Barbara doesn’t want to think her friend is having some kind of mindfuck, maybe even a nervous breakdown, nor does she want to believe Holly might have somehow stumbled on the trail of the school bomber… but she knows that’s not beyond the realm, as they say. Holly is insecure, Holly spends way too much time doubting herself, but Holly is also smart. Is it possible that Ondowsky and Finkel (a pairing that inevitably reminds her of Simon & Garfunkel) somehow stumbled across a clue to the bomber without knowing it, or even realizing it?

This idea makes Barbara think of a film she watched with Holly. Blow-Up, it was called. In it, a photographer taking pictures of lovers in a park accidentally photographs a man hiding in the bushes with a pistol. What if something like that happened at the Macready School? What if the bomber had returned to the scene of the crime to gloat over his handiwork, and the TV guys had filmed him as he watched (or even pretended to help)? What if Holly had somehow realized that? Barbara knew and accepted that the idea was farfetched, but didn’t life sometimes imitate art? Maybe Holly had gone to Pittsburgh to interview Ondowsky and Finkel. That would be safe enough, Barbara supposes, but what if the bomber was still in the area, and Holly went after him?

What if the bomber went after her?

All of this is probably bullshit, but Barbara is nevertheless relieved when the WebWatcher app tracks Holly leaving Pittsburgh and driving to her mother’s house. She almost deleted the tracker then, certainly doing so would have eased her conscience, but then Holly had called her yesterday, apparently for no reason other than to tell her she’d be staying over at her mom’s on Saturday night. And then, at the end of the call, Holly had said, “I love you.”

Well, of course she does, and Barbara loves her, but that was understood, not the kind of thing you had to say out loud. Except maybe on special occasions. Like if you’d had a fight with your friend and were making up. Or if you were going on a long trip. Or going off to fight in a war. Barbara is sure it was the last thing men and women said to their parents or partners before leaving to do that.

And there had been a certain tone to the way she’d said it that Barbara didn’t like. Sad, almost. And now the green dot tells Barbara that Holly isn’t staying the night at her mother’s after all. She’s apparently headed back to the city. Change of plans? Maybe a fight with her mother?

Or had she flat-out lied?

Barbara glances at her desk and sees the DVDs she’s borrowed from Holly for her report: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Harper. She thinks they’ll be the perfect excuse to talk to Holly when Holly gets back. She’ll affect surprise to find Holly at home, then try to find out what was so important in Portland and Pittsburgh. She may even confess to the tracker—that will depend on how things go.

She checks Holly’s location on her phone again. Still the turnpike. Barbara guesses that the traffic might be jammed up by construction or an accident. She looks at her watch, then back at the green dot. She thinks that Holly will be lucky to get back much before five o’clock.

And I’ll be at her apartment by five-thirty, Barbara thinks. I hope nothing’s wrong with her… but I think maybe there is.

4

The traffic crawls… then stops.

Crawls… and stops.

Stops.

I’m going to lose my mind, Holly thinks. It’s just going to snap while I sit here looking at the back of that dumptruck. I’ll probably hear the sound when it goes. Like a breaking branch.

The light has begun to drain out of this December day, just two calendar squares away from the shortest day of the year. The dashboard clock tells her that the earliest she can now hope to arrive at the Frederick Building is five o’clock, and that will only happen if the traffic starts to move again soon… and if she doesn’t run out of gas. She’s down to just over a quarter of a tank.

I could miss him, she thinks. He could show up, and call me to text him the door code, and get no answer. He’ll think I lost my nerve and chickened out.

The idea that coincidence, or some malign force (Jerome’s bird, all frowsy and frosty gray), may have decreed that her second face to face with Ondowsky should not happen brings her no relief. Because she’s not just on his personal hit parade now, she’s number one with a bullet. Facing him on her home ground, and with a plan, was to be her advantage. If she loses it, he’ll try to blindside her. And he could succeed.

Once she reaches for her phone to call Pete, to tell him that a dangerous man is going to show up at the side door of their building, and he should approach with caution, but Ondowsky would talk his way out of it. Easily. He talks for a living. Even if he didn’t, Pete is getting on in years and at least twenty pounds over what he weighed when he retired from the police. Pete is slow. The thing pretending to be a TV reporter is fast. She will not risk Pete. She’s the one who let the genie out of the bottle.

Ahead of her, the dumptruck’s taillights go out. It rolls ahead fifty feet or so and stops again. This time, however, the stop is briefer and the next forward advance is longer. Is it possible that the jam is breaking? She hardly dares to believe it, but she has Holly hope.

Which turns out to be justified. In five minutes she’s doing forty. After seven, she’s up to fifty-five. After eleven, Holly puts her foot down and takes possession of the passing lane. When she shoots by the three-car pileup that caused the jam, she barely gives the wrecks that have been pulled over to the median strip a glance.

If she can keep her speed to seventy until she leaves the turnpike at midtown, and if she catches most of the traffic lights, she estimates she can be at her building by five-twenty.

5

Holly actually arrives in the vicinity of her building at five minutes past five. Unlike the weirdly underpopulated Monroeville Mall, downtown is busy-busy-busy. This is both good and bad. Her chances of spotting Ondowsky in the bustle of bundled-up shoppers on Buell Street are small, but his chances of grabbing her (if he means to do that, and she wouldn’t put it past him) are equally small. It’s what Bill would call a push.

As if to make up for her bad luck on the turnpike, she spots a car pulling out of a parking space almost directly across from the Frederick Building. She waits until it’s gone, then backs carefully into the space, trying to ignore the poophead behind her laying on his horn. Under less fraught circumstances that constant blare might have induced her to let the space go, but she doesn’t see another space on the whole block. That would leave her with the parking garage, probably on one of the upper levels, and Holly has seen too many movies where bad things happen to women in parking garages. Especially after dark, and it’s dark now.

The horn-blower rolls past as soon as the front end of Holly’s rental car has cleared enough space, but the poophead—not a he but a she—slows long enough to wish Holly a little Christmas cheer with her middle finger.

There’s a break in the traffic when Holly exits the car. She could jaywalk to the other side of the street—jay-trot, anyway—but she joins a crowd of shoppers waiting for the walk light at the next corner instead. Safety in numbers. She has her key to the building’s front door in her hand. She has no intention of going around to the side entrance. It’s in a service alley where she’d be an easy target.