I'll Be Seeing You Read Free Page A

and backgrounds to give them. He’d call a right-wing host and rant liberal values, a liberal host and sing the praises of the extreme right. In his call-in persona, he loved arguments, confrontations, trading insults.
    Unknown to his mother he also had a forty-inch television and a VCR in the basement and often watched movies he had brought home from porn shops.
    The police scanner inspired other ideas. He began to go through telephone books and circle numbers that were listed in women’s names. He would dial one of those numbers in the middle of the night and say he was calling from a cellular phone outside her home and was about to break in. He’d whisper that maybe he’d just pay a visit, or maybe he’d kill her. Then Bernie would sit and chuckle as he listened to the police scanners sending a squad car rushing to the address. It was almost as good as peeking in windows or following women, and he never had to worry about the headlights of a police car suddenly shining on him, or a cop on a loudspeaker yelling, “Freeze.”
    The car belonging to Tom Weicker was a gold mine of information for Bernie. Weicker had an electronic address book in the glove compartment. In it he kept the names, addresses and numbers of the key staff of the station. The big shots, Bernie thought, as he copied numbers onto his own electronic pad. He’d even reached Weicker’s wife at home one night. She had begun to shriek when he told her he was at the back door and on his way in.
    Afterwards, recalling her terror, he’d giggled for hours.
    What was getting hard for him now was that for the first time since he was released from Riker’s Island, he had that scary feeling of not being able to get someone out of his mind. This one was a reporter. She was so pretty that when he opened the car door for her it was a struggle not to touch her.
    Her name was Meghan Collins.
4
    S omehow Meghan was able to accept Weicker’s offer calmly. It was a joke among the staff that if you were too gee-whiz-thanks about a promotion, Tom Weicker would ponder whether or not he’d made a good choice. He wanted ambitious, driven people who felt any recognition given them was overdue.
    Trying to seem matter-of-fact, she showed him the faxed message. As he read it he raised his eyebrows. “What’s this mean?” he asked. “What’s the ‘mistake’? Who is Annie?”
    â€œI don’t know. Tom, I was at Roosevelt Hospital when the stabbing victim was brought in last night. Has she been identified?”
    â€œNot yet. What about her?”
    â€œI suppose you ought to know something,” Meghan said reluctantly. “She looks like me.”
    â€œShe resembles you?”
    â€œShe could almost be my double.”
    Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting that this fax is tied into that woman’s death?”
    â€œIt’s probably just coincidence, but I thought I should at least let you see it.”
    â€œI’m glad you did. Let me keep it. I’ll find out who’s handling the investigation on that case and let him take a look at it.”
    For Meghan, it was a distinct relief to pick up her assignments at the news desk.

    It was a relatively tame day. A press conference at the mayor’s office at which he named his choice for the new police commissioner, a suspicious fire that had gutted a tenement in Washington Heights. Late in the afternoon, Meghan spoke to the medical examiner’s office. An artist’s sketch of the dead girl and her physical description had been issued by the Missing Persons Bureau. Her fingerprints were on the way to Washington to be checked against government and criminal files. She had died of a single deep stab wound in the chest. Internal bleeding had been slow but massive. Both legs and arms had been broken some years ago. If not claimed in thirty days, her body would be buried in potter’s field in a numbered grave.