The Collective (13 page)

Stupid
, Sean thought,
having a big breakfast on a hot August morning
. He’d be feeling full and sleepy all day. Walking would do him good. Despite the pressure in his temples, quickly growing into a genuine headache, he picked up his pace.

He dropped the half-empty coffee into a trash can he strolled past, realizing that his throat felt even drier. He swallowed, felt it constricting, and frowned.
You’d better not be getting sick
. Actually, though it had been years since he’d had a bad one, this felt a lot like a hangover. His mouth felt stuffed with cotton, his lips swollen, and now he blinked, unsteady on his feet.

Sean froze, there on the sidewalk.

Oh, Jesus
, he thought, as he realized what it was. This wasn’t a hangover at all.

He turned to glance back at the trash can where he’d just dropped the coffee cup, then at the Library Café, thinking how stupid he’d been. Of all people, he should have known better than to take anything from a stranger. Bile rushed up the back of his throat and he dropped to his knees, vomiting blood and scrambled eggs onto the sidewalk. His stomach convulsed and he threw up again, unable to catch his breath.

Then the seizure started.

A good Samaritan, seeing him twisting in agony on the ground, shouted for someone to call 911 and raced to his side. By the time the man reached him, Sean McCandless had stopped breathing.

The Houdini book lay open, facedown, on the sidewalk beside him, blood and vomit soaking its white pages.

Cait stepped off the elevator at 8:12 a.m., late for the meeting to which Lynette had summoned her, but she had surrendered herself to fate. Whatever happened now would happen. She couldn’t have gotten there any faster without risking a car wreck or a major speeding ticket. If the station manager wanted to make her suffer, then so be it.

The receptionist—a scrawny, twentyish Boho guy named Adam—waved to her as she crossed the foyer, chatting on his headset. The station was busy 24/7, but outside business hours, nobody got in without a magnetic key/ID card to swipe through the scanner. Adam split his job with a heavyset Dominican woman named Linda, but since she had seniority, he was the one who had to work weekend mornings.

“Hey,” Adam said as Cait pulled out her ID card.

She glanced up to see him covering the mouthpiece of his headset.

“You’re my hero,” he said. And there was none of the usual
laid-back coffeehouse demeanor in his tone. “Really nicely done last night. I fucking cheered when I saw it.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks.”

Adam grinned, then went back to his phone conversation, which didn’t seem to have anything to do with work. A quiet Sunday morning.

Cait waved her card at the sensor and heard the lock click open. She pushed through the door and went down a long corridor, past the restrooms, a conference room, and several storage closets, where she believed ancient videotapes were moldering to dust. A television hung on the wall straight ahead, the sound off, showing the current programming going out over the Channel 7 signal. There were other TVs in the office, some of them bulky, outmoded things that still sort of worked or that nobody wanted to go to the trouble of removing, considering how well they’d been bolted into corners or walls or the ceiling.

A right turn took her into a labyrinth of cubicles. Several people looked up from their desks as she passed, and she didn’t think it was her imagination that they watched her go by with a new level of interest. One older woman, Janis, practically scowled at her, but everyone else either smiled or nodded in approval, and puffy-faced Bob Gorman actually gave her a thumbs-up.

Weird. It
all
felt weird to her.

On the far side of the cubicle maze was a junction. Off to the right were the executive offices, and the control room and studio were down the corridor to the left. As she reached the junction, the door to an editing suite swung open, and Jordan Katz stepped out, a cup of coffee in one hand.

Cait did a tiny double take at the sight of him. The cameraman had a laconic confidence that she liked, but the wild bush of a beard he had grown since their unit had been brought home from Iraq had always seemed wrong on him. At least her brother’s beard was a part of his job and not a personal fashion statement.

Now, though, Jordan had clipped the unruly beard away, trimming it down to little more than stubble, and she could see the shape of his face again, not to mention more of the
mischievous smile that matched the quiet twinkle in his eye when he spotted her. Without the beard, his features had a hard edge that combined with his soulful eyes to start an engine purring inside her that had been quiet for some time.

Stop
, she told herself.
It’s Jordan. Don’t be stupid
. Yet she couldn’t help wondering if a spark of interest in someone, a good guy like Jordan, might help her find the way out of her enduring grief.

“Hey, Cait,” Jordan said. “Quite a morning, huh? Instant celebrity hell. Potential dates suddenly intimidated by your ass-kicking magnificence.”

She laughed. “Nice. I hadn’t even thought about the impact on my love life. Such as it is.”

Jordan nodded solemnly. “Oh, yeah. Any guy sees that video’s gonna want to do you.”

Cait crossed her arms. “Who says I want to be
done
?”

He put his hands up in mock surrender. “I know, I know. Even the tiniest bit of sex or romance will ruin your plan to become the withered old crone who all the neighborhood kids think is a witch. You’re right. It’s a good plan. You should stick with it.”

She couldn’t help smiling—right before she punched him in the arm.

“Hey!” he protested. “Back off, lady. I’ve seen you in action. I don’t want trouble.”

“Just remember that,” Cait said, shaking an admonishing finger at him.

Jordan probably knew better than anyone what Nizam had meant to her, and how much grief she still carried. Jordan and Ronnie had been there the night Cait and Nizam had met, had been the big brothers who watched out for her while she was falling in love with a guy everyone else looked at with suspicion, and Jordan had been the one who held her while she wept on the night Nizam had been killed. He and Ronnie made jokes about her love life as a way to drive back the shadows of her grief, though they all knew that it would not be as simple as that.

Someday, Cait would have someone in her life again. Nizam would not have wanted her to be alone. But for now, she
reserved all her love for Leyla. She cherished her daughter, and whenever strangers asked about the little girl—as they often did, curious about her olive skin and foreign features—Cait never hesitated to tell her story. Even the bitter old woman at the supermarket deli had softened at the sight of Leyla. In a climate of prejudice and fear, Cait had watched bigots turn thoughtful and even kind upon learning of Nizam’s death. One man, with a shaved head and tattooed biceps, had surprised her with a comment that touched her heart.

“Strange, isn’t it?” the man had said, standing behind her in line at the bank, after she’d talked about Leyla’s birth to the woman in front of her.

Cait had asked him what he thought was strange.

“Mixed-race kids,” the man had continued. “They’re always the most beautiful.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” the woman in front of them in line had said. “Maybe it’s not so strange at all.”

And this man, about whom Cait had made some unpleasant presumptions, had smiled at Leyla and said, “Maybe.”

If one little girl could start such conversations, Cait thought that one day she might be able to convince herself that Nizam’s death had meant something to the world.

“Hey,” Jordan said quietly. “You okay?”

Her smile had slipped. “Yeah. Sorry. Just drifting.”

“I know that look.” He gave her arm a comforting squeeze. “Come back, Cait. It’s much more fun out here in the world than in the sad places in your head.”

She exhaled, forcing her smile to return. “True. Just tired, I guess,” she said, then cocked her head, studying him. “What are you doing here anyway? I didn’t think you had to work this morning.”

Much of the humor drained from his face and she instantly regretted the question. Without the smile, he seemed tired and even a bit sad.

“Spence is sick,” Jordan said. “He’s covered for me a couple of times, so when he called this morning, I figured I couldn’t say no. But if I’d known what I’d be working on, I’d still be home in bed. Have you heard about these crib deaths out in the Midwest?”

Cait felt a sick twist in her gut.
Crib deaths
. Even the words were hideous.

“No,” she said. And to herself, she added,
And I’m not sure I want to
.

“I guess the first one was in Columbus, Ohio. Well, the first time anyone noticed something weird anyway. Seemed to be SIDS, but then the parents saw that the screen in the baby’s room was hanging loose, and when they checked, it had been cut. Someone had snuck in and then tried to put the screen back when they left, and now they’re thinking the kid was suffocated, that someone murdered her.”

Cait shuddered. “That’s awful!”

“I know, right? So that started people looking more closely at some of these cases, and the Feds have put together a list of at least seven other incidents in Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa that seem like they were probably the work of the same person. A serial killer who suffocates babies in their cribs. I have a hard time just imagining the existence of somebody like that. I don’t need that information in my brain, y’know?”

Cait nodded. “I do. Thanks so much for sharing.”

Jordan frowned. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’ve been editing stock footage and some reports from affiliates together for Aaron. I just needed some coffee before we start to dub in his voice-over.”

“That’s okay,” Cait said. “I’m just glad it’s far away from here.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” Jordan asked.

“Rain check,” she said. “I’m already late to face the dragon in her den.”

Lynette kept her office impeccable. A flat-screen TV hung on one wall. Normally it would have been turned on so that she could keep an eye on their programming, but at the moment the screen was dark. Cait sat in a plush armchair, facing Lynette’s desk, trying to pretend she wasn’t worried.

“So,” the station manager began, leaning back in her chair. “Some crazy night you had.”

“Definitely not the night I expected,” Cait replied, trying to read her tone.

“I talked to Mike Duffy last night,” Lynette said. Her expression was grim, her eyes contemplative as she studied Cait. “He’s pretty upset, actually. I’d go so far as to say that he’s pissed off. He thinks you interfered with his story, that you should have waited for the police to arrive.”

Cait stared, growing numb. “Look, I know I broke the rules—”

“The number one rule. We don’t make the news,” Lynette said.

“I know that. I get it. I guess I could argue that I’m new, that I haven’t been in this very long, but that’d be a bullshit argument. I did what I did because someone had to—and under the same circumstances, I would do it again in a heartbeat. If you want to fire me because of that—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Lynette said. “I have no intention of firing you, Cait. Yes, you broke the rules. But I wanted you to know about Duffy’s tirade mainly so you can prepare yourself. He’s going to be a baby about this for a while, even though I’ve told him to grow up. You want to know the truth? I think he’s mainly just embarrassed that a
girl
did what he couldn’t bring himself to do. I talked to Jordan Katz about what went on out there last night, too, and I’ve seen the footage, of course. It’s possible you saved that woman’s life, stepping in when you did.”

Cait blinked, uncertain how to reply. Relief flooded through her, along with irritation with Mike Duffy and gratitude toward Jordan. Her old friend was still looking out for her. She owed him for that.

“No response?” Lynette asked.

“Sorry,” Cait said. “It’s just not what I expected. I figured you were calling me in here to read me the riot act.”

“Every rule has an exception,” the station manager said. “You did the right thing. It’s possible not everyone is going to see it that way, but I think our footage is damned convincing. All of that said, though, there is one rule I’m going to have to insist you follow in exchange for me letting you off the hook.”

“What’s that?”

“No interviews to any other media source without my
consent—which, to be honest, you’re not going to get. Local girl, single mom, war veteran—people are calling you a hero, Cait. We want to make it clear that you’re Channel Seven’s hero. You’re off tomorrow, which is good, but I want you to take Tuesday off, too. We’ll talk to the police, make sure no one’s going to be able to make a case against you, and then Aaron will interview you on the air.”

Cait fidgeted. She already didn’t like the attention she was getting because of the previous night’s encounter, and the last thing she wanted was to put herself any further into the spotlight. But she didn’t see how she could avoid it.

“Not Duffy? It’s sort of his story,” Cait said. “Is he going to be pissed?”