It hadn’t been easy. But eventually, as the panic eased, she began to think about her station in life and what this tape could do to improve it. She had never meant to end up stuck at some low-rent tabloid. She had studied journalism at UCLA. She’d had ambitions, visions of Pulitzers. She wanted to be known as a serious investigative reporter. But at the time of her graduation, there had been a hiring freeze at all the newspapers. The industry was in a slump. It was beginning to look as if her only career opportunity would involve “hold the pickles, hold the lettuce.”
Until she found the opening at the Whisper. And so she began her career of stalking celebrities and searching for the truth about crop circles and cow mutilations.
And Sasquatch.
She had seen the job as temporary, a stopping place until other prospects opened up. But when positions at the real papers did open up, she found herself tainted by her contact with the Whisper. “Oh, you’re that kind of reporter”-and the interview would come to a swift conclusion. After a while, she developed evasive responses, but to no avail. The journalistic community was small and close-knit. Secrets were hard to keep.
And so her temporary stopover became an eight-year stint. With no end in sight. Eventually she had resigned herself to her fate.
Until the tragic last night of Princess Diana. Tess wasn’t involved in that tragedy, thank God, but afterward the thought of having anything to do with this sort of journalism made her sick. Problem was, she still had to eat. And she couldn’t figure out a way to make a name for herself in legitimate journalism.
Until now. If she could crack this murder, everything could change. This story had it all-murder, mayhem, sex appeal. This could be the lucky break that transformed her from Tabloid Mary to Diane Sawyer.
And so she took the plunge, left the safety of the Holiday Inn, and sought out the nearest place she could rent a VCR. Hadn’t been hard, as it turned out. Even a one-horse town like Magic Valley had a video store on every block, and they all rented out VCRs. They even had a gizmo that converted the Video-8 tape from her recorder to a regular VHS tape.
It had taken her ten minutes to install the damn thing, to disconnect the rip-off pay-per-view machine fused into the hotel TV and connect her VCR, but at last she had everything ready. She could feel her anxiousness; her mouth was dry and her hands were wet, both from anticipation of what might lie on that strip of magnetic tape.
She pushed the Play button and the images flickered to life. The TV screen was bathed with vivid yellow and red. The tree cutter had already exploded; it was now just a raging mass of twisted, melting metal, fused together like the core of a nuclear furnace. The victim had already collapsed on the ground, all charred flesh and cinders.
She watched for almost a minute as the camera panned and scanned the horizon, showing the devastation of the clear-cut forest, brought into sharp and haunting highlight by the raging inferno. Several times she thought she detected a trace of movement in the distance, but it was hard to be sure. Was there really someone there, or was it an illusion created by the flickering of the flames? It was impossible to be sure.
Impossible-up to a point. Shortly thereafter, a large hairy figure began moving in a direct line toward the camera. It was tiny at first, barely discernible except as a point of movement. It came steadily closer until, even in the darkness, she could tell it was Sasquatch-or more correctly, someone dressed as Sasquatch. Sasquatch with his mask removed.
She couldn’t make out the face yet, but he kept running closer, closer and closer, faster and faster. She could almost see it and then-
And then the picture changed. The camera moved every which way at once, moved so quickly she could make out nothing. And then all she saw was the ground, moving fast.
Tess knew what had happened. She had seen Sasquatch coming toward her and panicked. She had turned and fled for her life-just an instant before the monster’s face would have been visible on the tape.
She punched the Stop button, cursing under her breath. And so, when all was said and done, she had nothing. Her big chance for success, her opportunity to bolt from the sleaze market, had dissipated.
She felt a stinging in her eyes. It had been stupid to let herself fantasize. She should have known something would go wrong-didn’t something always go wrong? Face it-she was going to be spending the rest of her life with the ninety-five-year-old grandmother who gave birth to twins. There was no escape.
She slapped herself hard on the side of the face. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, damn it, and think! Suddenly she realized she knew a hell of a lot more than anyone else did about this case. She was the only living eyewitness-not counting the killer. She was the only one who knew exactly how it had happened. And she was the only one who knew there had been a fight preceding the explosion.
A fight. That was the key-it had to be. She had read in the paper that the victim was a logger, which made sense, since he knew how to start the tree cutter. If he was a logger, then who would be fighting with him? Who would be having an argument in the dead of night, at the site of a massive clear-cut?
Green Rage, that’s who.
She knew that the police had arrested the leader of the group and charged him with the murder. But she didn’t believe he was guilty; he didn’t look anything like the person in the Sasquatch suit. The height and weight were all wrong. The police were just latching onto the obvious suspect, as they always did. They were assuming the bomb had been planted in advance, that it was part of a Green Rage terrorist strike, that the logger had just had the misfortune to be the person who turned the ignition that night.
Tess knew better. She knew the killer had been there all along, including when the bomb was triggered. She knew the two men had fought. She didn’t know what they had fought about, but given the circumstances, it seemed more than reasonable to assume it had something to do with the destruction of the national forest.
She pushed herself off the bed, grabbed her notebook, and started making plans.
Somehow she would have to infiltrate Green Rage. The only way to learn what she wanted to know would be to gain their confidence, their trust. If she could get them talking, she might uncover the clues she needed.
Of course she would, she told herself. She was a reporter, wasn’t she? A real reporter.
But to do this, she would have to venture outside. And longer than it took to get to the video store, too.
But what could happen to her? She had just been silly, hadn’t she? Paranoid? After all, she had nothing on the killer, whoever he was. He or she. There was no reason to go after her. Hell, the creep probably never even saw her face.
Probably.
She laughed, trying to convince herself. Probably didn’t have the slightest idea who she was.
Probably.
Enough. She was going to do this. No one and nothing was going to stop her. This might be the last chance she had to make the Pulitzer committee sit up and take notice. Or at least to get a job she didn’t have to lie about when she called her mother. She wasn’t going to let it pass her by.
Her eye moved unbidden to the draped window. She wasn’t going to blow this opportunity, damn it. She wasn’t.
No matter what the consequences.
Sasquatch peered through his binoculars at the draped window of the Holiday Inn room. Of course, the Sasquatch getup was not being worn at the moment, but the brain behind the mask had begun to think in those terms. It seemed a good label. Or perhaps-The Artist Formerly Known as Sasquatch.