Chapter 73

The weekend newspaper power-that-be in Halifax, assignment editor Mittelstaedt was nearly breaking into Rawle and Verryn’s phone call.
The cell phone beeped again furiously, as soon as Rawle folded it over.
“Rawle, goddamn it!”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here. It’s me.”
Mittelstaedt growled in anger at finally getting through. “Are you on the search location? Where in hell is Jacky?!”
“-He’s dead,” Rawle said in a squeaky voice. “He’s dead. So’s Tamara. His wife.”
“What? What did you say?”
Rawle sighed loudly so as not to blubber, releasing his emotions into the air on a stream of hot breath. “I said he’s dead. He’s dead. Like, dead.”
There was a long pause, then Mittelstaedt’s voice came back. “Talk to me some more.”
“It’s a double murder,” Rawle said, but then a terrible thought occurred to him, for the first time. “Oh shit! Maybe, its murder-suicide? How in hell do I know?”
Rawle muttered part of that again, just to think out loud. “Murder-suicide? Oh, Shesus Christ.”
“Okay, here’s what I want you to do…”
Mittelstaedt always got shocked later, Rawle thought to himself, no matter how incredible the situation. If Mittelstaedt himself got murdered, he’d still get the story put to bed before deadline.
Cry about it after deadline, his deep, Germanic voice seemed to say.
Mittelstaedt was laying out orders, most of which Rawle did not listen to.
After a few long seconds, Rawle realized Mittelstaedt had hung up and he was no longer listening to anybody, except his own blaring thoughts.
He did manage to gather that the news of the deaths was exploding back in the large, industrial newsroom of the Gazette in downtown Halifax.
Word was being shouted from cubicle to cubicle: A good man, friend, co-worker, and his young wife, murdered. Disbelief and pain traveled through the Grey Lady of Argyle Street like the all-pervasive crackle of the police radio scanners.
In the midst of all the emotional stuff, Rawle knew, the paper would still have to have a story for tomorrow morning. Grieving and shock and everything else, would have to pile up later, mental health be damned.
Rawle Powder was already standing in the middle of the crime scene, standing toe-to-toe with police, learning things almost as quickly as they did.
He was the only reporter in the entire province at the crime scene.
Kyle Verryn arrived in 10 minutes more.