I’m excited to bring you an excerpt today from Front Page Fatality by LynDee Walker! Be sure to visit the tour page at
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“How are you going to get around the TV guys?”
Aaron grinned. “Not worried about it. You and Charlie are the only ones who’ve even asked about the other guy so far. There’s a new girl at Channel Ten. Green as a March inchworm. And Kessler over at RVA…” he rolled his eyes and I laughed.
“If the report wasn’t on his makeup mirror, he didn’t look at it for more than ten seconds,” I said. “But what’d you tell Charlie?”
Charlotte Lewis at Channel Four was my biggest competition, usually one step ahead of or behind me on any given story. If she was going with the vigilante, Aaron would just have to get over it.
“Hey, if I can handle you, I can handle Charlie.” He laughed. “She left about an hour ago. She didn’t ask for nearly as much as you did, but she did make me swear on my grandmama’s grave I’d call her if you were running it. So you just made my afternoon a bit more pleasant. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. When can I have my report?”
“It’s waiting on forensics, but I asked Jerry to bring it in with him. He won’t be too much longer.”
He didn’t get the words out before the door flew open and a disarmingly handsome detective who looked like he was good at hiding from those Krispy Kreme boxes in the gym rushed in. His sheer mass made the small space feel crowded.
“Jerry,” Aaron said, “this is Nichelle Clarke from the Telegraph. Nichelle, this is Jerry Davis, the detective working on this morning’s shooting.”
I smiled, extending my hand and shaking his firmly. “Nice to meet you, Jerry.”
“Nichelle.” Jerry nodded, offering Aaron a folder full of papers and photos. He shot a sidelong glance at me, then focused on Aaron, who was reading something he’d pulled from the file.
An eight-by-ten glossy from the scene lay on top of the stack in the open folder. Darryl Wright, lifeless eyes staring at nothing, was sprawled across his sofa in a relaxed pose that mimicked the first dead dealer. Part of Darryl’s black leather baseball cap was gone; the shot had come from the front and blown the hat and its contents across the lamp on the table next to the sofa and the wall behind it. I swallowed a curse, averting my eyes.
“Ballistics worked fast today. Same gun.” Aaron dropped the report over the photo and tapped it with his pen, raising his eyes to mine. “So, yes, Nichelle, we can’t say for certain that it’s the same shooter, but it’s looking that way. Jerry can answer some questions for you.”
Jerry folded his big frame into the other chair and rested his elbows on his knees, facing me.
“How does that change your investigation?” I asked, pen poised over my notepad. I prided myself on the fact that I’d never once been accused of misquoting anyone, especially since my inexplicable disdain for gadgets extended to tape recorders (and pretty much everything else with a battery that wasn’t my laptop or my Blackberry). I’d invented my own form of shorthand after I’d gotten frustrated trying to learn the real thing, but the accuracy of my notes would’ve made them admissible in court.
“Well, we can combine resources on the cases since we’re likely not looking for two different killers,” he said. “The more heads you’ve got looking at it, the better.”
“And what are you looking for? You have any working theories?” I asked.
Jerry glanced at Aaron and Aaron shot me a warning glare I pretended to ignore.
“We’re not ruling anything out yet. We have officers canvassing the neighborhood, and we’re waiting for all the relevant information to come in before we construct likely scenarios.”
Wow, that was a long way of saying a fat lot of nothing. I scribbled anyway. I was long-since fluent in cop doubletalk, and figured it would serve me well if I ever made it to covering politics.
“So you’ve stepped up police presence on Southside?”
“Yes. The number of uniformed officers on the streets of that particular neighborhood has been doubled and will stay that way until this is resolved. We don’t want our residents living in fear.”
I nodded. It wasn’t much, but I had two dead guys killed with the same gun. Not exactly Son of Sam, but worthy of a little space.
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