He ran to Costigan. The chief’s cowboy hat lay beside him. The left side of his head was covered with blood. Page touched his wrist and felt a pulse.

“Hang on,” he told him.

He found the car keys in Costigan’s pants and ran to the cruiser, pressing the unlock button on the key fob. Inside, he grabbed the radio’s microphone.

“Officer down! Officer down!”

“Who’s this?” a man’s angry voice demanded. “How’d you get on this radio?”

“Officer down!” Page had trouble keeping his voice steady enough to identify himself and describe what had happened. “I was with the chief! He’s been shot!”

“What?”

“At least twenty other people were hit. At the observation platform outside town. A bus is on fire, and…” As he supplied more details, the enormity of what had happened struck him. “The assailant’s dead, but we need all the help you can bring.”

“If this is a joke-”

“Look at the horizon east of town. You ought to be able to see the glow of the fire.”

“Just a…” The pause was suddenly broken. “Holy… I’ll get help as quick as I can.”

Page sat numbly in the cruiser and stared toward the devastation that lay beyond the windshield. The light from the flames rippled over the bodies. His side aching, he got out of the car and stepped around pools of blood, approaching the people who’d escaped the burning bus.

“Help’s on the way,” he promised them.

“Thank you,” a woman told him through her tears. “Thank you for saving us.”

“I was sure I was going to die,” a man said, trembling. “… Never been so scared.”

“Why did he do it?” someone demanded. “Why?”

Amid the roar of the flames, Page noticed that more survivors were warily emerging from their hiding places. Some had crawled under vehicles. Others had run across the road and concealed them- selves in the darkness of a neighboring field.

An elderly man wavered among the corpses. Smoke drifted over him.

“Where’s Beth? Where’s…?” The old man stopped and groaned. Grief made him sink to his knees. He cradled the head of one of the bodies.

Heartsick, Page went back to the observation platform.

Tori no longer stared toward the grassland. Instead she bent despairingly forward, her face in her hands.

She shivered.

Page noticed the windbreaker on the bench. He got it and draped it over her shoulders. He finally saw her purse on the floor, where she must have dropped it when the shooting had started. He placed it next to her. Numb, he sat beside her, put an arm around her, and listened to the blare of the approaching sirens.

TWO – THE DARKLING PLAIN

21

Brent Loft gave his most amused, sympathetic look to the camera, saying, “Near Arroyo Park, a tearful ten-year-old girl waved for a police car to stop and pointed to where her cat had climbed to the top of a high-voltage utility pole. Workers from El Paso Electric arrived with a crane and very carefully rescued the feline, which, as you can see, was more afraid of being rescued than of staying on top of the pole. The thick, insulated gloves of the man on the crane protected him from more than just the electrical lines.”

Next to Loft, his coanchor, Sharon Rivera, chuckled and read the next paragraph on the teleprompter: “The girl and her pet were finally reunited, but apparently this isn’t the only time the cat has been rescued. Last month two city workers had to free it from a storm drain.”

“Seven more lives to go,” Brent said, trying not to gag on the line. He turned toward the man on his left. “Frank, what’s the final weather recap?”

“Tomorrow’ll be another hot, sunny day with a chance of thunder- storms during the night.”

“We can always use the rain,” Sharon said.

“Sure can,” Brent agreed. “Well, that’s it for El Paso’s First-on-the- Scene News at 10. Be sure to watch our morning report from 6 to 7. We’ll see you tomorrow night at 5, 6, and 10. Thanks for joining us.”

With big smiles, they listened to their program’s pulsing theme music. The red lights on the cameras stopped glowing. The harsh overhead lights dimmed.

Like the other newscasters, Brent took off his lapel microphone and removed the earbud radio receiver through which the show’s producer could give him instructions to cut an item, add a late- breaking story, or make a joke.

Sharon’s earbud got caught in her voluminous hair.

“I hate reports about rescued pets,” Brent complained.

“Yeah, but people like to go to sleep with a cozy feeling,” sports re- porter Tom Montoya said as he stood from behind his desk. Tom wore a jacket and tie for the camera, but what viewers at home couldn’t see was that-hidden by the desk-the rest of his ensemble consisted of shorts, sweat socks, and sneakers. He’d played basketball between the 6 and 10 newscasts, barely returning to the station in time to refresh his makeup.

Sharon wore an elegant navy blazer and a pale-blue blouse, the tightness of which accentuated her breasts. When she stood from the news desk, her mismatched jeans became visible. Because she had chronic sore feet, she didn’t wear shoes. Her socks were thick wool because her feet were sensitive to the cold that came off the studio’s concrete floor.

In contrast, Brent wore a full suit, an expensive calfskin belt, and de- signer shoes that he always buffed before he went on the air. The shoes were the most important feature-he felt that their shine radiated upward and added to the substance of his delivery. From bottom to top, everything counted. He would no more go on the air with scuffed shoes than he would with hair that wasn’t carefully blow-dried.

But it had taken all his skill to sound sincere when he’d read that item about the damned cat. The next time the producer wanted a cute story, Brent promised himself he’d make Sharon read all of it.

“Want to go out for a drink?” he asked her.

“Brent, how many times do I need to tell you I’m dating someone?”

“Hey, it never hurts to ask. If you’re serious about this guy, why don’t you bring him around sometime so we can see what he looks like?”

“He?” She looked at him strangely.

“Very funny,” Brent said.

“You’ve been working here three months, and no one told you I was gay?”

“Yeah, right. Quit kidding around.”

“What makes you think I’m kidding?”

“Okay, okay, I can take a joke.” At that moment, the producer entered the studio, rescuing him from Sharon’s ridiculous act.

“Brent, I need to talk to you.”

Brent didn’t like his tone. Something’s going to hit the fan, he predicted.

He had risen through the broadcast markets from a small television station in Oklahoma to a modest-sized one in Kansas to this bigger one in El Paso. Every newscaster’s goal was to work for the premium cable news channels-like CNN or Fox-or the network stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and New York. Better yet, at the top-to go national on the evening news at ABC, NBC, or CBS.

Brent had rocketed through the lower-level stations, but he was forced to admit that he hadn’t gained the momentum he needed to get out of El Paso a year from now, as he’d planned. For one thing, he hadn’t managed to bond with the rest of the news team. Perhaps they sensed his determination not to stay in the area any longer than necessary. As a consequence, he hadn’t been given any career-advancing stories. Also, he had the sense that the news director regretted hiring him. Presumably he’d decided that Brent looked a little too white- bread for this market.

Shit, he’ll probably come down on me for the way I read that piece about the damned cat.

“Sharon, I need to see you, also,” the producer said. A somber expression on his face, he looked down at his tennis shoes as if he wanted to avoid eye contact.