The Triggerman Dance

"Remains so. We've gotten unverified reports that he headed up into the Pacific Northwest. If he shows his snout, we'll hook it."

"Wonderful language. Can I quote you?"

"Absolutely." Dumars smiled then, but it felt strange to be smiling and lying at the same time. She wondered if the columnist could sense her duplicity. Sharon had never considered herself an even passable deceiver, but Joshua had told her it was time to learn the craft. To deceive successfully, he said, began with belief in one's self. Like a religion, it required faith. If you had that, it was as easy as falling into bed.

"I can give you this file copy, if you'd like. I ran it on our best machine, but it's still a little blurred. The photos are really pretty decent."

Baum accepted the file, her eyes dancing with curiosity and pleasure. "What led you to Foster?"

"First, we matched all the people you'd written about negatively against their potential as killers. You'd hit the Boy Scouts pretty hard for opposing gay troop leaders and insisting on mentioning God in their pledge, but we didn't think the Boy Scouts of America would target you for assassination. You had a field day with the tobacco lobbyist who summers in Newport Beach, the GI Joe designer who lived in Fullerton and the Christian recording label out in Irvine, but are they killers? No. So, once we cast our net wide enough, we came up with Alamo West. A different story. We'd heard rumors that some members had planned violence against a local synagogue, and were targeting an Orange County group called One Hundred Black Men. We weren't convinced they had the, uh, the . . ."

"Balls?"

"... Well, resources for that, but we try to keep an eye on those kinds of people as a matter of course. Maybe, if Foster had just stuck around to answer our questions we might not have

latched onto him so fast. You can imagine how skittish these types are, after Oklahoma City. But he didn't stick around. No doubt the reverend tipped him to our interest, and that was enough. In Mark's sudden absence we managed to turn up, at his last residence, a box of .30/06 ammunition similar to that used on Ms. Harris. There were two cartridges missing from the box. We also found copies of your column on Alamo West. The clincher was a letter addressed to you that we assume he never mailed. It was in a safe deposit box that took some time to get into. In it, he implied that he would love to kill you because you were a Jew and a traitor to America and a fool."

"Oh, my."

After you've hooked her, enlist her.

Dumars set a hand on Baum's. "I ask you not to mention that. Say nothing about what we found in his place. It would encourage him to destroy evidence, and evidence is the only thing that will convict Rebecca's killer. Please."

"Understood. I would have come forth with that letter, if I'd gotten it."

"I know. There's a copy of it in the file for you."

"Did you find the gun?"

"No gun. Yet."

"Have you gotten an arrest warrant?"

"No. We want him only for questioning. It's important you say that in your article. There's no reason to put the fear of God in him if there's even a slight chance he'll come forward. It's possible he didn't do it. It's also probable that he didn't do it alone. So we want to give him the opportunity to include his friends at Alamo West, if that's how it went down. A suspect wanted for questioning—not for arrest."

"I understand. God, this is ... I feel so conflicted right now."

"There's no conflict in busting creeps."

Baum removed the largest of the photographs of Foster and stared at it. "He was the most decent one of them. Or so I thought."

"He's a fringe character, Susan. They all are at Alamo West."

"And you've got nothing on any of the others?"

"Not so far."

Baum continued to regard the picture. "Now that the killer has a face, I feel. . . it's like . . . this boy was capable of that? He looks so innocent."

"So did Ted Bundy."

"Oh, my." Baum flipped through the rap sheets. "A violent man. Of all the people I regularly insult in print, this boy wanted to kill me. You know, I wondered when I wrote that piece on the skinheads if one of them—just one—might read it and well, learn something from me. Be illuminated. Change. That was naive."

"Optimistic, but naive."

Baum's bright green eyes held Sharon's. "And I'm not a naive person. Not after covering the news for thirty years. Am here, I was so sure Vann Holt was behind it."

"Wishful thinking, Susan?"

"I hit him hard a few times in print. All his right-wing this and right-wing that. All those secret men he trains. I exposed his son as a probable sex offender during the Ruiz trial. I was sure he had decided to get me. He seemed like a perfect assassin. A pig with a gun. Though on some level, I felt sorry for him."

"It's a long journey from Republican to assassin."

"I know."