“Don’t know what?”
“Nia Durango was one of the girls at the cemetery last night.” He sounded like a magician who’s surprised himself along with his audience by pulling a rabbit from his hat.
“Nia Durango.” I repeated blankly. “The name is supposed to mean some—oh! She’s Sophy Durango’s kid?”
“Give the lady the kewpie doll for firing the winning shot. Do you swear on Boom-Boom’s jersey that you really didn’t know Durango’s kid was with you last night?”
“Murray, ten minutes ago I was blissfully asleep. I can’t handle all this—Wuchnik and Dick Yarborough, Sophy Durango’s daughter, Helen Kendrick’s shrieking, Satan, eliminating Bibles—too much without even a cup of coffee, let alone a trip to the bathroom. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up. At least I was wide awake now, but I still found Murray’s call a lot to digest. What on earth was Sophy Durango thinking, to let her kid take part in an escapade like this? I guess that wasn’t a fair question—Nia Durango had sneaked out pretending that she was spending the night with her pal Arielle.
Durango was president of the University of Illinois. She was also a candidate for the United States Senate. And she was running against Helen Kendrick, she of the ear of corn on the American flag. Three years ago, no one had heard Kendrick’s name, except in connection with her husband’s family’s fortune. Then Kendrick had sued Durango and the U of I over the school’s science admissions criteria—Durango refused to allow incoming freshmen to substitute Creation “science” for evolutionary biology.
“We’re training young people for the twenty-first century, not the twelfth,” Durango had said, and Kendrick, who believed Creationism should be taught in the public schools, had sued. The trial had brought Kendrick national attention and support, along with a slot on GEN’s national cable news show (GENuine News, No Substitutes Allowed! scrolls across the top of the screen while you’re watching Lawlor, Kendrick, and other commentators hyperventilate.)
Kendrick’s followers had filled the courtroom during the trial, and had held up gorilla masks when Durango passed them in the hallway. Since Durango was African-American, their chant “to send the monkey back to the zoo” had struck some of us as a wee bit racially charged.
How had Helen Kendrick gotten hold of the news that Durango’s daughter was at Mount Moriah in time for her Sunday-morning show? If parents of one of Petra’s girls had gone to their tame Rottweiler in the mayor’s office, their kid might have given him all the names of the girls in their Carmilla club, but that still made it a mighty fast data transfer to Helen Kendricks and Wade Lawlor. The officers at the 13th District wouldn’t have known, because I hadn’t known last night.
Of course, Global Entertainment probably had a dozen sources in police departments and mayoral offices all over America. It was GEN’s mission to spread embarrassing news about centrist or left-leaning public figures; sometimes the reports they put out were even true. When I’d showered and had some breakfast, I’d watch the Internet replay of Helen Kendrick’s show.
6.
LEAKS EVERYWHERE
AS IT TURNED OUT, I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO LOOK AT KENDRICK, let alone call Murray back. In fact, I barely had time to shower and make an espresso before Sergeant Anstey arrived, with Elizabeth Milkova. I’d met Milkova on a murder inquiry last winter, when she’d been part of the Area Six detective squad attached to Lieutenant Terry Finchley.
“Officer Milkova! Is Terry working this case? Or have you moved on to bigger and better things?”
“Lieutenant Finchley asked me to accompany Sergeant Anstey, since he’s tied up this afternoon.” Milkova had short, dark hair, which she played with nervously, pushing it behind her ears every few minutes. When I asked heartily after Finchley’s health, her hands automatically went to the sides of her head.
Anstey glared at me, hands on hips. “Finchley warned me that you think of yourself as some kind of one-woman show, but I’m not a customer. You lied to me last night.”
I didn’t have a witty one-woman comeback to that, so I merely sipped my espresso.
“I knew that story about you hearing some screams inside Mount Moriah was bull-hockey. I should have locked you up last night until you told the truth. Instead, I get to hear it from my watch commander, who brings me in on my day off.”
I wondered if I should put him in touch with Murray: two guys who felt I’d blindsided them with their bosses. They could get drunk together and think of horrible names to call me.
“Tough,” I commiserated instead. “I don’t like working Sundays myself, but here we both are.”