A Soul To Steal

by Rob Blackwell

  Still, she breathed in the crisp fall air and took in the orange color of the leaves. It might have been beautiful, but she barely noticed.

  Why is it always the same? The image of walking across the ground floor of her childhood home, so real she could feel the carpet beneath her toes. In the dream, she knows what is happening above her but cannot stop. She’s stuck on repeat, a character in an old home movie doomed to do the same thing again and again.

  But the dream (or the memory, it didn’t matter anymore) could not explain why she was here-why she had come back. Kate stared down the street and felt her hands grip the cold rusty railing. What was she doing here?

  She could hear the chirping of birds, with one long mournful call breaking through the morning air. It was the only answer she received.

  Would you know it if you went crazy? There was supposed to be a catch-you can’t be crazy if you wonder if you are insane. But it didn’t feel like a blanket exemption. What happens if you can look at your own behavior, evaluate it coldly in the light of day, recognize it for utter lunacy, but can’t stop it?

  There was no reason for her to have left Ohio, a suitcase thrown in her trunk, and return here. Not a good one anyway. Did she expect an answer, or healing, or…

  She let the thought drift off. Compulsion. What she felt was a compulsion, an obsession, and she hadn’t been able to stand it anymore.

  Kate turned and walked back inside. She sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. Before she could even begin to be depressed, the familiar anger took over, the feeling growing quickly inside her. Why? It was a question that echoed in her head every second of every day. Why had this happened to her?

  She stood back up again and walked to the bathroom to take a shower. As she turned on the water, she tried to block out her own thoughts. There were no answers inside her head. She had to trust the instinct-the compulsion-that brought her back here. She hoped some answers were out there somewhere.

  It was not until after she toweled off that she saw it. She had just begun to brush her teeth and absentmindedly looked in the mirror. When she looked up, she saw a word written in the mirror. It had been drawn in careful strokes as if the writer had taken their time. Kate was so surprised, she stumbled back through the bathroom door.

  “Sanheim,” it said.

  For a moment, Kate almost screamed. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Instead, when she blinked, the message was gone. All she saw was fog on the mirror.

  She shook her head. She was going crazy. It was as simple as that.

  One way or another, this had to stop.

  Quinn sat in his usual place at the Leesburg Starbucks and stared out the window. It had become a ritual, this stop, and he knew it was a bad idea. Starbucks was a giant pit that he threw money into. He could have purchased a coffee maker-it might have even produced better coffee-but somehow coming here made him feel better. Maybe it made him feel less alone.

  He picked through the main section of The Washington Post, waiting for something to catch his eye. But aside from the usual political scandals, the various fights in Congress and the inevitable crime stories, there was little to be found. Certainly nothing distracting.

  And then she walked in. Quinn felt the cool draft sweep by him as the door swung open and then shut. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blonde hair flip off her shoulder-the result of a casual toss of her head. Her hair just brushed her shoulders and curled a little in various directions. It was simple, yet elegant, like her khaki slacks and white blouse.

  By now, Quinn was staring shamelessly. No doubt, she was beautiful. Petite and graceful, roughly his age, with delicate hands as she counted out her money for the cashier. But she was compelling in a way Quinn could not begin to explain.

  When she turned to find a seat, Quinn almost caught his breath as he saw her bright blue eyes. With great effort, he stopped staring, but continued to steal glances as she stretched out in an armchair to read the paper.

  He had never been so drawn to a stranger before, nor so observant of her every detail. Her silver earrings, the way her fingers rested on her eyebrow as she read.

  He shook his head. This was stupid. It was nothing more than a reaction to two dateless years and too much time spent around women who were too old to court. It was a new face, that was all, he told himself. A new face with a great looking body.

  Suddenly she caught him watching her. But like a child caught staring, he couldn’t even pretend that he wasn’t. They held each other’s gaze for a moment and then she looked back down at her paper-his paper, his employer in fact. After a while she got up and barely looked his way as she left the Starbucks.

  When she was gone, he let out a large sigh, like he had been holding his breath the whole time. What was his problem?

  She would be gone now, he thought. If there was destiny involved, surely it had just slapped him in the face and passed him by.

  He tossed the paper in a recycling bin and left the shop.

  Quinn stared at his desk and for the 15 ^th time this week wondered how he got anything done. The desk was beyond a disaster-it was a crater filled with papers, pads, pens, highlighters and paperclips. Underneath all of it could be the Dead Sea scrolls, but Quinn seriously doubted he would ever know.

  It was a pile of rubble that shifted from place to place, exposing bare brown areas of desk. He didn’t think the entire desk would ever be seen again, at least not while he worked there.

  Scattered around were various pieces of Tupperware, which he hoped would find their way back to his apartment one day. But considering that every day he forgot they were there, he thought they would have to get up and walk home themselves.

  Quinn slung his bag onto an extra chair and flicked on the computer. The computer had no sooner booted up then a little sign appeared in the window.

  “How could you perform an illegal function yet, you dumb machine?” Quinn asked it.

  Quinn turned off the computer and started again.

  He hated computers. Clearly the feeling was mutual. A day that went by without a major computer fault eating one of his stories or just generally going haywire was an event to celebrate. Quinn thought maybe it would help if Ethan actually shelled out some real money for this place, but that was like asking for a miracle.

  His thoughts were rudely interrupted by Kyle, who practically burst through the door from the stairwell, walked quickly to his desk and threw his bag on a chair.

  “Fantastic,” Kyle declared, to nobody in particular. “Absolutely fantastic.”

  Quinn didn’t reply. You didn’t bother replying to Kyle. In a way, his manner of conversation was like a bad computer program. No matter what input you gave, his output would always be the same.

  “I mean fantastic,” Kyle said again, for the first time really turning to Quinn.

  “What is fantastic?” Quinn asked, not exactly expecting it to make any difference.

  “The fire last night. Whooh, boy,” and Kyle shook his head as if he could not believe someone had not seen this “fantastic” thing. “Makes me wish I were still a fireman.”

  “Thought you were a policeman,” Quinn shot back.

  “Of course, of course,” Kyle said, as if this were a minor detail. “But we handled fires all the time. But last night. Last night was…”

  He stopped as if searching for the right word.

  “Fantastic?” Quinn offered, smiling slightly to himself.

  “Yes,” Kyle said, and pointed to Quinn, gesturing with his finger to his nose. “Yes. Absolutely fantastic. This stupid kid was playing with matches in the garage and managed to light some dry wood lying around.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah, well, you should have seen what happened next,” Kyle said, savoring the moment, his hands twitching slightly while his eyes shifted away from Quinn and stared into space.

  “The kid ran out, got his parents. And they ran in. And the father saw it, right? He
knew what was going to happen.”

  “What happened?” Quinn asked, still vaguely looking more at his computer, which looked like it was crashing again, than Kyle.

  “The gasoline, man,” and Kyle came up right next to Quinn, as if to whisper conspiratorially. “Two cans of it-just sitting there. You wouldn’t believe it. When it went off, it was like a bomb. A large explosion.”

  “Jesus, was anybody hurt?” Quinn asked, for the first time really looking at Kyle. But Kyle still had that far away look, as if he were replaying the whole thing in his mind.

  “Was anybody hurt?” Quinn repeated, with more emphasis.

  “What? Oh, no,” Kyle said. “No, the guy knew there was no way. He just got his family out and ran. Ran and ran. But the garage really went up. I saw that fire burning, and whew! What a doozy. Fireguys said they hadn’t seen one like that since the gas explosion over in Ashburn.”

  Quinn didn’t respond. He didn’t want to talk about the gas explosion in Ashburn. Janus and he had been the first on that scene-before even the police arrived. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  “Amazing,” Kyle said again, shaking his head.

  “But nobody got hurt,” Quinn repeated.

  “No, no,” Kyle said and his voice appeared to echo with disappointment.

  Quinn wasn’t sure though and quickly dismissed it. Injured people might make a better story, but he doubted even Kyle was that cold-blooded.

  The guy was a softie, despite a muscular build and an almost fu-Manchu mustache-not to mention an obsession with WWF wrestling that bordered on serious psychosis. He wanted the story, but he wasn’t the type to really want someone dead.

  “Amazing,” he said again and wandered back to his desk.

  Quinn rolled his eyes.

  Within two hours, much of the rest of the staff started to arrive.

  Janus showed up first, predictably announcing himself by chucking a mini-basketball at Quinn’s head.

  “Head’s up,” he yelled a second before he cut it loose.

  Quinn nabbed it out of the air with terrific speed.

  “Jesus, how the bloody hell did you pull that?” Janus asked.

  “Quick reflexes,” Quinn replied.

  “Like you knew it was coming,” Janus muttered.

  “I've told you before-you Welsh boys can’t throw too damn well. Too busy playing soccer,” Quinn said and grinned.

  “Like you throw better?” Janus asked, but he was chuckling. “I’m sorry about the story.”

  “The what?” Quinn replied.

  “Come off it, mate. I saw the Summer story,” Janus said.

  Quinn grimaced and lied, “It sucked.”

  “It didn’t and you know it,” Janus replied.

  His voice was not entirely unsympathetic, however. He had his own issues with Summer, to be sure, but even photographers knew what it was like to see a better picture in somebody else’s paper.

  Quinn sighed.

  “What do you want me to say? She beat me,” he said.

  “Well at least you beat her the week before,” Janus replied.

  “What, the stalker stuff?” Quinn said. “I guess, but no one will remember, and she didn’t exactly give me credit when she did the same story two days later.”

  “You expected her to? That’s optimistic of you.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I suppose actually following the basic tenants of journalistic civility is too much to ask.”

  Janus laughed, turned and walked back to the darkroom in the corner of the newsroom-the place where the photographers worked, lived and breathed. Quinn briefly wondered why they still called it a darkroom. With everything having gone digital several years ago, there was no need to keep it dark anymore.

  He had little time to think about it, however, before Rebecca came out of her office and took a sharp look around.

  “Why isn’t anybody in the conference room?” she asked the staff loudly, glaring at them all. “Don’t we have a meeting anymore or did I miss a memo?”

  Nobody pointed out that it was only two minutes after ten o’clock and that that was hardly late. Instead, they all looked at each other and scrambled to get in the room after her.

  Chapter 3

  “Fifty men went up a hill,

  None of them came down.

  Fifty men went to him,

  None of them were found.”

  — Traditional Scottish Rhyme, circa 1880s

  Less than 20 minutes after accepting the job at the Loudoun Chronicle, Kate was already beginning to have doubts. Before she had made the rather impulsive decision to come back here, she had carefully considered the pros and cons.

  The paper had been around for nearly two hundred years, was well entrenched in the community and was one of the few paid subscription papers left in the area after recent expansions by The Washington Post. Since the Post was unlikely to hire her, and journalism was the only career she ever considered, the Chronicle felt like the right place to be.

  But her sense of balance had forced her to acknowledge some unpleasant truths. The Chronicle ’s subscription was dwindling; its stories often lacked polish; and she feared it would be more provincial than she was used to.

  Within those first few minutes, she knew she had been right on all counts. They were nice, of course. Lawrence, the editor, introduced her around to smiles and nods from all sides. But the meeting then became a series of inside jokes, unsubtle digs between reporters and general confusion.

  To add to her doubts, the guy she had seen in the coffee shop this morning-the one who could not stop staring at her-was here making a repeat of his morning’s performance. She had the feeling that he was trying to be subtle, but if so, it wasn’t working. Every time she looked away, she could feel him watching her.

  The sensation wasn’t threatening-she had no malicious vibe off him-just unnerving. Momentarily, the thought flitted through her mind that she had something on her face, or was somehow dressed inappropriately. But if that were true, only one guy noticed, and she thought that was unlikely.

  Rebecca tried to keep the meeting going by listing various sections of the paper: Schools, Crime, Politics, Business and Sports. It was life divided into easy-to-understand categories that had little bearing on the world outside-life as a series of boxes. Not that Kate saw any other way to run a paper; it just felt forced.

  But the meeting was bogged down from the get-go. The schools reporter was feuding with the crime reporter. The guy who was staring at her-Quinn-was bickering with the political reporter. The sports reporter wouldn’t say two words together, earning him the anger of Rebecca, and the business reporter was nowhere to be found.

  About the only good thing was that it was over quickly. Rebecca, though clearly annoyed, waded through the options and quickly chose those she thought would be on the front page. But the overall feeling was provincial-no doubt about that.

  Within minutes of leaving the meeting, it only became worse. Kyle, the crime reporter, was waiting for her outside, anxious to talk.

  “Do you know what the key to being a good reporter is?” Kyle began.

  On the face of it, this was an offensive question. Did she know what being a good reporter was? Well, she had been doing it for three years; she certainly hoped so.

  “Oh here we go,” said another voice, one of the photographers.

  Kate glanced at Bill. He was a huge guy, fat from every angle, but cheerful and friendly.

  “What?” Kyle said, looking annoyed.

  “Don’t let him bother you,” Bill said.

  “Kyle, are you bothering the new girl already?” a new voice piped in from behind Kate.

  It was Janus-she remembered the name because it sounded like a girl’s, but was spelled differently.

  Behind Janus, Kate noticed the guy from the coffee shop-Quinn.

  “Not a problem,” Kate replied to Janus.

  “Anyway,” Kyle said, clearly irritated at the interruptions and the crowd around him.

>   “Oh, is Kyle going to give his watch speech again?” Janus asked, and thrust out his hand to Kate. “The name’s Janus.”

  “He’s Welsh,” Quinn said behind him. Quinn thought it was possible this was the worst opening line he had ever used on anyone, but it had just popped out there.

  Janus turned and looked at him with mock offense.

  “How dare you bring my ethnicity into it?” he said, far too loudly. “I tell you, Kate, the racial stereotyping around here is just ridiculous.”

  “It’s best if you ignore him,” Quinn said, sticking out his own hand for Kate to shake. “He won’t go away, but you will gradually tune him out.”

  “Gentlemen, I believe I was talking to the lady,” Kyle said, and stroked his mustache angrily.

  “Right, right,” Janus said. “Mustn’t get in the way of the watch speech.”

  “The watch speech?” Kate asked, a little bewildered at the motley collection of guys around her.

  “As I was saying, the most important part of being a reporter is…”

  Janus shot up his hand and Bill quickly followed. Quinn laughed and Kyle ignored them all.

  “The most important part is to set your watch ahead by three minutes,” Kyle said, looking very serious.

  The others started chuckling.

  “Set it three minutes ahead?” Kate repeated, feeling like she was being put on.

  The others started laughing again.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Kyle said again, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s very important.”

  “Why?” Kate stammered, completely at a loss.

  “So that you will never be late,” Kyle said, still looking very intense.

  “How would that help?”

  Kyle stared at her a moment, giving her a blank look at why she couldn’t see the wisdom in what he was saying. Then he smiled.

  “It’s very simple,” he said, while Janus and Bill started talking amongst themselves. “All reporters like to procrastinate, yes?”