Beyond Midnight (77 page)

"You're attracted to him because he's hurt," Meg said flatly. "He can't chase after you the way the rest of them do — not yet, anyway."

"Not true. I'm attracted to him because of the look in his eyes, so sad and tired and fed up with the world. And because — don't you laugh — because he was on the cover of
Newsweek
. I mean, don't you think that's fate? What are the odds that a four-year-old magazine would be lying around in my room with him on the cover?"

"What are the odds that you've actually read the article inside?" Meg said, grabbing her sister by the ankle and half puffing her off the bed.

"I scanned it. There's not much about him; just an angry quote of his about children doing violence to children. Don't you think he's good-looking?"

Meg scowled at a new water ring on the mahogany dresser. "Yeah, I guess," she said, distressed by the ugly stain.

"I'll just go see if he needs anything," Allie said, bounding up from the bed.

Meg held on to her sister's shirt. "Not until you're done here. Why do you always make me play the evil stepsister?"

"Because," said Allie, wriggling out of her grasp with a grin, "you were born to the role."

Buy
Embers

Antoinette Stockenberg

RITA award winner.

A showdown between a U.S. Senator (with a house on
Martha's Vineyard
) who believes in ghosts and a reporter who doesn't.
 
What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter 1

Emily Bowditch threw down her notes in disgust.

"Can you believe this?  The
United States
is gazillions of dollars in debt, and Senator Arthur Lee Alden III wants funding for intergalactic communication.  Can you
believe
this?"

No one in the newsroom paid any attention to her; everyone was on deadline.  Emily turned her monitor on and began setting up a new file.

"Not to worry, E.T.," she muttered to no one in particular.  "If the senator gets his funding, pretty soon you
will
be able to phone home." 

The minutes ticked by.  Her hands flew over the keyboard; her muttering became more indignant.  "Of all the hopeless wastes of taxpayers' money ... of all the liberal spendthrifts ... of all the misdirected ... serendipitous ...  irrational ... downright
weird ...."

Stan Cooper looked up annoyed from his computer screen.  "What’re you going on about?"  He swiveled his chair to face Emily and reached for his coffee mug.  "Tell me now and get it over with, for God's sake, so I can get back to work."

The irritation in his voice didn't bother Emily at all.  She assumed that all forty-eight year old bachelor newsmen came that way.  "It's Senator Alden."

Stan's eyelids flickered.  "Yeah?  What about him?"

"I've just got hold of a letter he wrote urging the National Science Foundation to fund a heck of a lot more psychic research than they've been doing.  I didn't know they were doing
any
," she said through gritted teeth.  "And now, apparently, they're going to do more."

"How much more?" Stan asked.  His voice was low and still, the way it got whenever he talked about Senator Alden.

Emily shook her head.  "It doesn't say."  She fished her copy of the letter from a school of papers on her desk and read from it aloud.  "'We urge you' -- blah, blah, here it is -- 'to allocate substantially greater sums for psychic research which, among other benefits, can have far-reaching ramifications for both our domestic and foreign intelligence'."

Stan's laugh was short and derisive.  "FBI.  CIA.  Yeah.  Rumors have been going around for years that they've been fooling around with psi."  Stan drained the dregs of his coffee and made a wry face.  "So how you gonna handle the story?"

Emily sighed.  "I'm sure the Chief'll want me to play it straight; he respects the senator too much to feel any moral outrage here."

"No problem," Stan said with a deadly smile.  "Between you and me we have more than enough."

"Well, it
is
outrageous!"

"I agree."

"I mean it, Stan.  Our government is out of control, absolutely out of control.  Our bridges are falling down, our sewers are disintegrating, our schools need overhauling and this guy calls for -- psychic research!  Who needs psychic research?  We need concrete; pipes; schoolrooms."

Stan swiveled slowly around to face his computer, effectively ending the coffee break.  "What an innocent you are," he said in a tired voice.  "I suppose it comes from living and working in
New Hampshire
." 

Emily flushed.  She'd met Stanley Cooper when he was on assignment in
Manchester
seven years earlier.  She was a junior reporter then, really just a Gofer, and she'd been thoroughly awed by the hard-boiled political reporter from the
Boston Journal
.  He liked what little she'd written, though, and when she took a job in
New Bedford
covering municipal affairs for the local paper, his name was on her list of references.

Then, six months ago, she sent her resume to the
Journal
.  Stanley Cooper interviewed her in depth, recommended her, and put her through her paces after she was hired.  Later she learned the exact wording of his recommendation:  "She'll be a royal pain in the butt.  We need her."

At twenty-eight Emily Bowditch was as much in awe of Stan Cooper as ever.  She didn't think much of him as a man -- he drank, smoked, gambled, detested kids and didn't keep house -- but as a political writer he was without parallel.  She'd do just about anything to impress him.  Whenever he cut her down to size (which was often) she took it hard.

She studied him in profile as he hunched over his keyboard, pecking fitfully.  His clothes were shabby.  His face was lined, unshaven, unhappy.  He was thin, almost bony:  he was suspicious of everything, probably including food.  But he was brilliant, and Emily wanted desperately to make her mark with him.

"Stan?" she ventured, risking his wrath.  "I've been mulling over an idea for a story.  I think it could be pretty good."

"Hmmmn."

"Maybe even sensational."

"Hmmmn."

"Do you want to hear about it?"

"No.  Just do it."

That was it, the permission she wanted--more or less.  She grabbed her tweed jacket and said, "I'll be at the library for the next couple of hours."  But as she sprinted down the steps of the bland brick building that housed the
Boston Journal
, the thought occurred to her that her idea was cockamamie at best, and a pretty good reason for getting fired, at worst. 

She spent the rest of the afternoon in the Boston Public Library, plowing through old copies of
Etheric
, a magazine devoted exclusively to psychic phenomena; a magazine that until that morning she had never known existed.  She was working strictly on a hunch, and she wasn't sure what she'd find.

When she'd called Senator Alden's office earlier in the day to confirm the existence of his letter to the National Science Foundation, she was put through to his aide, Jim Whitewood.  In the process some signals had obviously been crossed.  Mr. Whitewood had come on the line and, before she could say boo, said in a sharp voice, "How did you get hold of the letter?  Are you from
Etheric
?"

"What's
Etheric
?" Emily had asked, a little stupidly.

"Who is this?" Mr. Whitewood had demanded.

That's when she made the first of a series of snap judgments that later would come back to haunt her.  She had said in response, "Hello?  Hello?  Oh darn, something's wrong with this phone," and hung up.  She needed time, time to track down
Etheric
and see what or who had made Mr. Whitewood so press-shy.

And so, with the bright May sun shining through the ceiling-high windows, warming the back of her neck under her straight dark hair, Emily thumbed drowsily through dozens of back issues of the fascinating and bizarre periodical, stopping every now and then to peruse an article that caught her fancy.  At five-thirty, she sat up straight.

"Bingo," she whispered softly to herself. 

In the Newsworthy column of a two-year old issue of
Etheric
was a photo of Senator Alden shaking the hand of his new aide, Jim Whitewood.  Mr. Whitewood, who admitted to having "only modestly psychic powers," promised to "keep the lines of communication open between Senator Alden and those with genuine psychic ability."

Only modestly psychic
.  That was like saying someone was only modestly around the bend.

Emily hugged herself with joy.  Her original plan suddenly got a little more cockamamie.

****

Armed with a Xerox copy of the
Etheric
photo and caption, Emily cornered Stan Cooper alone in the
Journal's
smoking lounge the next morning.  "Stan, I really need your input on this."  She handed him the photo she'd found and watched him break into a contemptuous smile.  "The magazine folded a little after this issue came out," she said.  "It had no circulation to speak of, so I doubt if your average voter even knows about this."

With a flick of his wrist Stan let the sheet of paper float down to the floor.  "Your average voter could care less," he said.  "Your average voter is female and madly in love with Senator Alden."

Emily scooped up the sheet and tucked it in her bag.  "Says who?"

"Ask anyone at a shopping mall.  Lee Alden was a devoted husband for ten years.  When his wife died in a car accident a couple of years ago there was talk he might not run again, that's how devastated he was.  For a while he refused to appear socially at all."  Stan lit a new cigarette from the stub of his last one, took a deep drag, and steered it out past his nose.  "Lately he's begun to show up at an occasional charity function; but he arrives alone and early, and leaves in an hour.  Every socialite in
Massachusetts
has tried to land him.  Every female shopper in the state nourishes her own silly, secret hope."

The measured tone in his voice had gradually turned bitter, so much so that Emily averted her eyes from the coldness she saw in his face.  For the first time it occurred to her that Stan might not be objective when it came to Senator Arthur Lee Alden III.  She couldn't imagine why.

"Well, I think women are as well-informed and conscientious about whom they vote for as anyone," she said firmly.  "But they have to have the information out in front where they can see it.  They have to know this guy's a flake."

"Oh, Christ, Emily, the man could get thrown in jail for life and they'd vote for him."   He snubbed out his cigarette in irritation and stood up to leave.  But at the door he turned suddenly and said, "What're you up to?"

"Okay," she said, taking the plunge.  "Originally I planned to call and say I was looking for a respected medium -- channeler, I guess I mean -- and ask if the senator could recommend anyone.  Then I found Whitewood's open invitation in
Etheric
and I thought, why don't
I
just show up and say I have psychic powers?  How far could I get?"

"You're nuts, Emily," Stan said calmly.

But Emily could see in his face that he was intrigued by the possibilities.  "No, really, Stan.  I mean, I do have certain ... intuitions.  I'm very good at intuition.  I've called my friend Cara several times at the exact moment when she's picked up the phone at the other end to call me --"

"-- which probably means it's your friend Cara who is telepathic," Stan said dryly.

"Whatever.  But I've been reading up on this stuff.  A lot of it is just plain old common sense and shrewdness --"

"-- both of which you possess in abundance, I can see." 

There was a sneer in his voice, but it was a kindly sneer.  Emily took hope from it and said, "So you think it might fly?"

Stan looked at her for a long, withering moment.  Then he said, "This conversation never happened," and walked out.

Emily was left puzzling over his parting shot.  Did he mean, "Lucky for you I'm not a snitch"?  Or did he mean, "Don't tell me until it's over"?  She threw herself into a battered Naugahyde lounge chair and remained there, deep in indecision, for some time.  But the sound of voices in the hall got her moving again.  Yes.  There was a story there, dammit.  And the taxpayers of
Massachusetts
had the right to know it.

The security guard had to throw Emily out of the library that night; when she left her book-bag was full.  For the rest of the week she crammed herself full of facts -- well, they were hardly facts -- on the paranormal, and learned all she could about Senator Alden.  Jim Whitewood, the senator's aide, was due back in
Boston
on Monday.  By Sunday afternoon Emily felt ready for him.  She felt sure that she could seem as mystical and vague as the next guy.  She'd be just fine, as long as he didn't ask her to bend a spoon or anything.