Mania (7 page)

“So you censor the news.”

Once again the editor smiled. “Back when I started out, I was a lot like you. I thought it was my job to tell the truth.”

“Isn’t it?”

Daly shook her head. “It’s my job to sell papers. Today, tomorrow, and the day after that. I don’t trade in truth. I trade in credibility.” The editor leaned toward her young reporter. “Can you believe that we’ve been criticized for the stories we’ve been running? You know what they’re saying? They’re saying we’re trying to take advantage of the public’s paranoia. They’re calling us terrorists.
Terrorists.
If the people only knew. If they could see the pictures we
haven’t
printed.”

“You didn’t invite me here to bitch about your critics,” Nick heard himself say. He felt nervous, watched. He concentrated on his hands, trying to steady himself.

Settling back in her chair, Daly examined the young man in front of her.

Nick tried to hold her gaze but couldn’t. “I’m just wondering where this is going,” he said.

“No—you’re absolutely right.” The editor raised a hand to cut off Nick’s apology. “You deserve my candor, Nick, so let me level with you.”

Nick glanced at his boss, then back down at his hands, waiting.

“We’ve been pretty careful with the news so far. Claire Scott gets killed and dumped in one of Ridgway’s graveyards, and we write columns telling people it’s a one-off thing. Dickenson gets stabbed a couple of weeks later, and for the most part we reassure people the two murders aren’t related. I’m not publishing lies. I’m writing what credibility demands me to write.” The editor looked at the young man, trying to gauge him. “But now with your brother, we’ve got three murders in three weeks. All of them stabbings.”

Nick waited for Daly to continue.

“Credibility. That’s what it all boils down to. I’ve got my credibility to think about. I like you, Nick. You know that. And it’s more than that. I know you. I believe in you. The time has come, though, where I have to run what I’ve got. From every angle. Understand?”

Nick turned the words over. He understood that the editor would have drawn the same conclusion as the police. Until he was able to remember what happened, he was a natural suspect.

“You’re one of my reporters. One of my best photographers. Hell, tomorrow morning I’m going to be running that piece you wrote a couple weeks ago. The story about Claire Scott’s son—what was his name? Daniel, right? But you’re also part of the story now. You understand that, don’t you?”

“So what does that mean, Laura? You’re going to investigate me? Is that what you brought me here to tell me?”

The senior editor sat back in her chair, flustered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. We know each other better than that. I just wanted to make damn sure we had this conversation before you read about yourself in the paper.” Daly herself seemed surprised by the harshness of her words, and she took a few seconds before continuing. “You can understand my taking you off the murders, though, can’t you?” she said. “At least for the time being.”

Nick didn’t respond.

“If it was baseball season, I’d send you out to the park to cover a few games. Seriously.”

Nick knew how closely the editor followed the Mariners, but he couldn’t bring himself to return her smile.

“There’s no reason you can’t work on something else,” Daly said into the awkward silence. “There’s the Hamlin gala tonight, for example. I’m sure you’ve been invited, haven’t you?”

“It’s too soon,” Nick heard himself say, cutting Daly off.

“I understand,” Daly said, reminding Nick of the sympathy that Delilah had shown him a few minutes before, on the phone. “These things take time.” When Daly lifted one of her hands, Nick noticed how slack the skin on her arm was. There were deep creases in the thin, waxy skin between her knuckles. The editor’s hand was nearly on top of his own before Nick understood that the middle-aged woman intended to touch him. He jerked away from the contact.

“I appreciate your concern,” Nick heard himself say. “But I’m okay. Really. It’s not Sam I’m talking about. I was talking about Sara. It’s too soon for you to ask me that.”

The twenty years that separated them were suddenly visible in the senior editor’s face. “I see.” Daly shifted in her chair, recovering her composure.

“I’ve only known her for a few weeks,” Nick explained.

Daly nodded, taking her time. “I thought that an assignment like this might be good for you. That you might
want
to work a little.”

Nick made an effort to meet the woman’s steady gaze. “I appreciate that,” he said. “But like I told you, Laura, I’ve only known her for a few weeks.”

“The gala’s a big event,” the editor said, ready to press the point. “The cream of Seattle society’s going to be there. Jason and Jillian Hamlin are about the closest thing to a king and queen we’ve got here in the Pacific Northwest. When they throw a charitable ball like this, they put on a real show. They’ve booked the whole of Benaroya Hall, and I hear the symphony’s going to be there tonight playing dinner music while the guests eat meals catered by a chef they’ve flown in from Paris.” Nick was aware of Daly’s censure. “One of Hamlin’s companies—Hamlin Waste Management—just earned a twenty-million-dollar bonus for cleaning up that toxic spill in Elliott Bay a month ahead of schedule.” Daly shook her head. “As if he didn’t have enough money already. They’re going to bring the house down, Nick. You can be sure of that.”

“Aren’t you going yourself?”

“Me?” Daly smiled. “I’m a newspaper editor. That’s all I am. The press isn’t invited.” She leaned forward. “You get pictures, and it would be a scoop for us. Not just the red-carpet stuff. Pictures from inside.”

Nick shrugged. “I can’t do it.”

“Think about it some more,” the editor said, apparently oblivious to Nick’s increasing distress. “The pictures would make the Sunday supplement.”

“Sara invited me as her guest.”

“Ask her, why don’t you? See what she says if you tell her you’re bringing your camera.” The editor leaned back comfortably in her chair and looked up to signal the waiter, turning her attention to the meal.

“I’ve got to go,” Nick said.

“What’s that?”

“You’re ready to order?” the waiter asked, standing over Nick’s shoulder. Daly lifted a hand to stay the tall, thin man.

“This was a mistake,” Nick said. “I’m not hungry. I can’t do this.”

“Sit and talk to me, then,” the editor said, changing her tone. She waved the waiter away. “We don’t have to eat. You know you’re more than just a reporter to me, Nick—”

“You wouldn’t ask me to do this if that were true.” Nick raised his eyes, expecting to have stung the editor with his words. The expression on Daly’s face, though, remained gentle. Unfazed. “Look—I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”

“I wanted to talk to you, Nick. Seriously. Not just about the gala. I’m not being coy.”

Nick wouldn’t be persuaded. “Another time.”

Laura Daly examined him, then seemed to give up. “Another time,” she echoed.

Aware of the shadow of deep concern darkening the editor’s eyes, Nick pushed his chair away from the table and strode to the exit. Daly was still watching him as he shoved his way through the doors past a few customers, and Nick knew it. He couldn’t decide what her expression was concealing. Was it concern for him? Or was she allowing herself to wonder whether he had slid a knife into his brother’s chest? Nick took a deep breath of fresh air, grateful to be outside.

After leaving Daly at the Metropolitan Café, Nick found himself drawn to the parking lot beneath Pike Place Market. This was his first visit back to the scene since Sam’s murder, and he had to steel himself against an upwelling of memories.

At three o’clock, the sun had broken through the clouds, and the waterfront was crowded. A flock of seagulls was circling and screeching overhead. He wasn’t certain precisely what he was looking for. Standing on the edge of the lot in the light of day, among hundreds of tourists and residents happy for the interlude of warm sunshine, he was convinced that he was grasping at straws. He looped the camera’s leather shoulder strap around his hand a few times, letting the camera dangle at his legs. The cast aluminum body of the telephoto lens tapped against his knee. There wasn’t anything for him to see here. Nothing to find that the police wouldn’t already have found.

He was ready to give up when two girls caught his attention. He hardly noticed the yellow tube top that the blonde was wearing, or the brunette’s long, slender legs. It was the way the blond girl was laughing that grabbed him. The shrill sound resonated in Nick’s head, and despite the sunlight, despite the crowd of people streaming past him on either side, his world went black. Nick was shivering, dressed once again in his jacket. A mist was swirling around him, a foghorn was sounding over the water. A few students were talking loudly, drunkenly, a couple of blocks down, their words indistinct. A girl was laughing. And Sam was next to him, in step at his side.

Nick was grasping something cold and metallic in his hand. He didn’t have to see it to know that it was the knife that had killed his brother. The handle and half its blade protruded unnaturally from his brother’s chest, wedged savagely into his body. The silvery steel blade was covered in gore, but Nick could see that its edge was rough and dinged. Sam’s last breath was gurgling from his lungs through a hole in his ribs. Nick looked down at his brother’s disfigured face, then stood up and, leaving the knife lodged in his brother’s chest, began to run.

Nick shook off the enveloping memory. As he came to, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He concentrated on the feeling of the sunlight on his face, warming his skin. He searched the parking lot for the two girls, but they were gone, swallowed into the crowd. He pushed himself off the light pole he had been leaning against, shaken by the vision, his legs weak beneath him. He was about to start home when, across the lot, something caught his eye.

In the midst of the throng, a lone vagrant was shambling toward the ferry landing.

The man had his back to Nick. All Nick was able to see at first was his ragged, greasy hair and the long, tattered coat he was wearing. An image of the killer’s face filled Nick’s mind. His watery blue eyes. The pocked, ravaged skin. Nick blinked, suppressing the memory, trying to focus his mind onto the homeless man in front of him instead. The man’s shoulders were hunched as he shuffled through the late afternoon crowd, cutting diagonally across Alaskan Way. When Nick banged into a passerby, a man turned and gestured at him. The man’s hands fluttered in the air in slow motion, and his mouth opened and closed in a curse, but Nick heard nothing he said. Except for the homeless man’s slow and deliberate footsteps, the day had gone completely silent. Nick raised his camera to his eye and snapped a picture of the man. Then, taking a deep breath, he followed him.

Nick was trying not to draw attention to himself. He had kept a good distance between the homeless man and himself. For over an hour the man had led him across town. The man had paused at any number of waste bins along the way, searching through them for scraps of food. In front of the Art Museum, he stopped to stuff some newspaper into his ragged shoes. When he stood back up, a pedestrian handed him a dollar, then hustled away, spooked by something the man said in return. The last three or four blocks, with daylight fading, Nick thought he might lose him.

Nick paused on the edge of the park on Occidental, downtown. Around him, homeless men and women were gathering with their grocery carts of possessions, shouting obscenities at one another, jockeying for places on the scattered benches. As yet, Nick hadn’t been able to get a good look at the man. He had him in the center of his telephoto lens now, though—a 400mm zoom that gave him 500 percent magnification. The sky was melting from a deep, purplish blue into a hazy gray twilight, and there wasn’t enough light for Nick to snap a good picture. He clicked the shutter down anyway, to give himself some identification to look at later. Perhaps, if it wasn’t too blurry, he would be able to enhance the image on his computer.

The man was talking to another homeless man sitting on a bench. The sky was getting darker, and it was becoming more difficult to see. Nick surveyed the area. The parking lots next to the long, narrow park were emptying out, and a few stragglers leaving their offices late were still on the streets. As night fell, the park was becoming a tent city. On the far side, next to a derelict building, several men had started a fire inside a rusted oil drum and were holding something over it, perhaps cooking themselves dinner. Their faces were lit orange, and plumes of black smoke billowed above them, undulating as they dissipated into the twilight, describing invisible currents in the air. Nick stifled a chill. Taking a step into the boundaries of the park, he had the sense that he was stepping into a jungle.

Nick stopped ten yards from the homeless man. Sidling up to the trunk of a tree, he could hear the man’s raspy voice. He had to listen carefully to the choppy, broken conversation to understand that the man was buying drugs from the bum seated on the bench. Once again, Nick raised his camera to his eye. There wasn’t enough light, though, to get a picture.

“You say you got Vicodin tonight?” the homeless man said.

“I din’ say that.”

“But you do.”

“I got six tabs. I got three Valium. I got a Xanax. I got me some generic hydrocodone. Some OxyContin, too.”

“No generics. The Vicodin ain’t generics, are they?”

“They’re Abbots, man. ’N the OxyContin’s Watsons.”

“Don’t want no generics. People are talking. There’s some strange shit going down.”

“Tell me about it.”

“How much for the Vicodin?”

“Always the same, man.”

“Six tabs you say?” The homeless man reached into the pocket of the long, ragged coat he was wearing and pulled out some crumpled bills. One of them, Nick reflected, must have belonged to the person who stopped to give him a dollar in front of the museum. “Gimme the Vicodin, and give me two of the Oxys.”

“You two dollas short, man.”

“Wait up, wait up.” The man reached into the pocket of his pants and brought out a handful of change. He counted through it, then, taking a quick glance around him over both his shoulders—as though he could feel Nick’s eyes on him—handed the coins to the other man. He took the pills in return, examining them in the dark light before shoving them into his shirt pocket.

“You got enough for a bed, man?”

The homeless man shook his head. “I’ll go inside and get me somepin’ to eat, but I’m outside tonight.”

The other man shrugged his shoulders and settled back onto the bench. He mumbled something that gave his friend pause. Nick waited for the homeless man to disappear into the shadows, then followed. He was aware of the second man’s eyes on him as he approached the bench where the exchange had taken place. As he walked past, the man let his breath out in a single shrill whistle. Nick hesitated in midstep, a chill crawling up his spine.

Nick paused in front of a tall brick building a few blocks east of the park. He had passed through Pioneer Square a thousand times, and while he had always known that homeless people gathered here, he had never once noticed this particular building. A large sign was taped in a ground-floor window, its words spelled out in marker on an aging piece of cardboard:
SEATTLE EMERGENCY SHELTER
. Nick looked up at the shabby building. From the number of ragged hobos lined up outside, he figured the building must house a shelter and a food program, as well as other services upstairs. It was dark now, and the street lamps in front didn’t cast much light. Nick could barely make out the words etched into the stone lintel above the front doors:
HUDSON HOTEL
.

Nick crossed the square just in time to see the doors close behind the homeless man. He had cut the line and let himself inside. Nick took a deep breath to steady himself. A number of people noticed him as he approached the building, and he was aware of the way they were eyeing his camera. Still, he had no alternative. He hadn’t yet gotten a good look at the man’s face; he needed to follow. He walked up the stairs to the entrance.

“Hey, Professor! You got a dolla’ fo’ me?”

“You got yo’self a fine camera, man.”

“You ken take my pitcher fo’ a dolla’, Professor.”

The handle of the door felt grimy in Nick’s hand. He yanked it open, then pushed his way through the crowd. The line stretched into the bowels of the building. He turned toward one of the men. “What are you waiting for?” Nick asked him.

“Clark Kent,” the man mouthed. “Are you Clark Kent?”

Nick took in the rags the man was wearing. The spectacles propped on his nose were missing a lens. He turned to the man next to him. “What are you in line for?”

“Dinner,” the man said, staring at Nick’s camera.

Nick pushed his way down the dim hallway. The walls were veneered with greasy green tiles, and the ceiling was gray with years of accumulated grime. Nick felt claustrophobic. He craned his neck as he rounded the corner, able to see down to the end of the line, which terminated in front of a set of double doors leading into a steamy dining room. There was no sign of the homeless man. He had lost him somehow.

Nick scanned the line of ragged, hungry men. Their voices had dropped to whispers, and they shuffled out of his way as he moved down the corridor, gathering again at his back, cutting off his retreat.

The smell of the food cooking in the dining room grew stronger as he approached the double doors, until it became overpowering. The smell of cheap beef simmering in pungent vegetables, mixed with the steamy smell of spaghetti smothered in canned sauce. The air was becoming stuffy, stagnant, the walls close. The men in line reeked of the street, as though they were festering in their own urine and excrement. Nick was surrounded by hands wrapped in cloth, by toothless smiles and unshaven faces.

When he reached the double doors, he turned to a tall, gaunt man with short brown hair and a rat’s face. The man took a step back, as if Nick were going to ask him to move aside. “I’m looking for someone,” Nick said.

The man didn’t respond.

“He was just a few steps in front of me. Did you see him?”

The man’s eyes darted toward a door on the other side of the hallway that Nick hadn’t noticed before.

“He went in there,” someone else said.

“Like he was runnin’ from you.”

Nick took an awkward step to the large metal door and pushed on its handle. The door swept open in front of him, revealing a filthy, fluorescent-lit men’s room paneled in the same grungy tile as the hallway. Its floor was covered with a slick layer of oily mop water. The stench of human waste and ammonia revolted him, burning the insides of his nostrils. He steeled himself and stepped inside. The door swung closed behind him.

A man was standing next to a urinal, peeing. Another man was in one of the four stalls, sitting on a toilet. A fan was blowing overhead, its blades rattling and clanging metallically as it turned in its old tin housing. The fluorescent light overhead flickered. Nick noticed none of these things. The homeless man he had been following was standing in front of a sink to his left, the water running from a broken tap. His hands were resting on the basin. He was staring back at Nick in the mirror, waiting for him.

Their reflections were side by side in the glass—Nick’s face, tense with stress, still healing from the battering he had received the night of Sam’s murder, counterpoised with the homeless man’s street-ravaged countenance. Nick looked into the vagrant’s light brown eyes and realized that he had been chasing a ghost. This sinewy, tired man was not the blue-eyed man who had attacked and killed Sam.

Nick had come too far, though, to turn around. The door was clicking shut behind him, there was no retreat. He was inside the bathroom, two steps from the man he had followed across town from Pike Place Market.

The man at the urinal zipped up and turned to leave, pushing past Nick to get to the door. Too late, Nick caught sight of the homeless man’s eyes narrowing in the mirror. He leapt at Nick, grabbing him by his shirt and slamming him up against the hard tiles. In the mirror, Nick saw his camera swing backward from the force of the man’s attack and bang against the wall. The man’s dirty, scaly hands sank into his clothing. The man’s knee pinned his thigh. His breath was hot and sour in Nick’s nose. His eyes had become unfocused and wild.

“What you want, boy? You want somethin’ I got?”

Nick shook his head.

“You been followin’ me. You think I ken’t see?”

“I made a mistake,” Nick said. He wanted to resist, but the man clamped his fingers around Nick’s throat.

“You want my pills, that it?”

“No.” The pressure from the man’s hand was choking him. He couldn’t breathe, and the room became dim and blurry in front of him.

“You make yer mistake with someone else, got it, boy?” The man’s leg gouged into his thigh. His dry, crusty fingers cut into his throat. He was closing his hand around Nick’s windpipe.

Nick tried again to struggle free. An image of Sam attacking him on the snow-covered lawn in front of their house in Madison blinded him as his head slammed back into the hard wall. The whiteness had drained from the day as Sam had strangled him, until Nick had been engulfed in blackness. Then at last the man released him from his grip. He elbowed Nick in the ribs, took a quick step around him, and pulled the door open, letting himself back out into the hall. Nick was aware of the swell of voices in the hallway as the door opened and closed.