Sue had almost forgotten that the secretary was out front. She walked around the room divider and saw the plump woman gathering a handful of multicolored pens and pencils from the bottom right drawer of her desk.
"He's always losing pens," Carole confided. "I just gave him a box last week. I swear I don't know where they all go." She handed Sue the pens she'd taken from the drawer. "Here you go, dear. This should tide you over for a while."
Sue smiled at her. "Than" ......... "You're more than welcome." .....
She returned to the newsroom and went directly to her desk. She found a suitable press release in the pile--an article from the Forest Service about an infestation of ips bee des in the northern part of the state--and began dutifully transcribing the symbols from her own paper to the release.
"I have a deadline to meet," Rich told her. "So I'll be working on my own article. If you need any help, give me a holler. Sue nodded. '
The two of them worked in silence. Sue kept glancing over at the editor. She couldn't help thinking that she should initiate a conversation, but she had no idea what to say. She wondered if he felt as strange and awkward as she did and hazarded another glance in his direction. He appeared to be busily working on his story, apparently unconcerned with the silence.
He glanced up, caught her looking at him, and smiled.
"How would you like to do "Roving Reporter'?" he asked. "Me?"
"I'm busy, I'm tired, and I'm not sure I'll be able to get to it this week. If I don't put it in, though, I'll be getting calls from everyone and his brother. The people in this town don't like their regular features to be missing."
"What do I do?"
"You know how to work a camera?" . "A little."
"Either you do or you don't. We have a Canon AEI." "I don't," she admitted.
"No problem. I'll show you how." He opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out the camera by its strap. "I should warn you, though, that
"Roving Reporter' is not as easy as it looks. People think we just stake out a spot, ask the question, take a few photos, and that's it.
But you're going to find that there are a lot of people in this town who don't want their opinions published or who are afraid to express their opinions even on innocuous subjects. And there are even more who don't want their picture taken. I remember standing in front of the bank for two hours one day looking for five people to tell me whether they prefer ice cream or frozen yogurt. Not a controversial subject, but I stood there for haft the afternoon trying to find someone to respond. Everyone likes to read the "Roving Reporter," but no one wants to meet him. Or her..."
Sue smiled. "Adversity and I are no strangers."
Rich chuckled. "We'll make a reporter of you yet."
Since she didn't have a car, Sue was forced to stake out a location within walking distance. She considered the post office, but Rich told her he'd been there two weeks ago and didn't want to repeat this soon.
He suggested the Shell station, but she said she didn't feel comfortable hanging out there. They finally decided on Mike's Meats, the butcher shop.
Sue first walked inside and told Mike Grayson, the owner, what she was planning to do and asked his permission to stand on his front walk. He said he didn't care, and she went back outside and waited.
And waited.
An old man ignored her completely, not responding to her request or even looking at her. Two women agreed to answer the question but refused to allow their pictures to be taken. A cocky-looking teenager laughed at her.
It was going to be a long morning.
By the time she returned to the newspaper, it was after one. Carole's seat was empty--the secretary was obviously on her lunch break--and Rich was at his desk, eating an apple. Sue sat down in the folding chair and placed the camera on top of his desk. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. "You're right. No one wanted to talk to me."
"What'd I tell you? How many responses did you get?" "Four." "How many people did you ask?" "Twenty." ...... Rich smiled. "Were the responses good?" She shrugged. "I guess."
"Anybody give you advice, tell you what you should be asking instead?"
"Three people told me I should be asking about vampires."
Rich's smile faded. "Vampires?"
She nodded.
"They were joking, weren't they?"
"I don't think so."
He frowned. "What did you tell them?"
"Nothing. I smiled, nodded, told them thank you, then went on to the next person."
Rich stared silently at the camera, making no move to pick it up.
Sue cleared her throat. "Maybe we should ask about vampires. It seems to be on a lot of people's minds. I think--" She broke off in mid-sentence, suddenly remembering the events of the night before. She mentally kicked herself, looking quickly away.
"We may," the editor said quietly. We may have to." "Hey, Daddy!"
Sue turned her head at the sound of the voice. A young girl with long blond hair came speeding out of the door to the paste up room.
"Oh," the girl said, stopping short.
Rich stood. "Sue, this is my daughter Anna. She's going to be visiting us for a few hours in the afternoons. Anna, this is Sue Wing.
She's going to be working here."
"I know you!" Anna said, coming closer. "You work at the restaurant!"
"I recognize you too," Sue said. She turned toward
Rich. "I know who your wife is. She's a regular customer." "Yeah.
We like your food."
"How come I've never seen you in there?"
"I've been in, a couple of times. You probably just didn't notice."
"Or I was in the back." "
"I like the fortune cookies[" Anna announced. Sue laughed. "Me, too.
You want me to bring you some tomorrow?"
"Yeah[" Anna grinned at her father.
"You've got yourself a friend," Rich said. He sat down again. "Now there are two of us who've glad you're here."
"Three," Sue said, smiling.
The FBI agent and the representative from the state police left at the same time. Robert saw them to the door of his office, shook hands with both men, and gave them a smile and a hearty "thank you."
The second the door closed, he stuck out his middle finger, thrusting it upward in the air for emphasis. Assholes. - .
He had never before had to deal with state or federal law enforcement authorities, and he hoped to Christ he never had to deal with them again. He walked across the room and watched through the slats of the miniblinds as the two men got into their respective cars. A chain of command had been established, and for that he was thankful. The buck no longer stopped with him. He was now merely a link in the chain, and if he couldn't handle the situation, he could pass that buck on up to the state police and the FBI. :,.:
But he regretted giving up his autonomy. Last week he'd been confused, not knowing what he should do or how he should do it, but a week of responsibility had given him a taste for serious decision making, and now he felt resentful toward the big boys for trying to horn in on his territory. :":, Especially since the were such complete and total assholes. The state policeman had said almost nothing during the meeting, had simply requested duplicates of every thing asked for by the FBI agent. It was the FBI agent who had done most of the talking who had laid out the recent events in Rio Verde in such a patronizingly arch manner that the emerging picture, though factually correct and chronologically accurate, made Robert and his department look like Joe Doofus and his Goober Patrol.
God, he hated the smug attitude of that business-suited geek.
To make matters worse, Robert had snuffled and sneezed his way through most of the meeting. The hand kerchief on his desk was soaked. Fall was always the worst time of year for his allergies, and, unfortunately, they'd picked today to start the season. He would're taken a pill had he known, but in that instance the cure was almost worse than the disease. Even the mildest over-the-counter allergy medicine knocked him
out. If he had taken a pill, he probably would have dozed off halfway through the FBI agent's diatribe.
Not that that would have been a bad thing. He and the agent, Greg Rossiter, had experienced an immediate antipathy toward one another.
That was strange. Ordinarily, he was a fairly easygoing guy and got along with practically everyone. But something about Rossiter had instantly rubbed him the wrong way. He'd known from the moment he'd laid eyes on that blond brush-cut Nazi's head that he wouldn't like the man. And his response to Joe Cash, the state policeman, had not been much different.
Both men had seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making him feel as inept and incompetent as possible. After allowing him to describe the coroner's findings on the death of Manuel Tortes and relate his own firsthand knowledge of the cemetery, Rossiter had said only, "Rio Verde only has ten thousand people. Anything new or different would be noticed immediately by you or your men, wouldn't it?"
The implied criticism in that condescending query had made Robert bristle, but he'd forced himself not to be come defensive, had made sure his voice remained professionally impersonal. "Not necessarily.
Our town may be small compared to Phoenix, but we still don't know every one in it. And we're not in the habit of keeping tabs on people when they haven't done anything wrong."
"But they've done something wrong now, haven't they?"
"Who?" Robert had tried to keep his voice even. "We're a couple hours' drive from Florence, Globe, Miami Superior. We're four hours from Phoenix. Five from Payson and Randall. Seven from Flagstaff and Sedona. Who's to say someone's not cruising into town, doing his business, and leaving? We get a lot of tourists passing through here on their way to Roosevelt Lake. It seems more than likely to me that this is being done by someone who does not live in Rio Verde."
"Really?" The agent had looked at him with a bored expression. "I think it highly unlikely that any criminal or psychopath would specifically make a series of runs all the way out here merely to perform activities he could do in his own hometown." :
He'd sneezed and said nothing more. "
The thing that had galled him the most was the importance both men seemed to place on anything that happened in Rio Verde, their almost nonchalant attitude toward the horrors that had occurred here. A man had been murdered. A man with friends, a family. The bodies of hundreds of the town's departed loved ones had been disinterred, their resting places desecrated. Wild animals had been killed. But none of this seemed to make any sort of impression on either Rossiter or Cash.
It was almost as though they considered events in Rio Verde too trivial to be taken seriously, the province of children rather than adults, hardly worth bothering with.
He half considered calling up both men's superiors and leveling a charge of racism against them, claiming that they were dragging their feet because Manuel Torres was
Hispanic. That would get a response.
Only he wasn't sure he wanted any deeper involvement from those people. The FBI had installed a fax machine in his office, a direct line to the federal building in Phoe nix so he could send copies of all reports and paperwork.
That was enough meddling in his business, as far as he was concerned.
]
He would keep them informed of his progress, let them know when something was discovered, but that was it.
The intercom beeped, and Robert moved away from the window and back to his desk. He held down the white
"Talk" button, leaning into the receiver. "What is it?"
Steve's voice came through clear and strong. "We have a slight, uh, situation. I think you'd better come out here."
"Be there in a sec." Robert let go of the button, wiped his nose with the wet handkerchief, and collected the forms and pamphlets the FBI agent had left him, carrying them out to the front office.
In the waiting area, six or seven people were clustered on the other side of the counter near the front door. They were standing close together, obviously upset. At the receptionist's desk, Lee Anne was trying to look busy, shuffling through recently typed papers, not looking up. Robert scanned the group of people and noticed that they were all from the Central Arizona Bank.
Almost as one, the faces turned toward him. Robert dropped the handful of pamphlets on Steve's desk and bent down. "What is this?" he asked quietly.
Steve shook his head, grinning. "I'll let them tell you."
"Mr. Johnson wants us to wear underwear Tammette Walker said.
"Uniforms!" Maxine Gilbert added.
Robert straightened up and stared at them uncomprehendingly. "He wants us to wear uniforms made out of underwear!"
"He's gone crazy! There must be a law againstm" Robert held up his hands for silence. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on now, just hold your horses. One person at a time." He nodded toward Maxine. "Maxie? Why don't you try telling me what this is all about?"
The elderly teller pursed her lips and nervously clicked the clasp on her handbag open and shut. "Mr. Johnson has not been himself lately, not for the past week or so. Usually, he's very involved in the operation of the bank, but for the past several days we haven't seen him at all. He just stays cooped up in his office. This morning, though, when we arrived, he was there waiting for us, and he had his ..
. uniforms on display."
"It was disgustingl" Tammette said.
Robert held up his hands. "Let Maxie finish. Please." He nodded at Maxine. "Go on."
"They were---" She shook her head, as though unable to come up with an adequate description. "They're made out of underwear. He sewed pan des and bras and boxer shorts all together, into pants and shirt swell they're not really pants and shirts, but they sort of have sleeves and legs and necklines---and he calls them uniforms. He said that all bank employees now have to wear one of his uniforms. He said if we don't wear them, we'll be fired."
"I think they're made from used underwear," Mort Emerson added, grimacing. '"They have stains on them."
Robert cleared his throat. "I don't quite understand what you want me to do about this."
"Pee Wee would know what to do," Stephanie Bishop said through pinched lips.
"I'm not Pee Wee."
"We want you to arrest him!" Tammette said. "It's not legal to force us to wear uniforms made out of underwear."
"I don't think an actual crime has been committed here. I'll go over and talk to Mr. Johnson if you want, but I can't arrest him. My suggestion would be to call the head office and talk to the bank president, tell him your problem-"
"There is no head office," Mort said. "Sophocles Johnson is the president."
"Well, if worst comes to worst, if Mr. Johnson really does fire you, you may have to take him to court--"
"We need our jobs," Tammette said. "And what do you mean court? Isn't there a law against forcing your employees to wear uniforms made out of underwear?"
"Used underwear?" Art added.
Robert sighed. "I'll talk to Mr. Johnson. I'll try to get this cleared up. If I can't, I'll call the Better Business Bureau and the state wage and hour commission. I'll get this thing sorted out, okay?"
"He's crazy," Maxine said. "He won't talk to you." "It sounds as though he's a little whacked out," Robert admitted, "but I'll see what I can do. Right now, why don't all of you leave your numbers with Lee Anne over there at the front desk. I'll give you a call this afternoon."
Maxine clicked and un clicked her purse clasp. "What about the bank?
It's going to stay close?"
"I can't afford to lose a day of work," Janice Lake said. "I'll do what I can," Robert told them. "I'm going to go call Mr. Johnson right now. Just leave your numbers with Lee Anne He turned away, forcing the receptionist to deal with the bank employees. He looked over at Steve, who was still grinning, rolled his eyes, and walked back down the hall to his office.
The first thing he saw when he strode through the door was the fax machine on his side table.
This was turning out to be a hell of a day.
>
Before he retired and moved back to Arizona six years ago, Bill Covey had been an architect. Senior Architectural Supervisor at Sippl, Doyle and Dane in Irvine, California to be exact. He never had any illusions about himself, and he would have been the first to admit that his architectural efforts had been less than inspired. Many of the small stores and restaurants that he had designed in the fifties and sixties had, in fact, been bulldozed over and replaced with splashier, more eye-catching structures in the wave of redevelopment which swept over Southern California in the seventies and eighties. The con doming ium plans he had laid out before retiring, his last project for the firm, were probably the best work he had ever done, yet even they were hardly original.
Now, however, he was inspired.
Covey, pumped up with caffeine from the massive amounts of coffee he'd been gulping all evening, raced through one sketch after another, not bothering to do cleanup work, not bothering to smooth out the rough edges or draw to scale. He was creating here, setting down ideas for the Church of the Living Christ, the future physical home of the Son of God on earth, and he could not be bothered with petty technical details. He could fix the small stuff later, right now he was on a roll, and he had to try to record these ideas as they came to him, before they were lost.
He had never been a churchgoing man, had always thought of belief in a higher power as a crutch used by people who couldn't manage their own lives, but some thing had made him start attending Pastor Wheeler's church a few weeks ago, and he was prepared now to admit that it was the hand of the Lord guiding him. When he'd heard the pastor describe his plan to build the ultimate house of worship right here in Rio Verde, Covey had known that the reason he had been put on this earth was to design Christ's church.
He'd talked with the pastor after the sermon, prepared to beg for the assignment if need be, but he hadn't had to say much at all. It was almost as though the pastor had been expecting him to approach and volunteer his services
They'd met once since then, a single quick informal conversation. They had not talked specifics, but the two of them had understood each other. He knew what the pastor wanted without being told, and when he'd explained a few of his ideas, Wheeler too had realized how closely aligned were their goals.
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