After picking up the mug shot of Darnell Hicks I walked back to the Times building and up to the third-floor newsroom. I didn’t bother checking in because I had already sent my editor a budget line on the drug sweep story. I planned to make some calls and flesh it out before I went back to Prendo and tried to convince him it was a story that ought to go out front on the home page as well as the print edition.

The 928-page printout of the Winslow confession as well as the other documents I’d sent to the copy shop were waiting for me on my desk. I sat down and had to resist the urge to immediately dive into the confession. But I pushed the six-inch stack to the side and went to the computer. I opened my address book on the screen and looked up the number for the Reverend William Treacher. He was the head of a South L.A. association of ministers and was always good for a viewpoint contrary to that of the LAPD.

I had just picked up the phone to call Preacher Treacher, as he was informally known by his flock as well as the local media, when I felt a presence hovering over me and looked up to see Alan Prendergast.

“Didn’t you get my message?” he asked.

“No, I just got back and wanted to call Preacher Treacher before everybody else did. What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk about your story.”

“Didn’t you get the budget line I sent? Let me make this call real quick and then I might have more to add to it.”

“Not today’s story, Jack. Cook’s already putting it together. I want to hear about your long-term story. We have the futures meeting in ten minutes.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean Cook’s already putting today’s story together?”

“She’s writing it up. She came back from the press conference and said you were working together on it. She already called Treacher, too. Got good stuff.”

I held back on telling him that Cook and I weren’t supposed to be working together on it. It was my story and I’d told her so.

“So whadaya got, Jack? It’s related to today’s thing, right?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

I was still stunned by Cook’s move. Competition within the news-room is common. I just hadn’t expected her to be so bold as to lie her way onto a story.

“Jack? I don’t have much time.”

“Uh, right. Yeah, it’s about the murder of Denise Babbit—but from the killer’s angle. It’s about how sixteen-year-old Alonzo Winslow came to be charged with murder.”

Prendo nodded.

“You have the goods?”