Speak Ill of the Living Read Free Page B

paper your size.”
    Cuhna grimaced. “That’s all a ruse. Those people are all me.”
    Eddie looked to the paper again. “You’re Amanda Collar?”
    â€œYes. And I’m Paul Alan, okay?”
    â€œIs that ethical?”
    â€œToo late for ethics, Bourque—I have no goddam staff. Nobody wants to read a paper written by one person—it looks cheap and not worth their time. I do
everything
on the news side—write the stories, edit my own goddam copy, write the headlines. I empty my own trash can, and once a week I gotta run the press, by myself!” Cuhna wiped his hand over his face again. He glared at the picture of Roger Lime. “And now I have to deal with
this
…” He trailed off.
    Eddie might have pulled a useable quote from Cuhna if he had invested the time, but decided he couldn’t afford it. He wanted to visit someone else who could help with the story, if she was on duty so early in the day.
    He left Cuhna and hurried through the halls of mint-colored cinderblock, toward the detective’s bureau. He couldn’t understand why Cuhna was so upset. Publicity was exactly what
The Second Voice
needed, and rarely in publishing was there such a thing as bad publicity.
    The detective’s bureau was a long room with desks arranged like two lanes of gridlocked traffic. Half the ceiling lights were off at this early hour and gloom hung over the space. Several doors led to offices and small interview rooms in which investigators would speak to potential witnesses. Calendars, street maps, and crime prevention posters covered the walls of the bureau. Just inside the doorway was a glass-topped wooden counter displaying stacks of official forms, for members of the public to fill out whenever something bad happened to them.
    A middle-aged clerk in jeans and a fleece sweatshirt—the uniform of the third shift—was typing handwritten field reports into a computer at a desk beyond the counter. She smiled and lifted her head, to invite Eddie to say what he wanted. That’s when Eddie smelled her perfume. Spicy, very nice. She shed ten years before Eddie’s eyes.
    â€œIs Detective Orr around?” Eddie said.
    The woman looked away in thought for a moment, then pressed a button on her speaker phone and said, “Lucy, there’s somebody here to see you.”
    A tinny voice came from the phone, “Who is it?” The woman lifted her head to Eddie again.
    â€œIt’s Bourque,” Eddie called out.
    â€œEddie?” squeaked the phone. “Before breakfast? Tammy, you can send him down here.”
    The woman directed Eddie with a long index finger. “Last door,” she said.
    Eddie passed three detectives on the night shift typing at keyboards, irradiated in blue by their computer screens. The last door swung in to the narrowest office Eddie had ever seen. Inside were two wheeled chairs on either side of a desk. The chair closest to Eddie was turned sideways and jammed against the left-hand wall, so the door had room to open. There seemed to be no way to get to the other chair, except by climbing over the desk. The office was windowless, painted burnt-orange, and lit by a buzzing fluorescent doughnut on the ceiling.
    Detective Lucy Orr, in the chair across the desk, stood when Eddie came in.
    She grinned and shook his hand. “I’ve been following your freelance work in some pretty fair magazines,” she said.
    â€œMy work has been rejected by all the prestigious ones.”
    They both laughed and sat down.
    Detective Orr was about forty. She had a squat build and powerful shoulders, like an Olympic swimmer from an old Soviet-bloc country. Her hands were rough, her nails unpainted and bitten down below the fingertips. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, which was impaled by what looked like two chopsticks.
    Eddie checked his watch. He didn’t have time to warm up the conversation before he asked for what he