The door was open to the noise of preparation for a birthday party, hammering and hollering, swearing and sawing wood.
Outside on the deck, a man in coveralls folded his ladder, having finished the chore of nailing strings of lights around the roof of the tower room.
Inside, Addison Winston stood by the bed, looking down at the face of his unconscious wife. "It's amazing that she could sleep through that racket." Though he should not call it sleep, this drunken stupor. He turned to Isabelle. "Well, now you know why she's been so cheerful today." He got down on his knees to drag an empty bottle out from under the armoire. "Where is she getting it from?"
"The maid?"
He shook his head. "Hilda gives her one drink for breakfast and one for lunch. That girl knows better than to cross me."
The workman carried his ladder down the tower stairs, and Isabelle closed the door behind him. " Addison, it's long past time to put Mom in rehab."
Worst possible timing." The lawyer walked out onto the deck. In the yard below, the workmen were breaking for lunch. Ah, peace. He was no longer troubled by the cawing and flapping of birds. They had learned not to come near him.
Isabelle joined him at the rail. "Why did you marry my mother? Was it because she was so beautiful?"
"She's still beautiful," he said, insistent on this. "But no, that wasn't it. Back in your mother's college days, do you remember how she supported you?"
"I think she had lots of different jobs."
"Well, you were only four years old. Belle, she literally sang for your supper. Such brave songs-brave because your mother couldn't sing very well. And she didn't play that guitar worth a damn. The first time I ever saw her, I was a visiting lecturer at UCLA, She was standing barefoot on the grass, and you were curled up in a little ball, fast asleep in a patch of afternoon sun. Students were coming and going all around you.
"The young can be very savage, but they never ridiculed Sarah-even though she played all the wrong chords and sang every damn note off-key. A truly awful performance, but the students dropped their loose change into her open guitar case. They weren't pity donations-more like showing respect. Sarah was so daring, hanging herself out on public display-and she even knew that she didn't have one shred of talent. I emptied my wallet into her guitar case, and that was the first time we said hello."
Addison leaned over the rail and pointed down at a long silver vehicle as it parked by the paddock near the old stable. "Keep your eye on that one.
The driver opened a door at the rear of the narrow trailer and lowered a plank. Led by a rope halter, a silver stallion emerged, tossing his head and shying at every loud sound around him as his handler guided him into the paddock and released him.
"Remind you of anyone we used to know?"
"He looks a lot like old Nickel." Isabelle picked up the binoculars for a closer look. "Exactly like Nickel." Her old horse had died the year after her mother had packed her off to a boarding school in Europe.
More trucks arrived in the yard below to disgorge lumber, long tables and round ones, linens and folding chairs. The stallion ran round the paddock, mad to escape.
"It took me a long time to find a horse with that same odd coloring," he said. "Call it a reward because you stayed for more than half a day this time. Your mother won't need you for a while, but that poor beast down there could use some company."
The day he had bought her the first stallion, she had instantly fallen in love with the horse. And Addison had believed that ten-year-old Belle had finally come to love him, too-for a day.
When she had flown down the tower stairs, leaving him alone on the deck, Addison resumed his puzzle of Sarah's most recent stupor and her secret stash of booze. Where did she keep it? He had looked everywhere. And now he searched the lay of his land. The garage was far enough away that the start-up of automobiles would not disturb the lightest of sleepers. The expensive engines purred so softly in motion; they could covertly sail past the lodge and down the drive.
Perhaps he should not be looking for secret bottles but a secret set of car keys.
He turned back to the open door of the tower room and raised his eyes to the high shelf of journals-an excellent hiding place.
Isabelle entered the stable's tack room to find her old saddle waiting for her on a sawhorse. And the leather saddlebags were right where she had left them after her last time out with old Nickel. She filled both bags with her mother's journals. Once upon another summer, they had been packed with her own birder logs and lunches for treks along the forest paths.
Years ago, Oren Hobbs had hiked those same trails. Aided by one of her mother's telescopes, she had caught glimpses of him from the deck at the top of the house. And she had risked encounters with that beautiful boy-risky because sometimes wishes came true, and, a time or two, she had thought of running him down with her horse and pounding him into the ground.
Saddlebags slung over one shoulder and bridle in hand, she carried her saddle out to the paddock to make the acquaintance of the second Nickel. If birds would not come to her, horses had always liked her well enough, and this one trotted toward her with some urgency. The sight of the saddle must have given him hope that she would take him away from this place.
"I know just how you feel." She held out one flat palm to offer him the solace of a sugar lump grabbed from the kitchen. His breath on her hand was a warm memory of better days.
While Isabelle saddled the horse, intending to rescue them both for some quiet time in a calmer place, a yellow Rolls-Royce was heading toward her. Most visitors parked in the circular driveway at the front of the lodge. Ferris Monty had probably assumed that no one would be at home to him, and he was right. The car stopped by the paddock, and the driver waved to her. He stepped out, leaving the door hanging open, perchance to make a fast retreat. With all his money, she wondered why he did not buy a better hairpiece that would blend more gracefully with his thick gray eyebrows.
"Hi there." He hesitated at a distance, lifting off the balls of his feet, saying on tiptoe, "I was hoping to have a word with your mother."
Isabelle, having nowhere to hide, resented being cornered this way, but she recalled a lesson in journalism learned at Addison 's knee: Always toss a bone to the dogs of the Fourth Estate. If you make them work for their supper, they'll turn on you and eat you alive. And so, because her mother was too fragile to be chased down for an interview, Isabelle bestowed a smile on the worm-white little man. "Mom's kind of busy right now." She gestured toward workmen on ladders, nailing up lights to frame every window. "Its quite a production. Will I do?"
"Oh, yes." He rushed forward, grinning.
And she took one step back.
His cologne was repulsive, though she recognized the brand as a wildly expensive one. No doubt Monty had bought it for status only. Certainly he had never realized that personal body chemistry added something to the mix of every wearer. In his case, the blend of his natural odor worked an unfortunate effect: riding just below the signature scent was a faint smell of piss, as if he had recently wet himself.
The little man pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his blazer, and his eyes slowly narrowed with a catlike smile. Later in the day, she would remember him with restrained claws and faint purring.
"It's about the birthday ball," he said. "I was so looking forward to attending this year. Assuming I'm welcome. Your father was-"
"Of course you're welcome. Everyone in Coventry has an open invitation." She smiled, as if she had no idea that Monty was the only exception. Addison despised this man, and Isabelle's only joy in life was thwarting her father. "I'll tell the caterer to seat you in the ballroom, unless you'd rather have an outside table." She borrowed his notebook and scribbled a personal invitation that would get him past a gorilla doorman hired for the event.
"Oh, this is wonderful," he said, insanely pleased.
While answering his interview questions, she slowly steered him back to his car, hoping to see him off before her mother awoke to appear on the deck. "Sorry," she said in response to his last inquiry. "I don't remember the year Addison started building this place." She looked up, shading her eyes to see the high tower. "It seems like we've always lived in the castle."
The mangling of this famous line of American gothic was not wasted on Monty. His eyes flickered, and his face brightened as he committed her words to paper, maybe embellishing on innuendo to create something worse than the truth about her family life.
Fat chance.
As I recall," he said, "you left town a few days after Joshua Hobbs disappeared."
"Well, there was nothing odd about that." And now she thought of another lie. "It was time to go back to school. I had summer sessions that year." She neglected to mention that she had been sent farther away than her eastern boarding school. Her plane had landed in Paris, where she had learned to speak French and miss her mother.
"But you never came back." His pen described small circles above the page of his notebook, a subtle prompt.
"Oh, you mean for the summer. No, you're right. This is my first summer back in Coventry. In my college years, I did internships during school vacations, and I picked up my graduate degrees in London. That's where I work now. So my visits home were short ones, holidays mostly." And they had indeed been short stays, years apart and never lasting for an entire day.
Isabelle and Ferris Monty smiled at each other, and there was no protest or insinuation. They had mutually and silently agreed that he would have to make do with this stew of truth and lies.
"Oh, one more thing." He held up his index finger, as if to test the wind. "Shortly after you left, your mother also went away for a while."
And that would have been the time, recently recounted by Addison, when her mother had been committed to a hospital for wealthy people with eccentricities, patients who eccentrically acquired the angry red tattoos of razor scars on their wrists. On another occasion, her mother had downed sleeping pills like handfuls of candy.
Bet you can't eat just one, Mom.
"My parents used to take separate vacations," said Isabelle. And so they had. Her father had gone off to the circus of his high-profile law practice down in LA, and her mother had gone insane.
The red cedar house in the woods had the steeply pitched roof and filigree of a Swiss chalet. Oren Hobbs was sitting on the doorstep when Ferris Monty came home.
The little man seemed resigned to his fate. His feet were dragging as he left his Rolls-Royce and crossed the yard to face his visitor. Without the exchange of a single word, the two of them entered the house.
The dust and debris of the large front room was the giveaway of a long malaise, but Oren could chart the past few days of recovery by inroads made in the mess and by the garbage bags lined up at the door. These signs of a brighter mood would not square with the anxiety of a murderer whose crime had recently come to light with the bones. He sank down in an armchair, and Ferris Monty stood before him, eyes cast downward, like an aged schoolboy awaiting punishment.
"I took a long look at those three pictures of you in the bank."
"I guessed as much." Monty slowly raised his eyes. "But tell me, what did you think of the other triptych?" His smile was strained. "The photographs in the post office?"
Oren's voice was calm. His eyes were cold. "I noticed the way you were looking at my brother when he took those shots-the ones in the bank."
"But the postmaster's pictures are miles more interesting. They give up a secret relationship. Your brother was very good at capturing secrets."
Oren nodded. "There's a word for what you are."
"A phebophile," said Monty. "One who preys on adolescent boys. That's the word you want. It doesn't describe me. I'm hardly a virgin, but I can assure you that all of my lovers have been consenting adults. I never touched that boy. I'd never set myself up for that kind of rejection."
Monty removed his toupee to reveal sparse strands of gray on a wrinkled scalp. He seemed even less normal without the fake hair-more insectile. The sheriff had correctly likened him to bug larvae.
The little man looked down at the black hairpiece in his hands. "A beautiful boy like that would run from the likes of me." His eyes wandered to Oren's boots. "And your brother could run very fast. He needed speed… considering what he was doing, shadowing people, following them around for hours-days. I think that's why he always wore sneakers. He imitated everything else about you, Mr. Hobbs-your walk, the way you combed your hair, clothes-everything but your cowboy boots."
"You just admitted to stalking my brother."
"I always kept my distance." Monty backed away as Oren rose from the chair. "I can help you, Mr. Hobbs." He tripped on one of his garbage bags and fell backward to land on his tailbone. "Today I led you into the post office." There was a trace of whimper in his voice. "I all but led you there by the hand and pointed out the pictures on the wall. I know you've seen them a hundred times… but today you actually studied them, didn't you?"
Oren moved toward him.
By hands and feet, Monty scuttled backward, eyes wide and frightened as he dragged his rump across the rug, and backed up to the wall. "You saw the pictures of Swahn secretly passing a letter to the town lunatic." His eyes were begging now, hands rising to ward off anticipated violence.
Seconds ticked by-half a minute.
Oren was motionless, arms at his sides. He knew how to wait.
Monty slowly lowered his hands. "You're disgusted by the idea that I could love Joshua. But I think you'll take my help. I know something about Swahn's letter."
Sarah Winston hardly paid attention to her husband. Addison had become accustomed to her hundred-mile stare, and so it raised no interest in him when her gaze went over his head to the high bookshelf that ran around the wall of the tower room.
A group of birder logs was missing.
Which ones?
Could Addison have taken them? No, her husband had nothing but contempt for this side of her life. Isabelle must have borrowed those Bird-land chronicles.
If he should look up and see that empty space on the shelf, he might wonder where the books had gone; and then he might take an interest and open the others. What then? Would he commit her to another hospital?
He was talking in the lecture mode that followed her every binge. She nodded absently, lowering her gaze to meet his eyes. And now husband and wife were connected. She could still hold him this way. At core, Addison was a romantic man, blind to the changes of her aging and alcohol-
| ism. His smile was a constant thing, even in moments of anger, but she knew all of the subtle nuances.
She wished he would stop it, drop it-yell if he liked-but stop smiling.
Isabelle and Nickel Number Two had followed a well-worn trail past Evelyn Straub's old cabin. After a while, it should have led her to a landmark in one of her mother's journals, but she had been lulled by the slow rhythm of the horse and the warmth of the summer sun. Intoxicated by lush green forest and birdsong, trills that ran up and downhill-distracted by the novelty of happiness-she had overshot the clearing.
She found another trail leading out of the woods and onto the fire road. Following a memory, she counted sharp twists and wide curves, and then she saw the turnout up ahead, the place where her mother had always left the car. As the horse clopped toward that old parking space, Isabelle passed another turnout closer to a favorite place in the forest, and there stood an empty van. In the dirt, there were signs of other vehicles recently stopping here.
She dismounted and guided the horse through the trees where there was no clear path. High in the branches, warbling songsters were drowned out by a magpie's whining, quizzical song.
Maag? Aag-aag?
And then came a rapid fire of notes. Wah-wah-wah-wah?
Sections of yellow tape were visible between tree trunks. And now she heard human voices. Drawing closer, Isabelle could see that the tape cordoned off an opening in the ground. Two teenagers, wearing T-shirts with university logos, knelt beside the hole, sifting dirt through screens. A third student used a soft brush to dust away the dirt from an object in her hand.
A bone?
So this was the grave of Josh Hobbs and a nameless stranger-here in the place her mother loved best among the million acres of forestland.
Isabelle tightened her hold on the reins, and the horse shied in sympathetic anxiety.
Oren stared at the photographs on the wall of Ferris Monty's study. He stood close behind the gossip columnist, who was scrolling through a file on his computer.
"You see?" Monty ran one finger down a list on the screen and paused at mentions of individual students. "They were all at UCLA that same year. Here's William Swahn-something of a prodigy, barely fourteen when he got his first college degree. Here's the librarian. She was in her twenties then. And Sarah Winston was twenty-four." One finger tapped the screen on this line. "This is her maiden name."
"That's it? You've got nothing on Ad Winston." Oren's eyes traveled back to the damning pictures on the wall.
Ferris Monty rose from his chair and removed these prints of the bank photographs to stack them facedown on his desk. "Concentrate on the photos at the post office. Before William Swahn was mutilated, I believe he had a relationship with Sarah Winston."
"When they were at UCLA? He was a little boy." Oren folded his arms and watched Monty's frustration grow with this little piece of bait. "I don't see Mrs. Winston as a pedophile."
"Not then." Monty paused to purse his lips and perhaps to censor his next words. "Later. When the child grew up-that's when they had the affair."
"The alleged affair," said Oren. Apparently Swahn's nondisclosure agreement had teeth and staying power. Ferris Monty's research had never turned up a rumor that the man was gay.
"All right," said Monty. "It's speculation. But what if it's true? What if that relationship continued after Swahn moved to Coventry? What if Addison found out about Mavis passing Swahn's love letters to his wife? I know a woman's bones were found with Joshua. Suppose Addison meant to kill Sarah… and he murdered a stranger by mistake? And let's say your brother was following her that-"
"You think any man could mistake a stranger for his own wife?"
"He could've hired one of his criminal clients to kill her-someone who didn't know her." Monty was like a dog vainly watching Oren's face for signs of approval.
Civilians and their damn theories, their television ideas of murder. First Millard Straub was hiring an assassin to murder Evelyn, and now Ad Winston was the one voted most likely to put out a contract on his wife.
"I know the dead woman was hit from behind." Monty waited for payback on this offering. Getting none, he made another. "And she's been identified. That's how I know she had light blond hair… like Sarah Winston's. I have a very reliable source."
"Someone in the sheriff's office? Maybe a deputy?"
Monty puffed out his chest in a small show of courage. "I would never give up a source."
"You bought your information from Dave Hardy." Oren knew he was right. Ferris Monty's eyes popped a bit too wide; he probably knew the penalty for bribing an officer of the law, and he would not fare well in prison. This little man was having a very bad day.
After a short canter down the fire road, Isabelle found an old picnic spot, a favored stop on the solitary horseback rides of childhood. She tethered Nickel to a tree and spread a blanket on the ground. Seven birder logs were laid out in chronological order. Upon opening the first one, she labored over the code of pictures and birdcalls. At the time of this entry, her mother was still happy to be alive.
The insanity began later, after Isabelle had worked her way through the Pages of winter and spring. A day in early June had begun with a delicate bird that had no song. The blue-eyed lark lay on the ground, broken wings spread at odd angles. Its eyes were closed.
In death?
There was blood on the young bird's face just below one eye. The sun was shining.
Isabelle's mind turned toward the trio of student grave diggers in her mother's favorite clearing. The year on the book spine was right, and the page was dated to that fatal Saturday. How could the lark be anyone but Josh Hobbs?
What could her mother know of Josh's death on that afternoon? The town had not gone looking for the boy before nightfall. And what of the blood? This journal entry had been written two decades before the disappearance had been called an act of violence.
Nowhere on this page or the next was there any sign of the stranger buried with Josh. The omission of a second victim argued for her mother's innocence. Isabelle rationalized the journal entry as a story come by secondhand.
On all of the following pages, Coventry was grotesquely altered. It was always night, a nightmare town of birds with animal claws instead of talons. Their beaks were filled with long teeth.
And her mother had lost her mind.
It might be best to replace the birder logs on the tower bookshelf, to hide them there in plain sight. But what if the investigation should lead to an interrogation of her fragile mother and a search of the house?
She could destroy these books, but that might also damn her mother in the cover-up of a crime. At some later date, this evidence might be needed to prove innocence-or madness. Isabelle's mind continued to work along criminal lines as she decided to hide the journals in the care of an honest man.
Taking a shortcut through the woods, Oren neatly sidestepped a recent deposit of horseshit. And so it was natural to be thinking of Isabelle Winston, the only one who had ever used the hiking trails as bridle paths. In summers past, he and Josh had sometimes encountered her on horseback. The girl had always waved hello to his brother. Oren, of course, had been beneath her notice.
A path forked off the trail and led him out to the fire road. He was headed downhill and homeward when he heard the sound of a horse's hooves. Oren was hopeful as he turned around. And there she was.
He saw her red hair on a distant rise-and the same silver horse.
Impossible.
That stallion had been old when the rider was a teenager.
Well, it was a day for ghosts, human or equine. And it was long past time to have a few words with Isabelle Winston. He stood in the middle of the dirt road and waved her down as she came trotting toward him, not slowing any, but riding faster, cantering, then galloping, galloping.
That horse was huge.
Oh, shit!
He dove into the woods, lost his footing in a tangle of deadwood and landed hard, all the wind knocked out of his chest as horse and rider sped by him. A near miss. And the lady never looked back.
Oren lay there for a while, idly ruminating. Isabelle was definitely escalating the violence. How would she top this?
He picked himself up and brushed the leaves and dirt from his clothes. It was a slow walk home. There was much to think about. His mind wandered back to a valentine from his childhood, the one mailed to him in an envelope with an eastern postmark but no return address and no signature. As a twelve-year-old boy, he had opened that heart-shaped card to read the words I hate you! writ large and bold. It had smelled of horse. He had kept it for years.
More than an hour had passed before he reached home. At the end of the driveway, it was a surprise to see the silver stallion tied by reins to a tree in the yard. Isabelle Winston pushed the screen door open. Eyes fixed on her horse, she failed to see the man with the foolish grin on his face, standing below her on the porch steps. She passed him by. After untying the horse's reins, she swung up into the saddle in one graceful motion and rode away across the meadow.
When Oren entered the house, Hannah was standing over a pair of saddlebags on the living room carpet. She crooked one finger, and he followed her down the hall to the kitchen, where the judge was seated at the table. Three cups had been laid out and emptied. So Isabelle had stayed long enough for coffee.
Small leather-bound books were piled at the center of the tablecloth. The judge held one open and offered his son a glimpse of drawings and lines of writing. "These are Sarah Winston's birder logs. Her daughter thought we should keep them for a while. I don't think the girl has much faith in Cable Babitt."
"That's not exactly what Belle said." Hannah set out a clean cup for Oren. "She said Cable's a fool, and he shouldn't get near these books."
"In any case," said the judge, "I gave her my word that her mother's journals would be handled with care and in confidence." His fixed stare made it clear that his son was also bound by this oral contract.
Hannah turned her attention to a fresh pot of coffee percolating on the stove. "Those journals were written around the time Josh went missing. Belle Winston wants you to know that this is all you get from her. And there's no point in trying to question her mother. If you show up at the lodge, Belle won't even open the door. She'll just shoot you right through the wood-right where you stand."
The judge lowered his reading glasses, something he did in serious moments, though he was smiling. "The girl was very clear about that, Oren. She will shoot you."
"I believe it. She tried to run me down with her horse."
Hannah poured coffee into his cup. "I wish you two would get married and take the fight indoors."
Oren opened one of the small books and read the neat script of Sarah Winston's notes on the songs and movements of-a dodo with a pipe? He looked up at his father to silently ask, What?
Judge Hobbs adjusted his bifocals, the better to study this drawing. "I believe that's Cable. He gave up his pipe a few years ago." The old man looked down to resume his perusal of the journal in his hands, and he idly turned the pages. "Belle Winston is an ornithologist, and she thinks there's something here." He held up the open book to show his son a graceful pink heron with long slender limbs of human form. "If I had to guess, I'd say this is Evelyn Straub in her prime. Longest legs in town." He pointed to the companion page filled with handwriting. "Sarah's notes are less clear. There's lots of shorthand for one thing and another, terms I've never heard before. It might make more sense to another bird-watcher."
"We can go see Mavis Hardy at the library," said Hannah.
"Nobody in Coventry goes to the-"
"Oren." The judge held up one finger as a warning. "Don't."
Hannah nodded in agreement as she opened one of the journals. "I hate it when people say that, even if it's true." She looked up at Oren. "So you'll talk to Mavis? She used to go birding all the time back in the days when she was still on the thin side."
"You mean before she started planning to murder her husband?"
Hannah closed the book and slammed it on the table. "Mavis can help you. Nobody in this county knows more about birds than she does. And, incidentally, that poor woman did not do murder."
"What? She spent a long time getting ready for it." Oren remembered a summer day when he and Josh had come upon Mrs. Hardy working out with weights in the library, building muscles, adding bulk. And the following summer, she had been arrested on a charge of murder. "Name one thing on her side."
"Mavis looked out for her son," said Hannah.
Oren folded his arms, telegraphing disbelief. "She made Dave's life a living hell. She castrated that kid all over town."
She probably saved his life." Hannah's voice was getting testy.
Judge Hobbs, the peacemaker, lightly touched his son's arm. "Remember when Dave broke his leg? You were in the third grade that year. Well, that didn't happen falling off a bike. It wasn't enough fun beating his wife. Colin Hardy had to go after that little boy."
Oren had better recall of a later event, the day the coroner carried the corpse of Dave's father out of the house. The librarian's hands were raw, her face swollen and her eyes triumphant. "She spent a year planning it. That makes it a premeditated murder."
"Says who!" Hannah's tone did not imply a question. As punctuation, she banged one fist on the table, and a spoon bounced to the floor. "Half the town-the half that's male-they'll never forgive her. Mavis scared them that day. That was her real crime. Men" she said, using this word to sum up the ills of the world. "Mavis didn't sneak up on that bastard while he was sleeping, did she? No, she did not. Her husband was fully dressed for work. And I don't want to hear the lie that Colin Hardy was falling-down drunk and helpless. It was eight o'clock in the damn morning. So don't you call it murder. That woman went into a knockdown fight with a man-a fair fight. She matched him pound for pound-and with her bare fists, she beat him to death."
The housekeeper rose from the table and turned her back on him to fuss with a pot on the stove. Her voice dropped into the guttural range of Pay-attention-or-else. "You will show respect when you visit the library- no matter what Mavis does or what she says. She's been fighting this town all alone for so long, she just doesn't know how to stop. I don't care if Mavis beats the crap out of you, Oren. You will be a gentleman."
After Hannah had said her piece, the silence was loaded. There was nowhere to fit in a contradiction, and only a fool would try. The judge would not meet his eyes. Oren was on his own. This canny little woman had reached deep inside him, made certain adjustments to his spine and caused him to sit up a bit straighten.
The workday was done, and Dave Hardy had changed into his T-shirt and jeans. He was straddling a barstool in Coventry, the first watering hole of his evening. The other patrons were watching the evening news with the sound turned off, as usual. Odd old ducks.
None of them called for the volume to be turned on, not even when they recognized the limping figure of a cripple pursued by screaming reporters. The regulars of the Coventry Pub sat in silence, drunkenly, blissfully unaware of worse things being done to William Swahn-what the pictures alone could not tell them.
This was the same film the deputy had seen earlier in the day at another bar, and he was the only one in this room who knew the words that went with the broadcast. The phrase-a person of interest-had been repeated three times, though Sally Polk had only said it once. And, by snatches of film, Swahn was made to limp across that parking lot with each repetition.
In the earlier version of this news broadcast, it had been clear that the CBI agent had waded into the fray to draw the reporters away from their victim, William Swahn. In this new job of film editing, she seemed to be orchestrating the whole event, even stirring up the crowd to chase down the man with the cane.
It was a clear case of slander against both of these people, but Dave Hardy did not care. He had no sympathy for Swahn, and he hated that Polk woman.
A million other viewers could only rely on the pack of lies their eyes were telling them.