“Fifty men went up a hill,
None of them came down.
Fifty men went to him,
None of them were found.”
— Traditional Scottish Rhyme, circa 1880s
Less than 20 minutes after accepting the job at the Loudoun Chronicle, Kate was already beginning to have doubts. Before she had made the rather impulsive decision to come back here, she had carefully considered the pros and cons.
The paper had been around for nearly two hundred years, was well entrenched in the community and was one of the few paid subscription papers left in the area after recent expansions by The Washington Post. Since the Post was unlikely to hire her, and journalism was the only career she ever considered, the Chronicle felt like the right place to be.
But her sense of balance had forced her to acknowledge some unpleasant truths. The Chronicle ’s subscription was dwindling; its stories often lacked polish; and she feared it would be more provincial than she was used to.
Within those first few minutes, she knew she had been right on all counts. They were nice, of course. Lawrence, the editor, introduced her around to smiles and nods from all sides. But the meeting then became a series of inside jokes, unsubtle digs between reporters and general confusion.
To add to her doubts, the guy she had seen in the coffee shop this morning-the one who could not stop staring at her-was here making a repeat of his morning’s performance. She had the feeling that he was trying to be subtle, but if so, it wasn’t working. Every time she looked away, she could feel him watching her.
The sensation wasn’t threatening-she had no malicious vibe off him-just unnerving. Momentarily, the thought flitted through her mind that she had something on her face, or was somehow dressed inappropriately. But if that were true, only one guy noticed, and she thought that was unlikely.
Rebecca tried to keep the meeting going by listing various sections of the paper: Schools, Crime, Politics, Business and Sports. It was life divided into easy-to-understand categories that had little bearing on the world outside-life as a series of boxes. Not that Kate saw any other way to run a paper; it just felt forced.
But the meeting was bogged down from the get-go. The schools reporter was feuding with the crime reporter. The guy who was staring at her-Quinn-was bickering with the political reporter. The sports reporter wouldn’t say two words together, earning him the anger of Rebecca, and the business reporter was nowhere to be found.
About the only good thing was that it was over quickly. Rebecca, though clearly annoyed, waded through the options and quickly chose those she thought would be on the front page. But the overall feeling was provincial-no doubt about that.
Within minutes of leaving the meeting, it only became worse. Kyle, the crime reporter, was waiting for her outside, anxious to talk.
“Do you know what the key to being a good reporter is?” Kyle began.
On the face of it, this was an offensive question. Did she know what being a good reporter was? Well, she had been doing it for three years; she certainly hoped so.
“Oh here we go,” said another voice, one of the photographers.
Kate glanced at Bill. He was a huge guy, fat from every angle, but cheerful and friendly.
“What?” Kyle said, looking annoyed.
“Don’t let him bother you,” Bill said.
“Kyle, are you bothering the new girl already?” a new voice piped in from behind Kate.
It was Janus-she remembered the name because it sounded like a girl’s, but was spelled differently.
Behind Janus, Kate noticed the guy from the coffee shop-Quinn.
“Not a problem,” Kate replied to Janus.
“Anyway,” Kyle said, clearly irritated at the interruptions and the crowd around him.
“Oh, is Kyle going to give his watch speech again?” Janus asked, and thrust out his hand to Kate. “The name’s Janus.”
“He’s Welsh,” Quinn said behind him. Quinn thought it was possible this was the worst opening line he had ever used on anyone, but it had just popped out there.
Janus turned and looked at him with mock offense.
“How dare you bring my ethnicity into it?” he said, far too loudly. “I tell you, Kate, the racial stereotyping around here is just ridiculous.”
“It’s best if you ignore him,” Quinn said, sticking out his own hand for Kate to shake. “He won’t go away, but you will gradually tune him out.”
“Gentlemen, I believe I was talking to the lady,” Kyle said, and stroked his mustache angrily.
“Right, right,” Janus said. “Mustn’t get in the way of the watch speech.”
“The watch speech?” Kate asked, a little bewildered at the motley collection of guys around her.
“As I was saying, the most important part of being a reporter is…”
Janus shot up his hand and Bill quickly followed. Quinn laughed and Kyle ignored them all.
“The most important part is to set your watch ahead by three minutes,” Kyle said, looking very serious.
The others started chuckling.
“Set it three minutes ahead?” Kate repeated, feeling like she was being put on.
The others started laughing again.
“Don’t listen to them,” Kyle said again, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s very important.”
“Why?” Kate stammered, completely at a loss.
“So that you will never be late,” Kyle said, still looking very intense.
“How would that help?”
Kyle stared at her a moment, giving her a blank look at why she couldn’t see the wisdom in what he was saying. Then he smiled.
“It’s very simple,” he said, while Janus and Bill started talking amongst themselves. “All reporters like to procrastinate, yes?”
Kate nodded.
“And all reporters are always about two minutes late to everything, right?”
“I guess,” she said.
“A-ha,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “Well, if you set your watch just three minutes ahead, it gets you moving. You look at it and instead of being late by two minutes, you are just in time.”
“Oh,” Kate said.
“It’s very simple, but I can’t tell you how many times it has saved my butt,” Kyle said, still smiling intently.
“I see,” she replied. She paused, waiting awkwardly for something to save her. “Well, that seems very helpful.”
“Of course, you could just leave earlier,” Quinn said.
Kyle grunted in disgust.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You could, yeah. You make fun of me, but how many times are you late to something, Quinn? Huh?”
“All the time, Kyle,” he replied.
“You see?” Kyle said, looking at Kate in triumph. “You see? I’m never late. I’m always one minute early. It makes all the difference in the world, Kate.”
Kyle jabbed his finger in Quinn’s direction.
“All the difference,” he said again.
“That’s super, Kyle,” Janus said, and put his arm around Kyle to start moving him away. “You’re scaring the poor girl. Worse, you’re scaring me.”
“Did you forget your medication again, Kyle?” Bill asked.
Kyle shook off Janus, gave him a dirty look and stomped away.
“Thanks, Kyle,” Kate called after him, but he glanced balefully at Bill and Janus.
“I’d stay out of his way today,” Quinn told them.
“Nah,” Bill replied. “He’ll get over it.”
“Don’t worry about Kyle,” Janus said. “Something will explode or some robbery will happen and he’ll be happy again.”
Laurence popped his head out of his door.
“Janus, Quinn, good,” he said. “I want you to give Kate the tour, will you? Take her around, show her the place.”
“That’s the first five minutes,” Janus said.
“Yes, well…” Laurence said.
“It’s okay, we’ll do it,” Quinn replied. Laurence retreated back into his office.
“Janus is right, though,” he said afterward. “This won’t exactly eat up your whole day.”
“It’s all right,” she said. She smiled at Quinn.
“Well,” he said. “Uh, I guess you can see the newsroom. If you walk straight ahead, you’ll find the graphics department.”
They walked just a few feet down the hall. As they did, Kate sized up her three companions. Quinn was handsome, though he looked tired. Janus struck her mostly because of his size. He looked no taller than her, at about 5 feet 4 inches, with straight black hair and brown eyes. Given how talkative he had been in the staff meeting, she wondered if he was the kind of guy to have a Napoleon complex. Stepping next to him, she also distinctly smelled the aroma of cigarettes on his clothes.
Bill was a big guy, not quite obese but well beyond chubby, Kate observed. She felt almost mean thinking that because he was so nice. About medium height with brown eyes and black hair, he looked pleasantly cheery, as if someone had recently complimented him. Maybe it was just a good day, but she had the impression he usually looked that way.
“About the only thing worth seeing here is the printing press,” said Janus.
“It’s cool you actually see it,” Kate said. “At the Gazette, we never did. It was all sent off-site.”
“It’s cool,” Quinn said, and he opened the double doors that led downstairs.
They walked down there and saw the paper run just beginning. The rumble of the press would soon be so loud they would have to start yelling to make themselves heard. They watched it for a moment.
In the corner a sign said, “Safety is our number one priority. We have not had an accident in…” and in magic marker it finished, “54 days.”
“Not a very encouraging record,” Quinn said when he saw Kate looking at it. “Come on, you can see back here where it all comes out.”
They walked around the gigantic machine to get to the back.
“The Loudoun Chronicle is a broad sheet,” Quinn said, pointing up. “If you look up there, you can see where the screens come in. Everything is sent electronically from upstairs, then photographed and placed on the screens. It gets sent through in sections, then comes out over there.”
He pointed to a few places.
It took Quinn a minute more before he realized Kate wasn’t watching him. He looked to see her staring at the far corner of the room. There was nothing there that he could see.
“Kate?” he asked. Janus and Bill followed her gaze, looked back at Quinn, and shrugged.
“Kate?” Quinn asked again. She didn’t respond for a minute.
“What happened there?” she said finally.
“Happened where?” Quinn asked, and looked back at the spot.
“There,” she said, and pointed to a spot on the floor. Quinn saw nothing but a very dusty piece of cement.
The three men exchanged quizzical looks.
“There’s nothing there,” Quinn said, feeling a little concerned.
Kate walked up and looked down.
“It’s right…” she trailed off.
Quinn followed her. He looked down and saw nothing.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
She turned and looked at him, then back at the floor.
“Trick of the light,” she said. “I just thought I saw something-that’s all.”
She did not sound convincing, but Quinn let it go.
“Sure,” he said.
“Hey, guys,” Bill said. “Are we done with the tour yet? Anyone up for lunch?”
Kate nodded, said she was hungry, and they headed out the back door. On his way out, Quinn noticed her look back at the corner of the room.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
She met his gaze.
“Yeah,” she said. “What could be wrong?”
Outside, he noticed her hands shaking, but he knew enough not to say anything.
They went to a small Italian deli for lunch and Kate tried to forget about what she had seen, though the thought of it kept coming back. She was surprised at how easy it was to hang out with these people. She had this idea that reporters were supposed to be constantly moving, as they had back in Ohio. No one had time for lunch there.
But she supposed a weekly paper was bound to be different and if there was a more relaxed atmosphere, she wondered why she felt herself missing the all-consuming pressure of a daily deadline.
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Quinn asked.
“What?” Kate said, startled out of reverie.
“Working here,” he replied, and smiled at her.
“You read my mind,” she said, and really looked at Quinn.
In jeans and a red button-down shirt, he appeared casual and comfortable, but she felt some vibe coming off him. He seemed…nervous. Like a guy on his first date or something. It never occurred to her that she might have had something to do with that.
“No, I just know how it goes,” he said. “When I came back here after working on the Hill…”
“You worked on Capitol Hill?” she asked.
“Yeah, for Congressional Quarterly,” he said.
“Nice,” Kate replied.
“I suppose,” Quinn said. “But when I got back here, it was kind of crazy. I had gone from a constant deadline to a paper that just seemed to take its time.”
“Hey, some of us enjoy our relaxation time,” Bill chimed in.
“Too much from the look of it,” Janus said, and patted Bill’s belly. Bill brushed Janus’ hand away with a look of bemused irritation.
Quinn barely acknowledged them.
“Anyway, it was a switch,” he said.
“I’ll bet,” Kate said, and tried again to size Quinn up. She had this nagging feeling that she knew him from somewhere and the more he talked, the more difficult it was to shake it. But she couldn’t place him to save her life.
“So Laurence said something about you coming from a daily paper and I thought I could relate,” Quinn said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”
“If you worked for a daily, why did you come down here?” Quinn asked.
That, my friend, is the million-dollar question, Kate thought. She was damned if she knew. Instead of saying that, however, she just smiled.
“I needed a change of scenery,” she said.
“So you came to Loudoun?” Janus asked. “Boy, did you take the wrong train to Clarksville.”
“You don’t like it here?” she asked him.
“Well, I do, yeah,” Janus said. “But I’m a loon, so I don’t think that tells you much. I guess I got my mates here and they pay me to take lovely photos. But I don’t know what anyone else sees in it.”
“You should be in tourism, Janus,” Bill said.
“I just mean it’s a pretty boring place,” he said.
“That wasn’t the impression I had,” Kate said.
“Oh, you just wait,” Janus said, picking up his turkey sandwich and biting into it. “Wait till you have lived here for six years. Then tell me how exciting it is.”
“It isn’t that bad,” Quinn said quickly.
“Then why did you move away, bucko?” Janus asked through a full mouth.
“I moved back, didn’t I?” Quinn replied.
“Why was that, anyway, Quinn?” Bill asked. “I always meant to ask.”
Quinn shot a dark look in Janus’ direction, who held up his hands in a ‘What did I do?’ gesture.
“Just didn’t like it there, I guess,” Quinn replied.
“I would have thought it would be exciting,” Kate said.
For a moment, she saw an odd look cross his face and then it was gone.
“Maybe it was too exciting,” he said, and appeared to want to leave it at that.
“Speaking of excitement,” Janus said, finishing off his sandwich even as Bill got up to get another. “I think you and I need to get going, right?”
Quinn looked at him blankly.
“Where?” he asked.
“I thought Buzz told you-we have to go see that coin-sorting place for the profile, right? Remember? I take the pretty photos and you write your boring article?”
“Oh damn,” Quinn said. “I forgot.”
He looked at his watch.
“We are supposed to be there in 10 minutes,” he said. “We’ll never make it.”
“You know, if you had just set your watch 3 minutes ahead, Quinn,” Janus started.
“Get stuffed,” Quinn said. “Let’s go.”
He looked apologetically at Kate.
“I’m sorry to run out on you, but duty calls,” he said. “We’ll see you back at base, right?”
“Sure,” she said.
“And sorry to leave you alone with Bill,” Janus said, watching as the portly photographer wandered back to the table with another sandwich. “Don’t let him get too fresh.”
“I won’t,” she smiled, and watched Quinn wave before they walked out the door.
As Bill sat down and began to munch on his sub, Kate let out a small sigh.
She wondered again just what she had she gotten herself into.
LH File: Letter #2
Dated: Oct. 5, 1994
Investigation Status: Closed
Contents: Classified
Dear Mr. Anderson,
I confess that I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t say angry-not yet anyway-but disappointed. When I chose you, it was with the expectation that you would make me famous. Instead, you appear to be cooperating with the police in covering me up. Since Ms. Verclamp’s death, I’ve seen two articles on her murder, not one of which has even hinted of my existence.
There is no good reason for this. It can’t be that you don’t believe I’m the killer. I gave you the precise location of her body and I’m told you made the call yourself to police after reading my first missive. So what’s the hold up? Did the police tell you that you would be interfering in an investigation? Did they say my letters would only panic the public? Nothing like a serial killer on the loose to get the blood circulating, right?
So you wrote two very drab pieces, the first on the death and the second a profile of the victim. Though the profile was touching-I note with pride you used my suggested color-the whole thing feels pedestrian. I wanted to make a big splash with my first kill and now everyone is probably assuming Ms. Verclamp had an angry boyfriend. They don’t even know I’m out here.
This makes me unhappy, Mr. Anderson, and I wish to warn you upfront that a second mistake of this nature will not be tolerated lightly. Consider this my second gift to you-I’m letting you off easy this time. I’m not threatening you, Mr. Anderson-I have no wish to see you harmed-but you must understand my position. I aim to make a name for myself, and see you as my partner. And right now, my partner isn’t pulling his weight.
Let’s hope things improve this time around. The next body is lying on the outskirts of Ida Lee Park, in the woods behind the tennis court. The police will identify him as Michael Weissman, a promising 16-year-old who attended LoudounHigh School. So that police can be sure I’m the killer, I’ll offer the following tidbits. He wasn’t killed where his body is now located-and he tried to fight his attacker. He failed, of course, but I give him credit for trying. I stabbed him in the lower abdomen and watched as he tried to crawl away. He bled to death eventually, but I have to admit it took longer than I expected.
I’ll leave you to find out more about his background. We didn’t have much time to talk. Did he have a girlfriend? What did he want to be when he grew up? How hard do you think his parents will take it? I’m tempted to give them a call myself-that would really give you something to write about: “Killer Taunts Dead Boy’s Family.”
But perhaps that can wait. Fear is a contagious thing, but sometimes it’s best to let it spread slowly. I trust that in this next article, you will mention me properly. Feel free to quote from my letters to you-they are on the record, as always.
Oh, and you might want to get a move on. It’s only Oct 5 ^th, and I have a lot more killing to do before the month is up. I’d prefer it if my victims knew who was gutting them, so I’m trying to keep things slow until the word gets out. Please don’t disappoint me again. I promise you that you will regret it.
Yours Sincerely,
Lord Halloween