Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery Read Online Free

I know who had done this to her?
    Face beaten to a pulp. Side of her head bashed in.
    Guilt formed a knot in my stomach. I will make this right, Olivia. I will find out who did this to you and make them pay. I will be strong for you.
    On the sink was a stack of tiny, lavender-scented towels, and I used a number of them to dry my face and repair my eye makeup before exiting the ladies room. Get it together, I told myself. For Olivia’s sake.
    Back at the Haverford, I found the crew inside the van, reviewing the interview tape. As soon as I popped my head through the open doorway, Jen motioned to me not to climb inside. She pulled off her headphones and stepped outside. “Are you OK?”
    “Not really.
    “Do you want to go home? I can tell them that—”
    “No.” I cut her off. I couldn’t go home. I knew myself enough to know that it wouldn’t be good for me to be alone right now. I was better off staying here, on the scene, asking questions, getting closer to the truth, getting closer to finding Olivia’s killer. That’s what was important.
    “Tell me about the interview with the doorman. What did I miss?”
    Jen looked at her watch. “They want you back at the bureau.”
    “Now?” I figured they’d want us to camp out for a while. “Where’s Alex?” I asked, suddenly noting his absence.
    “Already on his way.”
    “Don’t worry, I have a little time,” I told her. “Diskin’s coming in from the burbs.”
    Inside the van, she cued up the tape for me and handed me the headphones. The clip wasn’t long. After Andrew Kaminski identified Olivia as the murder victim, he said the building’s superintendent had contacted him that morning with the news. He didn’t know any other details about the crime, such as whether it had been an isolated event, what the murder weapon was, or if the police had named any suspects. Having struck out three times in a row, Alex lobbed a softball. “How are the other residents in the building taking the news?” he asked.
    Kaminski scrubbed the stubble on his chin. “They’re in shock. You don’t expect something like this to happen in a place like this. Or to someone like Olivia Kravis.”
    The interview ended and Jen stopped the tape. “You’d better get back to the bureau,” she said.
    “Have a seat Clyde, I need a sec.”
    Mitchell Diskin was alone in his office on the twenty-third floor, seated behind an elegant mahogany desk. As a former executive producer, he’d helmed the network as president and chief operating officer for over a decade—eons in television years—and built a reputation as both a brilliant newsman and able businessman.
    His fingers clacked across his keyboard as I settled carefully into one of two brown leather chairs facing his workspace. Ten seconds later, he closed his silver sliver of a computer, slid it to the side, and peered at me from across the clutter-free expanse of shiny wood. “How are you holding up?”
    In the fifteen years I’d been at FirstNews, Diskin had never once asked me how I was doing. And I’d seen some pretty gruesome stuff: severed heads, mutilated bodies, the kind of carnage that would give most people nightmares for the rest of their lives.
    “I know you and Olivia were close,” he said, removing his glasses.
    “She’s the closest thing I had to a sister,” I said, my voice breaking mid-sentence. I had to fight hard not to fall to pieces again.
    Something on the grid of muted television monitors mounted on the wall behind me caught Diskin’s attention. I twisted my neck over my shoulder to get a glimpse of the news feeds as a double knock at the doorframe announced Alex Amori’s arrival. He handed Diskin one of the two Starbucks he was carrying. “Nothing for Shaw?” Diskin asked, nodding at me.
    Alex lowered into the chair next to mine. “If only she’d tell me how she likes it, I’d be happy to fetch her coffee all day, every day.”
    Alex’s comment would have infuriated me if I hadn’t