Free If Angels Fall by Rick Mofina

wrote about the girl murdered last year, Tanita
Donner?”
    “Look, I’m on a deadline. Please give me your name and
number and I’ll call you right back.”
    “I don’t want my name in the paper.”
    “Listen ma’am—“
    “What I have to tell you, I have to say now, while I’m
up to it.”
    “I won’t talk to you unless you tell me who you are.
You know how people accuse us of making things up.”
    She gave it some thought: “Florence.”
    “Got a last name, Florence?”
    “Just Florence.” She sounded grandmotherly, early
sixties, working class, probably watched soaps and game shows all day.
    “Why are you calling, Florence?”
    “You know about that little boy who was kidnapped
today, how they’re saying it’s just like that little baby girl who got murdered
last year, but they don’t know who did it?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “I know who killed her.”
    Sure you do, dear. “What’s the killer’s name?”
    “I don’t know his real name.”
    “Look, I’m really—how do you know this guy’s the
killer?”
    “I heard him confess. He said he did it and no one
knows.”
    “Really? Did you tell the police?”
    “I called them. They said they needed more specific
information from me. But they never came around. Never talked to me. So when
that little boy got kidnapped today, I decided to call you.”
    She continued. “I love crime stories. I read all the
papers. Yours are the best, except for that mistake you made about the Sunday
school teacher being the killer.”
    “The Sunday school teacher didn’t kill Tanita Donner?”
    “Well, not by the way the real killer talks. I wanted
you to know what I heard, but don’t put my name in the paper. He scares me.”
    “Do you think the killer also kidnapped Danny Becker?”
    “What do you think? You’re a smart fellah.”
    “How did you come to hear Tanita Donner’s killer
confess?”
    A moment passed and Florence did not answer.
    “Are you a clairvoyant, Florence?”
    “A psychic? Who no, I’m a Roman Catholic. I sing in
the choir at Our Lady Queen of Tearful Sorrows.”
    “That’s lovely, Florence. Listen, I’m really sorry but
unless you can be more specific—“
    “I heard him tell God he did it.”
    Under R, religious nut: bingo?
    Suddenly Duggan loomed over him.
    “Fifteen minutes.” Duggan tapped his watch.
    Again, he asked for her full name and number. She
refused.
    “I’ve got to go, Florence.” Just a lonely old woman.
Reed hung up, finished the story, read it, then sent it to Duggan through the
computer system.
    In the washroom, Reed bent over a sink, and ran the
cold water. His tip on Wallace had come the same way, but the guy who called
offered something concrete he could check: Wallace’s conviction in Virginia.
Reed confirmed it and Sydowski confirmed Wallace was the suspect. Didn’t he?
That Wallace tip had to have come from a cop, the voice sounded like an old
source, yet Reed couldn’t put a name or face to it. This Florence person was a
nut. “I heard him tell God.” Sure. But if Wallace killed Donner, why was the
file still open? Did the killer call Reed to set up Wallace? That was
Sydowski’s thinking, but Reed couldn’t accept it. For it meant the real killer
was still out there. And now, with another child abduction, and in Balboa, it
meant another child may be murdered and that he may have truly contributed to
the death of an innocent man.
    He splashed his face until he washed the fear from his
mind.
    The few strands of gray invading the temples of his
short brown hair were multiplying. He was thirty-three. Thirty-three and he had
nothing. Nothing that mattered. Nothing but his job, self-doubt, and an
increasing affection for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Sipping Whiskey. When Ann
left, she opened the door to a dark truth, showing him exactly what he was. On
the way back to his desk, Reed saw Molly Wilson reading the memos posted on the
newsroom bulletin board.
    “Hey, Tomster, finish the story?”
    “Why