Do you know what really happened to your mother?
Ben Nash stared at the words on the computer screen. Blood
rushed to his ears, obliterating the background noise in the
Pittsburgh Tribune newsroom. It felt as though a
vise gripped his heart, stopping his blood from circulating.
His mother had died nineteen years ago in a fall from a
cliff in a Pocono Mountain town called Indigo Springs when
Ben was twelve years old. He'd always been told it was an
accident.
The return address on the e-mail was
[email protected]. His mother had never used
her married surname of Nash, preferring to be known as
Allison Blaine.
He clicked the e-mail closed with a trembling hand and
scanned his in-box, identifying a second message from the
same sender. The subject header was identical: Your
Mother. He sucked in a breath and pressed the button on
his mouse.
Why wasn't Dr. Ryan Whitmore investigated?
The Whitmore name was unfamiliar, as were most things
associated with Indigo Springs aside from pain and loss.
Ben's maternal grandparents had retired to the town just
months before the ill-fated accident to help friends start
up a restaurant. After the tragedy they'd fled Indigo
Springs, unable to deal with daily reminders of what had
happened.
For Ben, though, the memories were ever present. An image of
his mother, with her brown eyes warm with love and her lips
curving into a tender smile, was imprinted on his mind as
indelibly as an etching.
He checked the date and time at the top right-hand corner of
the e-mail. Friday, 9:15 a.m. The second contact had been
sent just minutes after the first. A scant hour ago. He hit
Reply and typed a message of his own: Who are you?
Within moments, the e-mail popped back into his in-box with
a Failure Notice heading. He scrolled through it, picking
out the words undeliverable and user doesn't
have a yahoo.com account.
"Damn it," he snapped.
"Something wrong, Nash?" Joe Geraldi, the managing
editor of the Tribune, stood beside Ben's desk.
With a trim build and a full head of prematurely white hair,
Joe radiated a brisk energy, the force of which he directed
at Ben. It snapped Ben out of his trance. "Where's the
IT department?"
Joe screwed up his lean, expressive face. "Geez, Ben.
You've worked here for two years and don't know where IT
is?"
"I know IT's extension." Technical help was a phone
call away, a godsend for a reporter habitually in a rush.
This matter, however, needed to be dealt with in person.
"Will you tell me where they are or should I ask someone
else?"
"Second floor."
"Thanks." Ben rolled back his chair, got to his feet
and strode toward the elevator past cubicles where other
reporters talked on phones and typed on computer keyboards.
"Hold up." Joe's raised voice trailed him. "I
need to talk to you."
"Sorry. This can't wait." Ben didn't break stride,
which wouldn't sit well with Joe. The two of them sometimes
grabbed a meal together after working late, but Joe was,
above all, his boss. Ben called back over his shoulder,
"I'll explain later."
He nearly plowed into the diminutive editor of the business
section, muttered a hurried apology and kept going.
Bypassing the elevator, he ran lightly down two floors of
stairs and emerged on the second floor. It was a neater
version of the newsroom, with the piles of paper and files
reporters typically kept on their desks largely absent.
Flimsy walls separated the workspaces into cubicles. He
stopped at the first one, where a young man wearing a
long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans hunched over his keyboard.
"Could you help me trace an e-mail?" Ben asked.
The man looked up over his wire-rimmed glasses and leaned
back in his chair. He had a shock of dark hair and an
unlined, earnest face that communicated amusement. His jaw
worked on a piece of gum and Ben got a whiff of spearmint.
"First you'll have to tell me who you are."
"Sorry." Ben rubbed the back of his neck,
encountering cords of tension. He was often abrupt, but
seldom rude. "Ben Nash. I work upstairs."
"Oh, yeah. You wrote the series that ran in Sunday's
paper about corruption in the police department. That's
bound to shake things up."
The story had consumed Ben for two months, during which he
might have averaged six hours of sleep a night, yet at the
moment it seemed unimportant. "That's why I wrote it."
"I'm Keith Snyder. We've talked on the phone."
"I recognize the voice." Ben didn't have the
patience for any more small talk. "Well, can you do it?
Can you trace that e-mail?"
"That's like asking Superman if he can fly." Keith
flexed his fingers. "Let me at it."
In a surprisingly short time, most of which Keith spent
dispensing insider information about IP addresses and
computer networks, Ben had an answer. The e-mail originated
from a computer inside the Indigo Springs public library.
The air-conditioning suddenly felt as though it had been
lowered a few notches.
"Can you narrow it to a specific computer?" Ben asked.
"Afraid not," Keith said. "Could have come from
anywhere inside the building, and most libraries have a bank
of public access computers."
"How about the e-mail address itself? Any way to check
whose account it is?"
"You mean whose account it was. I use Yahoo!
mail, too." Keith gestured to the mountaindweller-blaine
part of the e-mail open on his computer screen. "That
dash indicates a disposable address. Seems like it might
have been created for one purpose."
"To send to me," Ben said thoughtfully.
"You got it."
"Thanks. I owe you one." Ben clapped him on the
shoulder. "I'll buy you a beer after work sometime."
That was about the extent of his social activity lately.
"I'll take a rain check." Keith nodded to a photo on
his desk of an attractive woman holding a baby dressed
entirely in pink, from her shoes to her bonnet. "My
wife's on maternity leave. She can't wait for me to get home
so I can give her a break."
Nobody was waiting for Ben. He'd gotten the investigative
reporting job at the Tribune after establishing his
name at a series of smaller papers throughout the state.
He'd never worked a set schedule or taken the standard
weekend days off. The long hours came with the job, as did a
burning curiosity. Keith had focused on the technical
aspects of the e-mail, completely ignoring the content, a
feat that would have been impossible for Ben.
His boss would ask questions, something Ben
anticipated when he returned to the newsroom and rapped on
the frame of the open door to the managing editor's corner
office.
"If you hadn't just broken a story, I'd fire your
ass," Joe said from behind his desk. Through the window
behind him, gray clouds hovered above the city buildings and
the visible part of the Monongahela River, emitting a misty
drizzle that made it difficult to tell it was spring.
"Never happen," Ben said. "I'm your most
valuable asset."
"My most valuable asset is gonna find himself covering
the dog show down at the convention center if he doesn't
watch his back."
"Can't do it," Ben said. "I need some time off."
A deep furrow appeared between Joe's brows. "Impossible.
I just got a tip about a group home for the mentally ill
that's kicking out residents left and right. Something's not
right at this place. That's what I wanted to talk to you
about."
"Normally, I'm your guy, Joe. But not this time. I
really need that time off."
"For what?"
Ben hesitated. "It's personal."
Joe crossed his arms over his chest, dislodging one side of
his blue dress shirt. It came untucked by the end of almost
every workday. "Then let me personally assure you that
you're not getting squat unless you start talking."
Sighing heavily, Ben walked to the door and pulled it shut.
"You can be a real jerk, did you know that?"
"That's what my ex-wife always says but she doesn't work
for me. You do."
Ben leaned with his back against the closed door, pretending
a calm he didn't feel. "It's my mother. I just got some
e-mails about her."
"I thought your mother died a long time ago."
Ben swallowed. "She did."
While Ben divulged the content of the e-mails and IT's
findings, Joe got out of his chair and circled the desk. He
perched on the edge of the piece of heavy furniture, all his
intensity focused on Ben. "You never told me what
happened to her."
"It was an accident, or so I was told. She took me and
my two brothers to visit her parents in this little town in
the Poconos. One night she went to one of those lookouts
with the scenic views and she fell."
"One night? Why would she go to a lookout at
night?"
Ben had never received a satisfactory answer to that
question or the numerous others he'd asked his father over
the years. Even though Ben had always felt there was more to
his mother's death than he'd been told, his father wasn't
the best source. He hadn't even been present in Indigo
Springs when his wife died.
"I don't think it was fully dark yet. She had a camera
with her so supposedly she was there to take photos,"
Ben said, although that theory had never seemed quite right.
His mother had kept photo albums, but they were dominated by
snapshots of family members smiling into the camera, not
scenery. "It's time I found out the whole story. At the
very least I want to know who sent those e-mails and why
they waited twenty years."
Joe remained silent for a long time. Outside the weather had
worsened, and Ben could hear the patter of rain on the
windowpanes. Indigo Springs was in the Pocono Mountains on
the other side of the state, a drive of five to six hours.
If he went directly home and packed a bag, he could be there
by mid- to late-afternoon.
"If you want the time off, you got it," Joe finally
said. "Let me run something by you first. It's okay if
you don't want to do it."
"Do what?" Ben asked warily.
"Write a story from the angle of an investigative
reporter uncovering the mystery of his mother's death. On
the clock, of course."
Ben felt his muscles bunch. "Why would I do that?"
"Because I know you, Ben. Writing's cathartic. It'd be a
way for you to deal with the past once and for all." He
hesitated, as though unsure whether to continue. Finally, he
did. "Not to mention it'd make a really good story."
Joe's argument had merit. Ben totally engrossed himself in a
story until it came out in print. Only then could he let it
go. Maybe Joe was right. Maybe writing the story would
exorcise his demons.
"What about that tip?" Ben realized he'd just agreed
to his boss's proposition.
"I'll have Larry Timmons look in to it." Joe named
an ambitious reporter who had assisted Ben on a few
occasions, a young guy hungry to get ahead—Larry
reminded Ben of himself. "He's been hounding me for a
chance to take the lead on a big story."
It went against Ben's makeup to put anyone else in the
driver's seat, let alone somebody who would fight not to
give up the wheel. "Maybe what I need to do won't take
long."
Joe snorted softly. "With a rottweiler, it usually
doesn't."
"Excuse me?"
"Rottweiler," Joe repeated. "That's what the
other reporters call you."
Ben hadn't been aware he had a nickname. "Do I want to
know why?"
"Once you sink your teeth in a story, you don't let
go." Joe seemed to relish in the telling. "That Dr.
Whitmore doesn't stand a chance."
Dr. Sierra Whitmore turned away from her reflection in the
gift-shop window too late to avoid the image of the long,
caramel-brown hair she'd been too chicken to part with.
"Just a trim, please," she muttered to herself.
That's what she'd requested when the hip, young stylist who
was the new hire at her hair salon asked if she was feeling
adventurous. Her intention to have her hair cut boy-short
never made it past her lips.
Sierra fished a tie out of her purse and hastily pulled her
hair into a loose twist, the way she usually wore it,
silently berating herself all the while for her stunning
lack of courage.
"Hello, Dr. Whitmore."
The greeting pulled Sierra out of her daze. The woman
passing her on the sidewalk in the heart of the picturesque
downtown of Indigo Springs was a patient at the practice
where Sierra worked in partnership with her brother.
"Good day, Mrs. Jorgenson."
The woman gave her a tepid smile and kept walking.
Good day.