Private Scandals

sidewalk.
    “Violence struck in the early morning hours in this affluent New York neighborhood. Lewis McNeil, senior producer of the popular talk show Angela’s, was gunned down outside his home in Brooklyn Heights this morning. According to a police source, McNeil, a Chicago native, was apparently leaving for work when he was shot at close range. McNeil’s wife was in the house . . . .” The camera did its slow pan. “She was awakened shortly after seven A . M . by the sound of a gunshot.”
    Finn listened to the rest of the report, eyes fixed. Grimly, he zipped through another week of news, gathering snippets on the McNeil murder investigation.
    He tucked his notes away and headed into the newsroom. He found Joe as the cameraman was heading out on assignment.
    “Question.”
    “Make it a quick one. I’m on the clock.”
    “February ninety-two. Lew McNeil’s murder. That was your camerawork on the New York stand-up, wasn’t it?”
    “What can I say?” Joe polished his nails on his sweatshirt. “My art is distinctive.”
    “Right. Where was he shot?”
    “As I recall, right outside his house.” As he thought back, Joe reached into his hip pocket for a Baby Ruth. “Yeah, they said it looked like he was cleaning off his car.”
    “No, I mean anatomically. Chest, gut, head? None of the reports I reviewed said.”
    “Oh.” Joe frowned, shutting his eyes as if to bring the scene back to mind. “They’d cleaned up pretty good by the time we got there. Never saw the stiff.” He opened his eyes. “Did you know Lew?”
    “Some.”
    “Yeah, me too. Tough.” He bit off a hefty section of chocolate. “Why the interest?”
    “Something I’m working on. Didn’t your reporter ask the cops for details?”
    “Who was that—Clemente, right? Didn’t last around here very long. Sloppy, you know? I can’t say if he did or not. Look, I’ve got to split.” He headed for the stairs, then rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. “Yeah, yeah.” He headed up the steps backward, watching Finn. “Seems to me I heard one of the other reporters talking. He said Lew caught the bullet in the face. Nasty, huh?”
    “Yeah.” A grim satisfaction swam through Finn’s blood. “Very nasty.”
     
    Jenner munched a midmorning danish, washing down the cherry filling with sweetened coffee. As he ate and sipped, he studied the grisly photos tacked to the corkboard. The conference room was quiet now, but he’d left the blinds open on the glass door that separated it from the bull pen of the precinct.
    Angela Perkins. Marshall Pike. He stared at what had been done to them. If he stared long enough, he knew he could go into a kind of trance—a state of mind that left the brain clear for ideas, for possibilities.
    He was just annoyed enough at Finn for emotion to interfere with intellect. The man should have told him the details of his conversation with Pike. However slight it had been, it had been police business. The idea of Finn interviewing Pike alone burned Jenner more bitterly than the station house coffee.
    He remembered their last meeting, in the early hours of the morning that Pike had been murdered.
     
    “We’re clear that the shooter knows Miss Reynolds.” Jenner ticked the fact off on a finger. “Was aware of her relationship, or at least her argument, with Pike.” He held up a second finger. “He or she knows Deanna’s address, knew Pike’s and had enough knowledge of the studio to set upthe camera after killing Angela Perkins.”
    “Agreed.”
    “The notes have shown up under Deanna’s door, on her desk, in her car, in the apartment she still keeps in Old Town.” Jenner had lifted a brow, hoping that Finn would offer some explanation for that interesting fact. But he hadn’t. Finn knew how to keep information to himself. It was one of the things Jenner admired about him. “It has to be someone who works at CBC,” Jenner concluded.
    “Agreed. In theory.” Finn smiled when Jenner let out a huff of breath. “It could be someone who worked there. It’s possible it’s a fan of Deanna’s who’s been in the studio. A regular audience member. Lots of people have enough rudimentary knowledge of television to work a camera for a still shot.”
    “I think that’s stretching it.”
    “So let’s stretch it. He sees her every day on TV.”
    “Could be a woman.”
    Finn let that cook a moment, then shook his head. “A remote possibility. Let’s shuffle that aside for a minute and