It was top Philadelphia Daily News columnist Nick Robertson who first linked the story to Pine Deep’s haunted history with a story headlined SERIAL KILLER IN SPOOKTOWN. On CBS, Gail Harkins, her face frowning in concern, talked about how the “tragic events of last night were the latest chapter in a centuries-long history of menace, mystery, and murder in this quiet, upscale town.” Mitzie Malone of New York’s Channel 9, speaking in a hushed haunted-house voice, said that “in a town that boasts the country’s greatest number of spooky stories and campfire tales you would think that one more monster on the loose would not be noticed—but this monster is not out of a fireside yarn. This monster (dramatic pause) is real.” The evening commentator for Fox News called Karl Ruger the “ghostmaker,” hoping it would stick. It didn’t. Instead Ruger was simply labeled a “monster” and that was appropriate enough. None of the reporters seemed to be able to keep their stories free of clichés. The term “macabre” racked up a lot of mileage; every lurid adjective was dragged out and squeezed into the Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How of the story. For the first half of the day, though, the Black Marsh Sentinel owned the story. By ten that morning Dick Hangood was sitting at his desk with a smug grin on his face as he watched the way the story broke on the networks. Every time one of Newton’s sentences was quoted, Hangood made a tick mark on a scratch pad. By noon the page was black with them.
Newton himself was in the middle of it, and the other reporters were elbowing each other out of the way to interview him. Fired up by his first major story, and by the celebrity that came with the exclusive of the year, if not the decade, he held court in front of the chief’s office, which was thronged with scared and angry townsfolk and a swarm of reporters from all over the eastern seaboard.
One side effect of Newton’s story was that angry attention was suddenly focused on local government, a furor deliberately fueled by the news media who, as one, cranked up their studied self-righteousness and demanded—ostensibly on behalf of The Public, but actually on behalf of their ratings—that the mayor’s office and the police department respond to the allegations of a cover-up. Harry LeBeau responded by closing his shop and sneaking out the back way in order to head home and hide. Terry, for his part, was reading the papers and watching the news, and thinking it all through. This was becoming a make-or-break situation, and it had to be played just right. His nerves were beginning to grow taut again and he could feel the claws of the beast scratching at the inside of his brain.
So, the press descended on the police department. Gus Bernhardt, his face as red as a boiled lobster, hemmed and hawed as he tried to field eighty questions at once, most of them accusatory. Why had he not informed the public of the danger? Why was there a cover-up? How could the authorities let such a dangerous man walk around free? Sergeant Ferro was so tired and disgusted by all that had happened that he had the perverse urge to let the chief sink under the tide of questions, but a couple of the city journalists recognized him and immediately he was barraged. Unlike Bernhardt, Ferro was used to press conferences, and he had his own method for dealing with the pressure. He gave answers that were so dry and boring that most reporters found listening to him excruciating. Willard Fowler Newton was not so easily dissuaded; he grilled Ferro with questions like machine-gun fire and after a few minutes even Ferro found himself tripping over his words and casting around for an exit. Standing to one side, LaMastra fought valiantly not to crack a visible smile.
