way I could sit still or concentrate on anything. So I trotted back down the stairs, outside into what was becoming a gorgeous spring day, and pumped thirty-five cents into a newspaper machine and pulled out the early edition of the afternoon paper. I wondered if Rebecca’s murder had made the paper yet.
SIEGE CONTINUES the headline read. And below that: HOSTAGE DRAMA IN DAY THREE .
It was nearly eleven and I was getting peckish, so I bought a hot dog and a large Coke off a vendor’s wagon on Church Street, then parked myself on a bench in the little pedestrian mall across from the Church Street Center. The government employees, who were about all that was left in a central downtown that everyone else had fled for the ’burbs, filed out of buildings and headed off for their own lunches in a flurry of suits and dresses.
I scarfed down the dog and flapped open the newspaper. It was hard to imagine that the words blared across the front page had their origin barely a mile from where I sat. First Avenue was still closed from the Thermal Plant on up to where the road curved around and changed names. As I sat there reading I could hear the dim buzzing of the helicopters circling the area. General Hospital, I read, had been evacuated of all but the most seriously ill patients; the rest were sent to Meharry Medical Center, Vanderbilt, and Baptist Hospital. The obligatory urgent call for blood donations had been made. The mayor announced that for the time being, he was not going to ask the governor to activate the National Guard.
On page two of the first section, a long profile of Brother Woodrow Tyberious Hogg occupied all the space above the fold. I felt like I’d seen his picture a thousand times: the earnest eyes with droopy eyelids above a thickening set of cheeks and jowls, the head atop a thickening neck in white shirt and polyester tie.It was the same face that had been on the hundreds of religious stations that the cable companies were now required to carry—the tacky, sleazy appeals for money in God’s name pouring forth from mouths that blended together and all started to look alike after you’d surfed around the channels long enough on a sleepless night.
And in a box on the front page, near the bottom, with a jump to the last page, were the details of Rebecca Gibson’s murder. Police reported that neighbors heard the sound of a fight around four A.M ., glass breaking, screams, the thud of bodies slamming, or being slammed, against walls. Someone had phoned 911, and when police got there, Rebecca was already dead. She’d been beaten brutally, the kind of brutal that only a closed casket can hide.
Witnesses reported seeing a white, mid-Seventies Chevrolet four-door speeding away from the house.
I leaned back on the concrete-and-wood bench and let the sun beat down on my face. The noon whistle from the tobacco factory behind the State Capitol blared. Behind me, on Church Street, a bearded driver in a yellow taxi slammed on his brakes and laid on the horn to keep from hitting a street person who’d stepped off the sidewalk in a daze.
A white, four-door, fifteen-years-old-or-so Chevy, I thought. A white Chevy. I’d seen one before. Then it hit me.
Slim Gibson had a white Chevy.
I’d seen Slim Gibson’s white Chevy parked, double-parked, and triple-parked on Seventh Avenue in front of our offices so many times it was like a landmark. Once, I’d even given Slim a ride over to the Metro tow-in lot across the river to retrieve it after it’d been hooked. I never knew why Slim didn’t buy himself a slot in a parking lot somewhere.
One thing was for sure: the Chevy wasn’t parked out front today.
I entered the building this time without even bothering to check for Morris. I scooted up the stairs, turned left at the top of the landing, and fumbled for my key as I approached my office. The jangling of the keys must have been like an alarm. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I heard footsteps.
Just as I
SIEGE CONTINUES the headline read. And below that: HOSTAGE DRAMA IN DAY THREE .
It was nearly eleven and I was getting peckish, so I bought a hot dog and a large Coke off a vendor’s wagon on Church Street, then parked myself on a bench in the little pedestrian mall across from the Church Street Center. The government employees, who were about all that was left in a central downtown that everyone else had fled for the ’burbs, filed out of buildings and headed off for their own lunches in a flurry of suits and dresses.
I scarfed down the dog and flapped open the newspaper. It was hard to imagine that the words blared across the front page had their origin barely a mile from where I sat. First Avenue was still closed from the Thermal Plant on up to where the road curved around and changed names. As I sat there reading I could hear the dim buzzing of the helicopters circling the area. General Hospital, I read, had been evacuated of all but the most seriously ill patients; the rest were sent to Meharry Medical Center, Vanderbilt, and Baptist Hospital. The obligatory urgent call for blood donations had been made. The mayor announced that for the time being, he was not going to ask the governor to activate the National Guard.
On page two of the first section, a long profile of Brother Woodrow Tyberious Hogg occupied all the space above the fold. I felt like I’d seen his picture a thousand times: the earnest eyes with droopy eyelids above a thickening set of cheeks and jowls, the head atop a thickening neck in white shirt and polyester tie.It was the same face that had been on the hundreds of religious stations that the cable companies were now required to carry—the tacky, sleazy appeals for money in God’s name pouring forth from mouths that blended together and all started to look alike after you’d surfed around the channels long enough on a sleepless night.
And in a box on the front page, near the bottom, with a jump to the last page, were the details of Rebecca Gibson’s murder. Police reported that neighbors heard the sound of a fight around four A.M ., glass breaking, screams, the thud of bodies slamming, or being slammed, against walls. Someone had phoned 911, and when police got there, Rebecca was already dead. She’d been beaten brutally, the kind of brutal that only a closed casket can hide.
Witnesses reported seeing a white, mid-Seventies Chevrolet four-door speeding away from the house.
I leaned back on the concrete-and-wood bench and let the sun beat down on my face. The noon whistle from the tobacco factory behind the State Capitol blared. Behind me, on Church Street, a bearded driver in a yellow taxi slammed on his brakes and laid on the horn to keep from hitting a street person who’d stepped off the sidewalk in a daze.
A white, four-door, fifteen-years-old-or-so Chevy, I thought. A white Chevy. I’d seen one before. Then it hit me.
Slim Gibson had a white Chevy.
I’d seen Slim Gibson’s white Chevy parked, double-parked, and triple-parked on Seventh Avenue in front of our offices so many times it was like a landmark. Once, I’d even given Slim a ride over to the Metro tow-in lot across the river to retrieve it after it’d been hooked. I never knew why Slim didn’t buy himself a slot in a parking lot somewhere.
One thing was for sure: the Chevy wasn’t parked out front today.
I entered the building this time without even bothering to check for Morris. I scooted up the stairs, turned left at the top of the landing, and fumbled for my key as I approached my office. The jangling of the keys must have been like an alarm. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I heard footsteps.
Just as I
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