Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

"It's only temporary, isn't it?"

"That's the part I'm not too sure about." Rune looked toward Courtney's room. Her voice was panicky when she said, "You think she drinks too much juice?"

"Rune."

"She drinks a lot of juice."

"You should worry a lot less."

"Sam, I can't have a kid with me when I interview people. What am I-?"

"I'm going to give you the name of the day-care center Cheryl and I used to take Adam to. It's a good place. And some of the women there work nights as baby-sitters."

"Yeah?"

"Look at the bright side: You didn't have to go through labor."

Rune sat close to him and laid her head on his chest. "Why do I get myself into things like this?"

"She's a sweet little girl."

Rune put her arms around him. "They're all sweet when they're asleep. The thing is they wake up after a while."

He began rubbing her shoulders.

"That's nice."

"Yeah," he said, "it is."

He rubbed for five minutes, his strong fingers working down her spine. She moaned. Then he untucked her T-shirt and began working his way up, under the cloth.

"That's nicer," she said and rolled over on her back.

He kissed her forehead. She kissed his mouth, feeling the tickle of the moustache. It was a sensation she'd gotten used to, one she liked a lot.

Healy kissed her back. His hand, still inside her T-shirt, worked its way up. He disarmed bombs; he had a very smooth touch.

"Rune!" Courtney shouted in a shrill voice.

They both jumped.

"Read me a story, Rune!"

Her hands covered her face. "Jesus, Sam, what'm I going to do?"

The train up to Harrison, New York, left on time and sailed out of the tunnel under Park Avenue, rising up on the elevated tracks like an old airplane slowly gaining altitude. Rune's head swiveled as she watched the redbrick projects, clusters of young men on the street. No one wore colorful clothing; it was all gray and brown. A woman pushed a grocery cart filled with rags. Two men stood over the open hood of a beige sedan, hands on their wide hips, and seemed to be confirming a terminal diagnosis.

The train sped north through Harlem and the scenes flipped past more quickly. Rune, leaning forward, climbing onto her knees, felt the lurch as the wheels danced sideways like a bullfighter's hips and they crossed the Harlem River Bridge. She waved to passengers on a Dayliner tour boat as they looked up at the bridge. No one noticed her.

Then they were in the Bronx – passing plumbing supply houses and lumberyards and, in the distance, abandoned apartments and warehouses. Daylight showed through the upper-story windows.

You wake up in the morning and you think…

Rune tried to doze. But she kept seeing the tape of Bogg's face, broken into scan lines and each scan line a thousand pixels of red, blue and green dots.

… Hell, I'm still here.

The way their eyes looked at her was weird.

She'd figured the prisoners would lay lot of crap on her – catcalls, or whoops or "Yo, honey," or long slimy stares.

But nope. They looked at her the way assembly line workers would glance at a plant visitor, someone walking timidly between tall machines, careful not to get grease on her good shoes. They looked, they ignored, they went back to mopping floors or talking to buddies and visitors or not doing much of anything.

The warden's office had checked her press credentials and guards had searched her bag and the camera case. She was then escorted into the visitors' area by a tall guard – a handsome black man with a moustache that looked like it was drawn above his lip in mascara. Visitors and inmates at the state prison in Harrison were separated by thick glass partitions and talked to each other on old, heavy black telephones.

Rune stood for a moment, watching them all. Picturing what it would be like to visit a husband in prison. So sad! Only talking to him, holding the thick receiver, reaching out and touching the glass, never feeling the weight or warmth of his skin…

"In here, miss."

The guard led her into a small room. She guessed it was reserved for private meetings between lawyers and their prisoners. The guard disappeared. Rune sat at a gray table. She studied the battered bars on the window and decided that this particular metal seemed stronger than anything she'd ever seen.

She was looking out the greasy glass when Randy Boggs entered the room.

He was thinner than she'd expected. He looked best straight on; when he turned his head to glance at a guard his head became birdish – like a woodpecker's. His hair was longer than in the tape she'd studied and the Dairy Queen twist was gone. It still glistened from the oil or cream he used to keep it in place. His ears were long and narrow and he had tufts of blond, wiry hair growing out of them. She observed dark eyes, darkened by an overhang of bone, and thick eyebrows that reached toward each other. His skin wasn't good; in his face were patches of wrinkles like cities in satellite photos. But Rune thought it was a temporary unhealthiness – the kind that good food and sun and sleep can erase.

Boggs looked at the guard and said, "Could you leave us?"

The man answered, "No."

Rune said to the guard, "I don't mind."

"No."

"Sure," Boggs said, as cheerful as if he'd been picked for first baseman in a softball game. He sat down and said, "What for d'you want to see me, miss?"

As she told him about receiving his letter and about the story she grew agitated. It wasn't the surroundings; it was Boggs himself. The intensity of his calmness. Which didn't really make sense but she thought about it and decided that was what she sensed: He was so peaceful that she felt her own pulse rising, her breath coming quickly – as if her body were behaving this natural way because his couldn't.

Still, she ignored her own feelings and got to work. Rune had interviewed people before. She'd put the camera in front of them, washed them in the hot light from Redhead lamps and then asked them a hundred questions. She'd gotten tongue-tied some and maybe asked the wrong questions but her talent was in getting people to open up.

Boggs, though, took a lot of work. Even though he'd written the letter to the station he was uneasy around reporters. "Don't think I'm not grateful." He spoke in a soft voice; a slight southern accent licked at his words.

"But I'm… Well, I don't mean this personal, directed at you, miss, but you're the people convicted me."

"How?"

"Well, miss, you know the expression 'media circus'? I'd never heard that before but when I read about my trial afterwards I found out what they mean. I wasn't the only person who felt that way. Somebody who got interviewed inTime said that's what my trial was. I wrote a letter to Mr Megler and to the judge saying that I thought it was a media circus. Neither of them wrote back."

"What was a circus about it?"

He smiled and looked off, as if he was arranging his thoughts. "The way I see it, there was so many of you reporters all over the place, writing things about me, that the jury got it into their head that I was guilty."

"But don't they…" There was a word she was looking for. "You know, don't they keep the jury in hotel rooms, away from papers and TV?"

"Sequester," Boggs said. "You think that works? I was onLive at Five the day I was arrested and probably every other day up till the trial. You think there was one person in the area that didn't know about me? I doubt it very much."

Rune had told him she worked forCurrent Events but there was no visible reaction; either he didn't watch the program or he didn't know that it was on the Network, the employer of the man he'd supposedly killed. Or maybe he just wasn't impressed. He glanced at the Betacam sitting on the table beside Rune. "Had a film crew in the other day. Were shooting some kind of cop movie. Everybody was real excited about it. They used some of the boys as extras. I didn't get picked. They wanted people looked like convicts, I guess. I looked more like a clerk, I guess. Or… What would you say I look like?"