Edited for Death by Michele Drier Page B

go.
    “Hey, wait, this is really off the record, and I sure don’t want to see any of this in some story, because it’s lunatic fringe and not true!”
    I’ve jumped on him too fast. I back off and say, “There won’t be a word of this, I really am just looking for some background. I’ve only been with the Press for a few years and I’m still learning the area.”
    “O.K., I didn’t mean to snap,” Dodson says. “I’ve had some TV people use off the record stuff on the air before and don’t like being burned. The current conspiracy going around here is that some Middle Eastern Muslim group is buying up land because they’ve found a major gold deposit and are planning to use it to pay for terrorist activities. First, there’s been no land bought or sold; second, there’s no gold left here, it was all mined before the end of last century and last, there is no Middle Eastern Muslim group in the county. Now I better not see any of this in print.”
    I feel a flush creeping up my neck. I’ve pushed this good source. I cross my mental fingers that I haven’t pushed too hard and lost some of his trust. What he tells me is truly the lunatic fringe and no use to me at all.
    I am miffed at myself. I know better than this.
    “You won’t Jim. I’m sorry if I pushed you, but I really am just looking for some background. I’ve been trying to figure if there’s any more we need to do on the Calverts, the hotel, the murders, just all of it. You are always open and courteous with me, and with us, and I sure don’t want to jeopardize that.”
    Mollified, Dodson says, “You’ve always been straight with me, too. I hope we’ll continue like that. I’ve got to get over to the court now, so was there anything else?”
    I think my backpedaling allows us both to save face. It’s a strange, symbiotic relationship between the press and law enforcement. If the media doesn’t push a little, people accuse us of helping the cops cover up or reporting, “just whatever the cops said.” Push too hard, and law enforcement cuts off the communication.
    I’m typing a note to Roberts as Clarice rounds my doorway, already in mid-sentence. At first, Clarice’s stream-of-consciousness conversations threw me but now I’m careful about interrupting. I realize she’s full-bore on the Terry murder as she says “Of course if his daughter hadn’t...”
    “Hadn’t what,” I ask, more to slow her down than to get an answer.
    I’ve pulled out some of my coolest summer clothes today and Clarice has, too. She’s wearing a scoop-neck cotton top, denim skirt and sandals. The top is coming untucked from the waistband and she’s spilled something, maybe the remains of a latte, on the right side of her skirt, just about where she has to use her car’s shift lever. Tendrils of hair are sweat-pasted around her hairline and her face is glistening.
    “Hadn’t invited that scum to move in with her and her dad,” Clarice says. “The cops just arrested him, the scum boyfriend, for Terry James’ murder.”
    “Where, when, why,” I ask, my attention smack in the present.
    “Funny thing is,” Clarice only pauses to let my questions into her flow of words, “it wasn’t the Monroe police who found him, it was the Highway Patrol. They pulled over a car for erratic driving headed north on I-5, ran a check, found out that the car was a BOLO, stolen in Monroe. The driver gives them a license that doesn’t match his description; the CHP starts searching. They find some of the stuff stolen from James’ house and the driver admits he’s Orison Beach, Jetta James Forth’s boyfriend.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “The arrest was a couple of hours ago. The CHP called the Monroe Police in on it and Beach is still at the Monroe Police Department, being questioned. My source says he hasn’t confessed yet, but the cops are looking for a judge to sign warrants for hair and blood samples for DNA testing and Beach’s fingerprints are being compared