." He nodded, his handsome features somber.
She shook his hand and took her leave.