Wading back to the clearing, preparing to climb the bank to my car, I found two tourists standing at water’s edge wailing that the bears walked away just as they got ready to take pictures. Did you see him? one asked. Yes, I replied, but it was a her, with two cubs of the year. Of the what? the other asked. Of the year, I explained. This year. Oh, the first one said. Did you get pictures? I smiled. I didn’t need pictures. I had a vivid memory.
The memories flashed through Pace’s mind in seconds. The serene look in his eyes was completely opposite what Tarshis had seen moments earlier.
“Steve, you okay?” he asked tentatively.
Hearing his name brought Pace back. He felt a wave of jealousy for Tarshis’s freedom to explore nature.
“You have it made, you know that, Jack?” he said. “You flit around the beautiful places, and you come back and write serious stories like the point guard for some kind of environmental brigade. You spend your whole life on an expenses-paid vacation while the rest of us work our asses off around here and get castrated for our trouble.”
Tarshis went white. “Hey, I also go to places like Love Canal and Three-Mile Island.”
Pace dropped into his chair.
“Life’s a bitch,” he said.
Tarshis muttered something about a late lunch and disappeared, leaving Pace alone to deal with his anger. He attempted to read the newspapers, but he couldn’t concentrate. He straightened up his desk. He tried to make a list of angles to pursue on the Sexton story, but he couldn’t focus on that, either. He scanned the newsroom, hoping to find Glenn Brennan. He could talk to Brennan once he got past the Irish bullshit. But Brennan was out, apparently at the Pentagon. Pace recalled with a wince that he’d made plans for that night with Kathy. He wouldn’t be very good company. He called her anyway because he needed someone to talk to, and because he felt guilty about leaving her alone with her own pain.
The receptionist in Green’s office said Ms. McGovern was gone for the day, and that alarmed him. She wasn’t the type to leave work early. Concerned that she was distraught, or even ill, he called her home. She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you, Steve? I’ve been worried—”
“I’m at the office. Why are you home?”
“I’ve been worried—”
“I know.”
“No, I, uh, mean about you. I’ve been worried sick since I saw the paper. I’m so sorry about Mike. I can’t believe this is happening. It’s like a nightmare, and I can’t wake up.”
“A good way to describe it,” he said. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“Oh, no. Hugh ordered me out of the office to be with you. He thinks we can lean on each other. I wish you’d called me last night. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you.”
“Godawful,” he said softly, truthfully. “I came unhinged, unglued—”
“I can imagine—”
“—and I went home and got drunk and did some things I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t know… maybe I was wrong, maybe I was right. I can’t sort it all out right now.”
She didn’t press him. “Tonight?” she asked instead. “Maybe we could talk.”
“I’d like that. But I don’t feel like going out.”
“Then I’ll come to you. Your place. I’ll cook.”
“Yeah, right. I’m sure that’s just what you feel like doing.”
“I’ll keep it simple.”
He considered it. “I think I’d like that,” he said.
“Me, too. Call me here when you’re ready to leave the office. I’ll meet you.”
“You should have a key to my apartment,” he said with a slight laugh. It was a throwaway line, and her reaction surprised him.
“Maybe we’ll talk about that, too,” she said.
Paul Wister approached Pace at midafternoon, fully aware of the hiding the reporter had taken from Schaeffer and the reason behind it. Schaeffer had filled him in.
“Give him a chance to unwind and then wring some kind of follow-up story from him,” Schaeffer told Wister. “We can’t drop the kind of bomb we did this morning and not have something in the paper tomorrow.”
“Metro and suburban are probably working on follows,” Wister noted.
“I’m not talking about police-blotter bullshit,” Schaeffer thundered. He’d not worked out all his fury on Pace. “I want to know if there’s been progress tying these two murders together or proving they’re not connected.”
Wister watched Pace for the next hour with a mixture of contempt and pity. He’d seen other reporters unravel under pressure, and he thought he saw signs of it in Pace now. He believed journalists should be tougher than ordinary people, and he had little use for those who couldn’t be. It was one thing for Pace to rage over the murder of a friend the night before; it was quite another to jeopardize his story, his job, and his newspaper in a fit of drunken frustration later. Wister felt almost smug in his confidence that he wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Yet he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sorrow as he watched Pace now, spinning his emotional wheels on his own personal ice patch, trying to deal with the results of his self-indulgence.
He stood before Pace’s desk. “The editorial meeting’s in an hour, Steve. What have you got for tomorrow?”
The reporter’s head jerked up. His eyes were dazed, his forehead furrowed.
“You can’t leave the story hanging,” Wister said. “We’ve need more tomorrow. Metro and suburban aren’t touching it. Everybody figures, after last night, this is all yours.”
Pace glanced at his computer terminal as if it were a mortal enemy. He shook his head. “I-I hadn’t even thought about it, Paul. This hasn’t exactly been my best day.”
“It isn’t going to get any better, either, unless you start producing,” Wister said.
“Produce what?”
“That’s your problem. Call your cop sources. See if they’ve found any links between the two deaths. I don’t care what you do, but do something. And do it damned fast.”
Reluctantly, Pace spun his Rolodex to Clay Helm’s new card and dialed the number. He identified himself to the desk sergeant.
“He’s on ’nother line,” the sergeant said, dropping syllables that took up too much of a busy cop’s time. “There a message or you wanna hold?”
“I’ll hold for a few minutes,” Pace replied.
“Your nickel, but if the lines jam up, I’ll hafta cutcha loose.”
“I assume you’ll come back and take a message first?”
“Yeah, probly, if I got time,” the sergeant replied. The line went on silent hold.
Pace smiled. What was it about cops and reporters? Even when they didn’t know each other, never had a single dealing good or bad, they were instant adversaries.
“If you’re trying to get yourself killed, too, your story this morning is a pretty good start,” Helm said without preliminaries when he punched up Pace’s call.
“What?”
“Jesus, Steve, you’ve as much as told the killers you’re onto them.”
“That’s the idea,” Pace said. “I push until I hit a sore spot and somebody pushes back. When I see who it is, I know who I’m looking for.”