He kept stumbling forward-
O'Sullivan had started out as a newspaperman back in the glorious days of Watergate. That era had been one of the few in American history when journalists were esteemed and exalted by their fellow citizens, even if they had worn flowered ties and wide lapels and sideburns that reached to their jawlines.
O'Sullivan had been glad to take advantage of all this glory, even if he was little more than a glorified copy boy. Night after night he'd stood drinking white wine in the fashionable singles bars of those days declaiming on the subject of the journalist's responsibility to the democracy Anybody who had even an inkling of what he was talking about thought he sounded pretty silly and full of himself, but-to miniskirted insurance company secretaries (bored with guys who hit on them with little more than a few gags lifted from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), O'Sullivan sounded pretty good, especially after the young women had had more than their share of drinks.
A few years later, going nowhere as a reporter on the paper, O'Sullivan had some drinks with Channel 3's then news director and decided what the hell, to try it as a TV guy. Understand now, O'Sullivan had been thirty pounds lighter in those days, and most of his Irish dark hair was intact, and he still had a warm feeling for most people that came across as a kind of ingenuous charm. In other words, he worked pretty well on the tube. He was appealing if not downright handsome, he had a nice 'gonadic' voice (as one of the more eloquent news consultants once described it), and he found that he sort of liked the limitations of the form-cramming everything you could into a minute or a minute-and-a-half report. On the paper you might have two or three thousand words to tell your story; on the tube you had a max of three hundred.
He rarely thought of these things anymore except when he went over to the newspaper. Even late at night, when there were mostly just kids working, O'Sullivan got The Stare.
The Stare is something that newspaper journalists always visit on television journalists. It transmits, in effect, the notion that TV people aren't really reporters after all and that they couldn't report a parking meter violation with any accuracy or style.
O'Sullivan stood on the edge of the newsroom now, letting the six or seven folks who had the graveyard shift aim The Stare at him.
O'Sullivan missed the clackety-clack of the typewriter days. Now everything was word processors and they didn't make any respectable journalistic noises at all.
At this time of night, the vast room with its teletypes and desks, its paste-up boards and overloaded photo desks, was quiet and dark. Now that they'd had their fun flinging The Stare at him, the reporters went back to their work on the phones and their computer screens.
They knew him from his occasional appearances on TV but he didn't know them. There was a whole new generation at work here and not a friendly face among them. Who could he get to let him into the computer morgue?
From behind him then came a thunderous flushing noise from one of the johns. A few moments later the tune of Eleanor Rigby was whistled on the air and a tall, gaunt man bald on top but with shoulder length hair in back came strolling out from the men's room. Despite his white shirt and conservative necktie, his little granny-glasses and his PEACE NOW button on the pocket of his shirt said that he still wished the era of Flower Power were upon us. He was obviously O'Sullivan's age or thereabouts but there was something youthful about him, too, some vitality and wryness that too many meetings with too many TV consultants had drained from O'Sullivan.
"Hey, O'Sullivan."
"Hey, Rooney."
"You must be slumming."
O'Sullivan grinned. "You're right. I am."
"Still going out with Chris Holland?"
"Sometimes."
"I envy you that."
"What's wrong with your wife? Last time I looked, she was a pretty nice woman."
"Dumped me."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, so am I actually." For a moment pain tightened Rooney's gaze and then he said, "Whatever happened to that beer you were going to buy me last year when I let you go through our morgue?"
"How about adding it to the other beer I'm going to buy you for letting me use the morgue tonight?"
Rooney smiled. "TV has made you a ruthless, cynical sonofabitch, hasn't it."
O'Sullivan patted his stomach. "No, TV has made me a chunk-o who picks up a Snickers every time he has an anxiety attack."
"Why don't you come back to the newspaper? They don't pay us enough to afford Snickers."
"Maybe that's a good idea."
Rooney clapped him on the back. "Actually, it's good to see you, O'Sullivan. You're not half as big an asshole as most people think."
Laughing, O'Sullivan followed Rooney down the hall to the computer morgue. Rooney opened the door, pointed to the coffee-pot in the corner of the big room that was laid out with computers much like viewers in the microfilm room of a library. Here was where the newspaper stored decades of information on thousands of local subjects.
"You got to leave a quarter for each cup of coffee, though," Rooney said. "You remember Marge? The little black woman who runs this room?"
"I remember Marge all right."
"She runs a tight ship. She'll hunt you down to the ends of the earth if you take a cup of coffee without leaving a quarter for it."
"Don't worry. I will. She scares the hell out of me."
Rooney smiled and left, closing the door behind him.
Hastings House was built just before the turn of the century. In the photos from that time, the place looked about a tenth the size of its present form. A couple of stiff looking gents in top hats and long Edwardian coats could be seen, in one photo, turning over shovelfuls of dirt to get the project started-and then a year later standing in the same top hats and long Edwardian coats on the steps of the new building.
In the background, the tower was clear and impressive in the winter sunlight. Constructed of native stone, with a kind of turreted top, it rose against the sky with medieval grace, though the stories from the time quickly noted that the tower could not be used because of faulty construction.
In 1912 patient escapes tied to murders began. The first such incident involved a man named Fogarty. He had managed to walk away from the facility and had, several hours later, accosted a woman in her home. After raping her, he took a knife and began what the paper vaguely described as 'a series of mutilations.' She was found dead, at suppertime, by her two youngest children who had been 'down the road playing.' He had also been suspected of killing a four-year-old girl, but her body was never found.
Reading this, O'Sullivan sighed. Most people like to look back on past times with a patronising nostalgia. People were so much simpler then, they like to think. And life was so much easier, a Currier and Ives world of humble, pleasant people leading humble, pleasant lives. Well, to cure that nonsense, just sit down and read through some old newspapers as O'Sullivan was doing tonight. The Currier and Ives nonsense gets quickly buried. People then were just as petty, mean, and scared as they are now.
After twenty minutes, O'Sullivan went over and dropped a quarter into the change by the coffee-pot. It was like dropping money in the votive candle slot. Not unlike God, Marge demanded her due.
Then O'Sullivan got down to real work. And odd as it sounded, some of the things the Lindstrom woman said didn't sound half as crazy as they had over the phone earlier tonight. Not half as crazy at all.
By the time he was finished, O'Sullivan had deposited more than a dollar in the change box, and emptied his bladder three times.
During her fifth cup of coffee, Emily Lindstrom said, "Sometimes I wonder if it's just my vanity."