Frames Per Second

by Bill Eidson

  Close up, he could see red. Blood. He looked at his hands. Just dripping. He moved them and it hurt like hell, and he opened his mouth and he probably screamed something, but he couldn’t hear anything.

  Just that goddamn ringing.

  He looked up, saw Kurt above him now, saw his face sharp and clear, saw that the guy was worried and saying something to him, and then faintly Ben heard the word, first heard “ittle,” and then he listened closer, so damn happy that he could hear and see that he forgot that agonizing pain that was spreading hot along the backs of his legs and alongside his head. He heard Kurt say, “Hospital.”

  It took the ambulance just about forever to arrive. By the time they had strapped Ben onto a stretcher, he had arrived safely into a semblance of the world he knew. By then, he could hear clearly enough past the ringing. And although his eyes still watered, he could see clearly when he wiped them.

  “You’ll be fine,” Kurt told him.

  “Yeah,” Ben managed. “I’m fine.”

  Fine enough to see that he had dozens upon dozens of cuts from flying glass and that his clothes were soaked with blood. Fine enough to believe the EMT who was saying he’d be all right if they could keep the infection from setting in.

  Fine enough to see inside that roiling mass of flames that had once been his van.

  Andi was there when he awoke at the hospital.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “Are you going to keep scaring the hell out of me every two weeks from now on?”

  He started to talk, but his voice was barely a croak.

  “Here.” She handed him a cup of water with a straw. “They said you’d be thirsty when you awoke. They’ve picked about fifty slivers of glass out of you. Mostly your left leg and a bit of your shoulder and scalp. Your windbreaker and camera bag stopped most of the glass, and your world-famous reflexes turned your face away in time.”

  She bent over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’m so sorry about Peter,” she whispered.

  He drew her head down to his chest, and closed his eyes. Seeing Peter standing there, bowed under that bag, worrying about him.

  When Ben opened his eyes, Kurt was there. Ben saw his mouth tighten.

  Andi sat up and saw him, and wiped her eyes. “Caught us,” she said, wanly. “We’re just feeling bad about Peter.”

  Kurt nodded. “All of us are.” He looked at Ben. “How’s the patient?”

  Andi interjected. “Could you tell the nurse he’s awake? And then bring the kids in?”

  Kurt hesitated, and then turned away abruptly.

  Ben flashed back to Kurt clearing people away, his worried face hovering over Ben.

  Ben said, “He came through for me.” He told her about Kurt keeping people back, about calling for an ambulance.

  Andi smiled. “That’s the kind of a guy he is.”

  Ben sipped more water and then asked, “Do the police know anything?”

  “About who did it? No. In fact, they were here a while ago and then they said they’d come back to ask you some questions. But give the kids a few minutes first, they’re beside themselves with worry.”

  And indeed, when Kurt walked them in, Ben could see it in the paleness of their faces. Both moved toward his bed slowly, acting diffident. Perhaps steeling themselves for what they would see.

  Ben took a look down at himself, the bandages covering his legs, arm, and side.

  “You know how much glass they found in me?” he said.

  Both stopped and then Lainnie looked at her brother, a smile touching her lips, and said, “How much?”

  “Enough that some guy came around with a stencil to spray paint me, ‘Glass—Handle with Care.’ I told him to get lost.”

  Lainnie giggled.

  Jake said, “Buh-dump-dump.”

  Lainnie said. “That stinks.”

  “What do you want, a van blew up in my face. Now come here and find a spot to kiss that doesn’t have these overgrown Band- Aids.”

  Lainnie climbed up onto the bed and leaned over Ben to give him a kiss. It was apparent Jake was feeling too old to kiss his dad, but he stood closer and put his hand on Ben’s shoulder.

  Lainnie said, “Is it true about Mister Pete?”

  Mister Pete. Ben had forgotten that name.

  Peter had been a guest in their home often before the divorce, and the kids loved him. “Call me Mister Pete,” he’d growl with mock ferocity. “I’m too mean to be anybody’s uncle.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” Ben stroked Lainnie’s hair as he saw her eyes fill. Jake’s mouth worked, and Ben could see him trying to pull himself together.

  “Hey, I could use another hug down here,” Ben said, and Lainnie flung herself on his chest. Jake took Ben’s hand, and stood with his head down. Ben closed his eyes and held Lainnie tight. Breathing in her warmth, the scent of both of them. Well worth the pain to his left arm that the movement cost him.

  “I miss you, Daddy,” Lainnie said into his chest.

  “I know,” he said.

  “I want you to come home!” she cried. “I don’t care who Mommy married, I want you to come home!”

  “Lainnie,” Andi said, sharply.

  “Sssssh.” Ben ran his hand up and down her back. “That can’t happen. But you’re still my girl.”

  “I don’t want him,” she said.

  “Sssssh.”

  She said no more. But her tears were hot, soaking through Ben’s hospital gown. Jake tugged at Lainnie’s shoulder and said, “Come on, Lainnie, cut it out.” Ben looked past them to Kurt watching. A good man. Steady. Holding his hurt, if any, well in check.

  How did I let this happen? Ben thought.

  Soon after the doctor made his examination, he sent the police in. Both cops were big, but otherwise as different as possible. One was fat, with a big hard gut that stuck out aggressively past his blue blazer. He had a square face and brushed back white hair that Ben tended to identify as a politician’s look.

  The other was tall and gawky thin, with a bald head and sharp eyes in deep sunk sockets. He moved well despite the impression of awkwardness.

  The guy with the gut showed Ben his detective shield and said, “I’m Calabro, he’s Brace. I understand you had a lot of glass taken out of your hide this morning, but we’d appreciate a chance to ask you some questions so we can figure out what happened.”

  Ben nodded to the chairs, but both men remained standing.

  “We just want to be sure—you’re that guy we saw in the news, the Johansen thing, right?” Calabro asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell us what happened this morning,” Brace said.

  Ben told them about the message Peter had given to Lisa, and then outlined everything from the moment he walked out of the building.

  “We talked with the secretary.” Calabro flipped through the pages of his notebook. “She told us he said to tell you to ‘get your ass out front,’ is that correct?”

  Ben nodded.

  “Apparently he also said something to the effect of, ‘I’ve got something hot for him.’ She said he sounded excited, but in control. Like a story was breaking.” Calabro looked up directly at Ben. “What do you think that might be?”

  “I don’t know.” Ben told them how he just driven in from Maine that morning.

  Brace said, “Did you see the actual explosion? Any sense of where it went off in the van?”

  Ben shook his head. “I was walking right toward him and then I glanced down. He yelled something and then, bam. I was on the ground.”

  “What did he yell?”

  “Something like, ‘told you it’d be safe.’ I think he was talking about my camera. I’d loaned him a camera.”

  “As well as the van,” Brace said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me about what you think he was working on,” Calabro asked.

  Ben paused. The habit of keeping sources and story ideas in confidence was deeply ingrained.

  “I
f it’s a help, your editor already outlined the projects.” Brace glanced at his notebook. “Some of them include these women in jail who killed their husbands, Senator Cheever supposedly caught with his zipper down, and Jimbo McGuire. We’ll look into all of them, but naturally, we find that he was following around a local gangland boy particularly interesting.”

  “Those are the ones I knew about,” Ben admitted. “But I really don’t know much more than that. We talked about these ideas over a few beers about a week ago, and he asked me to help just before I took off on vacation. I told him I couldn’t and that’s when I loaned him the camera and van.”

  “Uh-huh. You find that significant?” Calabro asked.

  “Like was it meant for me?” Ben shrugged. “I can’t help but think about it, seeing as it was my van. But I haven’t really been working on anything for the past two weeks, ever since I got back from this Johansen thing.”

  “What about that?”

  Yeah, what about that, Ben thought.

  “Sure, that’s possible,” he said. “Blowing up things is the sort of thing that Johansen’s people do. And God knows I’ve made some enemies with that crowd.”

  “Hell, never mind the crowd,” Brace said. “Johansen himself is still alive in jail. These are strings he could pull.”

  Calabro said, “Or it just could be some sympathizer coming out of the woodwork.”

  Brace nodded. “Now about the van, is it yours or registered to the magazine?”

  “The magazine,” Ben said. “Officially, it’s a company vehicle, but I’m the only one who uses it.”

  Brace nodded. “That’s a break. Because no one else in the media has tipped to this being your van yet. It’s news enough that you were near an explosion so soon after the thing with Johansen, but if it looks like the bomb was set for you, you’ll get swamped. More important, it could excite the random nuts to try for another shot. You think you can keep this quiet, including your own magazine?”

  “Sure,” Ben said. “And I’ll talk to Kurt. I expect I can get him to agree.”

  Brace pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. Inside was a ripped piece of gray cloth backing a piece of leather. “Recognize this?”

  Ben nodded. “That’s the insignia on my camera bag, the one I loaned to Peter.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, we just came from the lab. They say it’s looking like the explosion came from this side.”

  He tapped the cloth side.

  Ben cocked his head. “That side?”

  “Yeah,” Brace said. “The bomb was inside your camera bag.”

  CHAPTER 9

  BEN WAS IN THE BACK OF THE VAN HE HAD BOUGHT THAT MORNING when Lucien found him. They were in the parking garage underneath the building where Insider was based. The van was a beat-to-hell Chevy with a strong engine, a good suspension and tires. Ten thousand bucks, paid by the Insider’s financial officer with a sigh and shake of his head. Everything, from the beige color to the missing hubcaps, only encouraged the eye to slide right past it.

  Lucien clambered in. “Here, let me help.”

  The smell of his aftershave filled the van immediately, and he hovered beside Ben. Lucien grabbed an end of the curtain rod and pulled it to the fitting Ben had just installed. “Like this, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Lucien said, “You think I’ve got a shot on the lead?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  Ben wanted to like Lucien, but from everything he had seen so far, Lucien was not only a kiss ass, but his ambition outweighed his talent.

  “There’s talk that Kurt is looking for a replacement for Peter,” Lucien said. “I don’t think that makes sense, do you? I mean, I could hit the ground running with Peter’s assignments.”

  “Huh,” Ben said.

  Lucien had been dogging him for answers for days, presumably because he thought Kurt’s marriage to Andi gave Ben some sort of inside pipeline.

  “So you haven’t heard anything?”

  Ben attached the rod on his side. The act of kneeling made him want to scream. He expected his bandages under his jeans were beginning to seep blood. “Not a thing.”

  “Ah.” Lucien looked at his watch. “Well, let’s go. Kurt’s called an editorial meeting and you know how he hates it when people are late.”

  Ben bit back his immediate response. Part of his new policy of giving his children’s stepfather every chance.

  Kurt sat waiting quietly while Lucien, Ed Liston, and Ben joined the group. Already Sid Barrett, Glenda Pierce, and Leslie Shea were seated. Sid handled business and finance reporting; Glenda, the society pages; and Leslie handled entertainment. Ben was somewhat surprised to see them all gathered at once: perhaps Kurt intended a staff meeting more than an editorial meeting. None of these three typically worked on the investigative projects and Kurt rarely brought people to a meeting without a reason.

  Kurt looked up from his notebook. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “As you’re all well aware, we’re dealing with the tragic loss of Peter. He was a friend and colleague to all of us. But before that, he was a husband and father. Some of you may know that Peter had been previously married to Sarah Taylor, when they were both on the Chicago Tribune. I expect all of you are familiar with her work when she was with the New York Times.’’

  “Was?” Lucien said.

  Kurt paused.

  “Shortly after Peter’s death was made public, I received a call from Sarah. This is a rather unusual move, but because of her talents I felt my instincts were on target … and when she said that she wanted to move to Boston to work for the Insider—so she could find out what happened to Peter … I offered her a position on the spot.”

  “But … she won’t have any contacts here.” Lucien’s face was stricken. He shot a look at Ben. “Hell, most likely Peter got killed because he was driving Ben’s van. I was in on the Johansen story. What good is an investigative reporter who doesn’t know anyone?”

  “I know you were on the story,” Kurt said. “In fact, I seem to remember assigning it to you. The point is that Sarah’s a highly talented investigator and writer and we’re lucky to have her. Surely you read her piece on the Teamsters.”

  Lucien colored. Rumor had it that her piece missed a Pulitzer by degrees. In reputation and skill, she dwarfed Lucien, and everyone in the room knew it.

  “So,” Kurt said, “I’d like to start this meeting off with a welcome to Sarah Taylor.” Kurt picked up the phone and asked his secretary to bring Sarah in.

  A moment later, she entered, and Ben was struck that this was the first time he had ever met his best friend’s wife. Ex-wife, anyhow.

  Sarah was in her early to mid-thirties. She was relatively small, with fine features, dark blue eyes, and a light complexion. There was a faint dusting of freckles on her cheeks and nose. Short, curly black hair.

  “Face like a Girl Scout,” Peter had said. “A Girl Scout who can sell you a half dozen boxes of cookies and get you to confess every bad thing you ever did just because this nice girl is so damn interested in you.”

  Ben could see it, the openness of her face. But now, tension was also evident there, the tightness of her mouth and a hollowness about her eyes.

  Kurt introduced her to the group.

  “Thank you,” she said. She looked around the group quietly before speaking. “I expect all of you are surprised that I’m here. I expect some of you aren’t too happy about it either, feel that I might be upsetting the balance of order. To which I’ll tell you that I’m sorry, but that it can’t be helped. I have a consuming interest in finding out what happened to Peter. And I know it sounds arrogant, but I’ve found that when I’m truly interested in getting to the truth of the matter, I just about always do.”

  She looked around at each of them. Her eyes settled on Ben, locked briefly. She said, “I’d appreciate any help you can offer.”

  Lucien looked down, but everyone else spoke up, made sounds of welcome and condolences. She thanked them all, but her eyes
kept coming back to Ben.

  Kurt stood up and formally welcomed her aboard. He told Sid, Glenda, and Leslie that they were free to go back to work now that the staff portion of the meeting was over. They filed out, leaving the new investigative team of Ed, Ben, Sarah, and Lucien. Sarah opened a notebook computer while Kurt turned over the first page of a flip chart he had standing in the corner.

  On it was a list:

  1. Johansen

  2. Battered Wives

  3. Cheever

  4. McGuire

  5. ???

  “Anything else?” Kurt pointed to the question marks. “Any other stories that Peter was working on that he may have mentioned to you and not me?”

  Lucien and Ed looked to each other and smiled.

  “Until you handed me that story about the battered women to follow up on, I knew nothing about it,” Ed said. “Peter kept his stories to himself.”

  Lucien nodded to Ben. “Maybe a word or two to his buddy here, but otherwise, you’d know more than us.”

  “Fine,” Kurt said. “So this will be our base of stories and I’ll expect you to keep me informed if others appear.” Kurt smiled faintly. “We’ve promised the police to keep quiet to any other media outlets about the projects Peter was working on. Naturally, this is something we’d want to hold on to anyhow, because I want Peter’s story on the cover of Insider next week. Sarah and Lucien, this week I want you to work together on a lead-in starting from Ben’s experience with Johansen to a quick and dramatic summary of the explosion that killed Peter. Sarah, I also see a sidebar about your own reaction when you heard of Peter’s death and insight into the risks reporters take.”

  Ben winced.

  She appeared to pause, but then she simply nodded. “Makes sense,” she said.

  Ben saw Lucien’s shoulders slump.

  Kurt continued. “Now, all the other media outlets think Peter was simply using a company van when this happened. Let’s keep it that way for Ben’s sake, keep the random nuts from thinking they should go after him, do it right.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Ben said.

  Kurt continued. “In any case, from there we go on to some background on Peter himself, and then we go into the violence the press can run into in the course of doing our jobs. Ben, see if your new friend at the FBI can secure an interview for you and Sarah.”