“I gather you didn’t like my editing?” Vivian asked with studied casualness, barely even glancing away from the monitor on which she was already reviewing stories for tomorrow’s edition.
“It wasn’t editing, Viv,” Anne told her. “It was butchery. It was a good story, and it was an honest story. And I’m taking it back.” She dropped the sheaf of notes onto the editor’s desk, forcing Vivian to shift her attention from the monitor to the reporter who stood opposite her, pale and drawn.
“Toning down an irresponsible story is one of my primary functions around here,” she began. But as she finally took a good look at Anne Jeffers, her words died on her lips. “Anne? Are you okay? You look like you’ve been up all night.”
“I might as well have been, for all the sleep I got,” Anne confessed. As quickly as she could, she filled Vivian in.
“Your cat?” Vivian asked as Anne described what had been done to Heather’s pet. “My God, who would do something like that?”
Anne shook her head. “And what kind of a world do we live in when people react more strongly to what happens to a cat than they do to what happens to other people?”
Vivian Andrews reddened. “I didn’t mean—” she began, but then dropped back in her chair. “Oh, God, maybe I did.” She sighed. “What did the police say?”
Anne repeated most of what Mark Blakemoor and Lois Ackerly had told her, holding back only the few words that had been spoken — and not spoken — about Glen. “And as for your changing my story to say that the police aren’t connecting the Davis and Cottrell killings, that simply isn’t true,” she finished. “They told me off the record that they’re definitely treating them as related, and that they’re going to have the same medical examiner who autopsied Davis and Cottrell look at our cat, too.”
Vivian Andrews sourly eyed the array of papers that Anne had dropped onto her desk. “May I assume you’ve decided to take yourself off this particular mess?” she asked, tilting her head toward the transit plan notes.
“It seems to me that there are a lot of people around here who could do that story perfectly well.”
“I’m not sure that’s the point,” Vivian replied. “I can also think of half a dozen people who could deal with these new killings in a more objective fashion than you.”
“Maybe. But there’s something else — something I haven’t told anyone else yet.” Struggling not to let her voice betray the extent of the fear she’d felt last night — still felt, she realized as she repeated the story — she told Vivian about the note that had appeared on her computer, then disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. “Look,” she finished. “Put someone else on the story with me, if you want to. But you have to let me stay with it.” When she saw the editor wavering, she pushed harder. “Vivian, something’s going on here. This isn’t just a copycat. Whoever’s doing this has something going against me personally. Maybe he’s trying to scare me off, or maybe he’s seen a picture of me and just likes the way I look. For some reason, he’s fixated on me, and even if you don’t think it’s a good idea for me to stay on the story, you know damned well that we can slant it to sell more papers than the P.I. and the Times combined. Picture the headline, Viv: ‘Killer Stalks Herald Reporter.’ I can write it without getting Blakemoor and Ackerly into trouble — I was there, Viv! It was my next-door neighbor. My cat. And my computer he left his damned note on!”
She fell momentarily silent, then spoke again, no longer making any attempt to keep her voice steady. “My God, Viv — he’s been watching me! He as much as said so!” Her voice rose. “ ‘See you soon!’ That’s what he said, Viv: ‘See you soon.’ He might even have taken Joyce Cottrell up to the park and dumped her there because he knew I jog there.” She shuddered. “Oh, God, I wonder how long it’s been going on — how long he’s been out there.” Again she fell silent, for now a memory was stirring. A faint memory, of having felt as though she were being watched. But where …?
Misreading Anne’s silence as a demand for a decision, Vivian Andrews made up her mind. Even as she committed herself, she knew she was doing it for the wrong reasons. Every instinct within her told her to assign someone else to this story. But she also knew that she was no more immune to the lure that Anne had held out than anyone else would be. How often did any reporter anywhere get a chance to go after a murder story where she herself might be one of the intended victims? They would, indeed, sell a lot of papers. “All right,” she said. “Keep on it. But be very careful, and keep in mind that I’m going to be going over every word you write with a fine-tooth comb. Keep it fair, keep it objective, and you can keep the story. Agreed?”
Anne stood up. “Agreed.” She started out of the editor’s office, already composing a mental list of the phone calls she needed to make. But then she turned back, and her eyes met her boss’s. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
Vivian Andrews gazed steadily at her. “Anne, I hope you’re smart enough to realize that all this should be scaring you to death.”
“I am,” Anne replied. “Right now, I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. And I don’t even know why this guy’s mad at me. What could I ever have done to him?”
“What makes you think you did anything to him at all?” Vivian Andrews asked. “It’s probably not even about you, Anne. It could still all be just a coincidence. But even if it isn’t, don’t start thinking it has anything to do with something you did, or even didn’t do. It’s just him, Anne. It’s just some nut.”
Anne left the editor’s office and returned to her desk, where she riffled through the short stack of messages that had come in overnight, then checked her E-mail, half expecting to find a duplicate of the note that had been left on her computer at home. She wasn’t sure whether she felt relief or disappointment when she found nothing.
Nothing in the way of a note, and nothing pertaining to the murders of either Shawnelle Davis or Joyce Cottrell.
Lots pertaining to the rapid transit mess, which she rerouted to Vivian Andrews for reassignment.
She was about to reach for the phone to call Mark Blakemoor when she changed her mind: it had long been her experience that people found it far easier to lie over the phone than in person, a phenomenon she attributed more to her own ability to read people’s facial expressions and body language than to any peculiar compunctions on the part of those she was interviewing.
Face-to-face, she could reel in practically any fish. On the phone, they could wriggle off the hook.
Retrieving her coat from the rack that served her own and half a dozen other desks, she scooped up her gritchel, slung the strap over her shoulder, left the office, and headed downtown.
Twenty minutes later — her car maybe-not-quite-completely-illegally parked in a passenger zone whose white paint was sufficiently worn away for her to think she might be able to argue the case — she entered the Public Safety Building and strode directly to the cramped office Mark Blakemoor and Lois Ackerly shared.
“They’re not here,” a detective whose name Anne couldn’t remember said as she was about to knock on the closed door. He grinned at her, his eyes glinting with malicious humor. “Would you believe they’re down at the M.E.’s office, checking out a dead cat?” Not bothering to reply, Anne turned on her heel and walked out of the Homicide Division. She did, however, make a mental note to find out the detective’s name, just in case she ever got the opportunity to make fun of him in the paper.