Deadline (29 page)

Let the FBI pay for their trip home.

Gently, he put the wallet back in Donovan’s coat pocket. He saw the watch, still ticking on Donovan’s wrist, and found it strange that the man’s watch would still be running while his heart was not. He wanted to strip it off and take it home to Kim, but he left it there. Kim would get it all in time.

It was still early, only quarter to nine. With luck and good connections, they would be home by midafternoon.

A shadow passed over the door. Diana stared down at him.

“We’ll be going now,” Walker said. “The cops will have to be called.”

She nodded absently.

“They’ll want me,” Walker said. “Tell them I’ll be back. I’ll do whatever they want, after I’ve cleared up some things. That won’t make them happy, but I can’t help it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. Back to New York.”

“Walker…” She came toward him. Her eyes were wet and her hand shook. Twice she seemed on the verge of words, and finally she settled for a simple goodbye. She offered her hand and he took it limply.

“You could still come with us,” he said.

“Oh, I can’t! How can I? Do you think I could just leave him there on the front porch steps with this all around?”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t.”

“There are other reasons. Don’t ask me what they are. I don’t know what they are. Dear God, I don’t know what’s going to happen, so don’t ask me anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“At least for now I can breathe again. He’s so different…” She looked out at the hunched-over form of her father. “When it gets to where I can’t breathe, maybe you’ll see me back in New York.”

That was all they said. Walker put Donovan’s credit card in his pocket and went out into the graying sunlight. He got behind the wheel of the blue Plymouth and didn’t look back as they drove away toward Lancaster.

T
HE ANSWER HAD BEEN
there all along, but he had smothered it under his own personality. It meant giving his story away, and that went against everything he was and had been for a dozen years. But Donovan’s death and the personal pain Walker felt from that had shown him that he was no longer the reporter, but a participant. It had never been his story, not once he had stripped away the top layer and exposed what lay beneath. His job as a reporter had ended with the burial of a little girl in an unmarked grave. Now that he had accepted that fact, the rest was simple.

He left the Plymouth at the airport and signed in as Al Donovan. Forty minutes later, he and Joanne were on a city-hopping flight to New York, by way of Philadelphia.

They got into Kennedy at two o’clock. Walker rented a car, using the cash in his wallet, and they drove into town. First they went to a photocopy shop, where he ordered a dozen copies of Malcolm Dawes’ diary, and the same number of the accompanying file pages. It took more than an hour. In a phone booth a block away, he made his calls. Perhaps out of loyalty, he called the
Tribune
first. He asked for Jerry Wayne, swore him to secrecy, then gave him the schedule. He didn’t elaborate; just the bare facts of what was happening, when and where. He called a friend at the
New York Times
and went through the same process. Then he called the
Post,
the
Daily News
and the networks. It took him thirty minutes to get them all.

After that there was only the waiting. He and Joanne went to a drugstore on Seventh Avenue and sat in a booth drinking Cokes. She was building up to a good case of nerves. He talked about things far away. Her childhood. Her little girl Robin. And he kept one eye on the clock.

At quarter to five, they drove the ten blocks to the Knickerbocker Hotel. Joanne held the copies in her lap. He turned a corner and faced a street full of cars.

He hadn’t bothered to rent a conference room. He told the networks to set up right there in the lobby, in a little circle of chairs that were usually reserved for guests. They were all there. He could see that already. Every car parked in the tow-away zone bore press plates.

“I’m scared,” Joanne said.

Walker touched her knee.

He pulled to a stop and left the car running in the street. Behind him, someone pounded on a horn. He hurried around and helped Joanne out. He took the copies out of her hands and held the originals in his other hand. Far up the street, Jerry Wayne was coming at a full run.

“Let’s get it over with,” Walker said.

They pushed through an old-style revolving doorway and walked into chaos. The first person he saw was Lesley Stahl of CBS. “Hi, Les. I thought you were in D.C. these days.” Her answer was drowned in voices. Three network cameras were set up facing a bright wall, and Walker and Joanne were hustled toward them. A ground swell of print men moved toward them. Walker held them off.

“We have a statement.”

He stood in front of the whirring cameras, staring into the smoky eyes of Lesley Stahl of CBS. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joanne Sayers.”

Then he moved back and let Joanne have the floor. She looked like a child, lost, alone and frightened. Her voice shook as she started to speak. While she talked, Dalton Walker, playing the ultimate flack, drifted around the room and gave the press fresh copies of Malcolm Dawes’ diary.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1981 by John Dunning

Cover design by Linda McCarthy

978-1-4804-5628-0

This 2013 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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