The room was crowded and excessively hot, no doubt because of the television camera lights. He pulled out his reporter’s notebook and flipped through it. There were notes here, about Alex Brandon. For two days now, Moriarty had tried to learn all he could about the man. Moriarty had resources within the LASD. A former Green Beret, Moriarty never ceased to amaze Kit with his ability to find someone who would give him information.
So Kit now knew about Brandon’s father’s suicide, the breakup of his marriage, and most of his career. He had been sorry to read that Brandon’s old partner, whom Kit remembered vividly, had died about a year ago. Kit learned that in the time since he had first met him, Brandon had taken up rock climbing. Brandon lived alone, but at the moment, his uncle was staying with him. For the first time in any report Kit had received from him, Moriarty had added a personal note. “Thanks for this assignment-it has helped me discover what became of an old friend. Before he left the army, Brandon’s uncle, John O’Brien, made my life miserable when I was training for Special Forces. I won’t contact O’Brien until this is all over, but I can tell you that if Brandon is anything like his uncle, you can trust him completely.”
Kit wondered if he should try approaching Alex Brandon through his uncle. Or whether that would destroy any possibility of keeping Gabriel Taggert safe until he decided to turn himself in.
A public information officer stepped up to the microphone and asked everyone to take their seats. Soon, a group was approaching the platform at the front of the room. Because of the cameras and other equipment near the front of the room, he could not see all of them, but he easily picked out Alex Brandon. Sheriff James Dwyer came to the podium, but Kit continued to watch Brandon.
He remembered him, of course. He could not clearly recall most of what happened in the days after he killed Jerome Naughton, but he remembered Brandon. Brandon was younger than anyone else who talked to him, had remarkable blue eyes, and was perhaps a little less hardened than he seemed now. He had brought with him two old men, his late partner and Shay Wilder, both of whom smoked constantly but were kinder to Kit than any of the others. Thinking of Shay Wilder, he decided he would ask Moriarty to try to locate him.
As for Brandon, Kit wondered if-should they meet-Brandon would recognize him in return.
He had seen pictures of himself, taken when Moriarty had first found him. Moriarty had been sent to help bring him back to his grandmother. Kit had been bruised, as usual, and wearing filthy, blood-spattered clothing. Holding tight to a mongrel he had named Molly. Fourteen, he had been tall for his age and muscular…
The room and the voice of the person at the podium dropped away from him as image after image from the years of building that muscle by doing as Naughton commanded flashed through his mind. And of the other photographs, the hated ones, the ones Naughton had taken.
“That’s right, put your arm around him. You see? All I want to do is take a picture of you with the boy. He’s not a bad-looking kid, now, is he? You pose with the boy a few times, and I’ll let you go free. I promise. That’s good…right. Now kiss him. Christopher, damn it, hold still…”
He closed his eyes and felt himself sway a little in his seat, as if he were falling asleep in his chair. He jerked himself upright and reached blindly into his pocket and found the rabbit’s foot. He took a deep breath.
“Hey, buddy-are you okay?” a low voice asked.
He turned and looked into the face of the man sitting next to him, a slender man with a beard. He glanced at the laminated tag around his neck. Los Angeles Times. Author of the article he had read this morning.
“Fine, thanks,” Kit said. “Just a little warm in here.”
“TV assholes always make it unbearable for the rest of us. In more ways than one.”
Kit smiled, then focused his attention back on the conference. Something in the reporter’s manner made him even more unsure of him, and he decided it would be best to avoid further conversation.
Alex Brandon was talking now, telling them about the man who posed as “Eric Grady” at the Crimesolvers USA studios. Kit didn’t pay as much attention to what he was saying as to his body posture and his eyes, the tone of his voice. Cues that would tell him more than words, whether Brandon was indeed as trustworthy as Moriarty thought he might be. Kit could not learn this from watching Brandon on television newscasts-the camera would not always be on him or pick up subtleties of behavior and expression.
Brandon wasn’t telling all he knew, but that was understandable. What interested Kit was how calm he was in the face of all the pressure. It wasn’t the disinterested calm of the cynical or the bored. Kit wondered at it, then remembered the rock climbing. He supposed that if you could withstand falling from cliffs, or put up with the pressure of literally hanging on by the tips of your fingers, a roomful of reporters wasn’t likely to faze you.
Brandon stepped back, and his partner, Ciara Morton, came up to the microphone. The two partners didn’t make eye contact during this change of places. They didn’t seem close, but it was hard to tell much about that in this setting. Detective Morton began speaking about the real Eric Grady. She seemed unhappy, Kit thought. Her face was tense. He became so caught up in her story of finding the bones of the real Eric Grady, though, he didn’t study her in the same way he had Brandon. She addressed her audience in an intense, direct way, demanding their unwavering attention. She was being truthful, he thought, but like Brandon, wasn’t telling all she knew.
“Hey, Thomas,” a voice said next to him, “you just here as a sight-seer?”
Startled, it took Kit a moment to remember that he was supposed to be Ed Thomas. He glanced down and saw, with a dread he quickly masked, that his name tag had flipped around.
“I’ve never heard of the Mountain Chronicle,” the reporter from the Times said.
“Small Colorado paper,” Kit said, with an assurance he was far from feeling. “Not in your league.”
“They have the bread to send you all the way out here for a story they can get off the wires?”
“There’s a local angle,” Kit said.
“Oh? Like what?”
Kit smiled. “Come sight-seeing in Colorado sometime, and maybe you’ll find out.”
They were shushed by someone behind them. Kit stood up and made his way out of the auditorium. For one awful moment, he had been certain that the guy from the Times was going to follow him.
He walked unhurriedly to a restroom, splashed cold water on his face, and went into a stall. He put on latex gloves and carefully removed the padded envelope addressed to Detective Alex Brandon from the inner lining of the bag, but left it within the bag itself. He pulled out the reporter’s notebook, the pens, the camera, and took off his press credentials. He took off the gloves and stuffed them into his pocket.
He stepped out and moved toward a bank of pay phones. He stood at one for a moment, pretending to make a call, hunching forward as if taking notes while talking, but not actually handling the receiver. He left the shoulder bag there and began to walk out.
“Leaving before the show’s over?” a deputy called to him.
“On a deadline,” he said and shrugged. “My editor’s pissed off at me for taking this long.” He glanced toward the pay phones.
The deputy followed his glance, then said, “Hey-you left your bag.”
Kit looked slightly puzzled. “Not mine.” He started to walk toward it.
“Never mind,” the deputy said quickly, stepping in between him and the pay phones. “I’ll take care of it. Good luck with your deadline.”
“Thanks.”
He walked out, the deputy watching him before he turned toward the phones again. Kit hurriedly crossed to the parking lot, ducking out of sight when he reached the television vans. He got into the Suburban with relief and felt even more relief when he reached Interstate 10 without being pulled over by the sheriff’s department.