A Confidential Source Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. My thoughts were on my stomach as I tried
     to choose a salad for dinner. Almost instantly, the sound of a gun blast blew away all those mundane considerations.
    The hairline just underneath my temples throbbed with pain. I tried to rub the ache away and felt a trickle of sweat. Get
     it together, Hallie, I told myself, glancing at the clock. I had only forty-five minutes to write this story. I had to stay
     focused if I was going to make deadline.
    I forced myself to reread my paragraph as an editor might.
Almost instantly,
what did that mean? I erased
almost,
began the next sentence, and halted. Who cared whether it was instantly or almost instantly; Barry was dead. An image flashed
     in my head: his eyes, frozen in alarm. The handgun on the floor. My fingers retracted from the keyboard, my hands balled into
     fists.
    Another picture, this time: the big man in the khaki parka. The ugly look on his face when I’d apologized for scaring him.
     He would have killed me if I’d been at the cash register. He’d want to kill me even more if he read my byline, realized I’d
     been there. That I was the one who had called the police.
    The shiver again. This time from lower in my spine. I wondered about the guy in the old navy jacket and gray cap, the hairy
     guy who’d never turned around. I wasn’t entirely sure the two had even been together. And the level of sound in the store
     made me think the guy in the khaki parka had been alone. Maybe I should leave out the part about calling the police, about
     telling them about the broken left taillight and dented fender. Maybe I shouldn’t write this goddamn story at all.
    I told myself to calm down. I had a job to do. I couldn’t let my brain spin in this direction, couldn’t leave out details
     that would make this a better story. This was my chance. My chance to prove I still had the skills to be a real reporter.
     I was
not
going to let fear of some small-time crook stop me from writing a front-page story.
    “I’m going to need that in about twenty-five minutes,” Dorothy said.
    She was standing over me again. The lights had been shut off in the back of the room. The copy editor’s desk was now empty.
     Besides Dorothy and myself, only one news editor and one other reporter remained.
    “Anything from police on an arrest?” I asked.
    “Not yet.”
    What had I thought? That all this would be wrapped up neatly for me? That with all the criminals in Providence, the police
     would be able to reach out and pluck this one from the streets?
    Dorothy walked away and I returned to my keyboard, forcing myself to describe the difficulty of trying to make out the getaway
     car through the rain. The shock of finding Barry on the floor. I could feel my adrenaline surge as I wrote about my desperate
     attempts to revive him, and then the dead feeling in my heart, the futility as I waited helplessly for the police to arrive.
    I was exhausted when I finally finished. I had time to reread it only once and check for spelling mistakes before I had to
     hit the button that sent the copy to the Desk. Afterward, I walked over to Dorothy to tell her it was done.
    Her eyes scanned the copy. She made a few clicks on the keyboard and looked up. Carolyn was wrong about her: Beneath the professional
     steeliness was real kindness. “You want to wait around and go for a drink when I’m done? Talk about it?”
    “Thanks,” I said, but it was already late. Walter would be showing up at my apartment in another hour or so—and he was probably
     the best person I could talk to at a time like this. “I’ll take a rain check.”
    I turned and started away from her. But I suddenly thought of what would happen tomorrow after Walter went back to Boston.
     I’d drive myself crazy, hanging around my apartment, nothing to do but wait, hoping for an arrest. I turned back. “If it’s
     all right with you, I’d like to come in tomorrow to make a few calls to police.”
    Providence police. As a South