She didn't answer. I heard her typing on the computer.

"Okay, yeah, there are selected quotes from the story and the poem. Three screens."

"Okay, is there a line that goes 'Out of space, out of time'?"

"Out of space. Out of time."

"Right. I don't know the punctuation."

"Doesn't matter."

She was typing.

"Uh, no. It's not in"

"Damn!"

I don't know why I made such an outburst. It immediately bothered me.

:'But, Jack, it is a line from another poem."

"What? By Poe?"

"Yes. It's in a poem called 'Dream-L-and." You want me to read it? The whole stanza's here."

"Read it."

"Okay, I'm not that great at reading poetry but here goes.

"By a route obscure and lonely, / Haunted by ill angels only, / Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, / On a black throne reigns upright, / I have reached these lands but newly, / From an ultimate dim Thule- / From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, / Out of SPACE Out of TIME." That's it. But there is an editor's note. It says an Eidolon means a phantom."

I didn't say anything. I was frozen still.

"Jack?"

"Read it again. Slower, this time."

I wrote the stanza in my notebook. I could have just asked her to print it out and then gone and picked it up but I didn't want to move. I wanted, for the short moment, to be totally alone with this. I had to be.

"Jack, what is it?" she asked when she was done reading.

"You seem so anxious about this."

"I don't know yet. I've gotta go."

I hung up.

In an instant I began to feel overly warm, claustrophobic.

As large as the newsroom was, I felt like the walls were closing in. My heart pounded. A vision of my brother in the car flashed through my mind.

Glenn was on the phone when I walked into his office and sat down in front of him. He pointed to the door and nodded like he wanted me to wait outside until he was done. I didn't move. He pointed again and I shook my head.

"Listen, I've got something happening here," he said into the phone. "Can I call you back? Great. Yeah."

He hung up.

"What'"

"I need to go to Chicago," I said. "Today. And then probably to Washington, then maybe Quantico, Virginia.

To the FBI."

Glenn didn't buy it.

"Out of space? Out of time? I mean, come on, Jack, that has got to be a thought that goes through the minds of many people who contemplate or actually do commit suicide. The fact that it's mentioned in a poem written by some morbid guy a hundred and fifty years ago who also wrote another poem this other dead cop quoted, it's not the stuff conspiracies are made of."

"What about Rusher and Roderick Usher? You think that's a coincidence, too? So now we have a triple coincidence and you say it's not worth checking out."