Nowhere to Run (33 page)

“That’s a helluva thing to tell us two minutes before we air,” griped Linus as he walked into the control room. “What the hell is going on around here?”

As Constance and Harry appeared on the television screen, welcoming the audience to
KEY to America,
Linus picked up the phone and called Yelena. Her explanation was fine, as far as it went. He needed to assign a producer to keep on top of this story as the broadcast aired. If an arrest was made, Linus wanted to beat the competition in reporting it.

“Who’s available, Dominick?” he asked the senior producer sitting next to him at the console.

“Annabelle Murphy is free. Her piece is all done.”

Annabelle took the call informing her of her new assignment. Her first step should be to talk to Joe Connelly.

“Annabelle, line three,” Wayne called across the newsroom.

She snatched up the receiver. “Annabelle Murphy.”

“Annabelle, it’s me.”

“Oh, hi, Mike. What’s up?”

He could tell by her clipped tone that she was under pressure there.

“I hate to bother you with this, honey. But Thomas has this weird scab on his hand.”

“What does it look like?” she asked as the hairs on her arms raised.

“It’s black, like coal.”

Sweet Jesus.
She couldn’t get out of the building!

Annabelle ached to fly out the door and rush downtown. She wanted to meet them at the hospital emergency room, talk to the doctors, hold her son’s hand. If something happened to Thomas, she would never, ever forgive herself. Tears welled in her eyes.

Yet she knew, instinctively, that she had to stay calm. Her panic wouldn’t help her little boy. What would help was clear thinking. She tried to remember the research she’d done for the Lee piece. The coal-like scab signaled cutaneous anthrax, the less deadly form.
Please, dear God, please, the much more treatable form.

If the treatment came in time.

The moment the parents left the house to catch the train into the city, the baby-sitter switched on the television set. While the baby’s bottle heated, she watched as the pretty blond lady introduced the story.

“There’s been another anthrax death in a prosperous New Jersey suburb. While investigators have arrested former KEY Medical Correspondent John Lee in connection with anthrax allegedly obtained illegally, town residents are worried.
KEY to America
correspondent Lauren Adams has more about the terror in Maplewood.”

The au pair stared as the video showed so many of the places she recognized from her walks around town with the baby. She listened to the people she had seen being interviewed in front of the diner. She wished that she could have been one of those people, who now had something to tell their friends. She envied them. They were famous now.

When the video story ended, too quickly as far as she was concerned, the
KTA
host and the reporter the au pair recognized from yesterday came back on camera in the studio, conversing about the anthrax cases and the fear that had begun to grip the town.

The young Irish woman went to her purse, taking the business card from her wallet. As she studied the white card, she thought perhaps she should call Annabelle Murphy and tell her the other thing she remembered. But as she went to the phone, the baby cried, diverting her attention back to the job for which she was so poorly paid.

The yellow Labrador retriever, along with her handler and other police officers, was escorted down to the basement ramp. The silver ski jacket was held to the dog’s nose.

“Every person’s scent is as unique as a fingerprint. Health, ethnic origin, the type of food the person eats, and the soap and perfumes he wears all make up the individual’s scent,” explained the handler. “But this could be a tough one. From what you say, this jacket wasn’t worn for very long. We should probably go into the closet too and let Duchess try to catch the scent in there as well.”

“What about the possibility of anthrax exposure?” asked Joe. “You stay back,” instructed the handler. “We’ve all been vaccinated.”

“Even the dog?”

He patted Duchess on her head. “Though we’re concerned about the risk, we know that dogs are about five hundred to a thousand times less likely than humans to develop an anthrax infection.”

Annabelle checked to make sure that her cell phone was on. Mike would call her on it as soon as he had some news. There was absolutely nothing she could do to help Thomas right now. She had to keep busy, keep her mind off her little boy, or she would go insane.

If they found the murderer in the building, Annabelle wanted to be there for it. They’d have to pull her off the monster. Her fists clenched at the thought of the miserable wretch who had hurt her son.

Suddenly, she was glad to have this assignment.

“Mr. Connelly isn’t in the office.”

“This is Annabelle Murphy. It’s urgent that I speak with him.”

“We can beep him, but it might be a while before he gets back to you. He’s with the police K-9 unit.”

Annabelle hung up the phone. So they were using dogs to try to track the killer. Her professional mind automatically went into gear.

She had better get pictures of that.

“No, I don’t know exactly where they are,” admitted Annabelle. “We’ll just have to scout around until we find them.”

“All right,” said the cameraman. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in five minutes.”

Annabelle grabbed her notebook and pen and was heading out of the newsroom when another call came in for her. It was Ruby, Edgar’s sister.

“I just wanted to tell you that Edgar’s graveside service has been postponed because of the bad weather out there, in case you might want to come.”

Annabelle wanted to scream. Sad as it was, Edgar’s burial was the last thing on her mind this morning. “Thank you for telling me, Ruby,” she managed to answer. “When you know the rescheduled time, let me know. If I’m not here, just leave it on my voice mail, all right?”

She wanted to get off the phone, but Ruby had more to get off her chest.

“It was awfully nice of you all to come to the Going Home Celebration last night. I have to admit, I was kinda surprised that the big boss came and paid for that van. Edgar told me she was mighty cheap.”

Where the heck was that coming from? “Oh, you mean cheap with the budget cuts?” Annabelle asked. “That’s just Yelena’s job. She has to enforce those things.”

“That’s what Edgar said too. But he couldn’t believe it when he caught the big boss one day taking sugar from the cafeteria. Doing your job is one thing, being cheap is another.”