on the coffee table, flipped a few pages, then a few pages more. 'Bruschetta and Torciano Fragolino? Fourteen dollars a bottle.'
Gretchen nodded. Jim would have hated this meeting with the caterer. It would have reminded him that things hadn't turned out the way they had dreamed. Still, he had always provided for their needs and had found a way to put their two children through college. It had been a little easier when she worked as a substitute teacher. But two years ago, her arthritis had grown too painful to ignore or sufficiently medicate. And an already tight budget became even tighter. She'd told him that their anniversary needed no special commemoration, other than their own remembrances of the happy times they'd shared. But he had insisted: 'Ask the kids to come, invite some friends. Let's have a little party—catered, because the guest of honor shouldn't do the work.'
'How many people?' the woman asked.
'About thirty, with the kids and their families.'
The caterer looked around the small living room. 'Have you thought about renting a banquet room? They can be had for a very reasonable price.'
'Our backyard has hosted many a birthday party,' Gretchen said, smiling at the memories. 'I think it'll do for this.'
The phone rang and she excused herself.
She found the cordless handset on the dining room table. 'Hello?'
'Gretchen Gaither?'
'Yes?'
'Jeff Hunter, with the
After speaking to the Gaither woman, Hunter disconnected
with a mouse click. Retired schoolteacher. No recent problems with financial institutions or anyone else that she could think of. Seemed like a sweet lady. He could tell his call had spooked her. He hoped she didn't follow up with a call to the news desk or, worse, to the police. He wasn't ready to answer questions, and he wasn't ready to let the list go.
Andrew Wallenski looked at the wall of the boys' restroom
and shook his head. Kids these days. To know such words in middle school was bad enough, but to actually spray paint them on a public wall! No respect. Not for property. Not for the people who had to clean up their messes. If they were his kids, they'd show respect, that was for sure.
He opened the can of white latex paint and poured it into a pan. He'd tried scrubbing graffiti off the walls before. The wall paint had come off with the spray paint, and he'd had to recover the entire wall anyway. Waste of time. Waste of paint. Fool kids. He draped a drop cloth over the tops of the urinals and had run the roller up three feet of wall, dulling but not obscuring a big letter
A dozen calls later, Hunter had nothing. He'd spoken to a mother in Denver whose infant son was on the list; a sixteen-year-old girl in Dallas who was late for her waitressing job and didn't want to talk; a father in Chicago who wanted to know why a stranger was asking about his seven-year-old daughter; and two women and three men, all of whom had no clue why they'd be on a list sent to a news reporter. Of course he'd encountered wrong, unlisted, and disconnected numbers; busy signals; unanswered calls; and answering machines. But none of those counted. No journalist worth his press pass let that stuff deter him from a story. Problem was, he wasn't sure he had a story. Just a list of names.
He had called a
Hunter then reached a senator at his Washington office. No news there, except that he was furious over a narrowly defeated tort reform bill he had helped draft. He ranted for three minutes, then apologized, saying he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. 'Fighting a cold,' he'd explained. 'It's got me down, and I think it wants to be the flu.'
That was another thing Hunter had discovered. There seemed to be a high percentage of people with colds. Hunter didn't know when cold season was and wondered if it was at different times of year in different parts of the country. He made a note to check it out.
He'd talked about or to five kids and twelve adults, nine males and eight females, six well-known people and twelve nobodies. Scattered around the country. No rhyme, no reason. No story.
A cub reporter appeared at his desk. The kid was helping him research a story on transit cops making a sport of beating up vagrants in the subway tunnels. He was excited about interviews he had conducted and wanted Hunter to listen to the MP3 files. Hunter took a last look at the mysterious list of names. He closed the document. Just another WAS story—wait and see. He had eighteen others like it.
eighteen
Julia Matheson checked into a downtown motel under her married sister's name and paid cash. It was the kind of place that didn't ask for identification or a major credit card, and couldn't care less who you were or what you did in the room, as long as you didn't destroy the property and you paid in advance. She requested a room on the back side of the building, out of sight of people cruising the boulevard.
The room had brown indoor-outdoor carpeting, a chipped Formica table bolted to the wall next to the bed, a threadbare bedspread, and a hand-printed sign on the back of the door that read NO cooking in room. The smell of fried hamburgers tinged the air.
Julia dropped her purse and laptop case on the bed, along with a big bag from Wal-Mart containing a change of clothes, a gym bag, and other items. She went to the window and opened it, then fell onto the bed beside the bags. Most of the acoustic spray had come off the ceiling, probably a little here and a little there for the past thirty years. There was a big brown-rimmed water stain in one corner. She tried identifying the other splotches: ketchup, coffee, a smashed insect. She sighed and closed her eyes.
What was she doing here? She should have been back in her duplex in Atlanta, cleaning up the dishes, helping her mother to the tub. She needed to call her. It wasn't that her mother's MS rendered her completely helpless, but more that she'd be worried. Julia rarely came home late, and when she did, she always called first. She didn't know what she'd say. Not anything that would make anyone tapping the phone decide to stake out the house and wait for her or anything that would give away her location.
Listen to her: tapping the phone!
But that was her reality right now. Someone with loads of intelligence and highly sophisticated technical capabilities had attacked them and killed Goody and Vero. They had intercepted the SATD signal, which this morning she would have said was impossible. And Goody had recognized one of the assailants, an undercover cop. What did that mean? Was a government agency involved in the hit? A rogue director? Or was the guy freelancing?
Now that Vero was dead, was it over? She didn't know, but she remembered something Goody had said during the investigation of a serial killer: 'There's no end to evil.'
She wondered if Jodi Donnelley knew that her husband was dead. Probably Edward Molland, the LED's director of domestic operations, had told her. Julia wanted to be there, to hold her, to comfort the boys. At the same time, she wished there was no reason to comfort Donnelley's family. She opened her eyes, turning her mind away from what she wished. It all hurt too much. She needed to keep her head straight, her thoughts on the problem.
She sat up and scooted back to lean against the wall, the nearly disintegrated foam pillow propped behind her lower back. She pulled her knees up and hugged her legs. Her heart felt wedged in her throat.
