It has to be done; she has no choice. Dan Bell is too old and Brad Bell is too scared. He flat-out refused, even after Holly explained that what she planned to do in Pittsburgh couldn’t possibly put him at risk.
“You don’t know that,” Brad said. “For all you know, the thing’s telepathic.”
“I’ve been face to face with one,” Holly had replied. “If it was telepathic, Brad, I’d be dead and it would still be alive.”
“I’m not going,” Brad said. His lips were trembling. “My grampa needs me. He’s got a very bad heart. Don’t you have friends?”
She does, and one is a very good cop, but even if Ralph was in Oklahoma, would she risk him? He’s got a family. She doesn’t. As for Jerome… no. No way. The Pittsburgh part of her budding plan really shouldn’t be dangerous, but Jerome would want to be all in, and that would be dangerous. There’s Pete, but her partner has almost zero imagination. He’d do it, but treat the whole thing as a joke, and if there’s one thing Chet Ondowsky isn’t, it’s a joke.
Dan Bell might have taken the shape-shifter on when he was younger, but in those years he was content to just watch, fascinated, when it popped up from time to time, a Where’s Waldo of disaster. Feeling almost sorry for it, maybe. But now things have changed. Now it is no longer content to live on the aftermath of tragedy, gobbling grief and pain before the blood dries.
This time it brought the carnage, and if it gets away with it once, it will do it again. Next time the death toll may be much higher, and Holly will not allow that.
She opens her laptop on the room’s chintzy excuse for a desk and finds the email from Brad Bell she was expecting.
Attached is what you requested. Please use the materials wisely, and please keep us out of it. We have done what we can.
Well, Holly thinks, not quite. She downloads the attachment and then calls Dan Bell’s phone. She expects Brad to answer again, but it’s the old man, sounding relatively rejuvenated. There’s nothing like a nap to do that; Holly takes one whenever she can, but these days the opportunity doesn’t come around as often as she’d like.
“Dan, it’s Holly. Can I ask you one more question?”
“Shoot.”
“How does he move from job to job without being discovered? This is the age of social media. I don’t understand how that works.”
For a few seconds there’s only the sound of his heavy, oxygen-assisted breathing. Then he says, “We’ve talked about that, Brad and I. We have some ideas. He… it… wait, Brad wants the damn phone.”
There’s a smatter of talk she can’t pick up, but Holly gets the gist: the old guy doesn’t like being co-opted. Then Brad is on. “You want to know how he keeps getting jobs on TV?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a good question. Really good. We can’t be sure, but we think he jimmies his way in.”
“Jimmies?”
“It’s a broadcast term. Jimmying is how radio personalities and TV reporters move up in big markets. In those places there’s always at least one local TV station. Small. Unaffiliated. Pays peanuts. They mostly do community affairs. Everything from opening a new bridge to charity drives to city council meetings. This guy gets on the air there, does a few months, then applies at one of the big stations, using audition tapes from the little local station. Anybody seeing those tapes would get right away that he’s good at the job. A pro.” Brad gives a short laugh. “He’d have to be, wouldn’t he? He’s been doing it for at least sixty damn years. Practice makes perf—”
The old man interrupts with something. Brad says he’ll tell her, but that isn’t good enough for Holly. She’s suddenly impatient with both of them. It’s been a long day.
“Brad, put the phone on speaker.”
“Huh? Oh, okay, good idea.”
“I think he was doing it on radio, too!” Dan bawls. It’s as if he thinks they’re communicating with tin cans on a waxed string. Holly winces and holds the phone away from her ear.
“Grampa, you don’t have to talk so loud.”
Dan lowers his voice, but only slightly. “On the radio, Holly! Even before there was TV! And before there was radio, he might have been covering bloodshed for the newspapers! God knows how long he—it—has been alive.”
“Also,” Brad says, “he must have a rolling file of references. Probably the aspect you call George writes