Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

“Oh my dear Jesus in a motorized wheelchair,” Pete says.

Holly gives him her most forbidding look. Pete claps one hand over his mouth and waves the other one in surrender.

“Siddown, siddown,” says Judge Law—actual name Gerald Lawson, Holly also knows this from People , but it’s close enough—and the spectators all sit down. Holly likes John Law because he’s straight from the shoulder, not all snarky and poopy like that Judge Judy. He gets to the point, just as Bill Hodges used to… although Judge John Law is no substitute, and not just because he’s a fictional character on a TV show. It’s been years since Bill passed away, but Holly still misses him. Everything she is, everything she has, she owes to Bill. There’s no one like him, although Ralph Anderson, her police detective friend from Oklahoma, comes close.

“What have we got today, Georgie, my brother from another mother?” The spectators chortle at this. “Civil or criminal?”

Holly knows it’s unlikely the same judge would handle both kinds of cases—and a new one every afternoon—but she doesn’t mind; the cases are always interesting.

“Civil, Judge,” Georgie the bailiff says. “The plaintiff is Mrs. Rhoda Daniels. The defendant is her ex-husband, Richard Daniels. At issue is custody of the family dog, Bad Boy.”

“A dog case,” Pete says. “Right up our alley.”

Judge Law leans on his gavel, which is extra-long. “And is Bad Boy in the house, Georgie my man?”

“He’s in a holding room, Judge.”

“Very good, very good, and does Bad Boy bite, as his name might indicate?”

“According to security, he seems to have a very sweet nature, Judge Law.”

“Excellent. Let’s hear what the plaintiff has to say about Bad Boy.”

At this point, the actor playing Rhoda Daniels enters the courtroom. In real life, Holly knows, the plaintiff and defendant would already be seated, but this is more dramatic. As Ms. Daniels sways down the center aisle in a dress that’s too tight and heels that are too high, the announcer says, “We’ll return to Judge Law’s courtroom in just a minute.”

An ad for death insurance comes on, and Holly pops her first Snickers Bite into her mouth.

“Don’t suppose I could have one of those, could I?” Pete asks.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?”

“I get low sugar at this time of day.”

Holly opens her desk drawer—reluctantly—but before she can get to the candy bag, the old lady worrying about how she can pay her husband’s funeral expenses is replaced by a graphic that says BREAKING NEWS. This is followed by Lester Holt, and Holly knows right away it’s going to be serious. Lester Holt is the network’s big gun. Not another 9/11 , she thinks every time something like this happens. Please God, not another 9/11 and not nuclear .

Lester says, “We’re interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you news of a large explosion at a middle school in Pineborough, Pennsylvania, a town about forty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. There are reports of numerous casualties, many of them children.”

“Oh my God,” Holly says. She puts the hand that was in the drawer over her mouth.

“These reports are so far unconfirmed, I want to emphasize that. I think…” Lester puts a hand to his ear, listens. “Yes, okay. Chet Ondowsky, from our Pittsburgh affiliate, is on the scene. Chet, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” a voice says. “Yes, I can, Lester.”

“What can you tell us, Chet?”

The picture switches away from Lester Holt to a middle-aged guy with what Holly thinks of as a local news face: not handsome enough to be a major market anchor, but presentable. Except the knot of his tie is crooked, there’s no makeup to cover the mole beside his mouth, and his hair is mussy, as if he didn’t have time to comb it.

“What’s that he’s standing beside?” Pete asks.

“I don’t know,” Holly says. “Hush.”

“Looks sort of like a giant pine co—”

“Hush!” Holly could care less about the giant pine cone, or Chet Ondowsky’s mole and mussed-up hair; her attention is fixed on the two ambulances that go screaming past behind him, nose to tail with their lights flashing. Casualties, she thinks. Numerous casualties, many of them children.

“Lester, what I can tell you is that there are almost certainly at least seventeen dead here at Albert Macready Middle School, and many more injured. This comes from a county sheriff’s deputy who asked not to be identified by name. The explosive device may have been in the main office, or a nearby storage room. If you look over there…”

He points, and the camera obediently follows his finger. At first the picture is blurry, but when the cameraman steadies and zooms, Holly can see a large hole has been blown in the side of the building. Bricks scatter across the lawn in a corona. And as she’s taking this in—with millions of others, probably—a man in a yellow vest emerges from the hole with something in his arms. A small something wearing sneakers. No, one sneaker. The other has apparently been torn off in the blast.

The camera returns to the correspondent and catches him straightening his tie. “The Sheriff’s Department will undoubtedly be holding a press conference at some point, but right now informing the public is the least of their concerns. Parents have already started to gather… ma’am? Ma’am, can I speak to you for just a moment? Chet Ondowsky, WPEN, Channel 11.”

The woman who comes into the shot is vastly overweight. She has arrived at the school without a coat, and her flower print housedress billows around her like a caftan. Her face is dead pale except for bright spots of red on her cheeks, her hair is disarrayed enough to make Ondowsky’s mussy ’do look neat, her plump cheeks glisten with tears.

They shouldn’t be showing this, Holly thinks, and I shouldn’t be watching it. But they are, and I am.

“Ma’am, do you have a child who attends Albert Macready?”

“My son and daughter both do,” she says, and grabs Ondowsky’s arm. “Are they okay? Do you know that, sir? Irene and David Vernon. David’s in the seventh grade. Irene’s in the ninth. We call Irene Deenie. Do you know if they are okay?”

“I don’t, Mrs. Vernon,” Ondowsky says. “I think you should talk to one of the deputies, over where they’re setting up those sawhorses.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you. Pray for my kids!”

“I will,” Ondowsky says as she rushes off, a woman who will be very lucky to survive the day without having some sort of cardiac episode… although Holly guesses that right now her heart is the least of her concerns. Right now her heart is with David and Irene, also known as Deenie.

Ondowsky turns back to the camera. “Everyone in America will be praying for the Vernon children, and all the children who were attending Albert Macready Middle School today. According to the information I have now—it’s sketchy, and this could change—the explosion occurred at about two-fifteen, an hour ago, and was strong enough to shatter windows a mile away. The glass… Fred, can you get a shot of this pine cone?”

“There, I knew it was a pine cone,” Pete says. He’s leaning forward, eyes glued to the television.

Fred the camera guy moves in, and on the pine cone’s petals, or leaves, or whatever you called them, Holly can see shards of broken glass. One actually appears to have blood on it, although she can hope it’s just a passing reflection cast by the lights on one of the ambulances.

Lester Holt: “Chet, that’s horrible. Just awful.”

The camera pulls back and returns to Ondowsky. “Yes, it is. This is a horrible scene. Lester, I want to see if…”