She took the books off the shelf and saw they were pretty old-mid 1970s. It gave her a weird chill to think that she herself was as old as an actual book. And vice versa.
The upside was that the prices were really, really cheap.
At the checkout line, they wouldn't accept Visa. Or Discover, Tammy found.
"Miss, I need to see your library card," a prim woman told her.
"Oh, I don't have that one. Must have maxed it out. Will you take a check?"
They wouldn't take checks. Or cash, either.
"You'll have to apply for a card. Or read them here."
Tammy still didn't quite get it, but figured if they were stupid enough to let her read the books on the premises, why should she bother to buy?
At a desk, she skimmed through both books, absorbing factoids by the score. This was how she did most of her research. Tammy had discovered long ago, you didn't need much to get through for a three-minute stand-up report. A necklace of names and facts usually carried the segment.
While skimming, she committed dozens of interesting facts to memory.
Bees, she learned, were very, very important. They gathered the pollen grains that fertilized all plants on earth. Without bees, flowers couldn't reproduce.
"Great! A sex angle."
Bees were good insects, because they fertilized food plants. And they made honey. Another good, beneficial thing.
"Ooh, a diet angle. It's getting better."
Then she got to the juicy stuff.
The proper name was Africanized killer bee. That presented an image problem, but that would be up to Fox standard practices whether or not to identify killer bees by race.
Early on, she read that there was no known geographic or climatic barrier that would prevent the spread of the killer bee into North America. That one she wrote down because it was an actual quote and she wanted to get it right in case someone actually checked. It sounded perfect for her lead.
Killer bees, Tammy further discovered, injected a neurotoxin that was more deadly than the simple toxin of ordinary honeybees. They were also unusually aggressive and easily provoked.
"More people succumb each year to bee stings than to snakebites," she muttered, moving her lips with each enunciated word.
"Deadlier than a rattlesnake!" she cried, instantly coining a new lead.
"Shh!"
Tammy ignored the other browsers at their tables. She wondered how libraries made money. Everyone seemed to be reading, not buying.
She was surprised to find that bees were kept in apiaries.
"Wonder where apes are kept. In honeycombs?"
She shrieked a resounding "Eureka" when she came to an illustration in the version of The Killer Bees, copyright 1977, that showed a projection graph of killer-bee migration that predicted they would reach New York by 1993.
"Perfect!" she added, rushing off to make a photocopy.
Leaving the library, clutching her notes, she found her cameraman eating a hot pretzel with mustard at a vending cart.
"I got everything I need," she said, waving her notes in his slowly chewing face.
"Except a talking head of an expert," the cameraman reminded.
"Expert what?" asked Tammy.
"On bugs, natch."
"Oh, damn. Where do I find one of those?"
"That's what news directors are for. Ask yours."
CLYDE SMOOT, news director of WHO-Fox, listened patiently to Tammy's breathless recitation of factoids and said, "You're on to something."
"I knew it! I knew it!"
"But you need a talking-head expert," he added.
"Told you so," the hovering cameraman said.
"Where do I find one?" Tammy asked.
"In the Fox research library," Smoot said.
"We have one of those?"
"For paranormal stories, absolutely."
And crooking a finger, Smoot motioned Tammy to follow him.
In a room marked Storage, he flicked a light switch and rummaged through shelves of black videocassettes. Finding a certain one, he popped it into a deck and fast-forwarded it to the end.
"Isn't that Fox Mulder?" Tammy asked, squinting at the off-color image.
"Yeah."
"Since when is an 'X-Files' episode considered news research?"
"Since it's the killer-bee episode."
"They did one?"
"Here's the end credit." Smoot slowed the tape down. Eerie music floated through the air, and he hit Pause.