of an animal in a slaughterhouse.
Unable to look away, Swanson stepped back and swallowed bile. What am I doing here? Am I out of my mind? I should've called the police. He passed a trembling hand over a damp forehead. No. If I called the police, everything would come out. I'd be ruined. I'd go to jail. Dr. Mui's right. I bury the body, and no one has to know anything. Over the course of a long career, he'd never hesitated to do what had to be done, and he wasn't about to start now.
Teeth clenched, he pulled the body out of the trunk. He tried to ignore the way it hit the ground, tried not to think of it as something that had once been alive. He dragged it about twenty feet, went back for the shovel, then began to dig.
"This is nuts. This is absolutely fucking nuts."
"Watch your language, Brent. And shut up, he'll hear you."
"Who?"
Patricia Chou grabbed her cameraman's arm and steadied him as he stumbled over a rut, the weight of the camera and light together throwing him off bal?ance. "Ronald Swanson, that's who."
"You don't know he was in that car we were following."
"I do."
"Based on a phone call at three in the morning?"
"That's right."
"That's it?"
"That and finely honed instincts for a story. Now, shut up!"
They moved as quietly as possible as they ap?proached the clearing. Eyes having grown accustomed to the dark during the walk up the logging road, nei?ther had any trouble separating the parked car from the surrounding shadows.
Head cocked at the rhythmic sounds from up ahead, the reporter raised a hand and, breathing a little heav?ily, Brent obediently stopped.
Digging? she mouthed silently.
He shrugged and lifted the camera up onto his shoulder.
She guided him around the car and pointed him toward the man-shaped shadow. This is it, she told herself as she stepped forward and gave the signal.
Ronald Swanson, already knee-deep in the soft earth, stared up at her like an animal caught on the road-disaster bearing down and unable to get out of the way. The body stretched out on the ground beside him, the unmistakably dead body, was more than she could have hoped for. Her own eyes squinted nearly shut from the brilliant beam of light from the top of Brent's camera, Patricia Chou thumbed her micro?phone on and thrust it forward. "Anything to say to our viewers, Mr. Swanson?"
His mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but no sound came out. His eyes widened, pupils con?tracted to invisibility. He dropped the shovel, clutched at his chest, and collapsed forward onto his face in the dirt, just missing the corpse.
"Mr. Swanson?" The microphone still on, she knelt beside him and reached under his ear for a pulse. He was alive, but it didn't feel good. Scowling, she reached into her belt pouch for her cell phone. "That goddamned son of a bitch has had a heart attack or something before I got a quote."
"Do I keep shooting?" Brent's voice came out of the darkness on the other side of the light.
"No. Save the batteries." Grinning triumphantly, she called 911. "We'll likely get some good stuff when the police arrive."
Chapter Fourteen
TONY snatched up the phone on the first ring. "Henry?"
"You were waiting?"
"Yeah, well, I set my alarm for half an hour before sunrise, so if you called, I could answer right away." He yawned and sat up against the pillow. "Did you find Celluci?"
"Detective Celluci is back, safe and sound under Vicki's protection, and she's insisted he spend the day in bed recovering."
"Recovering from what?"
"Loss of blood for the most part."
"Say what?"
"Apparently he made a few involuntary donations."
Tony winced. "Man, I bet Victory's pissed."
"No bet. What's more, we have Swanson."
"All right! So, no more ghosts?"
"God willing. Uh, Tony... "
The embarrassment in Henry's voice gave Tony a pretty good idea of what was coming. For all that the bastard son of Henry VIII had embraced the twentieth century, there were some things he just couldn't get the hang of.
"... I was wondering if you might drop by and set the VCR to record the day's news broadcasts."
"I've shown you how to do it a hundred times."
"I know."
Biting back another yawn, Tony wished he'd thought to provide himself with a thermos of coffee. "Jeez, Henry, what're you going to do when I'm gone?" Gone. That last word seemed to echo in the silence that