Then at the stroke of one, the back door to the chief’s office banged open and through it walked Terry Wolfe. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark blue tie loosened at the throat, and he had unbuttoned the top two shirt buttons. His hair was just slightly tousled and his curly red beard looked a little wild. The effect was that of a man who has been seriously at work all night, a man who has been in the trenches. He walked right through the middle of the crowd, which yielded and parted for him (though they continued to babble questions at him), past a grateful Gus Bernhardt and a skeptical Ferro—who had become convinced the mayor had wigged out—and stopped in the precise center of the crowd. Everyone was speaking at once, yelling, demanding, imploring, reviling, questioning, accusing, but Terry said nothing, did nothing other than fix his blueberry eyes on the nearest reporter and then turn very slowly in a full circle, making deliberate eye contact with as many people as possible. His stare was as hard and unfaltering as a statue’s, and from the subtle arch of one eyebrow and the set of his stern mouth it was clear that he was not going to speak until he had a more attentive and respectful audience. He did not say a word, but gradually every voice faltered and grew silent. By the time he completed the full turn the crowded office was totally quiet except for the rustling of clothes and a small, embarrassed cough here and there.
Ferro, watching, was impressed. He and LaMastra exchanged a brief look. “This should be good,” LaMastra murmured.
Terry had prepared himself for this moment. Since calling Gus late yesterday he had spent hours getting himself calm, gathering all the details, mentally rehearsing his comments, and listening to all the updates from the news services. Terry felt like ten miles of poorly paved back road, but he had showered, and dressed in the kind of outfit that would project the image he wanted the people of his town to see: not a shifty politician dodging the situation, but a leader of the people who was there on the front lines with the troops. Not an Italian suit but rolled-up shirtsleeves and all of the long hours stamped on his face. He crammed the other things—the hallucinations, the monstrous mirror images he was seeing, and the fear—into a closet in the back of his mind and made himself be The Mayor. He was good at this sort of stuff, and he knew it; and it was not all artifice—he genuinely cared about his town, though he rarely had a chance to show it. Right now, though, he needed to show a lot of it. He needed to be The Man in Charge. He waited out the silence, standing nearly six-five and powerful in the center of the reporters, few of whom were anywhere near his height, and none of them his equal in gravitas.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began in the stentorian tones he had learned long ago in high school debating society, “and my fellow citizens of Pine Deep. For those that don’t know me, my name is Terrance Wolfe, I am the mayor of Pine Deep.” He paused for effect, gave a small self-effacing smile. “I am aware of the depth of concern you all must feel about what has happened, and I understand your confusion about the way in which this situation was handled by myself and the members of the interjurisdictional task force. If you will allow me, I will present all of the available facts to you. However, before we begin, I would like to say that out of respect for everyone’s deadlines, I will first read a prepared statement and then I will field questions. I think it would help us all if there were no questions until I finish the statement, because the information I have is extensive and will probably provide you with most or all of what you need to tell your readers.”
He paused again, smiling the kind of smile a high school principal would give when addressing a group of incoming freshmen. Terry knew how to project both his sincerity and his command so that few people ever felt compelled to interrupt him. He deliberately avoided the use of contractions so that he sounded formal, and yet pitched his voice to be on the corporate side of affable. The length of his pause, and the sweep of his dark, intense blue eyes, cemented his words into every crack and crevice of the silence. “Very well. I assume most of you have your tape recorders and cameras rolling? Good. Let me begin with the prepared statement.”
