Rich chuckled. 'We'll make a reporter of you yet.'
Since she didn't have a car, Sue was forced to stake out a location within walking distance. She considered the post office, but Rich told her he'd been there two weeks ago and didn't want to repeat this soon.
He suggested the Shell station, but she said she didn't feel comfortable hanging out there. They finally decided on Mike's Meats, the butcher shop.
Sue first walked inside and told Mike Grayson, the owner, what she was planning to do and asked his permission to stand on his front walk. He said he didn't care, and she went back outside and waited.
And waited.
An old man ignored her completely, not responding to her request or even looking at her. Two women agreed to answer the question but refused to allow their pictures to be taken. A cocky-looking teenager laughed at her.
It was going to be a long morning.
By the time she returned to the newspaper, it was after one. Carole's seat was empty--the secretary was obviously on her lunch break--and Rich was at his desk, eating an apple. Sue sat down in the folding chair and placed the camera on top of his desk. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. 'You're right. No one wanted to talk to me.'
'What'd I tell you? How many responses did you get?' 'Four.' 'How many people did you ask?' 'Twenty.' ...... Rich smiled. 'Were the responses good?' She shrugged. 'I guess.'
'Anybody give you advice, tell you what you should be asking instead?'
'Three people told me I should be asking about vampires.'
Rich's smile faded. 'Vampires?'
She nodded.
'They were joking, weren't they?'
'I don't think so.'
He frowned. 'What did you tell them?'
'Nothing. I smiled, nodded, told them thank you, then went on to the next person.'
Rich stared silently at the camera, making no move to pick it up.
Sue cleared her throat. 'Maybe we should ask about vampires. It seems to be on a lot of people's minds. I think--' She broke off in mid-sentence, suddenly remembering the events of the night before. She mentally kicked herself, looking quickly away.
'We may,' the editor said quietly. We may have to.' 'Hey, Daddy!'
Sue turned her head at the sound of the voice. A young girl with long blond hair came speeding out of the door to the paste up room.
'Oh,' the girl said, stopping short.
Rich stood. 'Sue, this is my daughter Anna. She's going to be visiting us for a few hours in the afternoons. Anna, this is Sue Wing.
She's going to be working here.'
'I know you!' Anna said, coming closer. 'You work at the restaurant!'
'I recognize you too,' Sue said. She turned toward
Rich. 'I know who your wife is. She's a regular customer.' 'Yeah.
We like your food.'
'How come I've never seen you in there?'
'I've been in, a couple of times. You probably just didn't notice.'
'Or I was in the back.' '
'I like the fortune cookies[' Anna announced. Sue laughed. 'Me, too.
You want me to bring you some tomorrow?'
'Yeah[' Anna grinned at her father.
'You've got yourself a friend,' Rich said. He sat down again. 'Now there are two of us who've glad you're here.'
'Three,' Sue said, smiling.
The FBI agent and the representative from the state police left at the same time. Robert saw them to the door of his office, shook hands with both men, and gave them a smile and a hearty 'thank you.'
The second the door closed, he stuck out his middle finger, thrusting it upward in the air for emphasis. Assholes. - .
He had never before had to deal with state or federal law enforcement authorities, and he hoped to Christ he never had to deal with them again. He walked across the room and watched through the slats of the miniblinds as the two men got into their respective cars. A chain of command had been established, and for that he was thankful. The buck no longer stopped with him. He was now merely a link in the chain, and if he couldn't handle the situation, he could pass that buck on up to the state police and the FBI. :,.:
But he regretted giving up his autonomy. Last week he'd been confused, not knowing what he should do or how he should do it, but a week of responsibility had given him a taste for serious decision making, and now he felt resentful toward the big boys for trying to horn in on his territory. :':, Especially since the were such complete and total assholes. The state policeman had said almost nothing during the meeting, had simply requested duplicates of every thing asked for by the FBI agent. It was the FBI agent who had done most of the talking who had laid out the recent events in Rio Verde in such a patronizingly arch manner that the emerging picture, though factually correct and chronologically accurate, made Robert and his department look like Joe Doofus and his Goober Patrol.
God, he hated the smug attitude of that business-suited geek.
To make matters worse, Robert had snuffled and sneezed his way through most of the meeting. The hand kerchief on his desk was soaked. Fall was always the worst time of year for his allergies, and, unfortunately, they'd picked today to start the season. He would're taken a pill had he known, but in that instance the cure was almost worse than the disease. Even the mildest over-the-counter allergy medicine knocked him out. If he had taken a pill, he probably would have dozed off halfway through the FBI agent's diatribe.
Not that that would have been a bad thing. He and the agent, Greg Rossiter, had experienced an immediate antipathy toward one another.
That was strange. Ordinarily, he was a fairly easygoing guy and got along with practically everyone. But something about Rossiter had instantly rubbed him the wrong way. He'd known from the moment he'd laid eyes on that blond brush-cut Nazi's head that he wouldn't like the man. And his response to Joe Cash, the state policeman, had not been much different.
Both men had seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making him feel as inept and incompetent as possible. After allowing him to describe the coroner's findings on the death of Manuel Tortes and relate his own firsthand knowledge of the cemetery, Rossiter had said only, 'Rio Verde only has ten thousand people. Anything new or different would be noticed immediately by you or your men, wouldn't it?'
The implied criticism in that condescending query had made Robert bristle, but he'd forced himself not to be come defensive, had made sure his voice remained professionally impersonal. 'Not necessarily.
Our town may be small compared to Phoenix, but we still don't know every one in it. And we're not in the habit of keeping tabs on people when they haven't done anything wrong.'
'But they've done something wrong now, haven't they?'
'Who?' Robert had tried to keep his voice even. 'We're a couple hours' drive from Florence, Globe, Miami Superior. We're four hours from Phoenix. Five from Payson and Randall. Seven from Flagstaff and Sedona. Who's to say someone's not cruising into town, doing his business, and leaving? We get a lot of tourists passing through here on their way to Roosevelt Lake. It seems more than likely to me that this is being done by someone who does not live in Rio Verde.'
'Really?' The agent had looked at him with a bored expression. 'I think it highly unlikely that any criminal or psychopath would specifically make a series of runs all the way out here merely to perform activities he could do in his own hometown.' :
He'd sneezed and said nothing more. '
The thing that had galled him the most was the importance both men seemed to place on anything that happened in Rio Verde, their almost nonchalant attitude toward the horrors that had occurred here. A man had been murdered. A man with friends, a family. The bodies of hundreds of the town's departed loved ones had been
