“Well, I don’t know anything else, and to be honest, I think it would be an unfair imposition for me to ask Steve any more about it.”
“And I wouldn’t ask you to,” Green added hastily. “But I think you should get out of here and go find him.”
“What for? He’s probably at work.”
“Then be there when he comes home. He’s been there for you. He’s probably going through his own kind of hell. Losing a friend is never easy. Losing one this way is crushing.”
“If Steve has a place in my life, Hugh, it’s not during working hours,” Kathy protested. “Those hours belong to you. Besides, I’m already taking Monday off.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The philosophy of life according to dear old Dad.”
He saw the glint of anger in her eyes before she opened her mouth, and he held up his hand to fend off the attack.
“I love old Joe, Kathy, you know that,” he said. “And you’re his daughter. A large part of what made him successful and what’s making you successful is your ability to set your sights, plot your course, and never deviate. Distractions be damned, full speed ahead. Never waste perfectly good energy on emotions. Right? But unless you have some flexibility, you go through life with blinders on. Then you miss all the beauty on either side of you. And you miss a lot of the pain that makes the beauty look so good by contrast.”
“So you want me to look for pain?” Kathy was incredulous.
“No,” Green said softly. “I want you to look for Steve. Then take it an hour at a time.”
She looked dubious, but she nodded.
“And if he shares any dirt with you about the Cobra, I goddamn well better be the first to hear it.” He grinned. “If I can be of any help on it, give Steve my private number.”
The tears welled again in Kathy’s eyes.
Green walked around the desk, pulled Kathy up into his arms and let her cry.
16
Steve Pace tried to ignore the telephone, tried to will away the intrusion into his uneasy sleep. On the seventh ring he relented and fumbled above his head for the instrument screaming at him from the top of his bookcase headboard. “Yeah?”
“This is Schaeffer. Where the hell were you? In Pittsburgh?” Pace realized there was a sharp, sickening sort of pain embedded in his right temple. He rolled onto his back, and the pain bubbled into his forehead.
“What time is it?”
“It’s nearly noon. Get out of bed and get your ass in here. You’re in a shitload of trouble.” The last sentence was pronounced deliberately, leaving no room for doubt.
Pace let the receiver fall on the pillow beside his head. He knew he should be concerned, but his mind was so flooded with shards of memories from the night before there wasn’t room for another emotional thought. He couldn’t immediately recall why he was in trouble, and he chose not to think about it hard. He decided he didn’t care.
With some discomfort, he sat up. He’d pretty much ripped up the bed during the night, but that didn’t concern him, either. He was drained. Blasted. Empty. He rubbed his hands over his heavily-bearded face and through his hair, tempted to fall back and drift off to sleep again. Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, unsure why he made the effort.
He threw on a terrycloth robe and stumbled into the living room. He opened the front door and picked up the newspaper. Without looking at it, he tossed it on the sofa and went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. His eyes fell on the Jack Daniel’s bottle near the sink. The glass beside it, smudged with fingerprints, was empty but for a half-inch of light amber water in the bottom, the remnants of leftover ice and a few drops of unconsumed sour mash. He picked up the bottle and stared at it. It was nearly empty. He recalled buying it on his way home the night before. He remembered why he wanted to get drunk. Obviously, he’d been successful.
It was Pace’s intention to shower while the coffee dripped, but the copy of the Chronicle caught his eye as he padded past the sofa. It was folded with the top of page one faceup. All Pace could see of his story was the headline. He sat beside the paper and picked it up as though it would burn his fingers. He let the inner sections slide away to the floor as he unfolded the front page. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and read what he had written. His hands began shaking. He could feel bile rising in his throat and anger pounding in his head. The inked words blurred, and he clapped his hands together, crumpling the newspaper lengthwise between them.
Pace heard himself shout “No!” as he hurled the paper away. With little mass or weight, it barely cleared the coffee table, but as he watched it fall, his eye was caught by the address book lying on the table where he’d left it the night before. It was open to the list of names starting with S. Many of the addresses and phone numbers were scratched out, with new ones squeezed into whatever space was available. Sawyer, Severson, Scanlon, Sanchez, Simpson, Shohenney, Sachs. The last name on the page stopped him.
And then he remembered everything.
By the time Pace walked through the front doors of the Chronicle building, he’d figured out what had aroused Schaeffer’s fury. Somehow, word of the reporter’s call on Ken Sachs in the early hours of the morning had gotten back to the editor. Pace supposed he’d been a little hard on Sachs, essentially accusing him of complicity in a murder, with nothing but circumstantial evidence to support that belief. But even in the harsh light of day and under the cold eye of sobriety, Pace continued to believe it. Mike McGill had bet his life on the integrity of the NTSB chairman, and he’d lost.
Pace didn’t check for phone messages or remove his coat before going to Schaeffer’s office. There was no sense delaying the confrontation. He had no intention of backing down from the conviction that a conspiracy shrouded the crash of ConPac Flight 1117, a conspiracy that continued to take a toll in human lives. Schaeffer could rage all he liked, even fire him; Pace made up his mind to push the issue, regardless of the cost. The ConPac story had become personal. He owed it to Mike to solve the mystery. And he had made the promise to Kathy.
He found Schaeffer alone. “You wanted to see me, Avery?”
The editor looked up, and his face reddened. He jabbed the index finger of his right hand toward a point over Pace’s left shoulder. “In the Glory Room,” he ordered. His voice rumbled like the distant thunder of a developing storm.
Pace turned toward the editorial conference room, a dozen steps from Schaeffer’s office. He pushed open the oak door and left it open behind him. Schaeffer entered and closed it. Pace walked to the big window overlooking the heart of the nation’s capital and found himself wondering how many deals were being cut at this very moment in those buildings, and over what, and how many conspiracies were being hatched, and how many covered up. He sighed deeply and turned around, his face as neutral as he could manage.
Schaeffer was watching him closely, his lips drawn tight, his face reddened from above the slightly lanterned jaw to the top of the furrowed forehead. He was a man on a barely controlled burn. Without taking his eyes from Pace’s, he held out his hands toward the clusters of coveted prizes hanging against the rice-papered walls and sitting atop the polished-cherry credenzas.
“You see these?” he started, his voice trembling with anger. “These are awards for past efforts at responsible journalism. Responsible journalism!” The thunderstorm broke. “You stand in this room, amid these awards, and appear to feel nothing. You once won the most revered honor of all, yet you stand here now, the perpetrator of one of the most irresponsible journalistic acts I have ever had the misfortune to be associated with.” Schaeffer’s words echoed off the walls and crackled in Pace’s ears. The reporter felt himself flush. He hadn’t anticipated an attack based on idealism. “I am associated with it,” the editor continued, “because, ultimately, I am the one who approved hiring you. I am the one, ultimately, who gave you the aviation beat. I am the one, ultimately, who turned you loose on the ConPac story. And I am the one, ultimately, who will have to withstand the aftershocks of what you’ve done.”