She couldn’t admit it to anyone in the newsroom, but she was nervous. Extremely nervous. Allies asked if she was worried, and she shook her head and laughed. The Web site famous for the “Malik Watch” had started posting odds that by naming Sam Coyne, the previously unknown reporter, Sally Barwick, had torpedoed her own career and possibly brought down a handful of Trib executives with her. Already, just since the news had come down, a hundred of her colleagues had placed their bets, with the trend running two to one against her.
Sam Coyne had agreed to a blood test.
Shortly after the news broke on TV, police had asked Barwick in for questioning. Accompanied by a Tribune lawyer, she refused to reveal her source in the department but briefed them with all the information that would be in the piece, including Coyne’s attacks in Shadow World, the correlation between Coyne’s murders in the game and the Wicker Man murders, and Coyne’s attempted assault at her home. She was still at the station when they brought Coyne in: four cops, no handcuffs, and three attorneys (including Bob Ginsburg, the Trib lawyer pointed out). Sally hid behind a Coke machine until they disappeared into an interrogation room.
They questioned Coyne for three hours and released him after he agreed to a blood test. Sally’s stomach wrung itself like a wet towel when she heard that. She had been certain his lawyers would fight any request that might incriminate him. Now, at two o’clock the following afternoon, it appeared possible, even probable, she would be proved wrong about Coyne in a matter of hours – one of the fastest undoings of a promising career in journalism history.
Malik hadn’t been seen in the newsroom all day. This was surely it, the whispers said. The Sam Coyne stunt was the last straw. What was he thinking? What was Barwick thinking? We all knew she was a little off her rocker – she had no life outside the Tribune except in that crazy computer game – but no one had thought her capable of a suicidal stunt like this. Was somebody setting her up with bad information? Someone who had a beef with Coyne? Was she being played by someone who’d been slammed by Ginsburg and Addams in court? Research recent cases involving Sam Coyne – especially the ones where G amp;A acted as plaintiff’s attorney – and start with the biggest verdicts and work down. We’ll need all this when Coyne passes that blood test and we print the retraction next week. The new managing editor will be glad to have the diligence done in advance. Heck, the new editor might even be one of us… Such was the way rumors spread.
Rumors spread so fast, in fact, that an Iowa company specializing in the distribution of agricultural products, a company that had lost a hundred-million-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit last year with Sam Coyne leading the litigation for their competitor, issued a press release denying they had anything to do with the accusations against Coyne. No one had even asked them.
Rumors cut the other way too. Web sites were papered with unconfirmed and unsourced tales of Coyne’s promiscuity and kinky bedroom practices.
Sally called Justin on a real phone, her free hand on the cradle in case his mother answered. He was home.
“I just wanted to talk to somebody,” she whispered. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s starting to look like we were wrong.”
“We aren’t wrong.”
“But what if he didn’t kill Deirdre Thorson? What if that was a copycat and he’s giving up his blood because he knows he didn’t do it?”
“If his blood doesn’t match, that’s all it will prove.”
“Except that my career is over. And I’m going to be named in a trillion-dollar lawsuit. And probably go to jail for contempt or something because I don’t really have a source in the police department, but they won’t believe me when I tell them the truth.”
“You’re worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet.”
“But they will, Justin. Don’t you see what’s going on? He agreed to the blood test. Why would he do it if he knew he was guilty?”
“Lots of reasons. Maybe he’s a split personality and doesn’t remember.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Or maybe he’s going to challenge the DNA evidence,” Justin said. “It hasn’t been done much lately, but I’ve read about a bunch of cases going all the way back to O.J. where accused killers have gotten off by claiming the evidence was tainted. Or the testing not a hundred percent accurate. His lawyer will even say in court, Why would my client have freely given the police evidence he knew would incriminate him? Juries are too smart for that these days, but he might try if it was his only hope.”
“God, I feel sick.” Sally tapped her keyboard, searching the wire to see if any news was breaking on the case. On the far side of the room, Barwick heard a murmur and the swishy, squeaky sound of people standing up from their seats. Stephen Malik walked into the newsroom, stony and purposeful. Attempts by reporters to read his expression couldn’t have been more obvious if his face were Braille and they were assaulting it with their fingers. Malik passed Sally’s cubicle and didn’t pause but wiggled his fingers just under her sight line, and she hung up the phone and followed him into his office as the definitive rumor began its path around Trib Tower. Malik was fired and Barwick’s going with him. By the time it reached the tenth floor, the story described how Malik had already been escorted from his office by armed guards.
But by then the truth had entered the system, as well. In a whisper.
“Did they fire you?” Barwick asked in his office.
“They started to,” he said in a voice that was hoarse and tired and disappointed. “They started to tell me I had been irresponsible. That the checks and balances we have in place here at the paper should have stopped your story on Coyne before the press. That by circumventing those checks and balances I had betrayed their trust, or betrayed the duties with which I had been entrusted, or betrayed the board of trustees. Something about trust and the betrayal of it, anyway.”
Sally urged him with her eyes to get on with it. Did she still have a job?
“And they said this whole Coyne thing was just one event in a series of unfortunate ones, and they were disappointed, and they had given me every chance but they had no choice, and it wasn’t personal, and that some financial arrangements could be made with respect to my contract, and if I had even moderate savings tucked away somewhere, a pension, IRA, et cetera, that I could live a very comfortable retirement, which is what they assumed I wanted because a man my age wouldn’t be able to find another job after such a high-profile scandal, no matter how they couched it for the press. Also, that I should retain counsel in preparation for the inevitable civil suit.”
“God, I’m so sorry, Stephen,” Sally said, the beginning of a good cry stinging her nose.
“And then they started in on you. How you would take much of the fall, but you were still young and talented and could no doubt recover from this. There might even be a confessional-type book in it for you.”
“So we’re both cooked,” she said, a little relieved it was over, oddly.
“Curiously, no,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Because as they were making that speech, word came in. Coyne failed the DNA test.”
“Oh my God. It was him?” she whispered, certain she would cry now.
“It was him.” Malik was laughing. “You should have seen the sons of bitches. If they weren’t sitting on fine brown leather, I swear I could have seen each of them shit his pants.”
“Holy God!” Sally spun around his desk and hugged him. “I’m so happy for you. Happy for me, but mostly happy for you.”
“Barwick,” he said, pushing her to a distance where they could see each other’s faces. “I gotta ask… Why do you sound so surprised?”