Free There Fell a Shadow by Andrew Klavan

managing editor gave me a little more to handle. “Don’t be afraid to express your feelings. Your shock at seeing Colt killed. Your fear at being stalked by an assassin. Your sense of—of—triumph when you realized you had survived. Am I giving you a sort of idea of what I’m looking for here?”
    â€œIt’s beginning to take shape for me, Bob,” I said hoarsely. I coughed. My throat was tightening again.
    â€œGood!” Cambridge said. He slid his hand off my shoulder, slapping my back as he went. This time, I could not suppress a groan of pain. “Think you can have that on my desk by five? Give me a chance to look it over before I pass it on to Rafferty.”
    I hesitated. This was a little tricky. Cambridge had edited my copy before. Made it more relatable. In one instance, he had made it so relatable that I was nearly sued by an entire county. In the wake of this experience, he and I had come to certain understandings. He was allowed to tell me how to write my stories beforehand. I was allowed to ignore him. He was allowed to make suggestions on the finished copy. I was allowed to stick two fingers up his nose and yank hard if he changed any of it. Normally, all went well. He worked on making the newspaper relatable. I worked on making the newspaper a newspaper. Lately, however, it seemed to me that this arrangement was beginning to weigh on his sense of authority. Added to that, he couldn’t be too happy about Sandler forcing him to banner my Borough Prez story. I feared for the life of my sidebar if Cambridge got his hands on it before the city editor did.
    â€œWell,” I said finally, with a manly chuckle. “I’ll sure try, Bob. I’m still feeling a little low, truth be told, but I’ll do the best I can.” I whipped out a cigarette, lit it, took a drag. I blasted the smoke out in a great haze that spread over us both. Cambridge paled. He does not like cigarettes. He worries about my health, he says. I took another drag.
    Undaunted, he pressed the point. “You know, it’s only quarter to three now.… I just want a sense of how to coordinate the whole layout that we’re doing, so if you don’t mind I’d appreciate it: on my desk by five.” He paused. Grinned through another smoky blast. “Okay, guy?”
    â€œUh …” I said.
    â€œYo, Pop, you got a visitor!”
    The call came from the copyboy, Alex. He calls me Pop. Charming kid. I left Cambridge eagerly. I returned to the glass doors. Alex was there. He pointed me out to a woman who’d just come in. She was small and slender, almost lost in her big cloth overcoat. I guessed she was thirty-five or so. Every year of it was written on her pale face in lines that were carved deep into the corners of her mouth and eyes. Still, it was not an unattractive face. It was pert and sharp, with birdlike features under red hair cut short and bobbed. Her green eyes were bright and clear and intelligent. They followed Alex’s gesture quickly. They measured me with a single glance.
    She extended her hand. I took it. The skin of her palm was dry and cold. Up close, I saw she had too much lipstick on. She wore too much blush, and her cheeks seemed feverishly bright.
    â€œMr. Wells?” she said. She spoke crisply. She seemed to be forcing her smile.
    â€œI’m Wells.”
    She took another deep breath. “My name is Valerie Colt,” she told me. “I’m Tim’s wife.”

“T hey made me come in to identify the body,” she said. She pushed out a sad laugh. “I hadn’t seen him in over a year, I didn’t know if I’d recognize him.”
    We were in my cubicle now. I’d pulled an extra chair in there for her. I was seated against one wall, leaning forward, my elbows on my knees. She was seated across from me, leaning back, her head resting against the divider. Between us, my Olympia—the last typewriter in the