Free Anonymous Sources by Mary Louise Kelly

around. Pots clanging. Water being poured. Galloni must be brewing coffee.
    â€œRight. Okay. Miss James. Alex. Fill me in on your adventures over there in jolly old England.”
    So I told him about my conversations with Petronella, Joe, the bedder. About the terrible law school exam results and about Thom getting dumped. About all the reasons, in short, why Thom might have been awfully depressed on Tuesday night.
    â€œHmm” was all he said.
    â€œYour turn. What about the autopsy? What did it find?”
    â€œI think the chief’s going to do some sort of press availability this afternoon. You guys should send somebody.”
    â€œI’m sure we will. But since I’m on a different continent right now, what about just giving me the headline?”
    â€œCan’t. I don’t want to get out ahead of the chief.”
    â€œWhat about we talk now, and whatever you tell me, I promise to sit on it until after the press conference.”
    I waited.
    Galloni was quiet. Finally he said, “I want to be off the record. We’re just talking. Anything you want to quote, you get it from the chief later.”
    â€œDeal.” I doubted Galloni would give me much anyway. Junior guys are usually less willing to leak to reporters than their bosses. Not becausethey know less, but because they’re more likely to get fired if they get caught.
    But Galloni surprised me. “His blood alcohol level was .06. Guy his size, probably means he drank two or three beers. No other drugs in his system.”
    â€œTwo or three beers wouldn’t be enough for him to fall out of a window.”
    â€œI wouldn’t have thought so, no.”
    â€œSo this wasn’t an accident.”
    â€œCan’t rule it out. But I wouldn’t have thought so.”
    â€œWell, what about suicide? I’ve got his best friend and his girlfriend laying out some pretty compelling reasons for why he might have been thinking along that line.”
    â€œWe didn’t know about all that. We’ll have to interview them. But you met her, right? What’s she like? Worth killing yourself over?”
    Hardly, I thought. But Thom had apparently seen a different side of Petronella Black.
    I considered how to put it. “Somebody here described her to me as a piece of work .”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œI’d say they have a point.”
    We were silent for a moment.
    Then I asked, “Cause of death?”
    â€œHis skull was shattered. As you know. And his neck was broken.”
    â€œCould the coroner tell if those injuries were necessarily caused by the fall? I mean, could he have already been hurt before he fell?”
    I could feel Galloni weighing how much to say. “The injuries are consistent with a fall from that height.”
    â€œBut you can’t rule out that maybe somebody brained him at the top of the tower and then threw him down?”
    â€œI wouldn’t have put it quite like that, Alex, but, no. We can’t rule that out.”
    â€œJust one more thing. Would you steer me away from focusing on the fingerprints? It seems like that’s the most interesting piece of evidence you’ve got. That the doorknobs and banisters were wiped down. No prints. Seven floors. Somebody wiped them clean.”
    â€œThe janitors say they wipe down the stairwells regularly.”
    â€œDo you buy that?”
    He paused. “No.”
    I took a deep breath. “So you think Thom Carlyle was murdered.”
    â€œI didn’t say that.”
    â€œWould you steer me away from it?”
    He didn’t say anything.
    â€œI understand I can’t run with this in the paper yet. But here’s what I think. You guys are convinced that Thom was murdered. But you don’t have a suspect. Or a weapon. Or a motive.”
    I could hear Galloni sipping his coffee.
    â€œWell?”
    â€œI gotta go,” he said.
    The line went dead.
    PETRONELLA NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED.
    The