Chapter 15: The Parking Structure

Ansel's POV

Mara had told me what she meant to do about the reporter, and it was nothing.

"I'll tell Brynn first," she said in the car. "Whatever he prints Sunday, she'll have heard it from me."

"That leaves you nine days."

"It's nine more than my mother ever gave me."

She went inside Hattie's house to call the clinic, and I sat in the rental with the reporter's email open on my phone.

I had not been a line cook for nine years without learning that every kitchen leak has a drip you can follow back to a pipe.

"Who at this paper took the photo of me on Dayton Street?" I asked Hattie, when she came out with the trash.

"Nobody," she said. "Luther sold it. He was in the Dispatch lobby the morning after Christmas. I saw him go in."

I drove to the Dispatch.

The reporter was a tired man in a corduroy jacket who gave me four minutes in the lobby, standing, with his coat on.

"I don't name sources, Mr. Strandberg."

"I'm not asking for a name. I want to know how it reached you."

"A friend of the family, who thought I should get ahead of it."

He watched my face.

"He was very clear that Ms. Sjoberg would be happier if it came from us."

"Did he say who the file came from?"

"A friend at the hospital."

That was enough.

I called Hattie from the lobby, and she gave me the schedule without asking why.

"Monday and Friday, seven in the evening. He has a membership to a gym on Monroe Street, and he can't cancel the contract."