Free True Crime by Andrew Klavan Page B

right?”
    “Right. Sure,” I said. I adjusted my glasses which had slipped on the sweaty bridge of my nose.
This is almost over
, I told myself.
It isn’t going to be too bad. Not yet, not now
. First, we would deal with the story. That was Bob’s way. Professional, ordered, calm. We would deal with the story first, and all the rest would come later. All I had to do for now was keep my mouth shut and my head down; do the job, do the work, and we would get through today without the full-blown disaster that was surely coming. We would get through today, and tomorrow—well, maybe the world would end. Who knows? I could get lucky. “Human interest sidebar,” I repeated. “Righty-oh.”
    I thought I saw a grimace of distaste twist Bob’s mouth for a second. But then the round, youthful face was still again, and the expression calm, and the blue eyes black to their depths. “I’m sorry to call you in on your day off,” he said, with no inflection in his voice at all.
    “Hey … hey … I mean … hey. No problem. It’s an emergency,” I said.
    “Yes,” said Bob. “It is.”
    Jane March watched him, then me, then him again. She would get at the truth before long, I was certain. Everyone in the damn building would get at the truth before too long. And as for my wife, as for Barbara … I didn’t want to think about that.
    “Okay. Hokey-dokey. Right,” I said. “I’ll be … I’ll get … right on that.”
    Silently, I sang me a hallelujah when, at last, I couldturn away from him and head toward my desk. I felt the basilisk at my back, but I knew that if I just kept going it would be all right. I would get to my chair. I would bury my head in the story. I would hand in my copy at the end of the day, and then go home and move away without leaving a forwarding address. Something. I would think of something. I felt the clenched fist of my stomach starting to loosen as I hurried up the aisle.
    Three steps. I got three steps. And then I pulled up short.
    Shit
, I thought. A question had occurred to me. On a normal day, it would have been a simple thing to turn around and ask my question of the city editor. It did not seem a simple thing to do today. My stomach clenched right up again. I imagined the sweat on my back made my white shirt gray as Bob stared at it. I imagined he didn’t want me to turn around again any more than I wanted to turn around again. I told myself not to turn around. I told myself to forget my question, to go to my desk and get to work.
    Then I turned around. I saw Bob’s lips press together hard.
    “Uh … why didn’t she hear the shots?” I asked.
    I saw Bob’s lips turn white. “The shots,” he said softly.
    I felt my face get hot, I felt a prickling under my hairline. “Sorry, I just … The woman in the, in the—what-chamacallit—the parking lot. Jane said she didn’t know what was going on but … I mean, if she was right outside, she must’ve heard the … the shots …” My voice trailed away. A lump of nauseous fear corkscrewed from my stomach to my throat.
    Bob’s cheeks had reddened.
    You have to understand. The Reddening of Bob Findley’s Cheeks was a phenomenon regarded with terror by every single member of the city room staff. They had goodreason too. When Bob’s cheeks turned red, it meant that you had enraged him. Despite his lifework of calm, his caring, his ever-best efforts at fairness and decency, you and you alone had managed to throw a match into the gas tank of his wrath. This was not a happy thing. There were stories. About what he did to people, the people who enraged him. These were not stories about explosions or tirades. Bob did not explode. He didn’t shout or throw furniture. But if you enraged him—if you enraged him often enough, or deeply enough—he would get you for it. Quietly, surely. He would erase you from the Book of Life. Newspaper lore held that it had actually happened once—to a tough woman veteran who had