The Dying Hour Read Free Page B

anything.”
    “That suggests you have something. What’s happening tomorrow? Do you suspect foul play?”
    Stralla let a moment of silence pass between them.
    “Until we locate the owner, we really can’t say much.”
    Something in Stralla’s tone triggered Jason’s instincts—this was the precise moment to push.
    “Would you consider releasing a few details now? A story in tomorrow’s Mirror might help. You know our circulation is statewide. Goes right to the border.”
    Stralla considered the proposal.
    “Tell you what. Let me make a few calls. I’ll get right back to you either way. What’s your number?”
    Jason gave Stralla his number, telling him he had about an hour before the paper’s next deadline.
    “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” Stralla said.
    Jason hung up.
    Maybe he was on to something here. He glanced at Beale and the editors. Should he alert them? Alert them to what? He hadn’t nailed anything down. He’d forgotten another commandment. Never oversell a story. Besides, this could be nothing.
    Better sit tight.

6
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    J ason stared at the clock.
    No word yet from Detective Stralla. He watched the second hand sweeping time away, downed the last of his cold coffee, tossed the Styro cup in the trash, got up, and paced the desolate newsroom.
    He was the only metro reporter on night duty.
    The small crew at the copy desk worked with subdued intensity on the first edition, oblivious to the police radio chatter. Keeping an ear tuned to the scanner and his phone, Jason went to the newsroom bulletin board and browsed the administrative memos and staff notes offering items for sale. Like a Starcraft with a 45 Merc, or Mariners tickets and discounts on Hawaiian getaways.
    Then he saw his own picture under the banner: MEET OUR INTERNS .
    Jason’s face and bio were up there among the six junior reporters hired for the Mirror ’s internship program. The lucky ones, Neena Swain, the assistant managing editor, had told them when they had first arrived.
    “You have a golden opportunity to prove yourself to us. You won’t be coddled here. School’s out. This is the real world. We’re paying you a full-time reporter’s rate and we have expectations.”
    She adjusted her glasses with cool precision, then locked eyes with each intern at the boardroom table.
    “On every story you’ll go up against the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer. So you’d better make damn sure that you’re the first reporter on it, and the last one to leave. You get the best quotes and you get it right. Every damn time.” Neena Swain brought her fist down on the table. “The Seattle Mirror has won nine goddamned Pulitzer Prizes and we will not tolerate anything less than excellence. At the end of six months one of you, and only one of you, will be hired full-time.”
    The rest would be gone.
    That was the deal. A do-or-die competition. All of the interns had impressive resumes with experience at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. All of them came from big-name schools like Columbia, Northwestern, Missouri, Arizona State, and UCLA.
    All of them but Jason Wade.
    He had worked as a forklift driver at Pacific Peaks Brewery near the airport to put himself through community college. And he’d put in part-time shifts as a reporter at a now-defunct Seattle weekly, while selling freelance pieces wherever he could, including one to the Mirror.
    It was a crime feature on beat cops that had caught the eye of Ron Nestor, the Mirror’s metro editor, who gave Wade the last spot in the intern program after another candidate dropped out at the last minute.
    Jason got in by the skin of his teeth.
    It was likely why he was assigned to the most loathed position at any newspaper, the night police beat.
    “Looks like you drew the short straw,” Ben Randolf said. He was a tall good-looking guy from Columbia who’d worked at the Chicago Tribune. His parents were