Bones

“If you don’t want to write about what happened,” she said, “I’ll stick up for you with John. We’ll both walk out of here, if that’s what it takes.”

“Because newspaper jobs are in such plentiful supply right now,” I said.

“Because nothing is worth that much.”

I couldn’t say anything.

“You don’t want to write about it, because you think Nick Parrish was seeking attention all along.”

“Yes.”

“Irene, you idiot, make him the smallest part of the story.”

I looked up at her.

“You know what Tom Cassidy’s team is doing right now?” she asked.

“Holding CNN and Channel Five away from my front door.”

“Yes, that’s true. But you know how there’s a sense of family in any police department, so he’s also got crisis counseling crews that are trying to help the LPPD cope with the deaths of six of its men.”

I looked over at Frank, who nodded.

“He’s coordinating another group at the university,” she said, “in case any of Ben’s and David’s colleagues or graduate students need to talk about what has happened.”

“How do you know about all of this?”

“A fine city desk I’d be running if I didn’t.”

“What happened to Morry, by the way?”

“He moved to Buffalo. Got a job with the Buffalo News.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “His mom lives in Kenmore — the suburb, not the brand name.”

“He left without notice?”

She smiled. “My only regret is that you weren’t here to see easygoing Morry tell Wrigley to shove it.”

I laughed. “I can’t believe it!”

She made an x over her heart. “Swear to it. After Wrigley stormed out of the room, I gave Morry a kiss for it. He turned red and kept blushing for about four hours, but he was grinning the whole time. We gave him a big send-off at Banyon’s.”

I shook my head. “Sorry I missed that. I would have liked to say good-bye.”

“Sometimes you get to say good-bye, sometimes you don’t. It’s why you have to be good to people.”

I was silent.

“Nick Parrish is going to get his glory,” she said, “even if the Express never prints his name again. He’ll get it from all those folks who have their satellite dishes pointed over your rooftop. He’ll get it from every other paper in the country.”

I knew what she was saying was true. After a moment, I said, “He chased me. Or let me believe he was chasing me.”

“I figured that was why you met me with a knife and spear,” Frank said.

I realized that I hadn’t told him much about what had happened up there. He hadn’t pressed me for details, and he probably had lots of questions. Even if he had talked to the detectives who interviewed me, given the state I was in at the time, I doubted he had a very clear picture. I resolved to have a long talk with him that evening, but for now, I said, “I was going to go after Parrish at that point. I didn’t want him to kill whoever was arriving on the helicopter.”

“What?”

“My thinking was a little muddled then — but now — I don’t think Parrish ever intended to catch me,” I said. “I didn’t realize it then — I was too out of it to put my thoughts together. Now it hits me, you know — that it was too easy. Getting away from him. Like when you’re little and the older kids tell you they want to play hide-and-go-seek, but then they go off somewhere together while you stay hiding. You’ve been ditched.”

“So Parrish wanted you to escape,” Lydia said.

“Yes, I think he wanted a reporter to survive, wanted someone to go out there and add to the legend. You know, tell the story as someone who feared his power.”

Was that all there was to it? I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t quite believe my own sales pitch. He had said he would find me again. Julia Sayre and Kara Lane both had dark hair and blue eyes. Maybe Parrish had more than one purpose in mind after he learned I would be the reporter.

“And he singled you out,” Lydia said, startling me until I realized she was referring to my last spoken comment.

“Yes.”

“If you’re right about that,” she said, “and he’s expecting something special from you, disappoint him. You’re the only one who can really do that.”

It took me about another half hour to get started. But once I was started, everything else ceased to exist. After one mention of him by name, if I had to refer to Parrish, I called him “the prisoner.” I found I didn’t have to write about him all that much.