Graveland: A Novel Read Free

herself for a bit. She takes out her phone and does a quick check. A lot of actual tweets are being posted about Jeff Gale. This isn’t surprising, though. A murder in Central Park would be pretty unusual in itself these days, but add in a high-profile victim and you’ve got yourself an instant trend. Ellen thinks about it. The only information out there is that Gale was jogging, and that he was shot.
    She looks around.
    But why would anyone shoot a jogger? Not for their iPod. Not even for their wallet. Not in Central Park. Not these days.
    Not shoot them.
    So who did do it, and why?
    Unless there’s a quick explanation forthcoming, this is a story that’s going to burn up a serious amount of media space in the next few days. There’ll be intense speculation about it, because Northwood Leffingwell is a Wall Street behemoth, one of the Too Big to Fail brigade. But even if it turns out that where Jeff Gale worked had nothing to do with why he got killed, it’s inevitable that where he worked will form a significant part of the narrative.
    Anyway.
    It already has.
    Ellen checks the time on her phone.
    Ratt fucking Atkinson.
    It just annoys her that this feels like a real story, and that she’s right here, where it happened, but that for all she can do about it she might as well be one of those French tourists over there. Ellen’s not a beat reporter, and hasn’t been for many years. What she specializes in these days is longer, slow-burn investigative pieces, and mainly for Parallax . She’s also quite well known, and has a bit of a reputation, built up over years, as a polemical, potty-mouthed, uncooperative bitch . So even if she wanted to report on this, it’s unlikely that anyone—cop, city official, fellow hack—would talk to her.
    But anyway, report on what? The story’s over. She’s wasting her time. Even that camera crew there seem resigned to it and are setting up a generic shot now—East Drive in the background, steady stream of joggers, fine, but not one of them laid out dead on the asphalt.
    Ellen looks at her phone again. She could make it over to Central Park West, pick up a cab, and be home in fifteen, twenty minutes.
    She glances around one last time, then starts walking. But at about the five-yard point someone calls out, “Hey, wait up.”
    She turns back.
    “Ellen?”
    A guy is walking toward her, early thirties, overcoat, shades, mop of curly hair. Could be anyone. She’s actually pretty bad on people—faces, names—unless it’s someone directly related to whatever she’s working on at the time.
    “Yeah?”
    The guy arrives, hand extended. “Ellen, how are you?” Sensing her hesitation, he adds, “Val Brady.”
    Oh.
    Yeah.
    The reason she didn’t recognize him immediately, apart from the fact that they haven’t met in a while, is that he’s one of the few journalists she hasn’t ended up fighting with—this guy, and Jimmy Gilroy, and maybe one or two others. It’s the ones she doesn’t get along with that she tends to remember.
    “Val. What’s up?”
    He nods his head back in the direction of the cordoned-off area. “Just another day at the office. You?”
    “No. I’m … I’m just passing. I heard, though.”
    “Pretty wild, isn’t it?”
    Val Brady is a reporter for the New York Times, and a fairly reliable one. A couple of years ago they shared information on a story, some big-pharma-related thing, as she remembers. He was scrupulous about it, careful, didn’t let his ego bleed into the proceedings.
    She liked him.
    “Yeah. Any clue about what happened?”
    Brady takes off his shades. He looks around, then looks back at Ellen. “He was shot at point-blank range, in the forehead. They didn’t take his wallet, which apparently had a couple of hundred bucks in it, or his iPod. And no witnesses.” He points up at the apartment buildings on Fifth. “The cops are going to check over there, the high floors, see if anyone was looking out of their window. But given