If It Bleeds Read online

  Today Pete Huntley, her partner in the business since Bill Hodges died, is out trying to track down a runaway at the city’s various homeless shelters. Jerome Robinson, taking a year off from Harvard while he tries to turn a forty-page sociology paper into what he hopes will be a book, is also working for Finders Keepers, although only part-time. This afternoon he’s south of the city, looking for a dognapped golden retriever named Lucky who may have been dumped at a Youngstown, Akron, or Canton dog impound when Lucky’s owners refused to pay the demanded ransom of ten thousand dollars. Of course the dog may just have been turned loose in the Ohio countryside—or killed—but maybe not. The dog’s name is a good omen, she told Jerome. She said she was hopeful.

  “You have Holly hope,” Jerome said, grinning.

  “That’s right,” she replied. “Now go on, Jerome. Fetch.”

  She’s got a good chance of being alone until it’s time to close the place up, but it’s only the hour between three and four that she really cares about. With one eye on the clock, she writes a starchy email to Andrew Edwards, a client who was worried that his partner was trying to hide business assets. Turns out the partner wasn’t, but Finders did the work and needs to be paid. This is our third billing, Holly writes. Please clear your account so we don’t have to turn this matter over to a collection agency.

  Holly finds she can be much more forceful when she can write “our” and “we” rather than “my” and “I.” She’s working on that, but as her grandfather was wont to say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Philadelphia.”

  She sends off the email—whoosh—and shuts down her computer. She glances at the clock. Seven to three. She goes to the little fridge and takes out a can of Diet Pepsi. She puts it on one of the coasters the firm gives out (YOU LOSE, WE FIND, YOU WIN), then opens the top left drawer of her desk. In here, concealed by a pile of junk paperwork, is a bag of Snickers Bites. She takes out six, one for each commercial break during her show, unwraps them, and lines them up.

  Five to three. She turns on the television but mutes it. Maury Povich is currently strutting around and inciting his studio audience. She may have low tastes, but not that low. She considers eating one of her Snickers and tells herself to wait. Just as she is congratulating herself on her forbearance, she hears the elevator and rolls her eyes. It must be Pete. Jerome is way down south.

  It’s Pete, all right, and smiling. “Oh, happy day,” he says. “Somebody finally got Al to send a repairman—”

  “Al did nothing,” Holly said. “Jerome and I took care of it. It was just a glitch.”

  “How—”

  “There was a small hack involved.” She’s still got one eye on the clock: three minutes to three. “Jerome did that, but I could have.” Once more, honesty compels her. “At least I think so. Did you find the girl?”

  Pete gives her two thumbs up. “At Sunrise House. My first stop. Good news, she wants to go home. She called her mom, who’s coming to get her.”

  “Are you sure? Or is that what she told you?”

  “I was there when she made the call. I saw the tears. This is a good resolution, Holly. I just hope Mom’s not a deadbeat like that guy Edwards.”

  “Edwards will pay,” she says. “My heart is set on it.” On the TV, Maury has been replaced by a dancing bottle of diarrhea medicine. Which in Holly’s opinion is actually an improvement. “Now be quiet, Pete, my show is coming on in one minute.”

  “Oh my God, are you still watching that guy?”

  Holly gives him a forbidding look. “You are welcome to watch, Pete, but if you intend to make sarcastic remarks and spoil my enjoyment, I wish you would leave.”

  Be assertive, Allie Winters likes to tell her. Allie is her therapist. Holly saw another therapist briefly, a man who has written three books and many scholarly articles. This was for reasons apart from the demons that have chased her out of her teens. She needed to talk about more recent demons with Dr. Carl Morton.

  “No sarcastic remarks, roger that,” Pete says. “Man, I can’t believe you and Jerome bypassed Al. Took the bull by the horns, so to speak. You rock, Holly.”

  “I am trying to be more assertive.”

  “And you’re succeeding. Is there a Coke in the fridge?”

  “Only diet.”

  “Uck. That stuff tastes like—”

  “Hush.”

  It’s three o’clock. She unmutes the TV just as her show’s theme song starts up. It’s the Bobby Fuller Four singing “I Fought the Law.” A courtroom comes on the screen. The spectators—actually a studio audience, like Maury’s but less feral—are clapping along with the music, and the announcer intones, “Steer clear if you’re a louse, because John Law is in the house!”

  “All rise!” George the bailiff cries.

  The spectators get up, still clapping and swaying, as Judge John Law comes out of his chambers. He’s six-six (Holly knows this from People magazine, which she hides even better than her Snickers Bites) and bald as an eight-ball . . . although he’s more dark chocolate than black. He’s wearing voluminous robes that sway back and forth as he boogies his way to the bench. He grabs the gavel and tick-tocks it back and forth like a metronome, flashing a full deck of white teeth.

  “Oh my dear Jesus in a motorized wheelchair,” Pete says.

  Holly gives him her most forbidding look. Pete claps one hand over his mouth and waves the other one in surrender.

  “Siddown, siddown,” says Judge Law—actual name Gerald Lawson, Holly also knows this from People, but it’s close enough—and the spectators all sit down. Holly likes John Law because he’s straight from the shoulder, not all snarky and poopy like that Judge Judy. He gets to the point, just as Bill Hodges used to . . . although Judge John Law is no substitute, and not just because he’s a fictional character on a TV show. It’s been years since Bill passed away, but Holly still misses him. Everything she is, everything she has, she owes to Bill. There’s no one like him, although Ralph Anderson, her police detective friend from Oklahoma, comes close.

  “What have we got today, Georgie, my brother from another mother?” The spectators chortle at this. “Civil or criminal?”

  Holly knows it’s unlikely the same judge would handle both kinds of cases—and a new one every afternoon—but she doesn’t mind; the cases are always interesting.

  “Civil, Judge,” Georgie the bailiff says. “The plaintiff is Mrs. Rhoda Daniels. The defendant is her ex-husband, Richard Daniels. At issue is custody of the family dog, Bad Boy.”

  “A dog case,” Pete says. “Right up our alley.”

  Judge Law leans on his gavel, which is extra-long. “And is Bad Boy in the house, Georgie my man?”

  “He’s in a holding room, Judge.”

  “Very good, very good, and does Bad Boy bite, as his name might indicate?”

  “According to security, he seems to have a very sweet nature, Judge Law.”

  “Excellent. Let’s hear what the plaintiff has to say about Bad Boy.”

  At this point, the actor playing Rhoda Daniels enters the courtroom. In real life, Holly knows, the plaintiff and defendant would already be seated, but this is more dramatic. As Ms. Daniels sways down the center aisle in a dress that’s too tight and heels that are too high, the announcer says, “We’ll return to Judge Law’s courtroom in just a minute.”

  An ad for death insurance comes on, and Holly pops her first Snickers Bite into her mouth.

  “Don’t suppose I could have one of those, could I?” Pete asks.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?”

  “I get low sugar at this time of day.”

  Holly opens her desk drawer—reluctantly—but before she can get to the candy bag, the old lady worrying about how she can pay her husband’s funeral expenses is replaced by a graphic that says BREAKING NEWS. This is followed by Lester Holt, and Holly knows right away it’s going to be serious. Lester Holt is the network’s big gun. Not another 9/11, she thinks every time something like this ha
ppens. Please God, not another 9/11 and not nuclear.

  Lester says, “We’re interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you news of a large explosion at a middle school in Pineborough, Pennsylvania, a town about forty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. There are reports of numerous casualties, many of them children.”

  “Oh my God,” Holly says. She puts the hand that was in the drawer over her mouth.

  “These reports are so far unconfirmed, I want to emphasize that. I think . . .” Lester puts a hand to his ear, listens. “Yes, okay. Chet Ondowsky, from our Pittsburgh affiliate, is on the scene. Chet, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” a voice says. “Yes, I can, Lester.”

  “What can you tell us, Chet?”

  The picture switches away from Lester Holt to a middle-aged guy with what Holly thinks of as a local news face: not handsome enough to be a major market anchor, but presentable. Except the knot of his tie is crooked, there’s no makeup to cover the mole beside his mouth, and his hair is mussy, as if he didn’t have time to comb it.

  “What’s that he’s standing beside?” Pete asks.

  “I don’t know,” Holly says. “Hush.”

  “Looks sort of like a giant pine co—”

  “Hush!” Holly could care less about the giant pine cone, or Chet Ondowsky’s mole and mussed-up hair; her attention is fixed on the two ambulances that go screaming past behind him, nose to tail with their lights flashing. Casualties, she thinks. Numerous casualties, many of them children.

  “Lester, what I can tell you is that there are almost certainly at least seventeen dead here at Albert Macready Middle School, and many more injured. This comes from a county sheriff’s deputy who asked not to be identified by name. The explosive device may have been in the main office, or a nearby storage room. If you look over there . . .”

  He points, and the camera obediently follows his finger. At first the picture is blurry, but when the cameraman steadies and zooms, Holly can see a large hole has been blown in the side of the building. Bricks scatter across the lawn in a corona. And as she’s taking this in—with millions of others, probably—a man in a yellow vest emerges from the hole with something in his arms. A small something wearing sneakers. No, one sneaker. The other has apparently been torn off in the blast.

  The camera returns to the correspondent and catches him straightening his tie. “The Sheriff’s Department will undoubtedly be holding a press conference at some point, but right now informing the public is the least of their concerns. Parents have already started to gather . . . ma’am? Ma’am, can I speak to you for just a moment? Chet Ondowsky, WPEN, Channel 11.”

  The woman who comes into the shot is vastly overweight. She has arrived at the school without a coat, and her flower print housedress billows around her like a caftan. Her face is dead pale except for bright spots of red on her cheeks, her hair is disarrayed enough to make Ondowsky’s mussy ’do look neat, her plump cheeks glisten with tears.

  They shouldn’t be showing this, Holly thinks, and I shouldn’t be watching it. But they are, and I am.

  “Ma’am, do you have a child who attends Albert Macready?”

  “My son and daughter both do,” she says, and grabs Ondowsky’s arm. “Are they okay? Do you know that, sir? Irene and David Vernon. David’s in the seventh grade. Irene’s in the ninth. We call Irene Deenie. Do you know if they are okay?”

  “I don’t, Mrs. Vernon,” Ondowsky says. “I think you should talk to one of the deputies, over where they’re setting up those sawhorses.”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you. Pray for my kids!”

  “I will,” Ondowsky says as she rushes off, a woman who will be very lucky to survive the day without having some sort of cardiac episode . . . although Holly guesses that right now her heart is the least of her concerns. Right now her heart is with David and Irene, also known as Deenie.

  Ondowsky turns back to the camera. “Everyone in America will be praying for the Vernon children, and all the children who were attending Albert Macready Middle School today. According to the information I have now—it’s sketchy, and this could change—the explosion occurred at about two-fifteen, an hour ago, and was strong enough to shatter windows a mile away. The glass . . . Fred, can you get a shot of this pine cone?”

  “There, I knew it was a pine cone,” Pete says. He’s leaning forward, eyes glued to the television.

  Fred the camera guy moves in, and on the pine cone’s petals, or leaves, or whatever you called them, Holly can see shards of broken glass. One actually appears to have blood on it, although she can hope it’s just a passing reflection cast by the lights on one of the ambulances.

  Lester Holt: “Chet, that’s horrible. Just awful.”

  The camera pulls back and returns to Ondowsky. “Yes, it is. This is a horrible scene. Lester, I want to see if . . .”

  A helicopter with a red cross and MERCY HOSPITAL stenciled on the side is landing in the street. Chet Ondowsky’s hair swirls in the wash of the rotors, and he raises his voice to be heard.

  “I want to see if I can do anything to help! This is terrible, just a terrible tragedy! Back to you in New York!”

  Lester Holt returns, looking upset. “Be safe, Chet. Folks, we’re going to return you to your regularly scheduled programming, but we’ll continue to update you on this developing situation at NBC Breaking News on your—”

  Holly uses the remote and kills the TV. She has lost her taste for make-believe justice, at least for today. She keeps thinking of that limp form in the arms of the man wearing the yellow vest. One shoe off, one shoe on, she thinks. Deedle-deedle-dumpling, my son John. Will she watch the news tonight? She supposes she will. Won’t want to, but won’t be able to help herself. She’ll have to know how many casualties. And how many are children.

  Pete surprises her by taking her hand. Usually she still doesn’t like to be touched, but right now his hand feels good holding hers.

  “I want you to remember something,” he says.

  She turns to him. Pete is grave.

  “You and Bill stopped something much worse than this from happening,” he says. “That crackpot fuck Brady Hartsfield could have killed hundreds at the rock concert he tried to blow up. Maybe thousands.”

  “And Jerome,” she says in a low voice. “Jerome was there, too.”

  “Yep. You, Bill, and Jerome. The Three Musketeers. That you could stop. And did. But stopping this one—” Pete nods to the TV. “That was someone else’s responsibility.”

  3

  At seven o’clock Holly is still in the office, going over invoices that don’t really need her attention. She managed to resist turning on the office TV and watching Lester Holt at six-thirty, but she doesn’t want to go home just yet. That morning she had been looking forward to a nice veggie dinner from Mr. Chow, which she would eat while watching Pretty Poison, a vastly overlooked thriller from 1968 starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, but tonight she doesn’t want poison, pretty or otherwise. She has been poisoned by the news from Pennsylvania, and still might not be able to resist turning on CNN. That would gift her with hours of tossing and turning until two or even three in the morning.

  Like most people in the media-soaked twenty-first century, Holly has become inured to the violence men (it’s still mostly men) do to each other in the name of religion or politics—those ghosts—but what happened at that suburban middle school is too much like what almost happened at the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex, where Brady Hartsfield tried to blow up a few thousand kids, and what did happen at City Center, where he plowed a Mercedes sedan into a crowd of job-seekers, killing . . . she doesn’t remember how many. She doesn’t want to remember.

  She is putting away the files—she has to go home sometime, after all—when she hears the elevator again. She waits to see if it will go past the fifth floor, but it stops. Probably Jerome, but she still opens the second drawer of her desk and loosely grips the can there. It has two buttons. One blares an earsplitting horn. T
he other dispenses pepper spray.

  It’s him. She lets go of the IntruderGuard and closes the drawer. She marvels (and not for the first time since he came back from Harvard) at how tall and handsome he’s become. She dislikes that fur around his mouth, what he calls “the goat,” but would never tell him so. Tonight his usual energetic walk is slow and a little slumped. He gives her a perfunctory “Yo, Hollyberry,” and drops into the chair that in business hours is reserved for clients.

  Usually she would admonish him about how much she dislikes that childish nickname—it’s their form of call-and-response—but not tonight. They are friends, and because she’s a person who has never had many, Holly tries her best to deserve the ones she has. “You look very tired.”

  “Long drive. Heard the news about the school? It’s all over the sat radio.”

  “I was watching John Law when they broke in. Since then I’ve been avoiding it. How bad?”

  “They’re saying twenty-seven dead so far, twenty-three of them kids between twelve and fourteen. But it’ll go higher. There are still a few kids and two teachers they haven’t been able to account for, and a dozen or so in critical condition. It’s worse than Parkland. Make you think of Brady Hartsfield?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yeah, me too. The ones he got at City Center and the ones he could have gotten if we’d been just a few minutes slower that night at the ’Round Here concert. I try not to think about that, tell myself we won that one, because when my mind goes to it I get the willies.”

  Holly knows all about the willies. She has them often.

  Jerome rubs a hand slowly down one cheek and in the quiet she can hear the scritch-scritch of his fingers on the day’s new bristles. “Sophomore year at Harvard I took a philosophy course. Did I ever mention that to you?”

  Holly shakes her head.

  “It was called—” Jerome makes finger-quotes. “—‘The Problem of Evil.’ In it, we talked a lot about concepts called inside evil and outside evil. We . . . Holly, you okay?”