His last words still echoed in her mind.
“There’re a lot of creeps out there.”
Coming to her car, she happened to glance up at the shabby-looking brick building across the street. Someone was looking out one of its windows, and for just a second their eyes met. He was a man, perhaps sixty, perhaps much less. He was wearing an undershirt, his face unshaven and his hair uncombed, but none of those details stayed in Anne’s mind. It was the look in his eyes. He looked beaten, as if the world had challenged him and he had lost. But it wasn’t just defeat Anne saw in his eyes.
There was anger, too.
The man turned away from the window, but Anne stayed where she was for a moment, her eyes fixed on the building. It struck her that the man looked very much like the apartment house he lived in: worn-out, uncared for. Sad. Was the whole building filled with people like that, people for whom life had become one desperate day after another?
Probably it was.
Anne turned and looked back toward the hospital, where the window to Glen’s room was clearly visible. Perhaps this was what he had meant. Perhaps he had awakened early and seen someone — maybe even the same man she herself had just seen — slipping back into the structure’s unwelcoming shelter as dawn washed away the protective shadows of night.
Shivering in the chill of the morning, Anne hurried to her car and drove quickly away.
CHAPTER 15
The rain began as Anne turned into the parking lot of the building Glen had always called Seattle’s ugliest. It wasn’t a point Anne was about to argue, for the building that housed the Herald had been constructed in 1955, smack in the middle of one of the dullest periods in modern architectural history. Utterly devoid of any interesting features, it was a perfectly rectilinear, five-story aluminum-and-glass box, its main facade punctured only by a pair of glass doors. As if understanding that his building was architecturally unsalvageable, the designer had made no attempt to soften the structure with lawns or gardens, and the concept of “one percent for art” had still been years in the future. Anne, like the majority of the Herald’s staff, had long stopped noticing the building at all, and most people who passed it on the street weren’t even aware that it housed one of the city’s major newspapers. If and when the park that would be known as the Commons finally metamorphosed from endless talk into a reality of trees, lawns, and pathways linking Lake Union to the downtown area, the Herald Building would be razed. No one — least of all the newspaper’s employees — would miss it.
Pulling into the only vacant space in the lot, Anne ducked her head against the rain as she locked the car and threaded her way across the parking area, then through the first of two sets of double doors into a tiny foyer. Waving to the guard behind the scarred blond-wood counter that was the inner lobby’s single distinguishing feature, Anne brushed a few drops of water off her jacket, then pushed the second door open when the buzzer sounded. As if terrorists are just waiting to invade us, she thought as she nodded to the guard on her way to the bank of elevators opposite the doors. What makes anyone think we’re that important?
She punched at the elevator button, prepared a sarcastic remark for the guard in the typical event that no car showed up within a minute, and was pleasantly surprised when one of the doors instantly slid open. The usual chaos reigned on the third floor, and it took Anne almost five more minutes just to get to her desk, what with half a dozen people commenting on her column in this morning’s edition, and half a dozen more asking about Glen. When she finally crossed the newsroom to her desk, the monitor of her computer was flashing an accusatory beacon informing her that she had twenty-three unanswered internal messages, and forty-two more in her voice mail from outside.
Square in the center of her desk, where she couldn’t possibly miss it, was a message from her editor. Scrawled in large black letters, the message was no-more-than-usually direct:
SEE ME
— VIV
Pausing only to put her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk and hang her damp jacket on the coat tree she shared with three other reporters, Anne strode into the editor’s office, bypassing the sagging chair with the broken spring that her boss was gesturing her toward even while arguing with someone on the telephone, and helping herself to a cup of coffee. She scanned the papers scattered in front of the editor, her ability to read upside down and backward allowing her to assess that at least there were no formal complaints about her among the clutter on Vivian Andrews’s desk.
“I know what you’re doing, and I think it’s at least rude, if not illegal,” the editor said as she hung up the phone. “Are you going to read everything, or do you want to sit down?”
Anne eyed the rump-sprung chair with distaste, but answered neither question. “Got your newsy little epistle,” she said. “What’s up?”
Vivian Andrews burrowed into the mess on her desk and pulled out a copy of that morning’s paper, neatly opened and folded to expose Anne’s article. Tapping it meaningfully with one brightly polished fingernail, she gazed steadily at Anne. “As you can see, I passed this through exactly as you dictated it last night. Now, given that you’re back from the execution, and given that ‘dead men tell no tales,’ as I believe the saying goes, just how much longer are you planning to chase this particular wild goose, and when may I expect you to begin working on something that might be considered news?” She leaned back in her chair and regarded Anne archly. “Oh, and by using the word ‘news,’ I’m suggesting you might want to find a story that occurred within, say, the last six months?” The questioning inflection at the end of her remark was always a clue that Vivian was not feeling particularly patient.
“How long will you give me?” Anne countered.
Vivian Andrews placed the tips of her fingers together, resting her chin on them as she thought it over. “Not much,” she decided. “They’re cutting budgets again, and we’re stretched tight already.” Then, as her own eyes caught a few of the words Anne had dictated last night, she relented slightly. “Do you really think something’s missing? Something you can find, I mean?”
Anne dropped into the chair, wincing as the broken spring jabbed at her hip. “The execution is over, and there aren’t going to be any more trials,” she reminded her editor. “And Mark Blakemoor says they’re closing the files, which means there’s no reason for them not to let me see everything they’ve got.”
Vivian Andrews weighed the pros and cons quickly. The loss of a few more days of Anne’s time was far outweighed by the number of papers they’d sell if the reporter actually came up with something new. “Okay,” she agreed. “A few days. But if you don’t come up with something, it’s over. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Anne was already halfway out the door when Vivian Andrews spoke again. “Anne? How’s Glen doing?”
Anne turned back. “Pretty well, I guess, all things considered.”
“I heard they almost lost him.”
Anne tried to put up a facade of bravado, but didn’t quite succeed. “The important thing is that they didn’t. He’s going to be okay. It’s just going to take some time.”
Vivian nodded in sympathy. “If you need a leave—” she began, but Anne quickly shook her head.
“I don’t think so. At least I don’t right now. But I’ll keep it in mind. When Glen comes home from the hospital, I might just take a few days. Okay?”
“Okay,” Vivian agreed. “And keep me informed, Anne. About your story, and about Glen, too.”
“Thanks, Viv,” Anne replied. “I’ll do that.”