Final Breath

by Kevin O'Brien

  It was jarring to see the TV screen suddenly filled with side-by-side police mug shots of the skinny, long-haired man and his stocky friend. "Dwight Powell and Harvey Ray Loach were both convicted felons--career criminals--who met while serving jail time at California's Folsom State Prison," Sydney Jordan explained in voice-over. "Police were already searching for the duo in connection to a Portland convenience store robbery in which a twenty-three-year-old clerk was murdered."

  There was grainy footage--obviously recorded by the store's security cameras--of the robbery in progress. The two gunmen approached the counter with their guns drawn while a young, gangly clerk raised his hands and backed away from the register. Even at a distance, and even with the poor quality of the videotape, the boy looked scared. On the Edge or their Movers & Shakers correspondent, Sydney Jordan, had the good taste not to show the terrified young clerk casually--and mercilessly--gunned down.

  Sydney Jordan gave an account of what had happened at Thai Paradise that night. She briefly interviewed the busboy, Nuran, his face still bruised, and his sister, Sumalee. They still seemed traumatized. At one point--in the bottom corner of the screen--the camera caught a glimpse of the young waitress clutching Sydney Jordan's hand while she tearfully spoke in her broken English.

  More airtime was given to Jared and Leah, who seemed like a sweet couple, very much in love. At one point during the interview, Leah started to cry. "When I heard they planned to--to take us all into the bathroom and shoot us, I was just so scared," she admitted.

  Jared put his arm around her, and--on camera, at least--Leah seemed to gather some strength from him. Jared said he managed to stay focused and keep his head throughout the whole ordeal because Leah was there. She claimed the same thing about him.

  Sydney Jordan stressed it was teamwork that enabled the young couple to overcome the two armed, murderous thugs.

  Harvey Ray Loach was pronounced dead--from electric shock--at the scene. Dwight Powell was treated for a mild concussion and second-degree burns on his face and neck. The scalding tea had indeed temporary damaged his eyes, and he was blind for a few days. "But my sources here say Dwight Powell should regain his sight in time to watch this broadcast from his jail cell at the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, where he's being held without bail." Sydney Jordan announced.

  The picture switched to Sydney, walking with the elder Wongpooms through the wreckage of their restaurant. Sydney Jordan was limping slightly. There were close-ups of broken chairs, and all the shattered plates and glass on the water-damaged carpet. The camera pulled back to show Suchin pointing and wincing at the mess. The older woman started weeping on Sydney's shoulder. The reporter gently patted her back. Her voice-over continued, "Som and Suchin's insurance won't completely cover the cost of water damage, the destroyed aquarium and all its fish, as well as business lost while Thai Paradise remains closed for repairs."

  They cut to Sydney Jordan flanked by Leah and Jared, and about a dozen other people outside Thai Paradise. Everyone looked chilled to the bone, but they were smiling. "That's why Jared, Leah, and several of their neighbors--all regulars here at Thai Paradise--have so far collected four thousand eight hundred dollars to help offset repair costs for Som and Suchin."

  "Oh, Thai Paradise is one of my favorite places to eat," said one middle-age woman, in close-up. "And they're really wonderful people, too."

  "My wife and I are regulars," said a forty-something man with a baseball cap. "It's the best Thai food around."

  Sydney Jordan turned to Jared and Leah. "Some people might say you two have already done enough to help Som and Suchin and their restaurant. But I understand you don't intend to quit until you've collected eight thousand dollars for them."

  Leah snuggled up to her fiance. "It's the least we can do for these nice people who have had us over to dinner so many times."

  The pretty news correspondent turned toward the camera. "I'm Sydney Jordan--with two very special Movers & Shakers here in Portland, Oregon. Now back to you, Sloan."

  The picture switched to dapper, silver-haired Sloan Roberts at his news desk again. Seated beside him was his pretty blond co-anchor. "Here's an update on that story since it aired last December," Sloan said. "Thai Paradise opened its doors again in early January. If you'd like to eat there, reservations are recommended. It's so popular, Som and Suchin plan to open Thai Paradise II some time next year. As for Jared and Leah, they've set a date and will be married in September."

  "Maybe they could have the reception at the restaurant," chirped Sloan's co-anchor.

  Grinning, he nodded. "They're sure to get a discount. Thank you, Sydney Jordan--for that moving story. Stay tuned for more as On the Edge returns."

  A commercial for margarine came on.

  The man in the Portland hotel grabbed the remote and switched off the TV. Funny, they reran Sydney Jordan's Movers & Shakers segment with Leah and Jared tonight. He'd started making plans for them shortly after watching that piece when it had originally aired six months ago. He'd been watching Leah and Jared for nearly a month now. He knew the old five-story apartment building where they lived in Portland's Northwest district. He'd learned how to get inside the place undetected. He'd acquainted himself with every inch of it--from the roof to the dark, dank recesses of the basement. He'd even broken into their apartment already, just long enough to study the layout and go through their closets to make sure they didn't keep a gun on the premises. Before making his clandestine exit, he'd left a calling card. He'd peed in their bathroom, left the toilet seat up, and hadn't flushed. He'd imagined Leah later bitching out Jared for being such a pig, and that had made him chuckle. Yet a part of him had wanted them to know someone else had been inside the apartment. Part of him had been daring them to figure it out. Last week, he'd been cocky enough to take risks like that.

  But not anymore. He had to be very careful now that their Movers & Shakers segment had been recycled for On the Edge. Jared and Leah were in the limelight again, maybe not for long. But he had to pull back for a while, maybe even delay his plans for a few more days.

  Turning away from the TV, he glanced down at the hotel's king-size bed, where he'd laid out his burglary tools--a collection of files, skeleton keys, and wires. He'd used them to break into Leah and Jared's building and their apartment. On the ugly maroon and hunter green paisley bedspread, he'd also set out a pair of gloves, a knife, and a 9-millimeter Glock handgun. And on the pillow was a neatly folded, lightweight, clear plastic rain jacket.

  Everything he needed.

  Just a few more days, he thought. He could wait. He was a patient man.

  And then Sydney Jordan's friends, Jared and Leah, would be on the news again.

  "You're clearly limping here in this scene," the hotshot, twenty-something exec said. He had black, spiked hair, designer glasses, and a black designer suit--with no tie. He also had a Bluetooth phone attached to his ear. Leaning back in his chair at the conference table, he unclasped his hands from behind his head to point to the big TV screen for a moment. "See what I mean?"

  His assistant, a young East Indian man, worked the DVD remote control. With a flick of the button, he backed up the scene on the big-screen TV of Sydney Jordan assessing the wrecked restaurant with the Wongpooms.

  "Yes, I'm clearly limping," Sydney said tonelessly. "It's from an old spinal cord injury, Brad."

  Brad was an image consultant the network had hired to review her work. He'd shown the old Jared and Leah story to a test audience, and Sydney had flown from Seattle to New York to hear the test findings. She still had some jet lag. Her hair was swept back in a ponytail, and she wore a blue sleeveless dress.

  There was only one other person at the long conference table, a young woman in a power suit from the network's public relations department. She took notes and said nothing.

  "Well, people don't want to see you limping, Sydney," Brad said. "The test audience was split right down the middle--the ones who knew about your accident and the ones who didn't. Th
e ones who didn't wondered why you were limping. The ones who knew about your injury didn't want to be reminded of it. Made them feel bad. Plus it's distracting, and not very glamorous."

  "In the future, I'll try not to walk when we're taping," she replied. Sydney wondered how much the network was paying this guy. Watching this DVD of her work and getting a blow-by-blow analysis reminded Sydney of her figure-skating days, when her coach used to analyze videotapes of her routines. Those screening sessions, which she'd always loathed, had at least focused on her work from the day or week before and helped her to correct her recent mistakes. But this segment from Movers & Shakers was six months old, for crying out loud.

  So much had changed in the last six months. Back when she'd gone to Portland to cover Leah and Jared's story, she'd still been based in Chicago and still happily married. Her only real heartaches in life had been her slightly faltering walk and occasionally having to be away from her husband and son while she filmed her stories. Sydney's Movers & Shakers segments profiled athletes, inventors, philanthropists, eccentrics, and everyday people who had done something extraordinary. Sydney loved meeting these individuals and profiling them in her video shorts. She'd always searched for subjects and story ideas in Chicago, so she wouldn't have to go on the road. She'd loved her life at home.

  Gazing at herself on the TV, Sydney thought about how that woman up there on the screen had no idea her life was about to fall apart.

  "The trench coat is good," Brad was saying. "A very classic reporter look, but you've got a nice figure, Sydney. So for this scene inside the restaurant with the old folks, you should have lost the coat. The test audience liked your hair, and thought you looked pretty. I tell you, with high definition, the lines on some of these female correspondents' faces--goddamn, more bags than Louis Vuitton. I know, I know, it's unfair, but people don't expect male reporters to be pretty. Anyway, not to fear, you passed the HD TV test, Sydney. But some time within the next year or two, you might want to go in for a nip and tuck--just for maintenance."

  "I'll make a note of it," she said, her nostrils flaring.

  "You might even want to devote a segment to it--when you go in for the touch-up, I mean."

  She started drumming her fingernails on the desktop. "Are you serious?"

  "People want flashier stories from you, Sydney. Think sexy and edgy. After all, this is On the Edge. The kinds of stories you do aren't as interesting as they used to be. People don't want tales about these do-gooders..."

  Sydney glared at him. "No, they want stories about celebrity train wrecks and screw-ups. They want to see who's gotten a DUI, who's in and who's out of rehab, and that way, they can judge them and feel better about themselves. Then they don't really have to aspire to anything. You want me to give the people what they want? How's that going to enlighten or inspire them? Isn't that a reporter's duty--to educate and enlighten?"

  Brad touched something on his earpiece, then he held up his index finger. "Just a sec...I've got a call here...Yeah, well, what do the marketing people say?"

  Later that afternoon, Sydney waited for her plane in the VIP lounge at JFK. She had an easy chair over by one of the windows. Outside, they were loading bags into a Boeing 747. Sydney was on her cell phone with her brother, Kyle, in Seattle. She'd already spoken to her son, Eli, who was staying with him. "Anyway, my approval rating could be better, and they think I'm due for a facelift next year," she told him.

  "Have your boobs done while you're at it," Kyle recommended. "It's important that all female reporters have a good rack. Screw intelligence and creativity, they're overrated."

  Sydney laughed--though a bit listlessly.

  "You sound tired," her brother said.

  "And homesick," she added.

  "Which home have you been sick for? Here or Chicago?"

  This jaunt to New York had been Sydney's first overnight trip since leaving her husband, Joe, and moving to Seattle. Somehow the excursion had made her miss her life in Chicago even more. Sydney's plane, leaving within the hour, would be flying over Chicago on its way to Seattle.

  "I've missed Eli and I've missed you," she said finally. That much was true. But she also missed Chicago--and Joe. "Anyway, I'll see you guys in eight hours..."

  After she finished talking with her brother, Sydney took out her laptop computer to check her e-mail. It was mostly junk, a few messages from fans, and one with no subject listed from secondduet4U@dwosinco.com. Sydney opened the e-mail:

  Bitch-Sydney,

  You can t save them.

  She was used to the occasional crank or crazy e-mail. She usually deleted them. "Second duet for you," she murmured, checking the sender's name. "Weird...."

  With a sigh, she shook her head and pressed the Delete button.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The digital timer on the dryer's operating panel indicated thirteen minutes were left in the cycle. Opening the dryer door, Leah pulled one of Jared's sweat socks from the pile of warm clothes. It still felt a bit damp.

  Without the dryer's incessant rumbling noise, it was suddenly quiet in the basement laundry room. Though well lit by two fluorescent lights amid the network of pipes overhead, the uncarpeted, dingy room always gave Leah the creeps.

  Someone had tried to make the place more cheery with a few cheesy fake plants gathering dust and cobwebs on a shelf above the laundry sink. They'd hung ugly brown and orange plaid curtains on the small, barred window not far below the ceiling. A "Gardens of the World" calendar hung on the graying, paint-chipped walls. Someone had also left several old romance paperbacks and Better Homes & Gardens on the card table.

  Leah shut the dryer door, but hesitated before pressing the On button again. She could hear the mechanical knocks and humming from the old elevator across the corridor, but it sounded like someone was headed up to one of the floors above the lobby level. They weren't coming down to the basement.

  Restarting the dryer, Leah settled back into the folding chair and opened up one of the Better Homes & Gardens. She was dressed in a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. Despite the hot, sticky Fourth of July weather, a little shudder passed through her. In addition to being slightly creepy, the laundry room was also--year-round--the coolest room in the building. Sometimes in winter months, Leah sat on top of the dryer to keep warm.

  Just to the left of the washer and dryer was a chain-link, gatelike door to the storage area--a dark annex full of junk stowed in locked cages. There was no outside light switch for it. The few trips she'd taken into that gloomy storage room were with Jared, and she always made him walk in front of her--into the darkness a few steps--where he blindly felt around for a pull-string to the overhead light.

  Leah might have been more comfortable if the light were on in that storage area, but she wasn't about to brave the darkness inside there to turn it on. So she did her damnedest to ignore that shadowy nook beyond the chain-link door.

  She really shouldn't have been scared right now. It was only six o'clock, and still light out. Over the rumble and roar of the dryer, she heard a shot ring out--and then another. It startled her, but only for a second. Some idiots with their fireworks, she thought. They couldn't wait for tonight to set them off. They were probably in the park next door.

  She paged through the magazine, and stopped on a feature called, "Newlywed Nests--Affordable Ideas to Upgrade Your Starter Home!" Leah frowned at the two-page spread showing a happy young couple in their well-appointed little love shack.

  She and Jared must have looked just as happy and well adjusted to people watching the rerun of On the Edge a few days ago. In fact, after that incident in Thai Paradise back in December, she'd sort of fallen in love with Jared all over again. Nothing like surviving a life-threatening situation to make two people feel closer than ever--for a while anyway. They were terrific together, everyone said so. She'd bought into all of Sydney Jordan's teamwork talk.

  Leah had liked Sydney a lot. For someone who was on TV, she was very down to earth. Sydney had made her feel
so relaxed; Leah had almost admitted to the Movers & Shakers correspondent that she'd had some doubts about her relationship with Jared. But she'd decided not to spoil the TV-packaged image of this brave, selfless couple who were very much in love.

  In fact, it was how Leah wanted people to think of her.

  So now she and Jared had set the date. The rerun of their Movers & Shakers segment for On the Edge only made her feel more pressure from everyone about this damn wedding. That program also produced another strange side effect. Lately, Leah couldn't get over the sensation that someone was watching her.

  It wasn't anything she could put her finger on. But lately, while riding the Metro to and from work, or eating her lunch--whether in a restaurant or in the park--she'd suddenly feel someone spying on her. She'd glance around at people in the general vicinity, but Leah never caught anyone staring.

  "Oh, you're just picking up on people recognizing you from On the Edge," Jared had told her. "It's nothing. Don't be so paranoid."

  She couldn't help it. Something very bizarre and unsettling had happened a few days before the rerun had aired. She'd come home from work, and immediately realized someone had been in the apartment. She must have missed him by only a few minutes, because it smelled different in there. A stranger's body odor still lingered in the air. Nothing was missing. But the sweaters on her closet shelf were askew, and the clothes in her dresser drawers were slightly messed up. Strangest of all--the intruder had urinated in their toilet and left it there un-flushed with the seat up. She knew it wasn't Jared. He never did that. Just to be sure, she checked with Jared and their apartment manager and verified that neither one of them had been in the apartment that afternoon.