“He didn’t make it, Lucas.”
Wisniewski broke down and cried. He sounded inconsolable. His words were incomprehensible. Lucas’s eyes welled with tears, which rolled down his cheeks. His throat felt tight and dry. He didn’t have the strength to move.
“The Army will officially notify you about what happened,” Wisniewski continued in a hoarse voice that was now little more than a whisper. “I’m sorry to be the one to have to bring you this news. I know what your family meant to him. How close you and Eddie were.” He stopped for several seconds this time, then said, “I’m so sorry, Lucas. I’m going to miss Eddie so much.”
Lucas felt as though his insides had been invaded by creatures trying to bore their way out. His hands shook and he had to squeeze the cell phone to keep from dropping it. He tried to thank Wisniewski for calling but couldn’t get the words out. He mumbled something but wasn’t certain what. He felt as though he was going to scream, but suddenly focused on how he would tell Lois and his father about Eddie. Then he shook his head. Momentarily, he’d put aside what had happened to them. But then the realization of his father’s and sister’s deaths struck him like a lightning bolt. There was no one left with whom he could share his losses. His family was gone. God and man had abandoned him. Tears continued to cloud his vision as he stood and flung his phone against the wall.
A banshee-like wail reverberated off the walls and ceiling of the apartment. The sound made Lucas feel as though he’d been transported to an unearthly place. It wasn’t until he’d grasped that the noise had come from him that his sorrow turned to an all-encompassing anger, and then that anger turned to rage. Everything he had loved and believed in was gone. Gone forever.
And, in that very moment, his mind seemed to come apart and then repair itself. Like pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly before and, despite a completely different design, fit together again. He felt transformed. The memory of how he’d attacked the killer in the church flooded his brain. Images of his hand holding the heavy object that the priest had dropped flashed before his eyes. As though watching a slow-motion movie, he saw his arm repeatedly rise and fall as he struck the killer in his face, turning the man’s features into a ghastly mess. A warm rush flowed through his body and he suddenly felt at peace.
Then, with single-minded purpose, he decided that evildoers had to pay for the deaths of his father, his sister, and his brother. He made a mental list of those satanic acolytes who brought misery on people. The politicians who supported war; the bankers who took away peoples’ homes; the terrorists and mass murderers who killed the innocent.
Yes, the evildoers must be punished, he thought. And I will be the hand of God who will make them pay.
Night Shift
Linwood Barclay
It’s 12:35 a.m. and the retired newspaperman, Larry, looks at his watch and says to the guy sitting on the barstool next to him, “I should probably get home. Looks like my buddy’s not gonna make it.”
The other guy, who introduced himself as Frank when he sat down next to Larry more than an hour ago, says, “Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. You sure have some good stories. I had a friend, worked for a big paper like yours, he had no end of great stories. And he wasn’t even a reporter. He was an editor. But he still had his share of tales.”
“Same here. I was an editor most of my time at the paper. Started as a reporter. Most everyone does. But ended up working on the desk. City desk, mostly. Did some time on foreign, too.”
“This friend,” Frank says, “was so tired half the time. He worked the overnight shift.”
“That’s the worst.”
“But he said some pretty weird stuff could happen in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, well, the real struggle can be staying awake,” Larry says. “I worked overnights for a couple of years straight. Don’t know how I survived it, but I was a young man, could take the abuse. Coming in at eleven, driving home at six in the morning. Nearly ran off the road a couple of times. But if something happens, that can get the adrenaline flowing. Keeps you awake.”
“All the nutcases come out at night, I bet,” Frank says.
“No shit. Sometimes they’d wander right into the newsroom. Come into the building, head up the elevator. This was back in the eighties, before everyone started tightening up security. Had a guy come in once, wielding a shock absorber. Swear to God. Started swinging it around like a baseball bat. Cops came in and got him. And the switchboard would shut down at midnight, so anyone who phoned the paper, the call went right to the newsroom, so I’d be at my desk, editing a story, writing a headline for something that was to go into the morning edition, which closed at one-thirty, and the phone’d ring, and it’d be some guy complaining that his paper was late.”
Frank laughs. “Who calls in the middle of the night about a late paper?”
Larry shakes his head. “Exactly.”
“What was the weirdest thing that ever happened to you on overnights?”
Larry thinks a moment. “Oh, here’s an interesting one.” He glances at his watch again. “What the hell. Oh, and keep in mind, this was before caller ID and call display and all that stuff.”
“Okay,” says Frank.
“Let me get another beer.”
And this is the story Larry tells:
The guy who said he was going to kill as many people as possible the following day called into the newsroom at five minutes past one.
Larry, the overnight city editor, had arrived two hours earlier, relieving Charlene from her duties on the desk. She’d just overseen the production of the metro pages, all the local news, and was in the process of typing up a turnover note that included a list of things that might need to be checked on over the next several hours, or followed up on the next day.
“Mikey’s at a late night city council meeting where they might vote on putting in bike lanes on Connor Street,” she told Larry. “So he might file a top to his story. But if nothing new happens, you won’t hear from him. Oh, and there was a house fire on Wilton. Heard about it on the scanner. Just a one-alarm, doesn’t look huge, but sent Guffman in case it’s worth a pic. Otherwise, things couldn’t be deader. National had the big story tonight. You’ll have an easy shift.”
“Don’t say that,” Larry said. “Last time you said that, three minutes after you left they found that kid’s body in the attic.”
Charlene smiled. “Over to you. Oh, and you’ve got Jeff in the radio room. Harvey booked off sick so Jeff’s doing a double.”
“Anybody call Melanie to come in early so Jeff doesn’t have to stay until six?”
“Tried. She must have left the phone off the hook. She’s no fool.”
Charlene took off and Larry got settled into his seat on the city desk. Got signed onto the newsroom computer system, checked for any personal inter-office messages. He’d asked for the second week of August off and wondered if the city editor had gotten back to him. She had not.
About fifteen minutes into the shift, the early copies of the first edition to roll off the presses were delivered to the newsroom by the copy boy. He dumped a stack of them on the city desk, then continued to distribute them to various offices.
Larry unfolded the paper so he could see the entire front page. Most of it was devoted to an event on the other side of the country. A man with a high-powered rifle had gone into a fast-food joint near Monterey and started picking off people one by one. Twenty dead, fifteen injured. A police sniper took out the shooter. The only other story on the front was an update on a local highway expansion. The massacre turned inside to four clear pages of sidebars.