concerned, it will be worth it if y’all will help to make them famous.”
“If you’re about to hint that I’d be willing to let Frank join them on their ride to glory in exchange for a byline, stop now.”
“No, ma’am. Not at all. I’ll try to make myself clear. I’m telling you that if you want to write about it later, I’m all for it. No one is trying to prevent that. But for now, let us handle it, okay?”
I wasn’t sure it was in my nature to make that kind of promise. “You don’t know that Hocus is like other groups. Other groups would have published a list of demands. You don’t even know what they want.”
“I have a feeling, Irene, that they plan to tell us very soon. Now, I know you want to cooperate with the press. That’s only natural, given your line of work. At some point, you’ll be able to talk to anyone you want to talk to. I want that to be because Frank is home safe, not because we did something that got him killed.”
He was waiting for a reply.
I couldn’t give him one. I excused myself and made another small escape. I went into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Something in that unmerciful glass image fully awakened me.
It was the thought of all the tense and weary faces I had seen over my years as a reporter. I was starting to get that look in my eyes, the one I had seen in theirs. I’d interviewed lots of them.
If you’re a reporter, and the victim in your crime story is dead or missing or otherwise unavailable, you do your level best to talk to somebody who gives a damn about that victim. If you fail to do so, nobody gives a damn about your story. So you look for the relatives, the lovers, the best friends. They’ll have your story for you. The cops just have what passes for facts.
Facts aren’t enough for your readers. Readers want to see that sentence, the one that makes your editor say something like, “Great quote from the widow.” No matter how gentle or respectful you are when you’re with the people you interview, the truth is, you’re after their hearts.
A few of the people you talk to don’t have the look. But if the loved one is missing, if there’s no body yet — after a while, they almost always do. I’ve seen it many times — on the face of a father whose daughter had not come home after working a night shift at a college radio station; the face of a wife whose spouse had not returned from a sailing trip; the face of a mother whose son had become separated from the other hikers on a forest trail. It’s not just the worry and fatigue that wears them down. It’s the helplessness. Knowing that something awful may be happening to someone they love and they can’t do a damn thing about it.
“Screw that,” I said to the woman in the mirror.
I had some phone calls to make.
10
“SO, HOW DID HIS MOM TAKE IT?” Rachel asked me.
Pete and Rachel had arrived not long after he got word that Hocus had called. He wasn’t looking so hot.
“Not well,” I answered. “ ‘Hysterics’ is too mild a term for it.”
“Understandable, I suppose.”
“I called his sister first. Have you met Cassie?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Hmm. You’d like her. She was upset, but she took it better than his mom did. She offered to tell her mom, but that didn’t seem right to me. I didn’t want Bea to think I would tell Cassie and not her. Cassie went over there, though, so Bea has some company. I stayed on the phone with Bea until Cassie got there.”
Cassie didn’t live far from Frank’s mother, and the conversation with Bea Harriman probably didn’t last more than twenty minutes. Although Bea Harriman had stoically borne the worries of a cop’s wife throughout her marriage to Frank’s dad, as a cop’s mother she felt no similar need to confine her emotions. Healthier for her, I’m sure, but it had been a long twenty minutes for me.
I looked over at Pete. He was sitting on the couch, hunched forward over his knees, hands clasped in front of him. He was staring at the floor. Every few minutes he looked at his watch. “You’ve met Frank’s mom, right, Pete?”
“What?”
That was how he had answered my last three questions. I asked the question again, as I had the others. It was like listening to a radio that was losing a signal — I had to tune him in again before he could reply.
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah, sure, I’ve met his mom.” His eyes widened suddenly. “You told her yet?”
Rachel swore under her breath, but I simply repeated the gist of the conversation he had been too preoccupied to listen to.
“I shoulda thought of calling her,” he mumbled.
“Yeah,” Rachel said testily. She held out a hand and began counting off his regrets on her fingers. “You should have known something was hinky when Ross left a message asking for Frank. You should’ve gone out to Riverside with Frank. You should have checked up on him earlier. You should have told Carlson and the rest of the assholes in Homicide to quit riding Frank—”
“That’s right, goddammit!” he snapped. He stood up and walked toward the sliding glass doors, then abruptly turned away. I knew what had happened just then — it had happened to me earlier. He had looked through those glass doors and had seen Frank’s garden. His fists were clenched now, and he looked like he wanted to punch something. Seeing him pace toward the kitchen, Henry Freeman stood up and made a hasty retreat to the guest room. Cassidy, who had just showered and changed clothes, was leaning up against the counter that separates the kitchen and the living room, drinking a cup of coffee. He didn’t flinch as Pete approached.
In a voice that barely reached above a whisper, Cassidy asked, “You get any sleep at all last night, Pete?”
Pete stopped pacing, unclenched his fists.
“I didn’t think so,” Cassidy said. “Why don’t we take a stroll down to the end of the block? I haven’t even seen the water yet. I could use some fresh air.”
