49

WEDNESDAY, 12:10 PM

EXCEPT FOR THE PAIN in his right shoulder and the grass stains on his new jogging suit, it had been a very productive morning.

Simon Close sat on his couch, contemplating his next move.

Although he hadn’t expected the warmest greeting when he had revealed himself as a reporter to Jessica Balzano, he had to admit he was a little surprised by her violent reaction.

Surprised and, he also had to admit, extremely aroused. He had done his best Eastern Pennsylvania accent and she hadn’t suspected a thing. Until he hit her with the bombshell question.

He fished the tiny digital voice recorder out of his pocket.

“Good . . . if you want to talk to me, you go through the press office there. If that’s too much trouble, then stay the fuck out of my face.”

He opened his laptop, checked his e-mail—more spam for Vicodin, penis enlargement, great mortgage rates, and hair restoration, along with the usual fan mail from readers (“rot in hell you fukin hack”).

A lot of writers resist technology. Simon knew quite a few who still wrote on yellow legal pads with a ballpoint pen. A few others who worked on ancient Remington manual typewriters. Pretentious, prehistoric nonsense. Try as he might, Simon Close could not understand this. Perhaps they thought it would put them in touch with their inner Hemingway, the Charles Dickens fighting to get out. Simon was all digital, all the time.

From his Apple PowerBook, to his DSL connection, to his Nokia GSM phone, he was on top of the tech world. Go ahead, he thought, write on your slate tablets with a sharpened rock for all I care. I’m going to be there first.

Because Simon believed in the two basic tenets of tabloid journalism:

It’s easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

It’s better to be first than it is to be accurate.

That’s what corrections are for.

He flipped on the TV, cruised the channels. Soaps, game shows, shout shows, sports. Yawn. Even the esteemed BBC America had some idiot, third-generation clone of Trading Spaces on. Maybe there was an old movie on AMC. He looked it up in the listings. Criss Cross with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo. A goodie, but he’d seen it. Besides, it was half over.

He cruised the dial one more time, and was just about to flip it off when a breaking news flash came on a local channel. Murder in Philly. What a shock.

But it wasn’t another victim of the Rosary Killer.

The on-the-scene camera was showing something else altogether, something that made Simon’s heart beat a little faster. Okay, a lot faster.

It was the alley in Gray’s Ferry.

The alley out of which Kevin Byrne had stumbled the night before.

Simon hit the RECORD button on his VCR. A few minutes later, he rewound and freeze-framed a shot of the mouth of the alley, and compared it, side by side, to the photo of Byrne on his laptop.

Identical.

Kevin Byrne had been in that same alley the night before, the night that a black kid had been shot dead. So it hadn’t been a backfire.

This was so deliriously delicious, so much better than the possibility of catching Byrne at a crack house. Simon paced back and forth across his small living room a few dozen times, trying to figure the best way to play this.

Had Byrne committed a cold-blooded execution?

Was Byrne in the throes of a cover-up?

Was this a drug deal gone wrong?

Simon opened his e-mail program, calmed himself, somewhat, organized his thoughts and began to type:

Dear Detective Byrne:

Long time no see! Well, that’s not entirely true. As you can see by the attached photo, I saw you yesterday. Here’s my offer. I get to ride along with you and your scrumptious partner until you catch this very bad boy who has been killing Catholic schoolgirls. Once you do catch him, I want an exclusive.

For this, I will destroy these photographs.

If not, look for the pictures (yes, I have many) on the front page of the very next issue of The Report.

Have a great day!

As Simon looked it over—he always cooled off a bit before sending his most inflammatory e-mails—Enid meowed and leapt onto his lap from her perch on top of the file cabinet.

“What’s up, dolly-doll?”

Enid seemed to peruse the text of Simon’s mail to Kevin Byrne.

“Too strident?” he asked the cat.

Enid purred a response.

“You’re right, kitty-kitty. Not possible.”

Still, Simon decided he would read it over a few more times before sending it. Maybe he’d wait a day, just to see how big the story of the dead black kid in the alley would get. He could afford twenty-four more hours if it meant he could get a thug like Kevin Byrne under his thumb.

Or maybe he should send the e-mail to Jessica.

Brilliant, he thought.

Or maybe he should just copy the photos to a CD and head down to the paper. Just publish them and see how Byrne liked it.

Either way, he should probably make a backup copy of the photos, just to be safe.

He thought about the headline, huge type over a photo of Byrne walking out of that alley in Gray’s Ferry.

VIGILANTE COP? would read the headline.

DETECTIVE IN DEATH ALLEY ON NIGHT OF MURDER! would read the deck. God, he was good.

Simon walked over to the hall closet and fished out a clean CD-R.

When he closed the door and turned back to the room, something was different. Maybe not so much different as off-center. It was like the feeling you get when you have an inner-ear infection and your balance is just that little bit tipsy. He stood in the archway leading to his tiny living room, trying to pin down the feeling.

Everything seemed to be as he had left it. His PowerBook on the coffee table, his empty demitasse cup next to it. Enid purring on the throw rug near the heat register.

Maybe he was mistaken.

He looked at the floor.

He saw the shadow first, a shadow that mirrored his own. He knew enough about key lighting to know that you need two light sources to cast two shadows.

Behind him, there was only the small ceiling fixture.

Then he felt the hot breath on his neck, smelled the faint scent of peppermint.

He turned, his heart suddenly in his throat.

And stared straight into the eyes of the devil.