Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

She followed his eyes to the old plate. "Yeah," she said, laughing and sitting forward. Prometheus chained to a rock, a hug bird swooping down and tearing at his side. "Just like you – getting stabbed. Isn't that crazy wild?"

He closed the book and picked a couple chips of spine off the thin blanket. "So tell me, miss, you a college girl?"

"Me? Nope."

"How come you know this kind of stuff?" He held up the book.

She shrugged. "I just like to read."

"I kind of regretted I never was smart enough to go-"

"Naw, I wouldn't feel that way if I was you," she said. "You go to college, get a real job, get married,

what happens is you don't ever get a chance to play chicken with life. That's the fun part."

He nodded. "Never could sit still long enough to go to school anyway." He looked at her for a moment, eyes roving up and down. "Tell me 'bout yourself."

"Me?" She was suddenly embarrassed.

"Sure. I told you 'bout me. Remind me what life's like on the Outside. Been a while."

"I don't know…" She thought: So this is what the people I interview feel like.

Boggs asked, "Where you live?"

Houseboats took a lot of explaining. "In Manhattan," she said.

"You can stand it there? It's a crazy place."

"I can't stand it anyplace else."

"Never spent much time there. Never could get a handle on it."

"Why would you want to live somewhere you can get a handle on?" she asked.

"Maybe you've got a point there. But you're talking to somebody who's a little prejudiced. I come to town and what happens? I get myself arrested for murder…" He smiled, then looked at her closely. "So, you're a reporter. Is that what you want to do?"

"I have this thing about films. I think I want to make documentaries. Right now I'm working for this TV station. I'll do it for as long as it excites me. The day I wake up and say I'd rather go have a picnic on the top of the Chrysler Building than go to work that's the day I quit and do something else."

Boggs said, "You and me're kind of alike. I've done me a lot of different things too. I keep looking. Always been looking for that nest egg, just to get a leg up."

"Hey, before this job, I spent six months at a bagel restaurant. And before that I was a store-window dresser. Most of my close friends are people I met at the Unemployment office."

"Pretty girl like you I think'd be considering settling down. You have a boyfriend?"

"He's not exactly the marrying kind."

"You're young."

"I'm not in any hurry. I think my mother's got this bridal shop in Shaker Heights on call. In case I tell her I'm engaged she'll be like SAC – you know, Red Alert. But I have trouble seeing me married. Like some things you can imagine and some you can't. That's one that doesn't compute."

"Where's Shaker Heights?"

"Outside Cleveland."

"You're from Ohio. I spent some time in Indiana." Then he laughed. "Maybe I shouldn't put it that way. Not like I wasdoing time. I lived about a year there, working. A real job. As real as day labor can be. Steel mills in Gary."

"Miss," the guard said, "I let you stay a little longer than you should."

She stood up and said to Boggs, "I'm working really, really hard on the story. I'm going to get you out of here."

Boggs was running his finger along the edge of his book, touching it in awe, like it was solid gold. "I'll keep this." He said it as if that was the best thing he could think of to say to thank her.

As Rune and the guard walked back to the prison exit, the guard, without looking at her, said, "Miss, word been around about what you're trying to do."

She looked up at him. Her eyes didn't get much past the huge biceps.

"About you maybe getting him a new trial."

"Yeah?"

"I like Randy. He keeps to himself and doesn't give us any grief. But there're some people here don't like him much."

"Other prisoners?"

He didn't answer but said instead, "I'm not supposed to be telling you this and I'm hoping it won't go any further than here…"

"Sure."

"But if you don't get him out soon he's not going to live to parole."

"The people who did that?" She nodded back to the infirmary.

"There's nothing we can do to stop them."

They arrived at the gate and the guard stopped.

"But what did he do?"

"What did he do?" The guard didn't understand her.

"I mean, why did somebody stab him?"

The guard's face snapped into a brief frown. "He ended up here, miss. That's what he did."

The place was pretty easy to get into.

Like water through a sieve, Jack Nestor thought. Then laughed, thinking that probably wasn't the best word to describe a houseboat. The only problem had been there was a parking lot nearby and a booth with a security guard, who'd glance at the boat every so often like he was keeping an eye on it. But Nestor waited until the man made a phone call then walked past him and jogged up the yellow gangplank.

Once he was inside he pulled on brown cotton gloves and started at the back. He took his time. He'd never been on a houseboat before and he was pretty curious about it. He'd done some charters and been on more party boats than he could count and of course he'd done time in military LSTs and landing craft. But this wasn't like anything else he'd ever seen.

The decor sucked, for one thing. It looked like his nutzo stepmother's place. But he admired the pilothouse, if that's what you'd call it, which had beautiful brass fixtures and levers and grainy oak all yellow with old varnish. Beautiful. All the controls except the wheel were frozen and he guessed the motor was kaput. He resisted a temptation to pull the horn rope.

Downstairs he carefully went through the bookshelves and the cheap, sprung-fiberboard desk that was a sea of papers and pictures (mostly of dragons and knights and fairies, that sort of shit). There were a couple of dozen videocassettes. They were mostly that make-believe stuff too. Fairy stories, dragonslayers, the stuff he never watched. Some dirty films too. Lusty Cousins. And something calledEpitaph for a Blue Movie Star.

So, this chick had a kinky side to her.

Then he rummaged through the closets and drawers in the bedroom and in the little supply room that had another dresser in it. He went through the kitchen and the refrigerator, which was the first place that most people who thought they were clever hid things and which was the first place most professional thieves looked.

After an hour he was convinced she didn't have anything here that interested – or worried – him.

Which meant the files would be at her office and that was a pain in the ass.

Nestor looked around and sat down on the couch. He had a decision to make. He could wait here until she came back and just waste her. Get it over with, make it look like a robbery. The cops would probably buy that. He was always surprised how people craved to accept the most obvious explanations. Easier all the way around. Robbery and murder.

Or rape and murder.

On the other hand, that might leave a lot of material floating around somewhere, material that shouldn't be floating around.

Still…

A car door slammed. He was up fast, glancing out the window. He saw her – not a bad-looking girl, if she didn't wear those stupid clothes, like the striped black-and-yellow tights and red miniskirt. It turned him off and made him resent her…

Oh, he knew that emotion. The feeling that he'd get looking at a wiry brown-skinned man in a khaki uniform, looking at him through a telescopic sight, feeling the hatred, working up a wild, spiraling fury (maybe because Nestor was sweating like a steam pipe in the heat or because bugs were digging into his skin or because he had a glossy, star-shaped scar on his belly). Resentment, hate. He needed those feelings – to help him pull the trigger or press the knife in as deeply as he could.