One side effect of Newton’s story was that angry attention was suddenly focused on local government, a furor deliberately fueled by the news media who, as one, cranked up their studied self-righteousness and demanded—ostensibly on behalf of The Public, but actually on behalf of their ratings—that the mayor’s office and the police department respond to the allegations of a cover-up. Harry LeBeau responded by closing his shop and sneaking out the back way in order to head home and hide. Terry, for his part, was reading the papers and watching the news, and thinking it all through. This was becoming a make-or-break situation, and it had to be played just right. His nerves were beginning to grow taut again and he could feel the claws of the beast scratching at the inside of his brain.
So, the press descended on the police department. Gus Bernhardt, his face as red as a boiled lobster, hemmed and hawed as he tried to field eighty questions at once, most of them accusatory. Why had he not informed the public of the danger? Why was there a cover-up? How could the authorities let such a dangerous man walk around free? Sergeant Ferro was so tired and disgusted by all that had happened that he had the perverse urge to let the chief sink under the tide of questions, but a couple of the city journalists recognized him and immediately he was barraged. Unlike Bernhardt, Ferro was used to press conferences, and he had his own method for dealing with the pressure. He gave answers that were so dry and boring that most reporters found listening to him excruciating. Willard Fowler Newton was not so easily dissuaded; he grilled Ferro with questions like machine-gun fire and after a few minutes even Ferro found himself tripping over his words and casting around for an exit. Standing to one side, LaMastra fought valiantly not to crack a visible smile.
Then at the stroke of one, the back door to the chief’s office banged open and through it walked Terry Wolfe. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark blue tie loosened at the throat, and he had unbuttoned the top two shirt buttons. His hair was just slightly tousled and his curly red beard looked a little wild. The effect was that of a man who has been seriously at work all night, a man who has been in the trenches. He walked right through the middle of the crowd, which yielded and parted for him (though they continued to babble questions at him), past a grateful Gus Bernhardt and a skeptical Ferro—who had become convinced the mayor had wigged out—and stopped in the precise center of the crowd. Everyone was speaking at once, yelling, demanding, imploring, reviling, questioning, accusing, but Terry said nothing, did nothing other than fix his blueberry eyes on the nearest reporter and then turn very slowly in a full circle, making deliberate eye contact with as many people as possible. His stare was as hard and unfaltering as a statue’s, and from the subtle arch of one eyebrow and the set of his stern mouth it was clear that he was not going to speak until he had a more attentive and respectful audience. He did not say a word, but gradually every voice faltered and grew silent. By the time he completed the full turn the crowded office was totally quiet except for the rustling of clothes and a small, embarrassed cough here and there.
Ferro, watching, was impressed. He and LaMastra exchanged a brief look. “This should be good,” LaMastra murmured.
Terry had prepared himself for this moment. Since calling Gus late yesterday he had spent hours getting himself calm, gathering all the details, mentally rehearsing his comments, and listening to all the updates from the news services. Terry felt like ten miles of poorly paved back road, but he had showered, and dressed in the kind of outfit that would project the image he wanted the people of his town to see: not a shifty politician dodging the situation, but a leader of the people who was there on the front lines with the troops. Not an Italian suit but rolled-up shirtsleeves and all of the long hours stamped on his face. He crammed the other things—the hallucinations, the monstrous mirror images he was seeing, and the fear—into a closet in the back of his mind and made himself be The Mayor. He was good at this sort of stuff, and he knew it; and it was not all artifice—he genuinely cared about his town, though he rarely had a chance to show it. Right now, though, he needed to show a lot of it. He needed to be The Man in Charge. He waited out the silence, standing nearly six-five and powerful in the center of the reporters, few of whom were anywhere near his height, and none of them his equal in gravitas.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began in the stentorian tones he had learned long ago in high school debating society, “and my fellow citizens of Pine Deep. For those that don’t know me, my name is Terrance Wolfe, I am the mayor of Pine Deep.” He paused for effect, gave a small self-effacing smile. “I am aware of the depth of concern you all must feel about what has happened, and I understand your confusion about the way in which this situation was handled by myself and the members of the interjurisdictional task force. If you will allow me, I will present all of the available facts to you. However, before we begin, I would like to say that out of respect for everyone’s deadlines, I will first read a prepared statement and then I will field questions. I think it would help us all if there were no questions until I finish the statement, because the information I have is extensive and will probably provide you with most or all of what you need to tell your readers.”
He paused again, smiling the kind of smile a high school principal would give when addressing a group of incoming freshmen. Terry knew how to project both his sincerity and his command so that few people ever felt compelled to interrupt him. He deliberately avoided the use of contractions so that he sounded formal, and yet pitched his voice to be on the corporate side of affable. The length of his pause, and the sweep of his dark, intense blue eyes, cemented his words into every crack and crevice of the silence. “Very well. I assume most of you have your tape recorders and cameras rolling? Good. Let me begin with the prepared statement.”
He took a folded sheaf of papers from his shirt pocket, and after giving the crowd another brief pointed look, he began to read. It was long and involved. Terry was aware that there was going to be a lot of pressure to explain why the authorities had attempted to cover up the fact that the infamous and infinitely dangerous Cape May Killer had been running amok in Pine Deep and that one of his associates was apparently on a murder spree even now. Terry had decided not to try and weasel out of it, but to come right out and admit it, telling the straight truth: that they did not want to attract the attention of a lot of rubberneckers who might seriously compromise the effectiveness of the investigation. It was a crucial issue for Terry because his personal credibility as the mayor of the town was at stake, and elections were not all that far off.
Watching, Ferro had been curious to see how the mayor would handle it, and he found himself changing his opinion of Terry with each sentence. The mayor not only turned it around, but also made it seem that the cover-up actually aided in the early resolution of the Karl Ruger manhunt, more or less suggesting that it was part of a carefully crafted snare that had brought Ruger out of hiding so that he could be taken down.
Terry didn’t actually lie, but he played fast and loose with the truth, sometimes using rather vague (though seemingly detailed) accounts of actions taken, plans drawn, and manpower employed to sell his version of it. He sold it beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that Ferro could see just when it was that the gathered reporters took the bait and when Terry jerked the line to set the hook. By the time Terry was well into the third page of the statement, everyone watching was convinced that, working together in a high-security cabal of law enforcement teams, the Philadelphia narcotics task force and the Pine Deep Police Department had laid a cunning trap for the Cape May Killer, and had closed the trap around him with great courage and professional efficiency. Even the attack at the hospital was made to seem like a trap that had been set using Crow—and here the press was reminded that he had been reinstated as a police officer—as bait. Ferro felt himself believing what Terry was saying, and he couldn’t help but smile as Terry worked the room like a top-grade grifter getting ready to sell five thousand acres of swampland as prime beachfront property.