Jack Cavanaugh - Death Watch

The face of the ceramic angel looked nothing like Billy’s angels. Billy’s angels appeared to be having fun, swooping out of nowhere.

“Expressions!” Sydney shouted. “I remember their expressions! If they weren’t real, how come I remember their expressions so vividly?”

It wasn’t profound, but it was something.

There was a bump at the door. Not a knock. It was too much of a thud to be a knock.

Sydney rose and peered through the security peephole. A distorted Hunz stood on the other side holding a cup of coffee in each hand and clenching a white bag with his teeth.

She opened the door.

“Faannx,” Hunz said.

Crossing the room, he set the coffee cups on the table, double jumbo size from the looks of them, and took the bag from his mouth.

“Got myself a cinnamon roll,” he said. “Figure, why not? It’s not like I have to watch my waistline anymore.”

Death-row humor. Sydney smiled halfheartedly.

Hunz fell into the chair opposite her seat and leaned his head back. His eyes closed, but not for long. Pulling himself forward, he checked his watch, then pried the lid off one coffee. Two days ago, glancing at one’s watch was a casual act; now, it was no different than a demolitions expert checking the clock of a ticking time bomb.

“If you want,” Hunz said, “you can lie down for a while in the bedroom. You look like you’re asleep on your feet.” dead tired, dead asleep, dead to the world

“No, I’m all right,” Sydney said.

She sat down. He shoved her coffee closer to her. On the side of the container there was a checkmark in the box next to the word latte. Sydney lifted the lid and was greeted by the warm odor of milky coffee.

“Don’t know why you’d want to ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee by dumping all that froth in it,” Hunz said.

He drank his black.

Sydney pulled the cup closer. She didn’t drink any. The coffee stores always made it too hot. She was used to waiting for it to cool. She stared at the creamy brown swirls and wondered how to begin telling Hunz Vonner what she needed to tell him.

“You’re not going to make it as a reporter,” Hunz said.

She looked up. He was staring at her.

“That’s a cruel thing to say,” she said. “Something I’d expect to hear from Cori Zinn.”

“Wasn’t meant to be unkind, just stating a fact.”

“You haven’t even seen me in front of a camera. You haven’t read any of my copy, or seen any of my video clips. All you’ve seen me do these last two days is drive you all over Los Angeles, and from that you pass judgment .on my professional skills?”

“I’ve seen enough.” Hunz sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. His cinnamon roll lay atop the white bag on the table, largely uneaten.

Sydney wondered how many condemned men when served their last meal clean their plates.

“All right,” Sydney said, returning to the topic. “Tell me. Upon what exactly are you basing your opinion?”

“You’re angry,” Hunz said. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. Let’s just forget I said anything.”

“Oh, no! You said it, now defend it. What makes you think I don’t have what it takes to be a reporter?”

Hunz took another sip. “Let’s get to work. Tell me what Billy Peppers said to you on the roof.”

“No. You’re going to tell me why you think I won’t make a good reporter.”

Hunz stared at her, exasperated.

Fine. Let him be exasperated. They weren’t moving on to the next topic until he gave her an answer. She had more time to kill than he did.

Sydney cringed inwardly. She couldn’t believe she’d just thought that. Yes, she was tired, but that was just cruel.

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Hunz said. “You’re too kind.”

Now she cringed visibly.

“Don’t pretend you’re not,” Hunz insisted. “Naturally, no reporter wants to hear that they’re kind, but you are. You can’t help it. It’s part of who you are.”

“Hunz. ”

“Step back and look at yourself objectively. Look at what you did for Lyle Vandeveer, what you’re doing for Cheryl. With both of them, there came a point when they were no longer a story to report. There came a point when you were more concerned for them as persons than you were about doing your job as a reporter.

“And again, with Billy Peppers. A good reporter couldn’t have gotten down from that roof fast enough to get the story on the air. A good reporter would have been secretly—some outwardly—thrilled that he jumped, because it makes a better story.

“And now, here. Look at us. Sitting, drinking, chatting. If you were a good reporter, you’d be pumping me with questions: What was I thinking about just hours from death? If I could say something to the terrorists behind Death Watch, what would I say to them? How does it feel to come to America only to be handed a death sentence? Why did you choose a cinnamon roll for your last meal? But you haven’t asked any of those questions. Why? Because you’re more concerned about me than you are about getting the story.”

An uneasy silence settled between them.

“I have a question for you,” Sydney said. “Reporter to condemned man.”

“Too late. If I hadn’t goaded you into it, you wouldn’t be asking questions.”

“Not true. I was thinking about this question before you started evaluating my performance.”

Hunz was skeptical, but he said, “Go ahead. Ask your question.”

“Are you going to finish that cinnamon roll?”

It was probably the combination of being tired and being a few hours from death, but the question struck them both as hilarious. They laughed until tears came.

3:36 a.m. (PST)

Hunz Vonner had five hours, eleven minutes left to live.

“Billy wrote everything down in the front of his Bible.” Sydney pulled the black leather-bound book from beneath the angel in the shoe box. She laid it open between them.

“He wrote it down?” Hunz said. “He could have saved us all a lot of time by faxing the information to you.”

Sydney took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. Billy’s supernatural explanation to Death Watch would soon be on the table.

She anticipated a negative reaction. The stuff of fairy tales. A story worthy of the brothers Grimm. And as persuasive as Billy Peppers had been on the roof, a few hours ago, she might have agreed with him. But that was before Billy’s plunge.

How could she tell Hunz what she saw?

“The way Billy described it to me on the roof,” she began, “the human race is on the cusp of a new spiritual age, where matters of the spirit will soon take center stage.”

“Matters of the spirit what does he mean by that? Ghosts and demons?”

“Here, let me show you.”

Reaching for the Bible, she read the Job passage to him, where Satan makes an appearance in God’s court. Then, though it took her awhile to find this one, she read to him the passage in Genesis where Jacob stumbled upon the encampment of angels.

“Peppers was definitely fixated on angels.” Hunz studied the surviving ceramic angel. “Look at the way he covered himself with pictures of them.”

Sydney closed the Bible. Hunz picked it up, turning to Billy’s notes.

“Doesn’t it strike you as simplistic to blame Satan, the original bad guy, for all this?” he said flatly. “People have been blaming him for every evil event since the dawn of history.”

Sydney gave no reply; Hunz appeared to have his mind made up.

“The question is why,” he said. “Why would Satan do this? Just because he’s evil, or does he have something to gain from the slaughter of a massive number of innocent people?”