River’s End

Caryn, he decided to make coffee and toast a couple of bagels before he played them back.
    A guy needed fuel for certain tasks.
    He tossed his sunglasses on top of his pile of mail and got down to the first order of business. While the coffee brewed, he switched on the portable TV, flipping through the morning talk shows to see if there was a topic of interest to him. His bedroom VCR would have taped the Today show while he’d been out. He’d catch up with that later, see what was up in the world, skim through it for the news headlines. He’d brought the morning papers in before his run, and he’d get to them as well, spending at least an hour, if not two, absorbing the top stories, the metro reports, the crime.
    You just never knew where the next book would come from.
    He glanced again at the light blinking on his answering machine but decided his mail was a higher priority than his phone messages. Not that he was procrastinating, he thought as he sat at the counter with his single-man’s breakfast and listened with half an ear to Jerry Springer.
    He scooped back his hair, thought vaguely about a haircut and worked his way through the usual complement of bills and junk mail. There was a nice little packet of reader mail forwarded by his publisher that he decided to read and savor later, his monthly issue of Prison Life and a postcard from a friend vacationing in Maui. Then he picked up a plain white envelope with his name and address carefully handwritten on it. The return address was San Quentin.
    He received mail from prisoners routinely, but not, Noah thought with a frown, at his home address. Sometimes they wanted to kick his ass on general principles, but for the most part they were certain he’d want to write their story. He hesitated over the letter, not sure if he should be annoyed or concerned that someone in one of those cages had his home address. But when he had opened it and skimmed the first lines, his heart gave a quick jerk that was both shock and fascination.
    Dear Noah Brady,
    My name is Sam Tanner. I think you’ll know who I am. We are, in a way, connected. Your father was the primary investigating officer in mx wife’s murder, and the man who arrested me.
    You may or may not be aware that he has attended all of my parole hearings since I began serving my sentence. You could say Frank and I have kept in touch.
    I read with interest your book Hunt by Night. Your clear-sighted and somewhat dispassionate look into the mind and methods of James Trolly made his systematic selection and mutilation of male prostitutes in West Hollywood more chilling and real than any of the stories in the media during his spree five years ago.
    As an actor I have a great appreciation for a strong, clearheaded writer. It has been some years since I’ve bothered to speak to reporters, to the freelance journalists and writers who initially clamored to tell my story. I made mistakes in whom I trusted, and was paid back by having my words twisted to suit the public’s thirst for scandal and gossip. In reading your work, I’ve come to believe that you ‘re interested in the truth, in the real people and events that took place. I find this interesting, given my connection to your father. Almost as if it’s been fated. I’ve come to believe in fate over these last years. I would like to tell you my story. I’d like you to write it. If you’re interested, I think you know where to find me.
    I’m not going anywhere for a few more months.
    Sincerely,
    Sam Tanner
    “Well, well.” Noah scratched his chin and read over the high points of the letter again. When his phone rang, he ignored it. When Caryn’s angry voice shot out accusing him of being an insensitive pig, cursing him and swearing revenge, he barely heard.
    “Oh, I’m interested all right, Sam. I’ve been interested in you for twenty years.”
    He had files stuffed full on Sam Tanner, Julie MacBride and the Beverly Hills murder his father had investigated. He’d kept them and had continued to accumulate data even after his painful visit to Olivia at college.
    He’d put the book aside, but not his interest in the case. And not his determination to one day write the book that would tell the story from all angles. But he’d put it aside for six years, he thought now, because every time he started to work on it again, he saw the way Olivia had looked at him when she’d stood by the desk in that little hotel room, with his papers gripped in her hands.