Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

“But you do think so?” The redhead in the dark green suit couldn’t have finished lower than third runner-up in the Miss California pageant six or eight years earlier. Had they hired her for her reporting skills or for the way she filled out that suit? Colin couldn’t be sure about that, either, but he knew how he’d guess.

He also knew that, if he said no, most of the newsies would leave in a huff. The South Bay Strangler was sexy, especially during a sweeps month. Who cared about some dumb, ordinary murder, though? Poor Lupe Sandoval hadn’t so much as made the news, even though she was just as dead as Mrs. Peterfalvy.

“Everything we see is consistent with what the Strangler does,” the detective said reluctantly. “It could be a copycat case, of course, but that doesn’t seem likely.” Certain details about the Strangler’s M.O. hadn’t reached the media yet. (If they had, one TV station or another would have shouted them to the skies, with a big EXCLUSIVE! label pasted on.)

“How long will you let the Strangler continue his terrorization of women throughout this broad area of Los Angeles County?” another TV reporter demanded, as if it were all Colin’s fault. Colin had been positive that kind of question would come from somebody. It was one of the reasons he’d so looked forward to meeting the press.

“We’re doing everything we can to catch this guy, Dave,” he said. “If you can suggest anything we’ve missed, we’ll listen. Believe me, we will.”

“That’s not my place!” Dave sounded indignant. And well he might-the next idea he had would be his first. He went on, “What you’ve done hasn’t helped Mrs., uh, Peterfalk much, either, has it?”

Colin might have known-hell, had known-he would get the name wrong, and probably wrong like that. “Peterfalvy,” he corrected with cold politeness, and spelled it again. Useless, of course. The only time reporters were shown to be morons was when they came on with nothing to read-during a car chase, for instance. Otherwise, scripts from smarter people disguised their vapidity and foolishness.

“Any sign the Strangler’s slipped up here?” asked Mort Greenbaum, who’d covered the crime beat on the Breeze for about as long as Colin had been a San Atanasio cop. Not quite long enough to have started out in a snap-brim fedora, in other words, but long enough to give the impression that he had.

“Well, like I said before, the lab hasn’t turned the house upside down and inside out yet, so I can’t say for sure,” Colin replied. “Offhand, though, doesn’t look that way.”

“Gotcha.” Mort had a recorder, but he took notes, too, probably to organize his own thoughts. Looking up from the scribbles, he went on, “He’s bound to sooner or later, isn’t he?”

“Lord knows I hope so,” Colin said.

“Or maybe he’ll pick on a little old lady who sleeps with a. 45 under the pillow.”

“Maybe he will,” Colin agreed. “I’m still hoping we catch him, though. We don’t want to have to rely on civilians for do-it-yourself justice.”

“Woudn’t you have a better chance if the San Atanasio Police Department-if all the police departments in the impacted area-weren’t so incompetent?” Dave had finally figured out that Colin had mocked him for screwing up Mrs. Peterfalvy’s name. Cops weren’t supposed to do that to TV personalities: the natural order of things was the other way around. Now, stung, the handsome man in the Hugo Boss suit was trying to get his own back.

The TV news would be a hell of a lot better if you clowns weren’t brain-dead, too. Colin didn’t-quite-come out with it. You couldn’t let them know what you thought of them. And the chief would ream him out if he got into another slanging match with a reporter. Life was too short. A damn shame, but it was.

“I already told you, we’re doing everything we know how to do to go after him. State personnel and the FBI have given us a hand, too,” Colin said. “We expect to succeed.”

“How many more innocent victims will perish before you do?” Dave asked dramatically. He never knew how close he came to becoming one of them.

The coroner and the lab technicians pulled up then. Some of the reporters descended on Dr. Ishikawa for pearls of wisdom. He and the techs hadn’t done anything or viewed the crime scene yet, but that didn’t trouble the Fourth Estate. Other newshounds went after the neighbors for quotes about the late Mrs. Peterfalvy. If the neighbors didn’t tell them she was a nice old lady who never bothered anybody, Colin would learn something new about human nature.

Sergeant Sanchez came up behind Colin. “Boy, that musta been fun,” he said in a low voice.

“Always is,” Colin agreed. “I want a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke. I want a drink, too.”

“I notice you aren’t saying you don’t drink.”

“Good for you, Sherlock! But I don’t. On duty I don’t. Unless I really and truly need one. Or more than one.”

“I’ll never tell,” Sanchez said.

“Somebody will. Or a surveillance camera will catch it. Or something else will go wrong. I don’t need one that bad. Wouldn’t mind writing a ticket for that cocksucker from Channel 2, though.”

“Think their van’s close enough to the hydrant there to write them up?”

Colin eyed it. “No,” he said regretfully. “Besides, they’d have a cow if one of us did it. They’d say it was on account of they were asking questions we didn’t like.” And they’d be right. But he didn’t say that.

“I didn’t mean you or me. That’s why God made the guys in the blue suits.” Sanchez hadn’t been out of a uniform so very long himself. By the way he talked, he’d never worn one.

Well, Colin had been that way himself. Most cops were. “Let it go,” he said. “It’s not like the dickhead would pay the ticket himself. TV stations, they’ve got money falling out of their assholes.”

“Wish I did,” Gabe Sanchez said morosely. “The bills my kids run up, they think I’m made of the stuff so I really can crap it.” He eyed Colin. “Yours are pretty much grown. Do they ever stop scrounging offa you?”

“Eventually. Pretty much. The one who’s still in college goes a long way toward making up for the other two, though. And there are the lawyers’ bills, too, but you know about those,” Colin said.

“Fuck, do I ever!” Sanchez winced. “Those mothers send their kids to Harvard, and it’s, like, petty cash for them. No wonder they run the country.”

“No wonder at all.” Colin nodded. Gabe had that one straight, all right. Did he ever! Colin consoled himself by remembering that even lawyers’ brats at Harvard fell foul of booze and dope. And some of them would decide they were more interested in discovering themselves than in getting a diploma. Some would figure they already knew it all, and again leave without the sheepskin. Some would graduate, and then try to make it as rock’n’ rollers instead of sensibly imitating Dad and Mom.

He knew all the verses to all those songs. Maybe, in the end, things evened out. Maybe. He wouldn’t bet anything he couldn’t afford to lose.

Dr. Ishikawa came out of Mrs. Peterfalvy’s neat little house. “We won’t be sure till the DNA results come in, but it sure looks like another one.”

“Yeah, I figured the same thing,” Colin said. “Will this guy ever fuck up?” He’d put on an optimistic face for the TV morons. Among his own kind, he could say what he really thought. Cops were like family. They didn’t-usually-hold the truth against you.

Not that that did you a hell of a lot of good. But there it was, and Colin took what small advantage of it he could.

The Rockies. There they were, right out the apartment window. Vanessa liked that. On clear days, you could see mountains in Los Angeles, too, but they sat lower on the horizon, and they sure didn’t march from north to south in one magnificent straight line. When it got smoggy, they disappeared.