She turned away from Ethan. Took a couple of steps. “Ian? Is that you? It’s after midnight.”
“It’s important.” There was a pause. “You know those missing girls?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s another one. The mayor had an emergency meeting tonight. They’re reconvening the Beauty Killer Task Force. Clay and I are down here now. I think this is big, Susan. We want you to write it.”
Susan glanced over at Ethan. He was staring at the one-hitter in his hand, looking sort of dazed.
“Cops and serial killers?” she said.
“The mayor is going to let us have a press person on the ground in the task force. They don’t want another repeat of the Beauty Killer thing. Can you come down early tomorrow—say six—just to talk about it?”
Susan checked her watch. “Six in the morning?”
“Yep.”
She looked over at Ethan again. “I’m kind of working on something else,” she whispered to Ian.
“Whatever it is, this is more important. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Her head was foggy from the liquor. They would talk about it in the morning. “Okay,” she agreed. She snapped the phone shut and bit her lip. Then she turned back to Ethan. It had taken her months to track him down. She didn’t even know if he still kept in touch with Molly. But it was all she had. “Here’s the thing,” she said to him. “The media’s ignored the rumors long enough. And now I’m going to find out what happened. And I’m going to write about it.” She made eye contact with him and held it, wanting him to see her face, to see past the pink hair, to see how serious she was. “Tell Molly that. Tell her that I’ll keep her safe. And that I’m interested in the truth. Tell her that when she’s ready to talk about what happened, I’ll listen.” The rain had progressed from a spit to a halfhearted drizzle. She pressed a business card into his hand. “My name is Susan Ward. I’m with the Herald.”
CHAPTER
5
T he lobby of the Oregon Herald didn’t open until 7:30 A .M ., so Susan had to use the loading-dock entrance at the south side of the building. She was running on four hours’ sleep. She’d spent an hour on-line that morning, trying to get up to speed on the latest missing girl, forsaking a shower, so her hair still smelled vaguely of cigarettes and beer. She’d tied it back and dressed simply in black pants and a black long-sleeved shirt. Then threw on some canary sneakers. No point being completely boring.
She flashed her press pass at the night security guard, a plump African-American kid who had finally made it through The Two Towers and had just started reading The Return of the King. “How’s the book?” she asked.
He shrugged and buzzed her into the basement with barely a glance. There were three elevators in the Herald building. Only one of them ever worked at one time. She took it to the fifth floor.
The Herald was located in downtown Portland. It was a beautiful downtown, full of grand buildings that dated back to when Portland was the largest shipping port in the Northwest. The streets were tree-lined and bicycle-friendly, there were plenty of parks, and public art on every block. Office workers on break lounged next to homeless people playing chess in Pioneer Square, street musicians serenaded shoppers, and, Portland being Portland, there was almost always somebody protesting something. In the midst of all this elegance and bustle was the Herald building, an eight-story brick and sandstone behemoth that the good citizenry of Portland thought was unsightly back when it was built in 1920 and had thought was unsightly ever since. Any interior charm had been gutted during an ill-conceived renovation in the 1970s, which must have been the worst decade in which to renovate anything. Gray industrial carpeting, white walls, low-paneled ceilings, fluorescent lights. Except for the framed Herald stories that lined the halls and the unusually cluttered desks of the employees, it could have been an insurance agency. When she had thought about working in a newspaper office, she had imagined bustling chaos and color and fast-talking colleagues. The Herald was soundless and formal. If you sneezed, everybody turned to look.