Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

Snap.

He took another picture with his digital camera.

A policeman lying on the ground. Maybe dead, maybe wounded.

Maybe playing dead-when the Digger comes to town people do whatever they must to stay alive. They tuck their courage away and huddle until long after its safe to get up. Henry Czisman had seen this all before.

Picture: the wall of the duplex falling in a fiery explosion of beautiful embers.

Picture: a trooper with three fingers of blood cascading down the left side of her face.

Picture: the illumination from the flames reflected in the chrome of the fire trucks.

Snap, snap, snap… He couldn't take enough shots. He was driven to record every detail of the sorrow.

He glanced up the street and saw several agents talking to passersby.

Why bother? he thought. The Diggers come and the Diggers gone.

He knew he too should go. He definitely couldn't be seen here. So he started to slip his camera into the pocket of his jacket. But then he glanced back at the burning building and saw something.

Yes, yes. I want that. I need that.

He lifted the camera, pointed it and pushed the button.

Picture: the man who called himself Jefferson, though that was not his name, the man who was now so intertwined in this case, was resting something on the hood of a car, bending forward to read it. A book? A magazine? No, it glistened like a sheet of glass. All you could really see in the picture was the rigid attention of the man as he wrapped his leather jacket around the glass the way a father might bundle up his infant for a trip outside in the cold night air.

Snap.

So. Protect the mayor.

And don't trash the feds.

Anchorman Slade Phillips was in a coffee shop on Dupont Circle. There were still several dozen emergency vehicles parked nearby, lights flashing through the gray evening. Yellow police tape was everywhere.

Phillips had shown his press pass and gotten through the line. He'd been terribly shaken by what he'd seen at the foot of the escalator. The sludge of blood still drying. Bits of bone and hair. He-

"Excuse me?" a woman's voice asked. "You're Slade Phillips. WPLT."

Anchorpeople are forever doomed to be known by both names. Nobody ever says Mister. He looked up from his coffee at the flirty young blonde. She wanted an autograph. He gave her one.

"You're so, like, good," she said.

"Thank you."

Go away.

"I want to be in TV someday too."

"Good for you."

Go away.

She stood for a moment and when he didn't ask her to join him she walked away on high heels, in a gait that reminded Phillips of an antelope's.

Sipping decaf. All the carnage in the Metro-he couldn't get it out of his mind. Jesus… Blood everywhere. The chips in the tile and dents in the metal… Bits of flesh and bits of bone.

And shoes.

A half-dozen shoes had lain bloody at the base of the escalator. For some reason they were the most horrifying sight of all.

This was the kind of story most reporters dream about in their ambitious hearts.

You're a reporter, go report.

Yet Phillips found he had no desire to cover the crime. The violence repulsed him. The sick mind of the killer scared him. And he thought: Wait. I'm not a reporter. He wished he'd said this to that slick prick, Wendy Jefferies. I'm an entertainer. I'm a soap opera star. I'm a personality.

But he was too deep in Jefferies's pocket for that kind of candor.

And so he was doing what he was told.

He wondered if Mayor Jerry Kennedy knew about his arrangement with Jefferies. Probably not. Kennedy was a stand-up son of a bitch. Better than all the previous mayors of the District rolled into one. Because if Slade Phillips wasn't a Peter Arnett or Tom Brokaw at least he knew people. And he knew that Kennedy did want a chance to fix as much of the city as he could before the electorate threw his ass out. Which would undoubtedly be in the next election.

And this Project 2000 of his… Man, it took some balls to tax the corporations in the city even more than they were already taxed. Bad blood there. And Kennedy was also coming down like a Grand Inquisitor on that school construction scandal. Rumors were that he'd wanted to pay that whistle-blower, Gary Moss, an additional bonus from District coffers for coming forward and risking his life to testify (an expense Congressman Lanier had refused to approve, of course). There were rumors too that Kennedy was going to crucify anyone involved in the corruption-including long-time friends.

So Phillips could rationalize taking some of the heat off Kennedy's office. It was for a higher good.

More decaf. Convinced that real coffee would affect his gorgeous baritone, he lived on unleaded.

He looked out the window and saw the man he was waiting for. A slight guy, short. He was a clerk at FBI headquarters and Phillips had been currying him for a year. He was one of the "sources who wish to remain anonymous" that you hear about all the time-sources whose relationship to honesty was a bit dicey. But what did it matter? This was TV journalism and a different set of standards applied.

The clerk glanced at Phillips as he stepped into the coffee shop, looking around cautiously like a bumbling spy. He pulled off his overcoat, revealing a very badly fitting gray suit.

The man was basically a mailboy though he'd told Phillips that he was "privy" (oh, please…) to most of the Bureaus "primary decision-making activities."

Ego's such a bitch, Phillips thought. "Hello, Timothy."

"Happy New Year," the man said, sitting down and looking like a butterfly pinned to the wall.

"Yeah, yeah," Phillips said.

"So what's good tonight? They have moussaka? I love moussaka."

"You don't have time to eat. You have time to talk."

"Just a drink?"

Phillips flagged down a waitress and ordered more decaf for him and regular for Timothy.

"Well-" He looked disappointed. "I meant a beer."

The anchorman leaned forward. Whispered, "The crazy guy. The Metro shooter. What's going on with it?"

"They don't know too much. It's weird. Some people're talking about a terrorist cell. Some people're talking right-wing militia. Couple people think it's just a straight extortion scheme. But there isn't any consensus."

"I need some focus," Phillips said.

"Focus? What do you mean 'focus'?" Timothy glanced at a nearby table, where a man was eating moussaka.

"Kennedy's taking a hit on this. That's not fair."

"Why the hell not? He's a goon."

The anchorman wasn't here to debate the mayor's competence. Whatever history decided about the tenure of Gerald D. Kennedy, Slade Phillips was being paid $25,000 to suggest to the world that the mayor wasn't a goon. So he continued, "How's the Bureau handling it?"

"It's a tough case," said Timothy, who aspired to be an FBI agent but was forever destined to fall just short of every goal he set for himself in life. "They're doing their best. They got the perp's safe house. You hear?"

"I heard. I also heard he pulled an end run and shot the shit out of you."

"We've never been up against anything like this before."

We?

Phillips nodded sympathetically. "Look, I'm trying to help you guys out. I don't want to go with the story the station's got planned. That's why I wanted to talk to you tonight."

Timothy's puppy-dog eyes flickered and he asked, "Story? They've got planned?"

"Right," Phillips said.

"Well, what is it?" Timothy asked. "The story?"

"The screw-up at the Mason Theater."

"What screw-up? They stopped him. Hardly anybody got killed."

"No, no, no," Phillips said. "The point is they could've capped the shooter. But they let him get away."

"The Bureau didn't screw up," Timothy said defensively. "It was a high-density tac op. Those're a bitch to run."