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“What if Diviners aren’t a menace? What if they’re trying to protect us from a much greater danger?”
Malloy folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah? What danger is that, Mr. Woodhouse?”
“Danger from another world.”
“You mean like Canada?” the reporter in the bad hat
asked.
“Yeah, Charlie. Canada.” The gum-chewing reporter laughed.
Woody cleared his throat. “My, ah, sources tell me there was a secret project during the war that opened up a portal into another dimension. The entity from that world, the man in the stovepipe hat, is behind all this unrest.”
It took approximately five seconds before the entire assembly broke into wild laughter.
“Hey, Woody, who’s your source on this—Crazy Al, who talks to the pigeons in the park?”
Another reporter tapped the side of his head. “I think his bootlegger is cutting his whiskey with gasoline and it’s gone to his brain.”
Woody ignored them. “You never did solve the Naughty John case,” he reminded Malloy.
“Sure we did. Officer Lyga was a hero.”
“C’mon, Detective. We all know that’s bunk and you and the boys are covering up what really happened up at Knowles’ End,” Woody pressed.
“Yeah? And what’s that, pray tell?”
“What if it’s like Will Fitzgerald said, and it was ghosts? There are ghosts. They’re here. You can’t deny that.”
“I haven’t seen any ghosts,” Malloy said.
“It’s true. The folks at the Casino were pretty splifficated that night,” a reporter with a ruddy face and a gruff voice posited. “For all we know, the Diviners paid some actors to show up and make ’em look important just to throw us off the scent.”
“Anarchists,” the reporter in the hat said, shaking his head, and Woody wanted to take him by his lapels. This was how it happened if you weren’t careful. Somebody tried to redirect the story, and if nobody challenged it, that story became what everybody considered the truth.
“What about that night on Wall Street a few weeks back? The police were there when the Diviners faced off with—”
“Actors. Stage magic,” the reporter insisted. “C’mon, Woody. Why’re you falling for this bogus, fake medium bunk?”
“Seems like the Daily News’ll print anything these days,” Malloy echoed with a chuckle, earning a few laughs from the reporters.
“It isn’t bunk!” From his pocket, Woody grabbed a stack of newspaper clippings he’d taken from the museum. “These tell a different story. The professor was cataloging these. Ghost sightings and disturbances. Warnings. They’re from all over the country. And guess what? These started showing up just after the war. A lot of ’em mention that man in the hat.”
Malloy glowered. “Where’d you get those?”
Woody shoved them back into his pocket. “An interested party.” He didn’t need to tell Malloy that he was the interested party.
Malloy spread his arms wide. “Now, listen to me: There are no ghosts. There’s no secret project that opened up a door to some other dimension. That’s just plain crackers. But there is a threat to our national security in these Diviners with their unnatural powers palling around with anarchists who bomb innocent citizens and try to destroy this country. This is the greatest nation on earth. We aim to keep it that way. With law and order. So help me god.”
A reporter nodded. “Pretty speech, Detective. Say, you running for governor?”
Malloy puffed up, pleased with himself. “That’s all for today, gentlemen.”
The ruddy-faced man laughed. “Gentlemen? We’re reporters.”
“Hey, Woody! You need a ride to the cemetery to talk to your sources?” the gum-chewing reporter called out, earning another round of chuckles. It burned Woody up.
“I’m gonna blow this story wide open. And when I do, we’ll see who’s laughing.”
