if there’s any way I can help you, just let me know.”
Once Gwyn had disconnected, Violet placed the phone back on the cradle. The main obstacle keeping the story from print would be her editor. Stu was more interested in local news than what was happening in Chicago. Hopefully, the tie-in with two in-state murders would make the difference.
Three nights ago, Violet had called Clay, hoping he would provide additional information to beef up her submission. But instead of helping, he’d accused her of being an idealist. Not the worst name in the books but her spine had stiffened when he threw naive into the mix. Déjà vu of what he’d told her two years ago in Chicago.
Of course, back then, she had been naive and foolish. Closing down her computer, Violet smiled at her own audacity the night she’d stopped by the hole-in-the-wall Chicago bar and grill some of the Martino soldiers had been known to frequent. Luckily, God had been watching out for her.
Instead of the Mafia, she’d found Clay. Scruffy beard. Unkempt hair. Piercing black eyes. The guy in the corner had “don’t mess with me” written all over him, along with rugged good looks that made him impossible to forget.
He’d stopped by her table long enough to warn her she was out of her element and to hightail it back to safer parts of the city. A hardcore Mafia-type wouldn’t have worried about her safety. The concern she heard in his voice had said more than words.
Putting the investigational skills she’d learned in journalism school to the test, she’d come upon an old photo of the graduating class at the Illinois Police Academy. The too-considerate mobster was none other than Detective Clay West.
Once she had a name, she learned he’d married young and divorced soon thereafter. His ex had died a few years later. The handsome cop fought crime with as much passion as Violet had searching the Internet for clues to the mob’s corrupt control.
Realizing the wealth of information an undercover cop could provide if they teamed up, Violet had staked out the grill and tried to follow Clay home a few nights later. She’d lost him on the street, never suspecting he had doubled back. When he’d pulled her into a nearby alleyway and had given her a piece of his mind, she’d been hard-pressed to focus on his anger.
Standing way too close in the shadows, she’d noticed the scent of his leather jacket and the woodsy smell of his aftershave, as well as the tiny nick on the cleft of his chin. He’d tried to convince Violet she was in way over her head and getting into his business could cause problems for both of them.
Despite his raw appeal that had caused her heart to trip along her rib cage, the story came first. Violet had ignored his warning and planned to dig deeper into the mob’s activities. All that ended a few days later when the permanent position she had hoped to land at the Gazette went to another intern. With no other journalism openings in the Windy City, Violet had accepted a position on the Missoula Daily News, where she’d languished for the last two years.
Fast-forward to a few days ago when Gwyn had mentioned an undercover cop named Clay West. Since Violet and the cop had a history of sorts, she had phoned him, hoping he’d provide more information about the murders in Montana. Clay’s terse responses to her probing questions confirmed calling him had been a big mistake.
Monday morning, Violet was still thinking about her Mafia story as she stood at the end of her editor’s desk, listening to Stu Nelson lecture her about staying on task. As much as Violet wanted to set Stu straight, she needed to pick her battles.
Keep the editor happy.
Violet had imprinted those words on her brain in Chicago. She was a good writer. Stu had said as much on more than one occasion. But he refused to assign her the hard-hitting features she wanted to write. Two years on staff and she continued to get the fillers and fluff stories.
Anyone could pull together a litany of facts and feed them to the readers. Violet’s strength was finding the story within the story. She prided herself on going deeper, thinking bolder, writing stronger than anyone else on staff. And that wasn’t egotism. It was fact.
A fact her editor didn’t seem to realize.
“The number of cops on the force has decreased while crime is on the rise,” Stu continued, his slightly this-side-of-sixty face wrinkling like a prune. “That’s the story I wanted you to write. Not your biased opinion of the chief of police.” Stu wagged his finger close to her face for emphasis.
Aware of the office door hanging open, Violet knew her peers had overheard his lambasting.
“Did you happen to look at the information I typed up concerning the two murders?” Violet threw the question into the mix.
Stu raised his brow, and his finger returned to the aforementioned position. “There you go again, chasing windmills. The fact that two women died on opposite ends of Montana has no correlation to anything you think might be happening in Chicago, Illinois.”
“The mob exists, Stu.”
“Maybe in Chicago, but we’re over twelve-hundred miles away. If you change the slant of a story I assign again, you can head back to Chicago. As I recall, the Gazette didn’t ask you to stay on staff.”
Oh, yeah, Stu was on a roll and had just gone in for the kill. “It was an internship after college,” she offered in self-defense. “There was never any promise of permanent employment following the nine-month training period.”
Backing her way to the door, she grabbed the knob, and when Stu waved her off, she slipped out of his office, feeling as if she’d just missed a head-on collision with a tractor trailer on Interstate 90.
Her heels clipped across the tiled floor. Quinn Smith looked up from his computer as she passed his cubicle and gave her a thumbs-up. “Keep the faith, Violet.”
She tried to smile back at one of the Missoula Daily News’s lead reporters. Medium height but athletic for a midfifties guy with a receding hairline, Quinn seemed to understand how she ticked.
Violet threaded her way across the length of the newsroom to her small desk, tucked along the far wall. One of the realities of her position was her distance from the editor’s office.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Stu would see her in a more favorable light after she turned in the completed story that tied the Chicago crime family with the two women who had died in Montana.
A story he had just rejected, her voice of reason cautioned. Advice she chose to ignore.
She slipped behind her desk, into the swivel chair that had lost its swivel probably last century, kicked off her shoes and logged on to a Web site she’d created in college.
A lone partition separated her desk from the main hallway leading to the elevators where Jimmy Baker now stood, peering down at her. Gangly tall with a school-boy smile, the junior reporter was a friend from her University-of-Montana days.
“Sounded bad.” He smiled with encouragement as he rounded the partition and sidled up behind her desk.
She lowered her voice so only he could hear. “FYI, I’m on to something big.”
“Ah, Violet, you’re gonna get into trouble. I can feel it coming.”
“Not if the story increases subscriptions
