“I … he can’t talk to you himself. He’s afraid he’ll get in trouble.”
Adrenaline was pumping through her now. This could be the biggest story of her career. “Would he talk to me if he was assured his identity would be kept a secret?”
“Can you do that?”
“Certainly. Could we set up a meeting? A secret meeting.”
“He doesn’t want to be on TV. That would be as good as getting himself killed. Maybe I’d better go. I’ve changed my mind.”
“No, wait! Please,” she said anxiously. “If you … I mean your friend … if he knows something about those babies, shouldn’t he tell? Just have him meet me. It won’t do any harm to talk. No one would know.”
There was a weighty silence on the line, while he pondered his dilemma. “There wouldn’t be no cameras, no tape recorders, or nothing?”
“No. I swear it.”
“All right,” he agreed cautiously. “Meet him in the hospital employee parking garage. You know where that is?”
“I’ll find it.” She didn’t ask which hospital. She already knew. “What time?”
“Nine o’clock. Second level. Row B. Fourth car from the north end. If you’re not alone, he won’t stop.”
“Tell him I’ll see him at nine o’clock.”
Her caller hung up. For several seconds she sat there staring down at the script in front of her. Suddenly it seemed mundane. She had a real story on her hands now.
Leaping from her chair, she ran to tell Pinkie, then thought better of it. He might not let her go. Maybe he would pass the caller off as a kook or send one of the “hard news” reporters in her stead. That would blow everything, because the informer had said he would talk only to her.
Pinkie certainly wouldn’t want her going to meet an unidentified caller alone. She decided to keep it to herself until she had something. It might pan out to be nothing.
Still, she didn’t know how she could stand the suspense until nine o’clock.
By nine fifteen, she was pacing impatiently. By nine thirty, she was deriding herself for being a gullible idiot. She had wasted her evening on a wild-goose chase when she could have been at home thinking about the new bedspread she was tempted to buy, or redoing her shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets, or fantasizing about Hunter, or anything more constructive than spending the time in a deserted parking garage that was giving her the creeps.
She turned around with the intention of going back to her car and almost bumped into the young man who stepped from behind a concrete pillar. Kari gasped and flattened her hand over her chest. Her heart jumped into her throat. She had the fleeting notion that all this might have been set up by a weirdo with an obsession for her.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” she said breathlessly. This was the guy. His voice had been disguised over the telephone, but she recognized it.
“I’ve been watching to make sure you were by yourself.”
She tried a smile, but her lips were rubbery with fright. She had been very stupid. No one on earth knew where she was. No one would notice she was missing until tomorrow morning when she didn’t report for work. But it wouldn’t do to let him know she was afraid.
“What did you have to tell me?” she asked with an air of impatient authority.
He wet his lips and ran his palms down the side of his pants leg. She relaxed somewhat. He was more nervous than she. He sidestepped her and opened the door of a Volkswagen bug. “Can we talk in here? If anyone sees us …”
Knowing she could be making another dumb move, she slid into the front seat on the passenger side. He closed the door, went around, and sat behind the wheel. He gripped it with tense fingers and gnawed the insides of his jaw. “Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for calling me.” Neither pretended there had ever been a “friend.”
“I had to talk to somebody. I didn’t know who to tell. I didn’t want the cops after me, ya know?”
That was when she began to trust him. He wouldn’t quite look her in the eye, which told her he was almost as nervous about meeting a “celebrity” as he was about the information he had to give. He was young, early twenties, she guessed. His hair was blond and fuzzy, a trifle long, but clean. His complexion was clear but showed scars of adolescent acne. He had on gray slacks, a plain white shirt, and Adidas.
“What’s your name?” she asked in a confidence-inspiring tone.
“Grady. Grady Burton. You’re not going to use it in the story, are you?”
“I don’t have a story yet. But if you don’t want to be identified, you won’t be. You have my word.”