Jude looked up at the Metro desk. Leventhal, the editor in charge on weekends, was holding a huddle with the sub-editors. That was not a good sign. When Jude had first joined the paper, he had heard an old-timer remark that no good story ever came from a meeting of editors, and he had found nothing in his experience to contradict the axiom. Still, Leventhal liked him, or at least appeared to respect his work. If there was something good around, he might throw it his way.
Jude sat down at his desk and clicked on his computer. The screen leapt to life; he signed on, and promptly swore out loud. The message light was glowing, and he knew what that meant: questions about his piece. He was right, and as he scrolled through the story, his heart sank. He saw long dark patches of comment mode placed there by an unseen editor. He spent the next three hours piling through his notes, checking facts and calling up sources, who didn't exactly feature the idea of wasting a Saturday on the phone with him. For revenge, he took a long lunch.
When he returned, his phone rang. It was Clive, the young news clerk on the Metro desk, speaking in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Clive owed him — more than once, Jude had helped him shape a story — and as their eyes met across the newsroom, Jude picked up the signaclass="underline" payback time.
"A murder, sounds good," said Clive. "Don't know much about it, but the wires are saying it's strange. Mutilation. Maybe a ritual killing, maybe a Mob hit."
"Who's the victim?"
"No ID yet."
"Where?"
"Not far. Tylerville. Near New Paltz."
Jude did a quick calculation; he could get there in an hour and a half, maybe two; have an hour to report it out and half an hour to write it. He could make the deadline. Monday's paper was a good one, read by people starting the week and looking for something to gossip about around the proverbial watercooler. He felt a familiar rush — a quickening of the pulse, not much more — and he knew that he was hooked.
He sauntered up to the Metro desk and stood next to Leventhal, who ignored him until he cleared his throat.
"Hey," said Leventhal nonchalantly.
"I finished the revision on gun control," Jude said noncommittally.
"Weren't you out on some story this morning — what was it?"
"The psychic who got rich on the stock market. It didn't pan out. She lives in a railroad tenement in Hell's Kitchen. I'd like to leave if you have nothing for me. I've got to go upstate tonight."
"Upstate — where?"
"New Paltz."
"New Paltz." Leventhal raised one eyebrow slightly. "What're you doing up there?"
"Nothing much. Dinner with friends."
Leventhal paused, as if he were deep in thought. "Well, as long as you're in the area…"
He made a point of fishing through papers on his desk, even though the printed piece of wire copy was right on top. He finally seized it and handed it wordlessly to Jude, with a sideways cock of the wrist that said: this is no big deal, but it could amount to something.
On his way to his desk, Jude congratulated himself on the stratagem. He had known it would succeed because it tickled two primitive spots in the editorial cortex: fobbing off an assignment and disrupting a reporter's private life. As he grabbed his coat and a fresh notebook and hurried out the door, he looked at Clive and flashed him a V sign.
Chapter 3
Skyler lay in bed, listening to the birds and identifying them. There was the bubbling chatter of the yellow-throated warbler, and he imagined it hopping from branch to branch. Nearby came the fluted cries of the chachalaca; he knew how it looked when it rippled its feathers to shake off the morning dew. And far in the distance, he heard the jingle of the white-eyed vireo, "the drunkard" as Kuta called him, crying out quick with the beer check.
The moment he had awakened, he'd thought about Patrick. He had done the same every morning for the past week, since he and Julia had discovered the body. The image of it, shrunken and gutted on the cold table, rose up unsummoned. Part of him — the part that was so assiduously listening to the birds — tried to block it out. But that was impossible.
Maybe today something would happen — something that would bring to a head the confusing and frightening chain of events. Patrick's death had rekindled all the doubts that he had tried to lay to rest over the years. There had been a service for him, of course. A simple wooden coffin had been placed under the photograph of Dr. Rincon, and Baptiste had delivered a eulogy. But Skyler had not listened. Instead, he was envisioning the wounds in the corpse, his mind reeling with questions.
Thank God for Julia. Thinking about her was a balm to his fevered imagination. He needed her more than ever, now that his world was turned upside down and people that he had once loved and trusted had become objects of suspicion and fear.
He conjured her up in his mind's eye — her flowing dark hair, her bright laugh quick as a sandpiper, the fullness of her thighs and hips that never ceased to excite him, her body that schooled him in wisdom, and her mind that seemed to range always to the next horizon and welcomed him when he arrived there.
How long had he loved her? It was impossible to say. Forever, it seemed.
He remembered her as a young girl, and almost blushed in recalling how she used to trail after him and Raisin, and how the two would run off into the woods without her. Once they'd pretended to ignore her, and lured her deep into the forest and then abandoned her. It had been a great lark. They'd laughed and returned to Campus. But as the afternoon shadows lengthened and she still had not returned, Skyler had felt dread in his stomach. He'd scanned the treeline, unable to confess his mounting alarm, until finally close to dusk, he'd spied a tiny white spot — her shirt! — and felt such a rush of joy and relief that he actually gave a little leap of happiness.
Not long after that had come a second, even more frightening scare.
He came to dinner at the Meal House one evening — this was back when boys and girls were still allowed to mix — and noticed that she was not there. The next morning, he drew aside a girl from the Age Group and asked where she was. The girl lowered her voice to a whisper.
"Didn't you hear? She went for a physical and then right into surgery. Nobody knows what it is, but it sounds serious."
For five days he didn't sleep at night, and barely ate. During Science, he thought of nothing but her. On the evening of the fifth day he could no longer stand it. During dinner, he feigned a stomach ache and was consigned to barracks. He slipped out while the others were eating, crossed the yard to the Big House and located the window to the sick bay on the first floor. He opened it and climbed inside, and there she was, sitting up in bed, throwing him a big smile. Before he knew it, he was at her side.
"I was lucky," she explained. "They found something wrong, but they operated on it and now I'm all better."
She turned over in bed and raised her pajama top to expose her back, where an eight-inch-wide bandage was wrapped around her waist.
"I'm going to have a great scar."
She sat up again, and he reached over and touched her hand. It was a shock to be holding it — already the Elders had been laying the groundwork for the precepts against contact between the sexes — and he felt a thrill when she squeezed his hand in return.
From that time on, things were different.
He did not try to put a name to his feelings for her, because that was too complicated and upsetting, but he knew that she had come to occupy a central place in his scheme of things. He laid down the law: he and Raisin would no longer exclude her; they were offically a threesome. Raisin accepted the change, but not as easily, and once in a while, talking late at night in the barracks, his friend would reminisce about the good old days.