Larry re-entered the room, scribbled on Jeff’s pad NO NEWS. ANYTHING I CAN DO?
Jeff managed a grin, pointed to the can. Larry declined the offer to take it to the men’s room to empty it and instead went back to his desk. Along the way, he glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly four-thirty.
Thank God, he thought, nothing else happened tonight. The fire turned out to be nothing, and Mike had never filed a new top to the bike lane story. Council must not have come to a decision. Had there been some overnight development, there was no way he could have pulled Jeff off that phone call to deal with it. Not with God knew how many lives at stake.
His phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Durkin. Just thought I’d let you know. We found the psychiatrist. Sent a car over to his house, woke him up. They asked him, you got a patient who might be inclined to go into a crowded place and shoot up a whole bunch of people? Oh no, he says. I know just who that would be.”
“He told them? He gave you guys a name?”
“In this kind of circumstance? Yeah, he gave us a name. Tell your reporter to keep him on the line just a little while longer.”
“I will.”
“And there’s something I want to talk to you about after,” Durkin said.
“I’m here till six.”
“Okay.”
The detective ended the call. Larry ran back to Jeff with one last note: KEEP HIM TALKING LITTLE WHILE LONGER.
Jeff nodded.
Tim was saying, “Maybe not a place where people go to eat. I got a better idea. Maybe the subway. There’ll be hundreds of people down on the platform. Just before the train comes in, I can jump on the tracks. I think that’d be a good way to go out.”
“I went to one of those once,” Jeff said.
“One of what?”
“Jumper, in the subway. Man, that is not the way you want to go out. He was in pieces.”
“But it’ll be fast,” Tim said.
“They’ll be looking all over the place to find all your bits,” Jeff said.
“You’re not scaring me. But I appreciate you talking to me. I’m gonna go now.”
“No man, hang on. Let’s keep talking. Can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I just took a piss in a trash can.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. Whipped it out, took a whiz right here at my work station. Good thing you called in the middle of the night. Doing that in the day, women around, that could get me in a little trouble with personnel, you know?”
Tim chuckled. “That is pretty — hang on.”
“What?”
“There’s someone knocking at my door. Let me just see who it is.”
Jeff could hear Tim put the phone down. In the distance, some indistinct talking. And then, fumbling, someone picking up the phone.
A different voice. Female. She said, “It’s over. Thanks for your help.”
And then she hung up.
That was it.
Jeff put down the phone. “Jesus,” he said, putting his head down on the table.
Larry saw him hang up and ran over.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I guess it was the cops. They knocked, he answered, it’s over. Christ, I’m shaking.”
Larry found that he was, too. “Man, what a night. Holy shit. You know what you did? Do you know?”
Jeff looked at him blankly. “If you mean taking a piss right here, yeah, I can kinda smell it.”
“You fuckin’ just saved a whole bunch of people’s lives.”
Jeff offered another one of his familiar shrugs. “I don’t know. Fuck. I am totally wired.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
The phone on Larry’s desk was ringing. Larry ran back, snatched the receiver up.
“It’s done,” Durkin said. “Just wanted to thank you guys, and ask you a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Sit on this one for a bit? I mean, I know I can’t tell you what to print and not to print, but this guy, he got inspired by that mass shooting, and you wonder how many others might be feeling the same way. Just... sit on it. Talk to your dayside editor. This guy’s probably going to be taken for psychiatric assessment. He’s probably suicidal.”
“I’ll leave something in my turnover note,” Larry said.
“You guys did good. You did real good. I might actually stop hating your paper so much for how you cover the cops.” He paused. “Nah, I’ll still hate ya. Gotta go.”
Durkin ended the call.
Larry realized Jeff was standing right there next to him.
“Where the fuck do you get a drink at five-thirty in the morning?” he asked.
“I happen to know where the photogs keep a bottle in the darkroom.”
“Lead the way.”
“And that’s what happened,” Larry said. “A crazy night. Jesus, look at the time.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to the guy?” Frank asked, still sitting on the stool next to him.
Larry shook his head. “No, never did. We ended up not doing a story on it. Partly, we thought it would be blowing our own horn too much. ‘Paper saves city from massacre.’ Nah, this was one of those times when we went along with what the cops wanted.”
“What do you think happened?”
Larry tried to get the last drop out of his beer glass. “I don’t know. Maybe he got the help he needed, turned his life around. Or maybe he had just one fuckup after another. Someone like that, who knows. Do they get their life together, or do they get worse and worse?”
“You know what I think happened?” Frank said. “I think that arrest, it was like the first domino. He got dragged into the system, never got the help he wanted. Things got worse and worse for him over the years. In and out of institutions, maybe some time in jail. My guess is, he was having a bad night, that he never would have gone and killed all those people, that he just needed someone to talk to, and he happened to connect with this Jeff guy, started to think he really was a friend, that he honest-to-God actually gave a shit about him, and had no idea that he and his editor were working behind the scenes with the cops to get him, to betray his sorry ass.”
Larry, slightly glassy-eyed, took a closer look at his drinking partner.
“And by the way, my name’s not Frank,” Tim said. “And Jeff asked me to pass on his regrets about not being able to make it tonight. Took a long time to track down the two of you.”
And that was when Tim reached inside his jacket for something.
Larry said, “Son of a—”
Midnight in the Garden of Death
Heather Graham
“They say she came to life each night after midnight; she traveled like the wind, coming back into town, feeding upon a new person each night. Then, they would awaken in the morning, spitting blood, choking on that blood... dying, in a pool of their own blood!” Marcy announced.
Hayley listened to her cousin, silently shaking her head as she and their friends stood in the old cemetery, staring at the vault that held the remains of the local “vampire,” Elizabeth Barclay.
Those remains were, not surprisingly, in the Barclay Cemetery.
Hayley knew the legend, too. She’d grown up here — or partially grown up here. Her parents had moved a bit east to New Orleans when she’d been twelve. But Marcy’s father, Hayley’s uncle, was the manager and groundskeeper of the small cemetery, and Marcy had spent all seventeen years of her life living in a home that bordered the cemetery.
And she loved the legends — and doing her best to scare others, boys especially.