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It had been one month to the day that Wilhemina Morecroft had been executed. It was a day just like any other.
Or that's what Ian Jeffreys thought it would be when he finally made it into work half an hour late that morning. He'd been on the line with the phone company since 8am, complaining about the number of strange calls he'd received during the night. The first one was at 2am, when he'd only just managed to drift off to sleep after finishing an article. When he'd picked it up, annoyed of course for letting it get him out of bed, there was no-one on the other end, then the line went dead. This happened three more times during the dead of night, and Ian was not impressed. "Crossed lines" was the only excuse the phone company could come up with, but promised they'd look into it. Ian had snorted in disbelief at this empty remark, but had let it go when he
realized he was late for work.
He fell into his chair exhausted, and resisted the urge to plant his head on his desk and sleep. Instead he went through the assortment of messages on his desk, and the general mess that was always there. He hadn't been sitting there for more than five minutes when the editor's secretary came up to him.
"It's about time you got in, Bob has been looking for you everywhere."
"Yeah, sorry, I was held up with ..."
"No point telling me," she chided, as she pulled his chair back to encourage him to get a move on, "just get in his office now before he bursts something."
She didn't have to tell him twice. Ian made his way down to the editors office as fast as he could carry himself. Bob O'Leary didn't even bother to wait for him to tap on the door before starting on him.
"Where the hell have you been, kid? This paper doesn't run on fumes, you know."
"Yes sir," Ian stammered as he sat down in the chair, "won't happen again."
"Sure as hell it won't. Anyway, I don't have time for that now. You've got to get your butt to work on a story for the evening edition." He flicked a Coroners Report over the desk to Ian, which he barely had time to read a word of before Bob continued. "You should
recognize the name easily enough. James Anderson, the sniveling little court appointed lawyer that Mrs Morecroft had. Died suddenly at two o'clock this morning."
Of course Ian knew the name, and the man, well enough. He'd interviewed Mr Anderson several times during the course of the trial and during Wilhemina's two year wait on death row.
The time also struck a chord. Two in the morning. The same time the first of those weird calls came through, but Ian uttered nothing of the sort to Bob. He let him continue booming on.
"Of course it's not front page news, but it's a good follow up to your story on Mrs Morecroft." Bob noticed Ian wince. "Now don't give me that look. That story sold, and will still sell, hundreds of copies of this paper. It's a connection to her, and it's a connection to sales that we may not have otherwise. People can't get enough of her, even when she's dead. Now you'll probably get page two at best, with a line on page one. Find out all you can, and make it good. Mention her name as much as you can. Now get to it."
And with that, Ian was as good as flung out of the door and sent back to his desk to continue a story that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Ian had timed it well. Old Doc Henry the coroner was just finishing up Anderson's autopsy when Ian arrived at the morgue to speak to him.
"You know, it's the damndest thing. I can't see why his ticker killed him. It was a heart attack all right, but there didn't seem to be any long term damage that's usually associated with a fatal cardiac arrest like that, no deterioration, no blocked valves. Looked fine to me, for his age at least. I talked to Dr Wood this morning, Anderson's doctor, and he says Anderson never had a problem with his heart in his life. Strange, innit?"
"I guess so," Ian replied, scratching his head with his pencil, "so it couldn't have perhaps been a secondary thing, from an infection or something?"
"Nope, not that I can see. Far as I can tell, the man was just struck down for no good reason," and he leaned in to Ian with a cheeky grin, "like a curse, you might say. Like how Wicked Willie put a hex on everyone who wronged her while she was sittin' in the chair."
Ian tried to ignore the question that had hounded him for weeks since the front page report on Wilhemina's execution had been printed. "Anything else you can tell me, Doc?"
Doc leaned back with a sigh. "No, not right now. I've got to test some samples later, but I'll bet they'll come back fine. I'll let you know how they go."
"Thanks, I'd appreciate that."
"No problem. Oh, and Mr Jeffreys," Doc said, as they both stood to leave, "you take care now, y'hear?" And with a wink, Doc Henry disappeared into his lab.
(c) Cynthia M. Piromalli 2003
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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