"Jesus," O'Sullivan said when he saw the girl trapped in the glare of the lights.
Then before Chris knew what he was doing, O'Sullivan vaulted a barricade-he might be thirty pounds overweight but he was surprisingly nimble-and ran over in front of the lights. He started waving his arms and blocking the girl with his body so the police could more easily help her into the waiting squad car.
Chris smiled, thinking that this was just the kind of move that proved he was first a human being and second a reporter. Much as she liked some reporters, she didn't find many of them all that admirable as human beings.
Once the girl was in the car and speeding safely away, O'Sullivan turned reporter again. The Channel 3 team-two camera people and the station's reigning hunk who didn't look any smarter than usual-came trotting breathlessly up to their boss, awaiting his commands.
Rather than stand around, Chris decided to start soaking up some colour. Even if she'd been demoted to daily calendar lady, she still recognised a good-if bleak-story when she saw one.
She spent the next ten minutes familiarising herself with the scene in general. She wondered what the motive for the killing had been. Robbery seemed unlikely. Certainly the Alice B. Toklas Bookstore wouldn't have contained enough money to justify such slaughter. (Though, of course, if the killer was a junkie, he might well have murdered these people for a few dollars.) And from what she was gathering, a young white middle class boy had been murdered inside.
A few people in the crowd recognised her and pointed and smiled. You might not get much money as a local TV reporter but you got about all the fame you could handle. Grocery store, record shop, movie theatre-it didn't matter-wherever you went your public awaited you. Of course, not everyone loved you. She'd been spit at, given the finger to, and cursed out loud. And this was all during her off-duty hours.
The crime scene was laid out, as usual, to keep the maximum number of people out and let the minimum number of people inside the yellow crime scene tape. Two uniformed officers stood logging official people in and out, writing down.what they were wearing so that if later there were questions about fibres or blood or latent fingerprints, they'd know if any of these belonged to police personnel. She'd seen some crime scenes that had been limited to two or three people, police identification officers-who did diagrams and snapped photos and gathered all sorts of evidence-and one person from the coroner's office. All the activity was directed by a police commander on the scene (and many times not even the commander was let inside the yellow tape) and a commander back at the precinct. The object was to survey and catalogue the crime scene and get out before anybody had a chance to disturb or disrupt evidence. Understandably, uniformed police officers kept not only Chris but all the other reporters away as well.
This was the front of the store. She decided to try her luck in the alley, where the investigation was limited to one side of the pavement.
Two white coated men from the Medical Examiner's office stood by a wall examining a great stain of blood. The men recognised her and nodded as she walked past. Probably they didn't yet know she was now the daily calendar lady. They probably still thought she was a crack reporter. They probably didn't know how old she was, either. Too old to be anything but a calendar lady. But that was self-pity and that was one thing she always tried to spare herself. She had her health, her good if not brilliant mind, her good if not gorgeous looks, and there were one hell of a lot of people on this planet who had one whole lot less. She considered self-pity the most unbecoming of all feelings and whenever she felt herself slipping into it she bit her lip till she drew blood.
She drew blood right now.
She walked past the light in the centre of the alley, into the chill gloom near the misty light at the opposite end.
The place reeked of garbage and other filth. Near a light pole she could see the carcass of a cat that had been eaten up by some kind of scavenger. Most of the belly was gone. Its front paws and jaw were frozen in a position of extreme terror and pain. She loved cats. The poor little thing.
When Chris got back to the front of the bookstore, she found that the reporters had doubled, perhaps tripled in number. Uniformed police officers held them at bay ten feet on the other side of the yellow tape. The number of onlookers had increased, too. There was a carnival atmosphere now. Among the gloomy faces you saw a smile or two. Know-it-alls in the crowd pointed things out to newly arrived spectators. The slaying had gone from a numbing, depressing experience to one of novelty and even thrills. By now it wasn't a human experience-a life with a history and loved ones-but rather just one more titillation for the tube.
She found O'Sullivan barking at his reporters, ordering them to try to outflank the officers so they could get a better shot of the store interior. His moment of humanity-seeing that the teenage girl was protected from the wolf pack of reporters- had passed and he was once again his familiar self, a news director in a competitive TV market very worried about ratings and determined to get some kind of edge on his foes at the other stations.
So now, instead of walking up to the crime scene commander, she bypassed him and went over to O'Sullivan.
She had to wait until he was finished intimidating his troops.
He turned to her and said, "Channel 6 is going to beat the hell out of us on this story. They're up to something. I know it." O'Sullivan always said this. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "Where's Lindstrom?"
"On the other side of the barricade."
Some of the people in the crowd had recognised her. They were pointing and waving. She waved back. Anything except face O'Sullivan's scrutiny.
"Where you going after this?"
"Emily wants to talk to the Fane girl."
"You think you can get in to see her?"
She crossed her fingers. "Hope so." Then she gave him a most unprofessional kiss on the cheek and left.
Five blocks from the bookstore, Richard Dobyns was hiding in the deep shadows of a five-storey all-night parking garage. He was on the third floor.
Crouched in a corner of the place, he was slowly becoming aware of smells: leaky motor oil, fading cigarette smoke, his own sticky sweat, and the chill breeze off the nearby river smelling of fish and pollutants.
He was slowly becoming aware of sights, too: the way the perfectly waxed hood of a new Lincoln shone in the starlight through the open wall, the stars themselves inscrutable and imperious, and closer by the concrete floor slanting down into shadows. There were only a few cars left on this floor. The place looked deserted and lonely in the dim and dirty overhead light. Occasionally, from down below, he could hear footsteps and cars starting up, and then a laugh or two.
He wanted to be one of them. One of those everyday normal people getting into an everyday normal car going home to an everyday normal wife and kids. All his life he'd wanted to be everyday and normal yet he never had been quite-not in high school where he'd been the nerdy editor of the school newspaper or in college where he'd been the nerdy editor of the literary. He'd always felt the outsider, walking around with a nervous insincere smile on his face, and knowing a sorrow even he couldn't quite define.
Well, given what he'd done in the past twenty-four hours, now he was the ultimate outsider-
He tried to keep images of the teenage boy from his mind.
My God, he'd-
His breath still came in spasms.
Leaning back against the rough concrete wall, he felt his chest and belly heave as breath ripped upward through his lungs.
And then he felt the thing inside him shift.
Not a major shift, just a small one as if adjusting position.
He put his hand to his stomach.