Free Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch Page A

Shrontz asked Helen.
    “Several times. He’s hard to get ahold of. His campaign staff, so far, consists of an answering machine and his old—and I mean very old—sidekick from his fair days who—”
    “Severson,” Lundberg said. “Teddy Severson. Corporate lawyer. Ran for governor in ’sixty-four as a Republican and bailed early, as I recall. I’ll make some calls and see who Morgan advised over theyears. Maybe I can piece together his de facto public record so he can’t run as a blank slate.”
    “Good!” Birnbaum shouted. “Brilliant!”
    An editor who helped oversee cops and courts timidly poked her head into the meeting.
    “What is it?” Birnbaum demanded.
    “Seattle PD just confirmed an officer shot and killed an intoxicated—and apparently unarmed—African-American driver in the Central District early this morning.”
    “Driving while black,” Marguerite whispered.
    “And Starbucks,” the mousy editor added, “just got its windows smashed on Twenty-third.”
    Reporters drifted toward Helen’s desk after the meeting to ask how the clusterfuck went, and to offer their assessments of Roger Morgan, assuring her either that he was a straight shooter or as corrupt as they come though confessing not even secondhand knowledge of any of it. Once the crowd thinned out, Bill Steele strolled up.
    The paper’s oldest reporter, Steele still wore a suit every day and wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone until he’d unlocked his files, drunk his thermos of coffee and read the morning papers. His phone rang, he didn’t answer. People approached, he wouldn’t look up. After he finished refolding his papers, he’d whisper “Uh-huh, uh-huh” into his phone, as if the newsroom was bugged.
    A two-time Pulitzer finalist, Steele was seen by most of the reporters as a dated action hero of sorts. Not everyone enjoyed hearing him shout information-access laws into the phone, but Helen did. Most of his recent tussles had been with bankruptcy court clerks, ever since a prominent builder blindsided a couple hundred “investor friends” by filing Chapter 11. Regardless, it was Malcolm Turner
this
and Malcolm Turner
that
every day, all day. Early on, when Turner refused to speak to him, Steele had staked out his Eastside mansion for three days, hoping an ambush might provoke a response from the man who’d built four of the city’s ten tallest skyscrapers. She’d never seen Steele more delighted than when the developer filed a restraining order. “Let me guess,” he began now, “they took turns kissing Morgan’s ass until one of them got mildly tough—maybe you—and thenthey all got fired up to do some
public service
journalism, by God. Then somebody suggested putting me on the story with you, and half the room groaned.”
    “Not too far off, but your name didn’t come up.”
    “Yet.”
He noticed Marguerite was closing in on them. “Look out, here comes Mary Poppins.”
    The newsroom’s second-in-command crouched close enough for Helen to smell her shampoo. “You were
awesome
in there,” she purred. “This story is
so
overdue. Let’s kick some booty!”
    Adrenaline spiking, Helen started calling people she wasn’t even ready to interview just so her coworkers would leave her alone. Another call to Morgan’s office got the answering machine yet again. She noticed Shrontz hovering, waiting for her to hang up.
    “The MLK Center’s holding a community meeting in an hour,” he said, excitement twitching in his face. “Roger Morgan has asked to speak. Birnbaum wants you there.”
    “I’ll be damned,” Steele interjected from behind. “That crafty old dog’s running for real.”
    Helen grabbed a notebook, two pens, her phone and a tape recorder, then loped toward the elevator, trying not to break into a noticeable jog.
    THE DIAGONAL RAIN made it hard to see the freshly boarded-up Starbucks as she drove down Twenty-third toward a three-story brick fortress that looked more like a detention