The Dying Hour (2 page)

J
ust over a hundred miles south in Seattle, Trudy Moore heard activity in the apartment above hers.

Sounded like Karen was back, she thought, glancing at the time while getting ready to put in a morning shift at the coffee shop a few blocks away. This was Trudy’s busy day because she had three afternoon classes.

After washing her breakfast dishes and tidying up, she filled a watering can to tend to her plants, reminding herself how lucky she was to live in this gorgeous building in Capitol Hill.

It was a classic stone apartment house built around 1910. Her place was a second-story one bedroom with hardwood floors and bay windows overlooking downtown, the Space Needle and the Olympic Mountains to the west. She had managed to get a terrific sublet deal through a friend.

A door slammed overhead, startling her.

Strange.

Trudy’s apartment was identical to the one above her where Karen Harding lived. Both of them had been tenants for close to a year and had become attuned to each other’s living rhythms. Karen was as quiet as a church mouse, which was Trudy’s nickname for her because Karen went to church every Sunday morning.

Karen would certainly never slam a door. Maybe the door handle slipped. Trudy resumed checking over her lecture notes, tapping her pen against her pages, until she heard footfalls. Heavier than she was used to. The floor creaked as though someone was walking throughout the entire apartment. Walking,
urgently.
Doors opening and closing.

What was going on? That didn’t sound like Karen.

Trudy remembered hearing her leave last night. Heard her descend the stairs. From the window she’d seen Karen hurrying to her car and driving off in the rain. Afterward Karen’s phone rang at least six times. Come to think of it, it started ringing again earlier this morning and went unanswered.

Trudy waved it all off. None of her business.

She glanced at the time, calculating how much she had to study before collecting her books, getting on her bike, and riding to the coffee shop.

Karen’s phone started ringing again.

This time someone upstairs picked it up and Trudy heard the faint sound of someone talking. More footsteps, a door opened, thudded closed. Then the hall stairs creaked as someone quickly descended them.

Trudy heard the rush of a person passing by her door. A big person.

That is definitely not Karen.

Trudy was absolutely certain because she was staring at Karen’s parking space and her car was still not there.

T
he vague feeling that something was wrong nagged at Marlene Clark throughout much of her morning.

She couldn’t pinpoint the source.

It had nothing to do with her job as a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital. In fact, the surgery to remove the enlarged spleen of a sixty-year-old woman had gone well. Marlene had suppressed the twinge of puzzling unease at the back of her mind, concentrating on passing sponges and instruments from the tray to the surgeon.

After the operation, worry began niggling at her again. What was it? She didn’t know. She was sure it had nothing to do with work, with the kids, or her husband. Just a cloudy sensation that something wasn’t right.

She glanced at her watch and started for recovery. On the way she called her house to check with her sitter, Wanda, who was watching Timothy and Rachel.

“Everything’s fine, Marlene. All quiet here. Want to talk to the kids?”

A few seconds of chatting with Timothy and Rachel relieved her. She went to post-op where she reviewed the spleen patient’s chart. Later, she found an empty staff room and began eating a late lunch as she checked her schedule for the next day’s surgery.

A twenty-year-old woman was having her gall bladder removed. Given the patient’s age, Marlene would double-check for any body jewelry that might have to be taken out before the operation. Studs in tongues were popular, she thought as Anita from the desk poked her head into the room.

“There you are. Telephone call for you, Mar.”

Marlene glanced at the extension number of the line in the room.

“Can you put it through here?”

“No problem.”

In the moment she waited, she thought of Bill. He’d mentioned something about going out to dinner. The line rang and she picked it up.

“Hello, this is Marlene.”

“Hi, Marlene, it’s Luke. Luke Terrell, Karen’s boy-friend.”

Luke? Why was he calling her here? Was he in town?

“Hi, Luke.”

“I’m sorry to be bothering you, but, um—”

The tone of his voice was weird.

“What is it?”

“Is Karen in Vancouver visiting you? Or has she called?”

“No. Why? What’s going on?”

“Please don’t get worried. Please, but the police just called me—”

“Police!”

“They found Karen’s car off the highway, 539, near Laurel—”

As Luke explained the little he knew, a hollow sickening feeling seeped into Marlene’s stomach. Ears pounding, she seized upon bits of his account…Karen left her apartment with a bag…left without her cell phone…there was a storm…car abandoned…missing…

Luke was scaring her, stirring her mysterious fear, twisting it all horribly into focus.

It was about the dream she’d had last night.

A nightmare about Karen.

She was screaming and screaming.

“
S
he died?”

Jason Wade, a rookie police reporter at the
Seattle Mirror,
pressed the phone to his head to hear over the newsroom’s scanners. He needed to be certain of what the cop was telling him.

“She died in the hospital an hour ago,” the lieutenant said.

First edition deadline was looming. Jason jabbed the night editor’s extension.

“Beale.”

“Got an update on the I-405 traffic accident in Bellevue. State Patrol confirmed the woman just died of her injuries.”

“One hundred max.”

One hundred words. Gladys Chambers deserved more than that, Jason thought. She was seventy-two, driving home from a seniors’ club where she played the organ when a tire blew and her car rolled.

“I can give you a little profile, she’s a retired Boeing worker.”

“We’re tight. One hundred.”

One hundred words didn’t even warrant a byline. It was as if Gladys Chambers was somehow being cheated in death. Jason wanted to write more about her life but followed orders.

The night editors ruled his world.

Embittered veterans who had boiled his job down to a few commandments. Never turn off the police scanners. Never let the
Seattle Times
or
Post-Intelligencer
beat you. Write exactly to the length we tell you. Never take criticism of your writing personally. Everybody produces crap and the day side knows jack.

Obey and learn.

Jason knocked out exactly one hundred words, then sent his story to the copy desk.

Behold the lot of a cub reporter on the police beat of a major metro.

Discarded sections of the
Mirror,
the
L.A. Times,
and
USA Today
were splayed on his desk. He considered them along with the used-up notebooks, junk food wrappers, outdated press releases, and his future.

He was failing.

He was a month into the paper’s legendary soul-destroying six-month internship program and all he had to show for it were eight bylines. He had to get his name in print more often. This was his shot at a job with the best damn newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, a kick-ass operation.

He couldn’t afford to fail.

Jason called up the wires, scrolling through them for anything breaking. Little had moved since he last looked. He checked regional Web sites for press releases, then made more checks going down the tattered list of numbers for police, fire, paramedics, and port people throughout the Sea-Tac area. Call after call yielded nothing new.

Except for the organ lady’s death, it was an uneventful night.

Jason went to see Vic Beale, the night editor, typing before a large flat-screen monitor.

“Instead of searching the wires, I’m going to call around the state, see if I can dig something up.”

Beale, a craggy-faced man with wispy gray hair, peered over his glasses. His attention paused at the silver stud earring in Jason’s left lobe, then the few days’ growth of whiskers that suggested a Vandyke.

“We’re jammed for space. If you get anything, it’d better be good.”

“I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Knock yourself out.”

At his keyboard, Jason summoned the
Mirror
’s universal call list, a massive file of names, numbers, and contact information for anything and everything. He decided to start with the border and work his way south.

He called the Blaine crossing.

“Hi, Jason Wade from the
Seattle Mirror.
Anything shaking up your way tonight? Any arrests, seizures? Any oddball incidents?”

The duty officer gave him an officious brush-off. “You guys know you’re supposed to call the press office.”

“Yeah, but those people don’t know as much as you. And I bet they don’t work as hard.”

“You got that right.”

“So between you and me, did anything happen for you tonight, anything worth pursuing?”

“Naw. Try Sumas. I heard there was something out that way.”

“Thanks.”

The woman who answered the line at Sumas was cheery.

“Nothing going on here, dear. I’d try Lynden.”

The number for the Lynden border crossing rang and rang. Jason was hanging up when the line clicked, and he pulled the phone back to his ear.

“No, nothing here.” The Lynden man’s name was Jenkins. “Sorry, you got a bad tip.”

“Well, I’m just poking around.”

“That thing’s got nothing to do with us.”

That thing? What thing?

“Excuse me?” Jason sat up.

“You want the Sawridge County Sheriff.”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“Likely nothing, but they found an abandoned car on 539 about ten miles south of us.”

“Abandoned car? What about it?”

“I guess they’re trying to find the owner, a young Seattle woman.”

“Why? Is there foul play or something?”

“I’ve got no idea. Call the county, but you didn’t get it from us.”

Jason persisted with several calls to Sawridge County until he connected with Detective Hank Stralla. The cop listened patiently, then told him they had concerns over a car abandoned on 539.

“We’re attempting to locate the owner to be sure she’s unharmed.”

“Why concerns about a car? I mean that sort of thing happens all the time, right?”

“We’re going to wait until tomorrow before releasing anything.”

“That suggests you have something. What’s happening tomorrow? Do you suspect foul play?”

Stralla let a moment of silence pass between them.

“Until we locate the owner, we really can’t say much.”

Something in Stralla’s tone triggered Jason’s instincts—this was the precise moment to push.

“Would you consider releasing a few details now? A story in tomorrow’s
Mirror
might help. You know our circulation is statewide. Goes right to the border.”

Stralla considered the proposal.

“Tell you what. Let me make a few calls. I’ll get right back to you either way. What’s your number?”

Jason gave Stralla his number, telling him he had about an hour before the paper’s next deadline.

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” Stralla said.

Jason hung up.

Maybe he was on to something here. He glanced at Beale and the editors. Should he alert them? Alert them to what? He hadn’t nailed anything down. He’d forgotten another commandment. Never oversell a story. Besides, this could be nothing.

Better sit tight.

J
ason stared at the clock.

No word yet from Detective Stralla. He watched the second hand sweeping time away, downed the last of his cold coffee, tossed the Styro cup in the trash, got up, and paced the desolate newsroom.

He was the only metro reporter on night duty.

The small crew at the copy desk worked with subdued intensity on the first edition, oblivious to the police radio chatter. Keeping an ear tuned to the scanner and his phone, Jason went to the newsroom bulletin board and browsed the administrative memos and staff notes offering items for sale. Like a Starcraft with a 45 Merc, or Mariners tickets and discounts on Hawaiian getaways.

Then he saw his own picture under the banner:
MEET OUR INTERNS
.

Jason’s face and bio were up there among the six junior reporters hired for the
Mirror
’s internship program.
The lucky ones,
Neena Swain, the assistant managing editor, had told them when they had first arrived.

“You have a golden opportunity to prove yourself to us. You won’t be coddled here. School’s out. This is the real world. We’re paying you a full-time reporter’s rate and we have expectations.”

She adjusted her glasses with cool precision, then locked eyes with each intern at the boardroom table.

“On every story you’ll go up against the
Seattle Times
and the
Post-Intelligencer.
So you’d better make damn sure that you’re the first reporter on it, and the last one to leave. You get the best quotes and you get it right. Every damn time.” Neena Swain brought her fist down on the table. “The
Seattle Mirror
has won nine goddamned Pulitzer Prizes and
we will not
tolerate anything less than excellence. At the end of six months one of you, and only one of you, will be hired full-time.”

The rest would be gone.

That was the deal. A do-or-die competition. All of the interns had impressive resumes with experience at the
New York Times,
the
Chicago Tribune, Newsweek,
the
Los Angeles Times,
and the
Wall Street Journal.
All of them came from big-name schools like Columbia, Northwestern, Missouri, Arizona State, and UCLA.

All of them but Jason Wade.

He had worked as a forklift driver at Pacific Peaks Brewery near the airport to put himself through community college. And he’d put in part-time shifts as a reporter at a now-defunct Seattle weekly, while selling freelance pieces wherever he could, including one to the
Mirror.

It was a crime feature on beat cops that had caught the eye of Ron Nestor, the Mirror’s metro editor, who gave Wade the last spot in the intern program after another candidate dropped out at the last minute.

Jason got in by the skin of his teeth.

It was likely why he was assigned to the most loathed position at any newspaper, the night police beat.

“Looks like you drew the short straw,” Ben Randolf said. He was a tall good-looking guy from Columbia who’d worked at the
Chicago Tribune.
His parents were New York investment bankers. “Best of luck, buddy.” He winked at Astrid Grant, standing with them.

“It’s a good situation for you, Jason.” Astrid Grant had worked at
Newsweek.
Her father was an exec at a big studio in Los Angeles and she had graduated from UCLA. “Personally, I detest police, but it’s a good fit for you, what with your background, don’t you think?”

Later, Ron Nestor gave Jason a pep talk.

“The police desk is vital, Jason. Don’t sell it short. The crime beat is the front line of news. The radio scanner is our lifeline to stories that will stop the heart of Seattle, or break it.”

It was a mean, brutal business and Jason yearned to be part of it. But here they were, a month into the program, and each of the others had nailed front-page stories and long showcased features. All he had managed so far were eight small, forgettable, inside hits.

He walked away from the bulletin board.

The
Mirror
was at Harrison and Fourth, a few blocks north of downtown. The newsroom was on the seventh floor, its west wall made of glass. He gazed into the night. It was clear after yesterday’s storm. He watched the running lights of the boats cutting across Elliott Bay, trying hard not to think about the brewery and what awaited him if he failed to get a job with the
Mirror.

He was twenty-five and had already lost too much. Like Valerie. She just up and left him.
No. Admit it. You drove her away.
How many months had it been? It still hurt.
Get over it, loser, you blew it with her.

Jason’s phone rang. He trotted back to his desk. It was Stralla.

“We’re prepared to release a few details to you.”

He glanced at the clock. Forty minutes until deadline for the
Mirror
’s second edition, which was the largest.

“Are you releasing this to everyone?”

“Just you tonight. It’s all yours. No one else has called.”

Jason hunched forward in his chair, his pulse kicking up as he squeezed his pen and wrote down every detail Stralla gave him in the case of Karen Katherine Harding. Then he told Vic Beale what he had.

“You’re sure it’s exclusive?”

“Got it confirmed from the detective on the case.”

“And you got a picture?”

“Yup.”

“Get moving. I’ll talk to Mack about taking it for page one. You’ve got thirty-five minutes to get it to me. Move it.”

Fingers poised over his keys, Jason concentrated and began working on his lead. Thirty minutes later he was done and proofreading his story.

By JASON WADE

Seattle Mirror

Police are baffled as to the whereabouts of a Seattle college student after her car was found abandoned near the Canadian border.

Sawridge County Sheriff’s deputies have little evidence to help them explain what happened to Karen Katherine Harding.

A deputy on patrol found her 1998 Blue Toyota Corolla parked on the northbound shoulder of State Route 539, some 10 miles from the Lynden border crossing into Canada. The car’s keys were in the ignition. The doors were unlocked. Investigators found no signs of violence or a struggle among her belongings, which included an overnight bag.

“On the face of it, it’s strange. We’re attempting to locate Ms. Harding. Until then we cannot rule out the possibility of foul play,” Det. Hank Stralla told the Mirror last night.

It’s believed Harding may have had car trouble while driving in an intense storm after leaving her Capitol Hill apartment Tuesday evening. Stralla said Harding has a sister who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and suspects she may have been on her way there for a visit. Harding informed no one of her destination, he said, declining to discuss further details about her disappearance.

Harding is 24 years old, 5 feet 3 inches tall, 110 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone who has information concerning her whereabouts should contact the Sawridge County Sheriff’s Office.

Jason hit the Send button, delivering the story to the night desk for editing, then he began kneading the tension in his neck, when Beale called him.

“Front’s taking your story below the fold. Nice work.”

“Thanks.”

Jason left his desk for the internal viewing window at the far end of the newsroom and looked down two stories at the massive German-built presses. The smells of ink, hydraulic fluid, and newsprint were heavy in the air. The pressmen were busy replating and making adjustments for the next edition. Soon bells rang and the building trembled as the presses began to roll.

Later Jason wandered back into the news section, to Beale, who was watching Letterman on the big-screen TV on the high shelf.

“What do you think? Is she dead?” Jason asked.

“She could surface. It happens. But who knows? Pretty college girl all alone on a stormy night. I’ll tell you one thing.” Beale switched off the set, collected his jacket and bag to leave. “Readers will eat this up. People love a mystery.”