“No Lie Lasts Forever” links a shamed reporter, retired serial killer

Author’s note: In these excerpts, suspended TV reporter Flynn Martin and her father, Michael, visit the newsroom of The Denver Post in an effort to gain access to the notes of reporter — and recent murder victim — Robbie McGrath. Meanwhile, retired serial killer Harry Kugel, whose spree years earlier went unsolved, learns that police appear to be investigating the possibility he could be a suspect in the murder.

Flynn wonders if they have the right place. Perhaps it’s a diorama from a future museum in the twenty-third century.

A newsroom. How quaint! The same as watching polymer clay men discover fire during the Pleistocene epoch in a history museum today.

Nobody lives here. Nobody works here. A neutron bomb has wiped out every human-journalist.

“Holy shit.”

Her father says what she was thinking.

Michael hasn’t been to the newsroom since the offices moved from downtown to a warehouse with cheaper rent on the northern edge of town. Her father exited the journalistic stage before the great meltdown of readership and advertising. He missed round after round of buyouts and layoffs.

Managing editor Ted Withers greets Michael with an overabundance of good cheer. Flynn wonders what there is to manage beyond the faint hum of the fluorescent lights. 

Withers leads them to a small, windowless conference room. One woman waits at the hexagonal Formica table. Her face is weighed down by heavy-rimmed black glasses. Her hair is spiky and short. She might believe in self-barbering. Her handshake is rough and perfunctory.

The charm factor is zilch.

Flynn has never laid eyes on the woman, but no introduction is necessary. For decades, a Judy Hayes byline was a daily fixture of The Denver Post. She lorded over the cops and crime beat like no other. She owns a legendary Rolodex—never uploaded as data to any computer file she has no reason to trust—that is fat with statewide law enforcement contacts.

She always was a combative, competitive reporter who worked and acted as if there was another paper in town ready to duke it out on deadline. But there’s no competition. Now that the town is down to one newspaper, all she’s doing is shadowboxing ghosts.

As a crime reporter starting out, way back when, there was at least one day each week when Flynn Martin chased a Judy Hayes story. In the good old days when Denver was a robust journalistic town, the paper hit the streets around 3:00 a.m., and too often Flynn felt as if she was a half day behind come dawn.

Hayes likes her crime stories funky and gruesome. She revels in weird. Judy Hayes is no press conference reporter. She gathers all her quotes and information by phone. Her chalky pallor, and body built for carrying her brain around from one meeting to the next, is proof.

And here she sits, looking every bit as ready to talk as to smack someone in the teeth. Hayes gives Michael the good-old-buddy routine, her voice as feminine and pleasant as present-day Bob Dylan.

Flynn doesn’t misunderstand. She is here thanks to her father’s reputation and credentials.

After the pleasantries, her father straps on sincerity like a trusted pastor giving a eulogy. He offers heartfelt condolences about Robbie McGrath. Her father’s brief speech is so earnest Flynn finds herself tearing up. Judy Hayes, on the other hand, remains an unmovable force, facial features with all the emotion of cold marble.

“It’s good to see you and all,” says Withers. Gold wire rims. Dead eyes. Bald. Overdone aftershave. Fake smile. “But explain again what it is you want to do?”

Her father takes a moment. How to navigate this conundrum? Michael Martin is negotiating on the basis of a partial truth but needs to gain access to a reporter’s raw notes without seeming too eager or in any way suggesting the newspaper might be sitting on the answer to Robbie McGrath’s demise.

“And before you explain.” Withers turns to Flynn. He gives her the full once-over. “On what basis are you here?”

“I’m not here in an official capacity,” says Flynn. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You’re on leave?” says Hayes.

Is there a sign on her back?

“I’m off air. That’s all.”

“But you might be put back on any day?” says Withers. “I mean, theoretically.”

“I hope so.” Wrong answer. “It’s killing me. I mean, right now, of all times.”

“Well,” says Withers, “I guess it won’t hurt to hear your pitch, but we are not letting you sift through Robbie’s notes and files as outsiders.”

Outsiders like vermin, given the tone.

“Outsiders?” Her father stabs his elbow on the table and holds up one finger. “First, I’m a recent retiree. And I believe I left here with an honorable discharge.”

“And you’re out there blogging and Substacking or whatever it is these days?”

“Writing about obscure corners of the state budget and weird unintended consequences of new laws,” says Michael. “I’m not covering breaking news.”

“Not a big distinguishing difference,” says Withers.

“And two.”

Michael’s second finger joins the first.

V for victory.

“One of the most dogged reporters you’ll ever meet, someone who happens to have been screwed over by her station and, because of her longtime work in this city, happens to have received a tip from a quality source.”

“Nice speech,” says Hayes. “What else would a father say? These notes belong to the paper.”

“Without question,” says Michael. “Thus, my proposal.”

 “Slim chance but I will listen. As a courtesy.”

“Whatever we find—you get the first crack at anything we put together. Anything we write.”

Withers’s bushy eyebrows are stuck in an up position above his greasy wire rims. Hayes rubs her forehead.

“Extra labor—no charge,” says Michael. “The paper will come off looking like heroes.”

“Waste of time,” says Hayes. “Cops are sure this is PDQ. You know, BTK came back. He couldn’t bear to stay away. PDQ is in the same mode—determined to make a game of it. He needs attention. Craves it.”

“I know.” Flynn smiles, to see if her positive facial language might prove contagious. It doesn’t.

“The cops on the first three cases?” says Hayes. “They held back key details of the murder scene for exactly this reason. So they would know if he ever resurfaced. I mean, they didn’t go out and publish a Wikipedia page on PDQ’s precise methodology.”

“I get it,” says Flynn. “And I’m hearing the same thing.”

Hayes remains unmoved by the professional companionship. She turns to Withers. “We’d be setting all sorts of precedents.”

Withers puts his glasses on the table. He rubs his raw red eyes. “We are understaffed,” he says to Hayes. “And these two are hardly strangers to our line of work.”

Hayes is ready. “Robbie McGrath will roll over in her grave. Well, it will be the first thing she does as soon as she gets there.”

Her father knows.

Flynn knows.

As soon as the judge says things in your favor, zip it.

“Scary times call for tough choices,” says Withers. “Robbie McGrath might not have been crazy about someone else digging through her notes, but you can bet your ass she’s happy someone aboveground is asking questions about why she’s not here.”

Harry spots the black sedan and stops. He is half a block away on a path that cuts through Governor’s Park. The sedan stands out like an infected pimple on a model’s face. It’s parked under a streetlight on the stub of Pennsylvania Street that dead-ends in Governor’s Park.

He stares at the darkened windows of the car for one full minute before letting his gaze drift. He spots the second, an identical twin dripping with cop essence. Harry’s condo building sits between the two vehicles, but Harry knows the cops could be anywhere in the vicinity.

Or this could be a coincidence.

An acid bile burbles inside. He scolds himself for watching too closely, but it’s dark.

Harry is tired, worn out, pissed off.

And now this. Maybe they have cops all over Capitol Hill. Or maybe they think they have zeroed in on something. But any renewed investigative work in Harry’s corner of the Capitol Hill thicket will only be based on the old fucking cases and not the new because, as a plain matter of unvarnished fact, he did not kill Robbie McGrath.

So who stirred the pot? Who prompted a fresh canvass of the area?

Harry has a bad feeling about the answer to those questions.

Or maybe . . .

Jesus.

The cops walk out of the building to the north of Harry’s. They look purposeful. One is Black and thin, medium height. He has a bald head like a dark chocolate billiard ball. The second cop is White and female. Younger, slender, short dark hair. She is a full head taller than her partner but listens like an understudy learning a part. Both cops wear dark pants and dark-blue waist-length jackets. They stop at the first car. The Black cop opens the front door like he might be about to climb in, but then they both stand and set about the busy business of cops chatting. No rush. The female leans against the car with her back to Harry.

Harry cuts across Governor’s Park so he can come down Pennsylvania Street like he is arriving home, per normal. He hustles without being obvious in case anyone is watching for odd reactions.

But guilty parties—and Harry isn’t guilty, at least not for Robbie McGrath—do not strafe a pair of detectives gabbing by their not-so-stealthy unmarked car.

Harry tucks his headphones away. He was planning to finish Mahler’s garish Eighth Symphony all the way back to his condo. But now he needs his ears for whatever conversational shrapnel he might glean.

He pretends he is lost in thought. Oblivious.

He will walk as close as he dares. He keeps his gaze focused on a spot six feet in front of his stride, head down. This isn’t like Flynn Martin’s place, where he couldn’t risk staring.

But he can’t be obvious. He can’t stop and ask how they’re doing, what they’re up to, Is there a problem, Officer, in the neighborhood? 

The female cop has her back to Harry but turns at the approaching footsteps or turns because she turns for no reason at all. Even in the forgiving glow of a streetlight, her face reveals more age and experience than Harry had assumed, almost like a magic trick. Harry quickly adds a decade to his original estimate. She isn’t a newbie. Her gaze is seasoned and wary.

She looks at him longer than the average person might look. Cops can do that. Maybe they are supposed to do that. Maybe that’s how they’re trained. Harry and the female cop don’t lock gazes. It isn’t a stare-down, but it lasts several seconds past a glance.

Harry nods. If one end of the scale is completely ignoring the presence of another human being and the other end of the scale is a protracted genuflection where you don’t return to vertical until given permission to do so, Harry’s gesture is one baby step in the positive territory from complete disregard. But he communicates respect.

She nods back. She matches his chin bob with one of her own, no smile. She doesn’t look like a smiler. She looks like she hasn’t smiled in a long time. Has his gesture triggered a basic instinct in another human being, to match signals of acknowledgment? Dogs exchanging sniffs.

Whatever they are discussing stops when she turns. Harry has pierced an invisible bubble of personal space.

Colloquium interruptus.

The Black cop never looks over, but Harry feels the woman’s gaze on his back like dual laser beams.

Harry walks. He isn’t going to stop and ask, “What’s up?” like some dumb hick.

He hears their car door shut, not a slam but close to that level of assertiveness.

Harry hustles through the double-buzzered door of his condo building. He is swift and efficient with the keys for one door and keypad code for the next. He catches a glimpse of the two cops heading his way in the reflection off the second glass door as it opens.

Once the elevator door closes behind him and he is alone, Harry resists every urge to pound the wall. You can never be sure about new video surveillance, anything like that.

The presence of the cops is no coincidence.

They are here precisely because of what he’s feared.

The new fake case means the cops are mucking around again in their old hunches, their pet theories. They will take their failure off the shelf, blow off the dust, and wonder what they missed. 

And he knows exactly who to blame for dragging her ass.

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Type of Story: Review

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