Page 117 of Never Flinch

“What do you mean?” Holly is bewildered.

“Bad enough you want to tell the cops. I guess I have to allow that because the guy might be a threat to others, butno press, no Twitter.They canceled me in Toledo. If you give the politicians an excuse to cancel me here, they’ll take it.”

Holly grips Kate’s hand and detaches it—gently—from her shoulder. Later she’ll see the bruises of Kate’s fingers there. “This man wants to kill you, Kate. Do you understand that?”

“Every time I go onstage someone wants to kill me, and it’s probably just a matter of time before someone tries it. Doyouunderstandthat?” Kate’s smile is positively feral. Holly is speechless. So is Corrie.

At last, Jerome says, “What about circulating the picture to the Mingo personnel as well as to the cops?”

“And to the other venues we’ll be at,” Corrie adds.

Kate nods. To Holly she says, “Willthe cops try to cancel me?”

Holly gives Kate her own smile, not feral—she can’tdoferal—but thin and without humor. “I don’t think so,” she says. “If any of them can be spared from their charity softball game, I think they’ll see you as bait.”

2

Jerome buzzes off to Staples, where he makes two hundred copies of the picture from the Macbride audience-cam. He takes four dozen to Dingley Park and gives them to Tom Atta, who looks huge and athletic in his blue shorts and tee. Except for the elastic bandage wrapped around one knee and calf, that is.

“So it’s not bad enough that we’ve got a serial killer on the loose while the cops are practicing to play softball,” Tom says. “Now we’ve got to be on the lookout for this cuckoo-bird, too.”

“Will you pass those out? Here and to the radio cars?”

“Sure. Guy looks like a normal American.”

“So did Ted Bundy. What about checking hotels and motels?”

“Do you think this guy will have checked in under his own name?” Tom asks, then answers himself before Jerome has time to. “He might, if he doesn’t know we’re onto him.”

Jerome likes thatwe.

Tom says, “The Surrogate Juror nut is now a State Police case, guy named Ganzinger. That makes the Chief happy, but I’d love it if the home team could take down at least one bad guy. So yeah, I’ll have Dispatch call around. And speaking of the home team…”

He nods at the field, where Izzy is walking to the pitcher’s mound, looking impossibly long-legged in her police team shorts. Her catcher, a squat fireplug with COSLAW on the back of his shirt, walks beside her. On the third-base side, the Hoses squad comes alive, giving whistles, catcalls, and a sarcastic cheer.

“Gonna light you up, Red!” one of them yells. He’s a tall drink of water, with knees almost up to his chin. “Light you up like a Roman candle!”

“That’s the guy that talked trash to Iz at the softball press conference,” Tom says. “They kind of got into it.”

Izzy stows the softball she’s been holding in the pocket of her glove so she can give him the finger.

Tom nods at the tall Hoses player. “His name, oh so appropriate, is Pill.”

“Got into it for real or for show?”

“It was supposed to be for show, but he got under her skin, so she got under his.”

Coslaw crouches behind home plate and pounds his catcher’s mitt. Izzy does a herky-jerky windup, bends, and throws. The ball arcs over the catcher, bounces off the top of the backstop, and comes down on Coslaw’s head. The Hoses players howl. One is laughing so hard he falls off the bench, kicking his legs at the bright blue sky.

“You tryin to hit the Skylab?” George Pill bellows.

The catcher picks up the ball and flicks it back to Izzy. Even from Jerome’s place on the bench next to Tom, he can see Izzy’s cheeks have gone bright red.

“She ain’t even supposed to be pitching,” Tom says. “Got drafted because she pitched in college back in the day. Our regular guy got in a bar fight and broke his stupid hand.”

“SKYLAB, SKYLAB!”The Hoses players seem to like that one, although that particular object fell out of orbit decades ago.“REDHEAD’S TRYIN TO HIT THE SKYYYLAB!”

Izzy’s next pitch falls short, plopping into the dirt in front of home plate. The Hoses players are killing themselves now, trash-talking up a storm.

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