If Angels Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

lifted
it, directing them to a police an in the distance where reporters were
clustered around an officer. On the way there, Reed nudged Wong. Across the
street, a pony-tailed woman in her thirties, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt,
stepped out of Roman’s Tub & Shower Boutique. An ID card was clipped to her
waist, and she was instructing an officer, pointing somewhere, as they hurried
away together.
    “Let’s go in there,” Reed said.
    “What for?”
    “A hunch.”
    Bells jingled as they entered. Roman’s smelled of jasmine and had an
exquisite Florentine storefront displaying overpriced towels. A slim, tanned
man with bleached hair was sitting at a small table in one corner of the store
with a distraught-looking man. The thin man rose instantly, approaching Reed
and Wong.
    “I’m sorry, we are closed,” he said, arms shooing them away.
    “Door’s open and there’s no sign,” Reed said. He noticed a woman at
the rear of the store on a telephone. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt,
with a laminated ID clipped to her waist. Reed moved quickly. Approaching the
distraught man at the table. His widened eyes were horror-stricken, his short brown
hair messed. He had a long, bloody scrape on one cheek. His clothes were
streaked with black greasy smudges. He was staring at nothing.
    “Please, you’ll have to leave,” the thin man said.
    “We’re here to speak to Mr. Nathan Becker.”
    Bewildered, the distraught man said, “I am Nathan Becker.”
    The woman on the phone materialized, and pegging Reed and Wong for
press, inserted herself between them and Becker.
    According to her tag, Kim Potter was a volunteer with a victim’s
crisis group. “Leave now. This man isn’t giving any press interviews.”
    Wong looked at Reed. They didn’t move. Reed looked around Potter.
    “Is this true, Mr. Becker? Does this woman speak for you?”
    Becker was silent.
    “Please leave now!” Potter raised her voice.
    “Mr. Becker, we’re with The San Francisco Star . Do you wish
to tell us what happened? I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I will
respect your answer.”
    Nathan Becker rubbed his hand over his face, tears streaming down
his cheeks. “We have to find him. We have to find Danny. Maggie will be
destroyed. He’s all we have.”
    “Yes. What happened?” Reed stepped closer.
    “Go get Inspector Turgeon,” Potter ordered the clerk. She glared at
Reed, angrily punching numbers into the store phone, shouting into it about “a
press problem.”
    Reed would have to hurry.
    Trapped alone in his nightmare, Becker began.
    “They won’t let me search. It was a man, I saw him for less than a
second. Bearded, white, about six feet, medium build, sandy hair, wearing a
cap. I stopped the train, I ran, it was too late, it happened so fast. I only
looked away for a few seconds. He wandered to one end of the car and ... -- ...
damn it! Why wasn’t I watching him?”
    Reed took notes, softly asking questions. Becker was clutching a
wallet-size snapshot of himself with Danny on his shoulders, laughing as
Danny’s mom looked up adoringly. The radiant, white, upper-middle-class,
professional family. Police were going to duplicate the photo. Wong took shots
of it, and of Becker holding it.
    “Why would somebody want to take Danny, Mr. Becker?” Reed asked.
    Becker didn’t know. His face disappeared into his hands. Wong’s
camera clicked and the store’s entrance bells pealed.
    “That’s enough!”
    It was the pony-tailed woman who left earlier. Flanked by two
uniformed officers, she faced Reed.
    “This interview is over,” she said. The uniforms pulled Reed and
Wong aside and she copied their names into her leather-bound notebook. She had
hard brown eyes. “Tom Reed,” she said. “Why am I not surprised? Pull this stunt
again and you’ll be charged.”
    “Ever hear of the constitution?” Reed shot back. Glimpsing her waist
and id. He couldn’t get her name without being rude.
    Ignoring Reed,