Terror at the Fair

Chapter Forty-Five

My phone had squawked twice while Fahey and I talked, but I ignored it. I was pretty sure at least one of the calls had been from the Tribune, so I dialed the city desk. To my surprise, Hal Murray still manned his post.

“I didn’t expect to hear your voice this late,” I told him. “Not to suggest I’m in any way disappointed, you understand.”

“Are you by chance still at the fair?” he barked. “I called you a couple of times.”

“You might say I’ve been tied up for a while. The killer—or should I say alleged killer—of three people out here is now dead himself, as you probably know by now. Plus he’s an accomplice in a fourth death here.”

“You’re damned right, we know. But we don’t know a whole lot else, except the police are saying a suspect in the pageant shooting was found dead in his hotel room in Uptown today. What’ve you got for us?”

“Quite a bit. I can tell you more about the Uptown death, and I also became an eyewitness to a suicide, but I don’t want a big deal made out of my role. I had more than enough of that during the Truman business last fall. I’m well aware we are expected to report the news, not make it.”

“That’s true, although you seem to be the exception to the rule,” Murray remarked dryly. “You are to news as a pot of honey is to a hungry bear. Look, just feed Williamson everything you’ve got, and the higher-ups here can do the worrying about whether there is too much of you in it.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Put Mr. W. on, and I’ll regurgitate what I’ve been experiencing here on this fine Chicago summer evening.”

I gave Williamson all the gory details, and being a superb rewrite man, he as usual asked a question after almost every sentence I dictated.

“Look, Eddie, please play down my part in this,” I beseeched him.

“Okay, but we have got to keep in your eyewitness description of Taylor throwing himself onto the tracks. You know the bosses are going to want lots of details. It sells and it shows the world the Tribune is always right where news happens. Let the other papers try to match that.”

I groaned, but knew he was correct. He did promise, however, to keep my role at a minimum. However, his wasn’t the ultimate decision by any means. That got made by Pat Maloney and the other top editors sitting at the big, four-sided desk in the center of the newsroom.

The next morning, the Tribune’s banner headline read FAIR KILLER ENDS LIFE! The lead story gave a straightforward account of Taylor’s killing spree and death, but sure enough, the editors had included a sidebar headed TRIB REPORTER SEES SUICIDE. It used practically every quote Williamson had wormed out of me when I had phoned in.

“Dammit all,” I said as I read the paper at home while drinking coffee after breakfast. Catherine had decreed I was in no condition to go to work at the fair that day, and I did not argue the point. She had been beside herself the previous night when I got home well after eleven o’clock and she took one look at my face.

Her initial shock gave way to anger, which I’m happy to say quickly gave way to concern. Then came the requisite “I thought you said you wouldn’t get involved…” admonishment, but she then rapidly switched into Florence Nightingale mode, which I accepted as being a pretty good outcome after what had been one of the wildest days of my life.

“He actually planned to kill you, didn’t he?” Catherine asked as we had more coffee.

“Sure seemed liked it,” I said, “but for some reason, I wasn’t worried, although I’m not sure I can tell you why. Rob Taylor seemed so singularly intent on wrecking the train I became almost an afterthought, a minor irritant.”

“Yes, but you were all that stood in the way of making the wreck happen.”

“I suppose you’re right. He darned near pulled it off at that. He would have if he didn’t take his mind off of me, if only for an instant. Even so, I had to make a perfect throw with our trusty flashlight.”

“Who would have thought it would come down to a flashlight? In the end, it all gets back to Walt Disney’s theory being right on the mark,” Catherine said as she looked at me over the rim of her cup. “Now what, Steve?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you go back to the fair after all this?”

“I really don’t know; it’s up to the editors. I’ll tell you this, however. I think we’ve pretty much milked the thing dry. There are only so many features you can wring out of an exposition like this. I thought when I got the assignment it was overkill having somebody out there full-time.”

“You didn’t say anything to your bosses at the time, though.”

“True enough. But it pretty much got presented to me as a fait accompli, as you will recall.”

“You were plenty depressed then.”

“Well, I’m still not exactly doing handsprings now about my future prospects,” I told her. “And to top it off, I wake up to find the home-delivered edition full of my exploits. Just what a reporter doesn’t want to be: a major player in a story he’s covering.”

“But don’t your editors have to be impressed with you now? Won’t all the publicity actually help what you refer to as your ‘future prospects’?”

“I don’t know... maybe,” I replied, draining the rest of my coffee.

“We will just have to worry about those future prospects later,” she said with wifely authority. “Right now, I want to change the bandage on your forehead and put another cold compress on your nose. He could have broken it.”

“True, but given its original Slavic configuration, almost anything would be an improvement,” I said as we went upstairs, where she would further minister to my wounds, both physical and psychological.