"The people who did that?" She nodded back to the infirmary.
"There's nothing we can do to stop them."
They arrived at the gate and the guard stopped.
"But what did he do?"
"What did he do?" The guard didn't understand her.
"I mean, why did somebody stab him?"
The guard's face snapped into a brief frown. "He ended up here, miss. That's what he did."
The place was pretty easy to get into.
Like water through a sieve, Jack Nestor thought. Then laughed, thinking that probably wasn't the best word to describe a houseboat. The only problem had been there was a parking lot nearby and a booth with a security guard, who'd glance at the boat every so often like he was keeping an eye on it. But Nestor waited until the man made a phone call then walked past him and jogged up the yellow gangplank.
Once he was inside he pulled on brown cotton gloves and started at the back. He took his time. He'd never been on a houseboat before and he was pretty curious about it. He'd done some charters and been on more party boats than he could count and of course he'd done time in military LSTs and landing craft. But this wasn't like anything else he'd ever seen.
The decor sucked, for one thing. It looked like his nutzo stepmother's place. But he admired the pilothouse, if that's what you'd call it, which had beautiful brass fixtures and levers and grainy oak all yellow with old varnish. Beautiful. All the controls except the wheel were frozen and he guessed the motor was kaput. He resisted a temptation to pull the horn rope.
Downstairs he carefully went through the bookshelves and the cheap, sprung-fiberboard desk that was a sea of papers and pictures (mostly of dragons and knights and fairies, that sort of shit). There were a couple of dozen videocassettes. They were mostly that make-believe stuff too. Fairy stories, dragonslayers, the stuff he never watched. Some dirty films too. Lusty Cousins. And something calledEpitaph for a Blue Movie Star.
So, this chick had a kinky side to her.
Then he rummaged through the closets and drawers in the bedroom and in the little supply room that had another dresser in it. He went through the kitchen and the refrigerator, which was the first place that most people who thought they were clever hid things and which was the first place most professional thieves looked.
After an hour he was convinced she didn't have anything here that interested – or worried – him.
Which meant the files would be at her office and that was a pain in the ass.
Nestor looked around and sat down on the couch. He had a decision to make. He could wait here until she came back and just waste her. Get it over with, make it look like a robbery. The cops would probably buy that. He was always surprised how people craved to accept the most obvious explanations. Easier all the way around. Robbery and murder.
Or rape and murder.
On the other hand, that might leave a lot of material floating around somewhere, material that shouldn't be floating around.
Still…
A car door slammed. He was up fast, glancing out the window. He saw her – not a bad-looking girl, if she didn't wear those stupid clothes, like the striped black-and-yellow tights and red miniskirt. It turned him off and made him resent her…
Oh, he knew that emotion. The feeling that he'd get looking at a wiry brown-skinned man in a khaki uniform, looking at him through a telescopic sight, feeling the hatred, working up a wild, spiraling fury (maybe because Nestor was sweating like a steam pipe in the heat or because bugs were digging into his skin or because he had a glossy, star-shaped scar on his belly). Resentment, hate. He needed those feelings – to help him pull the trigger or press the knife in as deeply as he could.
Boots scraped on the asphalt outside.
Nestor felt a low itching and rubbed his scar. He felt the weight of the Steyr automatic in his pocket.
But he left it where it was and climbed out onto the deck.
He watched her open the door, clumsy, tilting against the weight of a movie camera and cassettes and a leather belt of batteries or whatever, which looked like a bandolier of M16 clips. She stacked it all by the door and disappeared into the bedroom. He waited a few minutes to see if he'd get a glimpse of skin but when she came out in a boring work shirt and stretch pants he silently left the boat and disappeared into the West Village.
15
A genius, but always controversial…" Click.
"A genius, but always controversial, Lance Hopper…"
Click.
Rune hit the rewind button again. It was a good shot of him: Lance Hopper. Or a good shot of his mortal remains, at any rate – the gurney holding his body as it was wheeled out of the deadly courtyard three years before. She wished she could use the footage. Unfortunately, it had been filmed by another station.
"… controversial, Lance Hopper was disliked by coworkers and competitors alike. Although under his brief leadership the sevenp.m. national news program rose to number one in the ratings, he managed to embroil the network in several major scandals. Among them was an uproar caused by numerous firings of staff members, massive and – his critics said – arbitrary budgetary cutbacks and intense scrutiny of the network's news programs and their content.
"Perhaps the incident that gave his network the blackest eye, however, was an Equal Employment Opportunity suit brought by five women employees who claimed that Hopper's hiring and promotion practices discriminated against them. Hopper denied the charges and the suit was settled out of court. Associates of the late executive, though, admitted that he preferred men in executive positions, and felt that a woman had no business in the higher echelons of network news. His flamboyant personal life belied that reputed prejudice, however, and he was often seen in the company of attractive women from society and the entertainment industry. There were rumors of bisexual behavior and of his having had several young male models as companions. His penchant, however, was for tall blondes…"
Click.
Tall blondes. Why is it always tall blondes?
Rune was at her desk, surrounded by piles of newspapers, magazines, computer printouts, videocassettes and the refuse from a dozen fast-food meals. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and everyone was gearing up for the news at seven. She felt that she was in the eye of a hurricane. Motion everywhere. Frantic, crazed motion.
Rune had also learned that while Hopper's internship program had indeed launched many a career in journalism he himself was maybe a bit more interested in the young people than he should have been. In the archives Rune found a confidential memo in which the network's ethics committee heard complaints from two interns, eighteen and nineteen, that he'd made improper advances toward them. The names weren't given and there seemed to be no follow-up references to the incidents.
She asked Bradford about the reports but he said he knew nothing about them and didn't believe the stories for a minute. Powerful people, he explained, attract rumors. He obviously didn't want his idol to have feet of clay and Rune wondered if it had been purely an oversight that the young man had missed the memo about the investigation when he was digging through the archives in search of material on Hopper.
Click.
Rune watched the tape of Hopper's body rolling out into the spring night, the snakes of afterimage etched into the screen by the revolving lights on the EMS vans and police cars, the crowds – pale in the video camera's radiance of light – that looked curious and bored at the same time.
"Rune." A calm voice, a woman's voice.
"Oh, hi." It was Piper Sutton.
Should've cleaned up my desk. She thought. Remembering how neat the anchor-woman's was. And seeing how neat she looked now, standing here in a dark red suit with black velvet tabs on the collar and a white high-necked blouse and and dark fleshy stockings disappearing into the slickest patent-leather shoes Rune'd ever seen. Shoes with high heels sand one red stripe along the side.