Endings by Linda Richards (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

I head towards the safety of my car, but a man gets out of one of the media vans, blocking my path. He would have startled me, but he is just so pretty I figure he’s an on-air personality, and though he’s come upon me quickly, there isn’t anything menacing in his bearing.

“Nothing, huh?” he asks, and I understand he was hoping my visit would meet with success. He doesn’t know who I am, but he’s prepared for me to be his next segment of the story and he’s hoping that I’ll do something he can report on. I can read all of that in his smile.

“Nada. Zilch.”

“Sucks,” he says with regret. I know he means it. “Been camped out here a few days now, hoping for a break. Nothing much doing.” He puts out one big hand. “Curtis Diamond, WBCC Los Angeles,” he says. I can tell he figures I will know who he is.

“Hey,” I say in a way that I hope is admiring. It’s clear it’s what he’s used to, so it seems prudent to deliver. “I’m working on a book on Atwater,” I say, sticking to my story. “I talked with the mom briefly before. On the phone. It seemed worth a try to take a run at getting in.”

Curtis nods. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Can I interview you for my afternoon segment?” he asks. “I got a lot of nothing, and at least you’d be a talking head.”

I feel my eyes widen at the suggestion and panic clutch at my breast. For so many reasons, getting interviewed wouldn’t do at all. Me on TV. Thinking of it makes me want to duck for cover. I try to show none of that.

“It’s a work in progress,” I say, trying to think fast. “And, honestly, I don’t think it would serve my purpose to put my face up there ahead of my book.” Whatever that means, but he seems to understand the words better than I do because he gives in without a struggle.

“I see your point, I guess,” he says. “No sense getting the publicity machine working before there’s an actual book to promote.”

I feel myself sag with relief. There are nearly two hundred thousand words in the English language. Against all odds, I appear to have chosen the right ones.

“This case, though, you know. It’s an awful business.”

I nod. Nothing more is required of me. I am in agreement. It is an awful business, no matter how you look at it. We are here, far from our homes, because we imagine that we can get something done.

“Did you hear about the psychic?”

I shake my head: no.

“She went to the police here, before things got real rough.”

“Went to the police for what?”

“A police source told me: she approached them with information about Atwater’s whereabouts, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“You did a story?”

“Naw. I thought I might, but my news director nixed it. Said there were enough crackpots running around out there without us encouraging them.”

“Fair enough.”

“I guess.” Curtis seems a bit wistful. “I think it might have made good TV.”

I laugh, though I agree. It seems to me I have seen a good range of crackpots on television since all of this began. And I can’t, of course, judge good TV from any other kind though keeping the crackpot quotient to a minimum strikes me as a good idea.

We laugh together briefly, then I say goodbye and head for my car.

He stops me. “Here, take my card,” he says, pressing it into my hand. The stock is thick and creamy, the letters raised. There is a network logo emblazoned on it, and his name in stark letters: Curtis Diamond, Reporter. “Call me if you want to talk. I’m thinking I’ll get to interview you before long.” He flashes me a smile so white I fight the instinct to cover my eyes while I push the card into my bag without really looking at it.

“See you at the next stop,” I say, hoping that, too, will have meaning beyond my understanding. I don’t wait for his response, though. I walk straight-legged back to my rental car, outwardly calm, but feeling anything but. I know I wasn’t nearly exposed as a fraud, but I feel that way just the same. Maybe we all do, really. That’s the thing. Maybe we all always do whether we are lying or not.

I start the car and pull away gently, even though I feel like hitting the gas and getting out of there so quickly that the pea gravel under the car sprays the media van. I don’t want to punish ol’ Curtis; I just want to put distance between his practiced steely gaze and me.

The crappy neighborhood gives way rapidly to a better one, and with the media van out of my rearview, I pull the car up at the end of a cul-de-sac and go over my plan and my notes. Now that I am here in the real world, with actual reporters and an at-large bad guy, when I go over said notes I feel abashed and ever so slightly ashamed. What had I been thinking in coming out here? It’s all I’ve got, though, so I go over the rather broad plan in my head once again.

I know I want a full day to do my exploration of the northern part of the county. It is over an hour’s drive, and there are several stops I want to make along the way. And now I revise my mental picture. Before my arrival, I’d imagined peaceful semi-wilderness settings. Now I sketch media teams and trucks equipped with space gear into that image.

The platoons of media have altered the picture in other ways, too. The small town is full. I manage to book a hotel just outside the downtown core and only because I catch a break, walking in on a cancelation. The little inn is on the tidy side of modest.