Read Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) for Free Online

shivered.
    “That’s the news biz. Say the President comes to town to make a speech; theoretically that’s the news, but what if he has a sudden heart attack or someone shoots him? Then that’s the real news. So you’ve got to send someone to sit in the bar of his hotel and drink, just in case.”
    “How boring.”
    “Not really. The place is always full of other reporters on deathwatch.”
    “Trading sizzling repartee.”
    “And topping one another’s war stories.”
    “But the Trapper, assuming he’s real, didn’t say he was going to strike tonight. It might be tonight, or tomorrow, or six months from now. You can’t camp here permanently.”
    “Listen! What’s that?”
    I listened. I heard sirens, getting closer. Rob knocked over his chair running out the door.

5
     
    Ambulances were drawing up to the Pier—one after another as if they’d been called to a disaster area. Feeling queasy, I realized I was about to learn firsthand why deathwatches were invented.
    Rob was nowhere in sight, but I figured it was going to be no problem to find him. He’d be where the action was. And there was beginning to be quite a lot of action, as paramedics ran up the stairs and rubbernecks followed. If I didn’t hurry, there was going to be such a traffic jam I’d get shut out—which was the only thing I could imagine worse than being at the center of the carnage. And carnage it had to be—I’d now counted six ambulances.
    Following the crowd, I ended up at a fish restaurant called Full Fathom Five, mentally cursing the management for giving it such a bad-luck name in the first place. Cops had the entrance sealed off and had a path cleared for the paramedics, who were going in with empty stretchers and coming out with full ones. The people on the stretchers were strapped down, and some seemed to be gasping for breath; one young man was screaming. And an elderly man who looked dangerously white was very still.
    After the first half dozen ambulances, another four or five came. I was beginning to lose count and not to feel very well myself. The crowd was buzzing, repeating two words over and over, high, low, soft, loud. “Food poisoning,” they were saying. “Food poisoning, food poisoning. Food poisoning.” But I didn’t for a second think it was. Even a restaurant dumb enough to name itself for a watery grave could hardly screw up this badly. Further, I imagined that food poisoning wouldn’t really get into its nastier manifestations until a few hours after one had dined. Also, I knew something no one else in that crowd knew—someone who signed himself Tourist Trapper had written Rob to ‘look for action at Pier 39.’ Not only had Jack Sanchez been a tourist, but San Francisco’s Castro district—our gay ghetto—was certainly the hottest attraction in town for gay tourists. Pier 39 was frequented almost exclusively by tourists; as for Full Fathom Five, it was unlikely any native other than its employees and the random health inspector had even passed its swinging doors. If this was the Trapper’s work—and I felt sure it was—there was certainly no doubting his intent; he was out to kill or hurt tourists in San Francisco.
    But why? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he could possibly have against them. I spotted Rob and waved him over to me. “Think it’s the Trapper’s work?”
    “It has to be. But I can’t get the cops to say so. In fact, I can hardly get a word out of them. All they’ll say is that eleven people fell ill after dining at Full Fathom Five.”
    “Eleven!”
    Rob nodded, his face unfamiliarly grave. “You’d think since I told them about the Trapper in the first place, they’d cooperate. But suddenly, it’s ‘Forget it, Charlie; who needs you?’ Next time I’ll keep it to myself.”
    “You had to tell them.”
    “Oh, I know. But you’d think—”
    “You’d think there’d be justice in the world. Guess again, pussycat.”
    He grinned. “Fine thing for a