Red Man Down(70)

‘We keep a log,’ Pam said, ‘and it’s almost all we keep on this machine, so I think it goes back … yeah, five years. Give me the name again?’

She found the entries for Frank Martin’s death – the report of his discovery in the car, and a couple of follow-up reports, the first of which featured the ‘farewell message.’ Each report was signed by the information officer who had transmitted the information to the media. The report that included Frank’s message was signed, in a clear, firm hand, ‘Mary Leary.’

‘Huh,’ Pam said, puzzled. ‘When did Mary have that job? Must not have lasted long. I sure never worked with her.’

‘She doesn’t have it now?’

‘No, Mary’s got a morning shift on patrol at West Side. You want her phone number?’

Mary Leary answered from her squad car and agreed to meet at a Wendy’s on Campbell.

‘You bet I remember the Frank Martin case,’ she said, sipping her coffee. ‘I was subbing for Kelley Pease that week. Two information officers got sick at once and when my sergeant asked me to take it for a few days I jumped at the chance to try the job. Shee, I handed it back to Kelley when she got back and said, “You can have my share of this, Baby.”’

‘It was too hard?’

‘It was all pretty stressful, but it was that Frank Martin case that convinced me never to put in for the job. Suicides always seem like the saddest cases to me. And then when I looked at the next of kin and saw it was Ed Lacey’s uncle – he was at the academy when I was in training. He was one of the Red Men, the guys you have to fight! And remember how you start out hating the Red Man’s guts—’

‘That’s mostly fear.’

‘Well, rightly so – they can reduce you to just jelly if they want to, and then you’re history, out of there. But then those trainers, if they see you’re willing to try, can help you so much – and nobody was ever kinder or more considerate than Ed Lacey was about helping. He was a wonderful teacher. So when I saw that it was his uncle we found dead in front of the Sears store, I thought, as a courtesy, I should call him and ask if he wanted to comment for the story I was about to release to the media. He answered at home, and the poor guy had just opened that email message from his uncle. He was simply, you know, devastated.’

‘It’s so hard to try to comfort,’ Sarah said. ‘You don’t know what to say.’

‘Yeah, but this was … different, somehow. At first he couldn’t seem to talk, he kept choking. But then he kind of sucked it up and said, “Mary, I want you to be sure you report his final message exactly the way I give it to you.” And he read out that first sentence, something about “I didn’t take the money.” I did my best to copy it exactly, but he was kind of sobbing at the same time, and then he dropped the phone. I heard some coughing and groaning, and then his wife picked up the phone and said, “Who is this?” I gave her my name and told her, “Ed was trying to give me the message he just got from his uncle, but I guess he broke down.”

‘I told her he seemed anxious to get it quoted right, and asked her if she could just forward the message to me. And she did, and I gave it to all the reporters.’

Mary’s face was a mask of regret. ‘I have never seen anybody so close to apoplectic as Ed was when he found me here the next day. He kept yelling, “I told you to report it just as I read it to you!”

‘Do you know what it’s like to have a Red Man mad at you? I mean, I didn’t think he’d actually beat me up, but I wasn’t sure. I kept remembering the first time I saw him in that big red helmet, beating on me just enough to make me look like a turkey. And the thought does cross your mind that if he wants to, this man is just an awesome fighter; he could put a hurt on you you’d never forget. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry; after all, he’d told me to give it to the press. It wasn’t till later that I realized he had just read me the first sentence and it was Angela who gave me the whole text.’

‘Why do you think he was so upset about the second sentence?’

‘I suppose he thought the first sentence proved his uncle wasn’t guilty, and then the second sentence seemed to imply that he was. He was probably going to change it slightly.’

‘So you got the message only from Ed’s email? Not from Harry Eisenstaat?’

‘Who?’

‘Our investigating officer, the one who attended the autopsy.’

‘Oh, him. I never could get him on the phone. After I got the case assigned I called him and left messages, but he never called me back. So I just called around and picked up the info from the first responders and the coroner, and pieced the story together myself. You can’t wait, you know – you have deadlines.’