Rick Mofina - If Angels Fall

“No,” Reed said as the man approached Zach. Theytalked, then left together. Reed’s face flushed. His heartbeat quickened. Hecouldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“George, take it back to when the cop walks in,”Pender said.

Dempsey reversed the tape.

“You have any audio?” Pender said.

Dempsey nodded. The tinny sound of homemade videos,with hard noise amplified and monotone voices, hissed from a tiny speaker onthe monitor: “I’m looking for a boy, about ten years old, blond hair, backpack,sneakers. He was last seen in this area within the last half hour.”

“Could be the fella you want, drooling over the KittyHawk there. He just came in. Anything to do with that gang shooting inOakland?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter.”

Pender was staring at Reed. A fist covered Reed’smouth, the veins of his neck were pulsing.

“You recognize that voice, don’t you, Tom?”

“It’s Edward Keller.”

Where was Keller’s beard and long hair? Realitystabbed Reed with switchblade suddenness. Keller had Zach. Had his son!

Have you ever lost a child? No. You have children?A son, Zach. He’s nine. My eldest boy was nine when he died.

Pender seized his portable police radio.

Sirens .

Wailing. Yelping. Screaming.

It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. It was a terrifyingdrug-fueled dream. Reed was numb. Detached. Alone in the shop, watchingeverything unfold. Detectives talking to him as models of World War II fightersstrafed them from above.

“Mr. reed, anything you can remember about Keller thatmight…”

His mouth wouldn’t work. What were his lines? What washe supposed to say? My little boy. My son. My only child has been taken. Whatwas he supposed to do? Faces in his face. Dead serious. Faces at the shopwindow. Police cars. Flashing lights. A crowd gathering. A TV news camera, no,two — three. Coffee-breathed detectives who wore strong cologne clasping hisshoulder.

“Mr. Reed, Tom, we need your help….”

Zach needs me. My boy. I did this. Zach. Keller, hishand on Zach’s shoulder.

Sirens. Wailing. Yelping. Screaming.

Sirens — the score of his profession. The choruscueing his entrance upon a stranger’s tragedy. And it was always a stranger, italways happened to other people. It never touched him. Oh, it grazed him in theearly days. But he grew skilled in his craft. He knew the bridges into theirpain, knew his way over the crevasses that would consume you if you failed inyour mission, knew how to cradle their suffering long enough to serve himself.

The city shares your grief. Now is the time to saythe things that need to be said, by way of tribute.

And in virtually every case, they would struggle tohelp. Stunned by their loss, they would recite an inarticulate requiem fortheir son, daughter, father, mother, husband, wife, sister, brother, or friend.Some would scrawl tearstained notes, or show him the rooms of the dead, theiraccomplishments, their dreams, their disappointments, the last things theytouched.

And would you be able to provide the paper with apicture?

Dutifully, they would flip through family albums,rummage through shoe boxes, yearbooks, wallets, purses, reach to the mantel forphotos. Drinking in each image before placing it tenderly in his trusted hands.But there were times a relative would see him for what he truly believed hewas. They knew.

Oh, the years-off-the-street, J-school profs andburned-out hacks could pound their breasts about the unassailable duty of ademocratic free press, safeguarding the people’s right to know, ensuring no onedies anonymously and secretly on American streets. But that constitutional crapturned to dust when you met bereavement face-to-face, took it by the hand, andpersuaded it to expose itself. You steeled your soul with the armor of achampion. The sympathetic, respectful reporter. Democracy’s champion. But atthe bottom of your frightened heart, you realized what you were: a driver ant,leading the column to the carrion, overcoming and devouring the mourners whoopen their door to you, those too pained to flee.

And before he left, they would usually thank him.

That was the joke of it. They would thank him. Forcaring.

He was shoved, prodded, and paid to succeed at this,and they thanked him. For caring.

Don’t thank me. I can’t care. I can’t.

But he would smile, professionally understanding, allthe while fearing he might never find the bridge back, for his ears rang withtormented voices chanting:

Wait until it happens to you. Wait until this happensto you.

Now it had.

He was paying the price for the sum of all hisactions. This was his day of reckoning. The toll was his son.

Zachary, forgive me.

“ — Where is he? You let me go!”

It was Ann. Pender struggling to hold her, failing.She ran to Reed. He opened his arms to take her. A horsewhip crack of her handacross his face.

“Bastard!”

Reed saw stars and Franklin Wallace’s widow, heraccusations resurrected with Ann’s voice. It was his fault.

“You bastard!”

Pender must have told her everything. “Ann, please.”His face burned. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand and I blame you! You had to get close,had to keep digging for the sake of a story! Well, you’ve got a good one now,don’t you? You used my son for it!”

“Mrs. Reed.” Pender and another uniformed officersubdued her.

Sirens. Screaming. Ann screaming.

“Come with us, Mrs. Reed.” Pender took her to a backroom.

Reed turned away, meeting the rheumy eyes of GeorgeDempsey, who was pretending he hadn’t seen what he had seen, along with thepolice people in the shop. Dempsey was showing a detective the U.S.S. KittyHawk , the one Zach had held less than an hour ago.

The last thing he touched.

Suddenly the model fighters suspended from the ceilingbegan trembling, the shop windows vibrating. Quake? No. A chopper was circling.Reed overheard someone say they had a partial description of the suspect’s vanfrom a clerk at the bakery nearby. The pounding intensified when the dooropened. Merle Rust and a posse of FBI agents arrived, flashing ID’s, assumingcommand, from Berkeley PD, going to Dempsey’s video. Sydowski, Turgeon, and afew others dicks from the task force were with them. Sydowski put his large,warm hand on Reed’s shoulder, just like Reed’s old man used to do whenever Reedlost a little league game.

“Hang in there, Tom. We’re going to need your help.”

Reed swallowed, then told them. “It’s Edward Keller.It’s been him all along. I met him for a story” — Sydowski and Turgeon triedto interrupt him, but he continued — “his three children drowned. He’s areligious psychotic — thinks he can resurrect them. I was secretly researchinghim. My paper found out before I was finished and fired me. Keller asked if Ihad a son. I never suspected. I–I - I think he’s going to drown … theFarallons where he lost his kids!”

“Tom, Tom, Tom!” Linda Turgeon’s compassionate eyesoffered comfort. “We know it’s Keller.”

“We found out this morning. I called you,” Sydowskisaid. “We need you to help us get him.”

“Martin! Dr. Kate Martin, did you try — ”

Sydowski nodded. “She told us everything she knew.Tom, what did you find out? Addresses? Relatives? Anything?”

“Okay,” Rust said from the counter where the FBI andSFPD people huddled around the video monitor. “It’s ready.”

Reed watched the videotape again. Then FBI SpecialAgent Rust turned to him. “You’re certain that man is Edward Keller?”

“Yes,” Reed said. “All the information I have on himis at the paper. Keller lost his kids near the Farallons and made pilgrimagesthere from Half Moon Bay with a guy named Reimer.”