about that. Soon everybody else will.â
Mood, like this right here. Robert Barnes, the mayor. God, if there was a better synonym for a political hack than D.C.âs two-term chief elected official, it was unknown to Sully Carter. But Barnes, when asked about the level of fear in Washington, said, âMy wife didnât walk the pug today.â
How brilliant was that? The political elite, the bastards who ran this place, they were so unnerved by the specter of Terry Waters materializing on the front doorstep with a pair of ice picks in hand that the mayoral missus
wouldnât even walk the First Dog around the block
. Made him poop in the backyard. You want a tangible, cut-the-meat-off-the-bones description of fear that would resonate from the white folks in Northwest to the black folks in Southeast? That right there.
The manhunt was still centered on D.C., where bloodhounds trackedphantom trails in Rock Creek Park and along the Anacostia riverbank. But it also was radiating out into the Shenandoah, the low-slung but densely forested mountains and gullies an hour or so west. The Coast Guard was patrolling the Chesapeake, roadblocks were set up around the Beltway and on I-95, heading both north and south, and west on I-66, turning traffic into a monstrous, slow-moving worm. You could see the tie-ups from space. He heard that from behind him, somebody with a television, the evening anchor blathering. He flicked his eyes up, the clock. 8:30.
One of the largest manhunts in the history of the nationâs capital blanketed the region yesterday, as the gunman seemed to vanish into the humid August air. Checkpoints choked traffic, airports heightened security, Amtrak routes were delayed for hours, and commuter traffic grew into a monster so large that tie-ups, when viewed from satellites, took on the size and forbidding shape of something prehistoric emerging from the earth beneath.
Terry Running Waters, as the gunman identified himself in a 911 call from the Capitol, apologized for killing everyone but Edmonds. He said what he wanted most, at the moment, was a âchicken sandwich and a cold beer.â
Deadline. Now it took physical form. It was a beast that chewed into his right shoulder with a saw-toothed glee, gnawing deeper beneath the shoulder blade with each passing minute. The later it got in the newsroom, the more other reporters filed out, the more an invisible bubble seemed to grow around him. No one dared speak to him, so low in his chair was he slung, so furiously was he chewing on his pen, so intently was he staring at the screen, so violently was he whisper-cursing at eachclunky bit of narrative that refused to be transmitted from mind to fingers to screen.
Federal Washington all but ceased to exist. The Capitol, site of yesterdayâs deadly rampage, was closed, with armed officers and yellow police tape blocking off the entire campus.
All adjacent congressional office buildings were closed, as was the Library of Congress. The Supreme Court was flanked by armed guards at each corner. The museums along the Mall were closed. So was the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. No tour buses ran. Pennsylvania Avenue, long known as Americaâs Main Street on its route between Congress and the White House, was largely deserted. Maître dâs at its high-priced restaurants leaned on the pulpits and awaited anyoneâanyone at allâto ask for a corner booth.
His solitude was broken only by R.J. coming over every now and again to whisper in his ear that Eddie loved the story, he did, but if Sully could maybe move the second sentence of the third graf into the lede, and move the second sentence of the lede graf into the fourth, that would be lovely, just lovely, and Paul had the smallest of concerns about the eighth graf because that was going to be the one right before the jump. This kept up until Sully loudly broadcast, at 8:58, spying R.J. getting up from his seat once again,
Mood, like this right here. Robert Barnes, the mayor. God, if there was a better synonym for a political hack than D.C.âs two-term chief elected official, it was unknown to Sully Carter. But Barnes, when asked about the level of fear in Washington, said, âMy wife didnât walk the pug today.â
How brilliant was that? The political elite, the bastards who ran this place, they were so unnerved by the specter of Terry Waters materializing on the front doorstep with a pair of ice picks in hand that the mayoral missus
wouldnât even walk the First Dog around the block
. Made him poop in the backyard. You want a tangible, cut-the-meat-off-the-bones description of fear that would resonate from the white folks in Northwest to the black folks in Southeast? That right there.
The manhunt was still centered on D.C., where bloodhounds trackedphantom trails in Rock Creek Park and along the Anacostia riverbank. But it also was radiating out into the Shenandoah, the low-slung but densely forested mountains and gullies an hour or so west. The Coast Guard was patrolling the Chesapeake, roadblocks were set up around the Beltway and on I-95, heading both north and south, and west on I-66, turning traffic into a monstrous, slow-moving worm. You could see the tie-ups from space. He heard that from behind him, somebody with a television, the evening anchor blathering. He flicked his eyes up, the clock. 8:30.
One of the largest manhunts in the history of the nationâs capital blanketed the region yesterday, as the gunman seemed to vanish into the humid August air. Checkpoints choked traffic, airports heightened security, Amtrak routes were delayed for hours, and commuter traffic grew into a monster so large that tie-ups, when viewed from satellites, took on the size and forbidding shape of something prehistoric emerging from the earth beneath.
Terry Running Waters, as the gunman identified himself in a 911 call from the Capitol, apologized for killing everyone but Edmonds. He said what he wanted most, at the moment, was a âchicken sandwich and a cold beer.â
Deadline. Now it took physical form. It was a beast that chewed into his right shoulder with a saw-toothed glee, gnawing deeper beneath the shoulder blade with each passing minute. The later it got in the newsroom, the more other reporters filed out, the more an invisible bubble seemed to grow around him. No one dared speak to him, so low in his chair was he slung, so furiously was he chewing on his pen, so intently was he staring at the screen, so violently was he whisper-cursing at eachclunky bit of narrative that refused to be transmitted from mind to fingers to screen.
Federal Washington all but ceased to exist. The Capitol, site of yesterdayâs deadly rampage, was closed, with armed officers and yellow police tape blocking off the entire campus.
All adjacent congressional office buildings were closed, as was the Library of Congress. The Supreme Court was flanked by armed guards at each corner. The museums along the Mall were closed. So was the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. No tour buses ran. Pennsylvania Avenue, long known as Americaâs Main Street on its route between Congress and the White House, was largely deserted. Maître dâs at its high-priced restaurants leaned on the pulpits and awaited anyoneâanyone at allâto ask for a corner booth.
His solitude was broken only by R.J. coming over every now and again to whisper in his ear that Eddie loved the story, he did, but if Sully could maybe move the second sentence of the third graf into the lede, and move the second sentence of the lede graf into the fourth, that would be lovely, just lovely, and Paul had the smallest of concerns about the eighth graf because that was going to be the one right before the jump. This kept up until Sully loudly broadcast, at 8:58, spying R.J. getting up from his seat once again,
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