“No, Rudy, get Paul.”
Rudy must have conveyed the idea there was an emergency, because Paul Wister banged through the double outer doors within sixty seconds.
His mouth dropped. “My God, what happened?”
Schaeffer helped Pace off with his sport coat and hung it on an empty stall door. The reporter leaned against the cool wall tiles while a sink filled with water.
“Wash your face, Steve,” Schaeffer said, ignoring Wister for the moment. When Pace didn’t move, Schaeffer spoke again, harshly. “Clean yourself up! We have work to do!”
Suddenly Pace lost all semblance of control. “What do you mean, we have work to do?” He jumped right into Schaeffer’s face, defying the editor’s unyielding restraint. “You don’t have anything to do, because you don’t believe what happened down there. You want to call this another senseless crime in the city. Well, fuck that!”
“Watch your mouth, Pace,” Wister ordered. “I won’t tolerate insubordination.”
Schaeffer held up a hand, a signal for Wister to back off. He turned to the national editor. “Two things, Paul. I want you to order the first edition held up, and I want a reporter—I don’t care if it’s metro, suburban or national—get somebody down to the Price-Less drugstore down the street. There’s been a multiple homicide, and we need a story on it tomorrow. Then come back, and I’ll fill you in.”
Wister, bewildered, looked at Pace again. “We know about the shooting, Avery,” he said. “It came over the scanner. Metro has a reporter and a photographer there. The first edition’s already gone, but I can pull it back.”
“Do it,” Schaeffer ordered. “Then make two holes on the front page for a spot report on the shooting and a longer piece Steve will write when he gets a grip on himself.”
“That sounds like a long delay,” Wister suggested warily. “It’ll bump all the editions back and cost us a fortune in composing-room overtime.”
“I know,” Schaeffer snapped. “Just do it!”
“I’ll be right back,” Wister said. He left to follow orders he didn’t understand.
Pace glared at Schaeffer. “I’ve got a grip on myself, and I’ve got a pretty good grasp of reality, too,” the reporter said.
Schaeffer refused to allow himself to rise to Pace’s bait. “Then you know you’ve got a job to do,” he said. “Clean yourself up and get to your desk.”
Fifteen minutes later, with Pace working on Schaeffer’s story, the editor took Wister into his office and told him about the evening’s events and what Pace suspected about McGill’s death. As the story went into its graphic details, Wister paled progressively.
“Sweet Jesus, no wonder Steve’s out of control,” he said. “That’s unbelievable. Mike was sitting right here just a few hours ago.” Then he straightened. “Is Steve writing that two NTSB investigators have been killed in a conspiracy to preserve a cover-up?”
“Of course not,” Schaeffer said impatiently. “We don’t have that story. He’s writing about the coincidence of the deaths within four days of two key members of the NTSB team. I think if we had a mathematician, he’d say the odds of that happening were a million to one against. There will be no accusations, not even a hint we think it’s more than coincidence. I’m not convinced it isn’t coincidence, but it’s still one hell of a story.”
“You’re sending a message,” Wister said. It was a conclusion, not a question.
“Precisely. If there is a cover-up, and if homicide is being used as a convenience to preserve that cover-up, I want the devils behind the scheme to know we’re watching.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, I think you should consider whether this is a game too dangerous for us to be playing.”
“The way I look at it, Paul, the stakes are too high for us not to deal ourselves in.”
Pace made it through the eighteen-inch story. It raised fascinating questions and coincidences. Three times during the writing, he forced himself to go back and tone down the copy. In his devastated, furious state of mind, he was writing accusations he couldn’t substantiate, or that he wasn’t yet ready to make public.
His hands shook, and several times, trying to bring the trembling under control, he grabbed the edge of his desk and squeezed until they cramped. When he finished writing, he read over the words he’d fed to the computer but barely remembered:
“Two key members of the National Transportation Safety Board team investigating last week’s fatal crash of a Sexton 811 at Dulles International Airport have themselves been killed violently in the last four days, although police say at this time there is no reason to suspect a link between the deaths.
“Mark Antravanian, 48, an engineer studying whether the Sexton’s Converse engines played any role in the crash, died in a one-car accident in Fairfax County in the early hours of Sunday morning.
“Michael McGill, 52, the chief pilot for TransAmerican Airlines and chief of the systems group within the NTSB’s Sexton team, was shot to death Tuesday evening in a Pennsylvania Avenue drugstore, where he apparently walked in on an attempted robbery.
Police in Virginia and the District of Columbia…”
Pace broke off reading and closed his eyes. It was like a book-length nightmare, with a new death in each new chapter.
“Steve, drop the story in my basket,” Wister called urgently. “We’ve got to move.”
Pace nodded and keyed the story off his screen and into electronic storage, where the national editor could pick it up.
He considered calling Kathy but thought better of tormenting her with the story tonight. She didn’t need that on top of her own grief.
“Do you want me to take you home?” Schaeffer asked. He’d come up behind Pace.
“No, thanks, Avery. I’ve got my car.”
“You’ll be all right?”
“I’m not all right, but I can make it home.”
“You did a good job tonight. I know how hard it was for you. I’m sorry about Mike, Steve. I am. I liked him a great deal myself. If you need to, you can take tomorrow off. Let us know where to reach you in case something breaks.”
Pace was shaking his head. “I don’t want the day off. I don’t want to sit around thinking about this. I need to move ahead, finish what we started together.”
“Do what you think best,” Schaeffer said. “But don’t think of yourself as being alone. I’m right here with you, and Paul’s behind us. I don’t know if your suspicions are correct, but we’re going to find out.”
Late that night, Pace sat in his living room. It was darkened, except for one light that let him see when his drink was getting low. He consumed a third of a fifth of Black Jack and remembered Mike McGill. He’d been trying to get drunk, without success, he thought. He was considering giving up and going to bed when a random image jolted him from his chair. Of course! It had to be!
He’d assumed Mike was killed in the aftermath of his confrontation with Vernon Lund over Mark Antravanian’s death. But Lund wouldn’t have known where to find McGill. Only one person knew that. Only one person knew that to find Pace was to find McGill.
“Goddamn you, you sonofabitch,” Pace whispered.
You almost had me believing in you. We probably weren’t out of the building before you were on the phone issuing a contract on Mike’s life. You bastard! Damn you to hell!
Pace picked up his sport coat and located his small address book in the deep pocket sewn into the lining. Through booze-glazed eyes, he found what he was looking for, nodded as he confirmed the address he remembered, and tossed the little book on the coffee table. He strode out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Moments later he was back in his car, wheeling onto 22nd Street, west into Georgetown.