Mirror Image

he saw light leaking around the tattered shades in his apartment windows that he had been up all night, viewing one videotape after another. After he had slept for about an hour, he’d drunk a pot of strong, caffeine-rich coffee and returned to his console. The desk area was littered with junk food wrappers, empty soda cans, empty cigarette packs, and rank, overflowing ashtrays.
    Van hadn’t noticed the untidiness. He didn’t care. Nor did it matter to him that he hadn’t eaten a square meal or showered in over forty-eight hours. His compulsion to watch videotapes had become his obsession. His passion had grown into a mission.
    He accomplished it at nine-thirty P.M. as he sat looking at a tape he had shot three years earlier while working at an NBC affiliate station in Washington state. He didn’t even remember the station’s call letters, but he remembered the assignment. He had used four tapes in all, each containing twenty minutes of unedited video. The reporter had compressed those eighty minutes into a five-minute special feature for the evening news during a ratings sweep week. It was the kind of piece people shuddered over and woefully shook their heads at, but consumed like popcorn.
    Van watched all eighty minutes several times to make certain there was no mistake. When he was positive he was right, he flipped the necessary switches, inserted a blank tape, and began to make a duplicate of the most important, and most incriminating, one of the four.
    Since it had to be duplicated at real time, that left him with twenty minutes to kill. He searched through the crumpled packets littering the console and finally produced a lone, bent cigarette, lit it, then picked up the phone and called the Palacio Del Rio.
    “Yeah, I need to talk to Mrs. Rutledge. Mrs. Tate Rutledge.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the switchboard operator said pleasantly, “I can’t put that call through, but if you leave your name and number—”
    “No, you don’t understand. This is a personal message for Av… uh, Carole Rutledge.”
    “I’ll give your message to their staff, who is screening—”
    “Look, bitch, this is important, got that? An emergency.”
    “Regarding what, sir?”
    “I can’t tell you. I’ve got to speak to Mrs. Rutledge personally.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the unflappable operator repeated. “I can’t put that call through. If you leave your—”
    “Shit!”
    He slammed down the receiver and dialed Irish’s number. He let it ring thirty times before giving up. “Where the hell is he?”
    While the tape was still duplicating, Van paced, trying to figure out the best way to inform Irish and Avery of what he’d found. It was essential that he get this tape into Avery’s hands, but how? If he couldn’t even get the hotel operator to ring her suite, he couldn’t possibly get close enough tonight to place the tape into her hands. She
had
to see it before tomorrow.
    By the time the duplication was completed, Van still hadn’t thought of a solution to his dilemma. The only possible course of action was to try to locate Irish. He would advise him what to do.
    But after keeping the phone lines hot for half an hour between his apartment, KTEX’s newsroom, and Irish’s house, he still hadn’t spoken to his boss. He decided to take the damn tape to Irish’s house. He could wait for him there. It would mean driving clear across town, but what the hell? This was important.
    It wasn’t until he reached the parking lot of his apartment complex that he remembered his van was in the shop. His companion reporter had had to drive him home after they’d covered Rutledge’s return to the San Antonio airport earlier that evening.
    “Shit. Now what?”
    The post office box. If contact couldn’t be made any other way, that was the conveyance he’d been told to use. He went back inside. Among a heap of scrap papers, he found the one he’d scribbled the post office box number on. He sealed the videotape into an addressed, padded envelope, slipped on a jacket, and struck out on foot, taking his package with him.
    It was only two blocks to the nearest convenience store, where there was also a mailbox, but even that represented more exercise than Van liked.
    He purchased cigarettes, a six-pack of beer, and enough stamps to cover the postage—if not, Irish could make up the difference—and dropped the package into the mailbox. The schedule posted on the outside said that there was a pickup at midnight. The