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fellowshippers2006-04-03 07:47 am
almaviva.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2006-04-03 07:47 am
Fic: A Wolf at the Door, Chapter 1
Title: A Wolf at the Door, Chapter 1
Fandom: lotrips
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction from which I earn no money and by which I mean no harm.
Note: This is a mystery with the all the accompanying violence, possible character death, and gratuitous sex.
Previous parts: Prologue
Police have no leads in three Center City break-ins. Billy reads the headline twice before he scrolls back to the end of the document and picks up his dictionary. It's a fruitless search; no word is going to make the article be more exciting than what it is: a rehashing of the same material he wrote just two days ago. The police have no leads, citizens are advised to take precautions to protect their property, please call with any information. Dull as dirt no matter what words he uses and enough to make him feel like a hack at a paper one step above reporting on alien abductions and celebrity marriages. The copy will go out whether he's satisfied with it or not, and it's been ages since he's been proud of anything he's written.
"When was your deadline?"
Billy doesn't look up from the dictionary to answer Sean. As the paper's only sports reporter, deadlines mean little to him. He writes most of his stuff while listening to games on the radio or watching them down in the building's coffee shop. Anything more in depth he picks up the details from the AP wire. Billy waits until he hears Sean impatiently tapping his blunt fingernails on the desk before glancing up. "Ten minutes ago."
"C'mon. Just send it and we can go."
The dictionary search is useless; Billy can't even remember what he's looking for anymore and is just tracing his finger down the page (effervescence, effervescent, effervescently) because he knows it's annoying Sean. (Emit small bubbles...) Billy puts the old, tattered book down and begins to type again. "What was that girl's name again? The one you met last night."
"Has nothing to do with it," Sean says, but the blush that blossoms on his cheeks tells otherwise. He grabs the bill of his baseball cap, lifts it from his head and smoothes down his hair before he replaces it.
"Cherry? Berry? Some kind of fruit, wasn't it?" Billy covertly watches Sean as he types. He's doing a search and peck to draw this out further as he finishes the article and begins a quick email to his sister without letting Sean know. Sean looks like an oversized kid with his hat turned backwards, his cheeks now red from the mention of the stripper. It's more fun than he's had all day, he decides, to watch Sean squirm and check his watch repeatedly as if it'll make time—and Billy—go faster. "You can go on without me, you know. I'm sure Orange? No, no. Can't be that."
"Apple is just her stage name, as you well know. And it isn't me she's interested in, is it."
It's the sigh that has Billy looking up a bit sympathetically; it's the second time today they've had this conversation. Giving in, he signs off the email with a promise to call his sister later then waits until his computer shuts down before he stands and takes his jacket from the back of his chair.
Sean looks up from where he's resting his chin on his arms folded on the desk but seems less keen on going now. The memory of how said Apple had offered Billy a private dance in the VIP room probably still rankles though Billy had turned her down. "They always go for the accent."
"It's a curse." There's a smile lurking around Billy's lips, but it doesn't go quite to his eyes. He's tired from chasing down stories all day--stories that in the end amounted to nothing more than a fire alarm at the midtown library, a break-in at a pawn shop on 5th, and a purse snatcher who got away uptown. All together they don't add up to more than 1500 words, 2000 with what he's just sent, and Billy suspects that by next month he'll be writing copy on dog shows and the grand openings of garden centers. At least going down to the Glass Angel will be something to do besides going home to drink alone in his empty flat. Billy slaps his hand on Sean's shoulder as he walks past. "Come on. I'll tell Apple that you're rich."
"Liv. Her name is Liv."
"Liv then. She seemed the type to appreciate a man with a healthy salary and his own by-line."
***
The Glass Angel is little more than a strip club that's billed itself as a burlesque show and thus attracts a slightly less seedy clientele. It's still hot, smoky and crowded and within moments of walking in, Billy is sweating inside his wool coat. The music is pounding in a sort of non-committal way, with no harmony or counterpoint, no lyrics on which to hang. Still, Sean is already bouncing along on his heels, attempting to give the impression that he's not approaching thirty with alarming speed and less of his hair than he entered his twenties. Billy, being a few years older and at the tail end of a bad marriage, understands why Sean feels such a desperate need to cling to what's left of his youth though Billy likes to think that maybe he's not fighting quite as hard.
A traveling pack of hipsters bump into Billy pushing him a little further into the club. He looks at their retreating backs, envious of their style and height--mostly their height--and realizes he's closer to forty than thirty and his being here is probably more pathetic than Sean. Still, he's Scottish and Billy's pretty sure that his nationality alone makes up for a receding hairline.
A tug on his coat makes him return his attention to Sean but he shakes his head to show that he can't hear anything. Sean tries again, yelling over the music and pointing towards the tiny stage where two women are performing a kind of gyrating dance. It's mesmerizing in its own way and Billy nods, willing to agree to anything to get this night over with. A few drinks in him and he knows he won't care about anything anymore.
Closer to the stage, they grab a tiny table another couple is vacating and sit, Billy looking around in some hope that a barmaid might suddenly appear. Sean's knees bump against Billy's as Sean bounces in his seat. "Calm down, mate."
"Mate. That's good. I should use that."
"No. Look there she is. Don't use mate." Billy waves to Apple as she takes the stage. She doesn't see him, of course, and he feels a bit like a git. "I'm going to get us some drinks. What do you want?"
"Beer. No. Wine. No. Wait." Sean watches as Liv struts across the stage in a cheerleader's outfit, his face taking on a rapturous kind of joy Billy's rarely seen anywhere else. The Jets. Wonderful. Sean lifts his baseball cap again and smoothes down his hair before he replaces it, bill forward now to show his belief in kismet, Billy assumes. Billy starts to leave, not wanting to disturb the moment but Sean grabs his arm to stop him. "What are you going to have?"
"Macallan." The same as always. "Just get beer. You don't like anything else."
"No. I need something cool. Maybe something with an umbrella? Umbrellas are cool, right?"
Billy pulls away now, walking towards the bar and ignoring Sean. Every sports writer he's ever known has been the same though, here and back home in Britain. The only difference is that Americans always wear baseball caps. At the bar he tries to catch the eye of one of the bartenders. A quick look over his shoulder at Sean shows that he's still trying to figure out how to look cool. Deciding to let him have at it, Billy orders a drink and sips at it for a while, waiting until Liv is finished with her dance before motioning the bartender back over.
"Another." He motions to his glass. "And a beer."
"What kind?"
"Anything cheap and American. He bloody well won't know the difference."
"Tap or bottle? Right. Doesn't matter."
Apple actually has three performances tonight and Billy and Sean catch them all. Somewhere along the line, Billy switches to rum and cokes and by his second decides that he doesn't mind the club or the dancing so much. By the fourth, he thinks she's brilliant, persuaded by Sean's argument that she's obviously not only the city's finest burlesque performer but a grande dancer and wasting her talent, though stunningly so.
It's also the fourth that has him stumbling into his flat closer to morning than midnight, bleary eyed and missing the envelope slipped beneath his door. He doesn't even take off his trousers when he falls face first into his bed.
***
Early the next morning, the cell phone in Billy's pocket vibrates for a full minute before playing a tinny version of Sisqo's Thong Song. Briefly surfacing from his dreams, he tries to place where the noise is coming from and realizes with a groan that it's his own pants. Billy has a vague memory of reprogramming the ring last night and thinking that it was hilarious. This morning, with the sun barely making its way past the blinds in his bedroom, it seems like torture--and like salvation when it stops.
A few hours later, he blessedly misses hearing it again as he stands beneath the spray of the shower. He's moved past wanting to die and focuses all his remaining brain cells towards one purpose: coffee, preferably a latte with a double shot of espresso. By the time he wraps a towel about his waist and looks at himself in the mirror above the sink, he's progressed to feeling human-like though still single-mindedly focused on caffeine. It's this thought--and a straight edge razor gingerly pressed against his chin--that understandable holds his attention, making him jump and curse when the cell begins to ring again. Billy digs into the trousers balled up on the floor to find his phone, hearing Sean yelling into the phone the moment he's answered.
"I'm going to Vegas!"
"I'm sorry. Do I know you?"
"Apple!"
"Sean, really. Full sentences." Billy leans against the sink again to inspect his slightly bleeding chin. "I know that your life passes you by in box scores and--"
"Married! Apple and me!!"
"I."
"What?"
"Apple and I," Billy says, his voice flat and disinterested. He decides that he'll forgo the shave and rinses the shaving crème from his face. "Apple and I are getting married."
"Pedantic."
"Do you even know what that means?"
"Do you have no other reaction that your best friend--"
"--You were going to marry a waitress last month. Savannah, remember her?"
"I'm hurt, Billy, that you would bring her up. You know the break up was difficult."
Billy almost laughs. Sean actually does sound hurt. "Two weeks ago, when we were in Cooke City, you wanted to elope with that girl who was dealing at the blackjack tables."
"This is for real."
"You bought her a ring. And you weren't even drunk." Billy, giving up everything in favor of searching out coffee, heads down the hall towards his kitchen and finds the envelope he had missed seeing the night before. "Right. For real. Hey Sean, let me call you back, okay?"
Billy signs off before he hears Sean's answer. There's no mark on the envelope, no hint as to its sender. He picks it up, turns to open it and thinks of DNA on the glue strip. He's halfway to the kitchen to find a knife instead before he begins chiding himself for his overactive imagination. He rips the envelope open and pulls out a photo of a young boy.
Youth is a relative thing, he reflects. The lad in the picture is probably 18 or 19, but trying to look older. He's dragging deeply on a little cigarette, one of those Indian things that smell of spices, his bright blue eyes turned away from the camera, laughing at something just out of the frame. It looks like one of those paparazzi photos where the target doesn't know he's being photographed. Billy turns it back over to see a date, 29 October 2005 and the words I'm sorry. The date means nothing to him. He turns the picture again and studies the boy. His nails are bitten down to the quick but otherwise he looks well cared for, like any of the boys his age who attend the university.
His phone rings again while he still looks at the picture and he answers it automatically without looking at the screen to see who it is. “This is Billy.”
“You didn’t call last night. I left you a note by the TV telling you to call.”
Ally, his soon to be ex-wife, sounds tired and irritated, not a good sign before noon. Billy grips the phone a little tighter as his head begins to ache at the base of his skull. He doesn’t want to fight. Not this morning. “Did you drop a picture in an envelope?”
“A picture? What? I wrote you a note.” Billy can tell that she wants to hang on to her argument but her curiosity is piqued. “What kind of a picture?”
“Of a boy. College student, I guess. I think he’s standing somewhere on the university campus.” Billy flips the picture again then drops it onto the counter. Ally makes a dismissive sound but doesn’t say anything else. He turns to find the coffee grounds and fill the carafe with water. “I didn’t think you’d want me to call yet. I wasn’t sure.”
“We’re still married,” she says, but there’s no anger left in her voice. He wonders if she’s counting the days until their divorce is final but then guesses she wouldn’t be calling if she hated him. Amicable was her word for it, their relationship for the last year. “It’s my dad’s birthday next weekend. They’d like for you to come down.”
“How about you? Is it what you want, too?” Amicable wasn’t something that Billy was looking for in a relationship. He remembers a time when they couldn’t keep their hands off one another. Ally lets the silence stretch between them. Billy imagines her pixyish face wrinkled in concentration as she chews on her thumbnail. “Never mind. I’ll try to come down. Tell your parents.”
They sign off and Billy is still thinking about the conversation while he waits for the coffee to brew. They’d lasted seven years before the fights began over his drinking and her career. They’d both wanted children but it had never happened. Billy thinks maybe that was a blessing. He knows that Ally doesn’t agree. He’s still thinking about it when his phone rings again. This time his “This is Billy” sounds resigned.
“Mr. Boyd?”
Billy doesn’t recognize the voice of the woman on the other end of the line. “Yes.”
“Mr. Boyd, you don’t know me but your editor gave me your number. He said you might be able to help me. I was wondering if we could meet.” There’s a quality of desperation to her voice that Billy recognizes from years of talking to victims of the crimes he reports on. When he doesn’t say anything she rushes on. “It’s about my son, Mr. Boyd. You did an article last year about—“
“—Your son. Black hair? Blue eyes?”
“Yes. Did you—“
The conversation with Ally has left Billy feeling vulnerable. His earlier worry of DNA samples on the envelope seems stupid and he’s chagrined to have thought of it. Though he’s alone in his kitchen, he stands up straighter, distancing himself from this woman’s tragedy. “You slid his picture beneath my door last night. Why?”
“Your editor, Mr. Jackson. He gave me your information. He said you could help me.”
Billy exhales deeply, irritated about how this day is shaping up so far. He doesn’t doubt that Mr. Jackson—Peter—did just that. He imagines Peter thinks he can turn a distraught mother of a missing boy into something epic. He probably already has a two page layout plotted out in his head. He senses he won't be able to avoid talking to her at some point if Peter has sent her. “Fine. I’ll meet with you, Ms.—“
“Wood. My son’s name was Elijah.”
Fandom: lotrips
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction from which I earn no money and by which I mean no harm.
Note: This is a mystery with the all the accompanying violence, possible character death, and gratuitous sex.
Previous parts: Prologue
Police have no leads in three Center City break-ins. Billy reads the headline twice before he scrolls back to the end of the document and picks up his dictionary. It's a fruitless search; no word is going to make the article be more exciting than what it is: a rehashing of the same material he wrote just two days ago. The police have no leads, citizens are advised to take precautions to protect their property, please call with any information. Dull as dirt no matter what words he uses and enough to make him feel like a hack at a paper one step above reporting on alien abductions and celebrity marriages. The copy will go out whether he's satisfied with it or not, and it's been ages since he's been proud of anything he's written.
"When was your deadline?"
Billy doesn't look up from the dictionary to answer Sean. As the paper's only sports reporter, deadlines mean little to him. He writes most of his stuff while listening to games on the radio or watching them down in the building's coffee shop. Anything more in depth he picks up the details from the AP wire. Billy waits until he hears Sean impatiently tapping his blunt fingernails on the desk before glancing up. "Ten minutes ago."
"C'mon. Just send it and we can go."
The dictionary search is useless; Billy can't even remember what he's looking for anymore and is just tracing his finger down the page (effervescence, effervescent, effervescently) because he knows it's annoying Sean. (Emit small bubbles...) Billy puts the old, tattered book down and begins to type again. "What was that girl's name again? The one you met last night."
"Has nothing to do with it," Sean says, but the blush that blossoms on his cheeks tells otherwise. He grabs the bill of his baseball cap, lifts it from his head and smoothes down his hair before he replaces it.
"Cherry? Berry? Some kind of fruit, wasn't it?" Billy covertly watches Sean as he types. He's doing a search and peck to draw this out further as he finishes the article and begins a quick email to his sister without letting Sean know. Sean looks like an oversized kid with his hat turned backwards, his cheeks now red from the mention of the stripper. It's more fun than he's had all day, he decides, to watch Sean squirm and check his watch repeatedly as if it'll make time—and Billy—go faster. "You can go on without me, you know. I'm sure Orange? No, no. Can't be that."
"Apple is just her stage name, as you well know. And it isn't me she's interested in, is it."
It's the sigh that has Billy looking up a bit sympathetically; it's the second time today they've had this conversation. Giving in, he signs off the email with a promise to call his sister later then waits until his computer shuts down before he stands and takes his jacket from the back of his chair.
Sean looks up from where he's resting his chin on his arms folded on the desk but seems less keen on going now. The memory of how said Apple had offered Billy a private dance in the VIP room probably still rankles though Billy had turned her down. "They always go for the accent."
"It's a curse." There's a smile lurking around Billy's lips, but it doesn't go quite to his eyes. He's tired from chasing down stories all day--stories that in the end amounted to nothing more than a fire alarm at the midtown library, a break-in at a pawn shop on 5th, and a purse snatcher who got away uptown. All together they don't add up to more than 1500 words, 2000 with what he's just sent, and Billy suspects that by next month he'll be writing copy on dog shows and the grand openings of garden centers. At least going down to the Glass Angel will be something to do besides going home to drink alone in his empty flat. Billy slaps his hand on Sean's shoulder as he walks past. "Come on. I'll tell Apple that you're rich."
"Liv. Her name is Liv."
"Liv then. She seemed the type to appreciate a man with a healthy salary and his own by-line."
***
The Glass Angel is little more than a strip club that's billed itself as a burlesque show and thus attracts a slightly less seedy clientele. It's still hot, smoky and crowded and within moments of walking in, Billy is sweating inside his wool coat. The music is pounding in a sort of non-committal way, with no harmony or counterpoint, no lyrics on which to hang. Still, Sean is already bouncing along on his heels, attempting to give the impression that he's not approaching thirty with alarming speed and less of his hair than he entered his twenties. Billy, being a few years older and at the tail end of a bad marriage, understands why Sean feels such a desperate need to cling to what's left of his youth though Billy likes to think that maybe he's not fighting quite as hard.
A traveling pack of hipsters bump into Billy pushing him a little further into the club. He looks at their retreating backs, envious of their style and height--mostly their height--and realizes he's closer to forty than thirty and his being here is probably more pathetic than Sean. Still, he's Scottish and Billy's pretty sure that his nationality alone makes up for a receding hairline.
A tug on his coat makes him return his attention to Sean but he shakes his head to show that he can't hear anything. Sean tries again, yelling over the music and pointing towards the tiny stage where two women are performing a kind of gyrating dance. It's mesmerizing in its own way and Billy nods, willing to agree to anything to get this night over with. A few drinks in him and he knows he won't care about anything anymore.
Closer to the stage, they grab a tiny table another couple is vacating and sit, Billy looking around in some hope that a barmaid might suddenly appear. Sean's knees bump against Billy's as Sean bounces in his seat. "Calm down, mate."
"Mate. That's good. I should use that."
"No. Look there she is. Don't use mate." Billy waves to Apple as she takes the stage. She doesn't see him, of course, and he feels a bit like a git. "I'm going to get us some drinks. What do you want?"
"Beer. No. Wine. No. Wait." Sean watches as Liv struts across the stage in a cheerleader's outfit, his face taking on a rapturous kind of joy Billy's rarely seen anywhere else. The Jets. Wonderful. Sean lifts his baseball cap again and smoothes down his hair before he replaces it, bill forward now to show his belief in kismet, Billy assumes. Billy starts to leave, not wanting to disturb the moment but Sean grabs his arm to stop him. "What are you going to have?"
"Macallan." The same as always. "Just get beer. You don't like anything else."
"No. I need something cool. Maybe something with an umbrella? Umbrellas are cool, right?"
Billy pulls away now, walking towards the bar and ignoring Sean. Every sports writer he's ever known has been the same though, here and back home in Britain. The only difference is that Americans always wear baseball caps. At the bar he tries to catch the eye of one of the bartenders. A quick look over his shoulder at Sean shows that he's still trying to figure out how to look cool. Deciding to let him have at it, Billy orders a drink and sips at it for a while, waiting until Liv is finished with her dance before motioning the bartender back over.
"Another." He motions to his glass. "And a beer."
"What kind?"
"Anything cheap and American. He bloody well won't know the difference."
"Tap or bottle? Right. Doesn't matter."
Apple actually has three performances tonight and Billy and Sean catch them all. Somewhere along the line, Billy switches to rum and cokes and by his second decides that he doesn't mind the club or the dancing so much. By the fourth, he thinks she's brilliant, persuaded by Sean's argument that she's obviously not only the city's finest burlesque performer but a grande dancer and wasting her talent, though stunningly so.
It's also the fourth that has him stumbling into his flat closer to morning than midnight, bleary eyed and missing the envelope slipped beneath his door. He doesn't even take off his trousers when he falls face first into his bed.
***
Early the next morning, the cell phone in Billy's pocket vibrates for a full minute before playing a tinny version of Sisqo's Thong Song. Briefly surfacing from his dreams, he tries to place where the noise is coming from and realizes with a groan that it's his own pants. Billy has a vague memory of reprogramming the ring last night and thinking that it was hilarious. This morning, with the sun barely making its way past the blinds in his bedroom, it seems like torture--and like salvation when it stops.
A few hours later, he blessedly misses hearing it again as he stands beneath the spray of the shower. He's moved past wanting to die and focuses all his remaining brain cells towards one purpose: coffee, preferably a latte with a double shot of espresso. By the time he wraps a towel about his waist and looks at himself in the mirror above the sink, he's progressed to feeling human-like though still single-mindedly focused on caffeine. It's this thought--and a straight edge razor gingerly pressed against his chin--that understandable holds his attention, making him jump and curse when the cell begins to ring again. Billy digs into the trousers balled up on the floor to find his phone, hearing Sean yelling into the phone the moment he's answered.
"I'm going to Vegas!"
"I'm sorry. Do I know you?"
"Apple!"
"Sean, really. Full sentences." Billy leans against the sink again to inspect his slightly bleeding chin. "I know that your life passes you by in box scores and--"
"Married! Apple and me!!"
"I."
"What?"
"Apple and I," Billy says, his voice flat and disinterested. He decides that he'll forgo the shave and rinses the shaving crème from his face. "Apple and I are getting married."
"Pedantic."
"Do you even know what that means?"
"Do you have no other reaction that your best friend--"
"--You were going to marry a waitress last month. Savannah, remember her?"
"I'm hurt, Billy, that you would bring her up. You know the break up was difficult."
Billy almost laughs. Sean actually does sound hurt. "Two weeks ago, when we were in Cooke City, you wanted to elope with that girl who was dealing at the blackjack tables."
"This is for real."
"You bought her a ring. And you weren't even drunk." Billy, giving up everything in favor of searching out coffee, heads down the hall towards his kitchen and finds the envelope he had missed seeing the night before. "Right. For real. Hey Sean, let me call you back, okay?"
Billy signs off before he hears Sean's answer. There's no mark on the envelope, no hint as to its sender. He picks it up, turns to open it and thinks of DNA on the glue strip. He's halfway to the kitchen to find a knife instead before he begins chiding himself for his overactive imagination. He rips the envelope open and pulls out a photo of a young boy.
Youth is a relative thing, he reflects. The lad in the picture is probably 18 or 19, but trying to look older. He's dragging deeply on a little cigarette, one of those Indian things that smell of spices, his bright blue eyes turned away from the camera, laughing at something just out of the frame. It looks like one of those paparazzi photos where the target doesn't know he's being photographed. Billy turns it back over to see a date, 29 October 2005 and the words I'm sorry. The date means nothing to him. He turns the picture again and studies the boy. His nails are bitten down to the quick but otherwise he looks well cared for, like any of the boys his age who attend the university.
His phone rings again while he still looks at the picture and he answers it automatically without looking at the screen to see who it is. “This is Billy.”
“You didn’t call last night. I left you a note by the TV telling you to call.”
Ally, his soon to be ex-wife, sounds tired and irritated, not a good sign before noon. Billy grips the phone a little tighter as his head begins to ache at the base of his skull. He doesn’t want to fight. Not this morning. “Did you drop a picture in an envelope?”
“A picture? What? I wrote you a note.” Billy can tell that she wants to hang on to her argument but her curiosity is piqued. “What kind of a picture?”
“Of a boy. College student, I guess. I think he’s standing somewhere on the university campus.” Billy flips the picture again then drops it onto the counter. Ally makes a dismissive sound but doesn’t say anything else. He turns to find the coffee grounds and fill the carafe with water. “I didn’t think you’d want me to call yet. I wasn’t sure.”
“We’re still married,” she says, but there’s no anger left in her voice. He wonders if she’s counting the days until their divorce is final but then guesses she wouldn’t be calling if she hated him. Amicable was her word for it, their relationship for the last year. “It’s my dad’s birthday next weekend. They’d like for you to come down.”
“How about you? Is it what you want, too?” Amicable wasn’t something that Billy was looking for in a relationship. He remembers a time when they couldn’t keep their hands off one another. Ally lets the silence stretch between them. Billy imagines her pixyish face wrinkled in concentration as she chews on her thumbnail. “Never mind. I’ll try to come down. Tell your parents.”
They sign off and Billy is still thinking about the conversation while he waits for the coffee to brew. They’d lasted seven years before the fights began over his drinking and her career. They’d both wanted children but it had never happened. Billy thinks maybe that was a blessing. He knows that Ally doesn’t agree. He’s still thinking about it when his phone rings again. This time his “This is Billy” sounds resigned.
“Mr. Boyd?”
Billy doesn’t recognize the voice of the woman on the other end of the line. “Yes.”
“Mr. Boyd, you don’t know me but your editor gave me your number. He said you might be able to help me. I was wondering if we could meet.” There’s a quality of desperation to her voice that Billy recognizes from years of talking to victims of the crimes he reports on. When he doesn’t say anything she rushes on. “It’s about my son, Mr. Boyd. You did an article last year about—“
“—Your son. Black hair? Blue eyes?”
“Yes. Did you—“
The conversation with Ally has left Billy feeling vulnerable. His earlier worry of DNA samples on the envelope seems stupid and he’s chagrined to have thought of it. Though he’s alone in his kitchen, he stands up straighter, distancing himself from this woman’s tragedy. “You slid his picture beneath my door last night. Why?”
“Your editor, Mr. Jackson. He gave me your information. He said you could help me.”
Billy exhales deeply, irritated about how this day is shaping up so far. He doesn’t doubt that Mr. Jackson—Peter—did just that. He imagines Peter thinks he can turn a distraught mother of a missing boy into something epic. He probably already has a two page layout plotted out in his head. He senses he won't be able to avoid talking to her at some point if Peter has sent her. “Fine. I’ll meet with you, Ms.—“
“Wood. My son’s name was Elijah.”
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