The Cutaway

by Christina Kovac

  “Better watch yourself,” she warned before rounding the column, soon out of sight.

  When I turned back to the vigil, the man Paige had been arguing with was gone. Now Paige was chatting with a female police captain and a tall, middle-aged man with the sloped shoulders and husky frame of a laborer. He wore a brown tweed blazer and a pink tie. The cameras circled them.

  I showed my press passes to a man in an overcoat who was stuffing leftover candles into a box. “That’s Paige Linden in the middle of everything, right?”

  He glanced over. “Sure is.”

  “And the man she’d been with a few moments ago? Blond hair cut short, medium height, thin?”

  “You’re probably talking about Ian, I guess? Ian Chase?”

  Of course I recognized the name. He was an assistant US attorney downtown. A few years back, he’d gotten a lot of press for the successful prosecution of corruption within the city government. The mayor had been implicated, but only his cronies had been charged. It had been a very big story. Since then, Ian Chase had been promoted to the Homicide Section as its chief.

  “I don’t see Ian anymore,” I said, standing on my toes.

  The stout man glanced around. “Huh, no. Must’ve left.”

  I asked around about Evelyn, but few knew her. They were mostly acquaintances or friends of Paige Linden, who was working the crowd. She touched one woman lightly on the sleeve. To another, she gave a soft, sad smile. When her eyes locked with mine, she cut through her admirers with an easy confidence.

  “Virginia Knightly, right?” she said, holding out her hand. Her grip was strong. She looked down at me, unblinking, and her eyes briefly unfocused. It gave me a weird feeling, almost like a premonition. Then her face lit with a wide smile, and the feeling was gone. She was really very lovely when she smiled.

  “Thanks so much for helping with the press release,” she said. “We got a good turnout, didn’t we?”

  “You did, yes.”

  She agreed to let me buy her a warm drink. When we got to the coffee shop across the street, I reached for my wallet, but it was gone. I dug deeper in the satchel where everything lost always turned up, but no wallet.

  I never carried credit cards in the field, so it wasn’t a complete catastrophe. My press passes and identification cards hung safely in plastic sleeves on a lanyard around my neck. But I’d lost cash and the business card I’d wanted to give Paige.

  Could I have left my wallet at home? No, I had it when I paid the cabbie.

  “Is something wrong?” Paige said.

  And then I remembered the girl who bumped me. It must have happened then. “My plan was to treat you,” I said with an apology. “But I’m pretty sure someone lifted my wallet.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE COFFEE SHOP was nearly empty. I chose a table at the back, far from the windows and the prying eyes of my competitors, and watched Paige Linden place our order at the counter. She wasn’t beautiful, but was something better. She had sharp cheeks and a strong nose, a chin that could crack ice, and there was a glow about her, as if she revved at higher throttle than the rest of us mere mortals.

  She walked toward me, her confident stride laced with swagger, and when she held out my coffee, she winced. I jumped up. “You okay?” I said, helping her with the drinks.

  “Sparring injury.” She rubbed her shoulder in an annoyed manner. She was a runner, she said, but on off days practiced martial arts for self-defense. During practice last night, she’d let down her guard and taken a hard right to the shoulder. “It was stupid to work out when my thoughts were so scattered. I kept worrying about where Evie could be.”

  Gingerly, she slipped off her jacket and settled it on the back of her chair before seating herself. She wore a silver necklace with a circle pendant. It glittered over a black sweater that was tightly fitted to show off her muscular arms and neck. She appeared capable of great athletic feats, and I could tell she took pride in her body. It was the way she held herself, tall and straight, pointy chin lifted.

  “I can tell from your reports that you’re getting good intel from the authorities, aren’t you?” she said. “Are they saying anything you’re not reporting?”

  It was as if she was the producer, and she was interviewing me.

  “You were talking to a police official tonight, too,” I said. “What do you hear?”

  “Do they think Evie was abducted?” she asked, ignoring my question.

  I hunched over my coffee, warming my palms on the cup, and thought about it. “There’s no evidence pointing that way, not that I’m aware of. Investigators seem more interested in Evelyn’s marital troubles. They say she left her husband for another man. What do you know about that?”

  “It doesn’t explain why she hasn’t been to work,” she argued. “If Evie separated from her husband, how does that keep her from her job? She’s been a no-show. No calls. Nothing. If she’s not sick or hurt, she’ll be fired.”

  “Would that be a big deal? Does she like her job?”

  “Evie was thrilled when I hired her.” She explained how a colleague had called in a favor last year, asking Paige to give Evelyn a chance, and as these things happen every day in the District, Evelyn was hired. Evelyn was smart and hardworking. She’d been a good hire, Paige said defiantly, even if Evelyn wasn’t like the other associates and didn’t have Paige’s Ivy League education or résumé full of clerkships or family connections to help her along.

  “It’s so boring how top firms pick candidates from the same schools and backgrounds and who all look and act and talk like all the other partners.” She paused, waiting for me to agree, as if I was someone with Paige’s background, as if her firm would pick someone like me—which it wouldn’t.

  That I kept to myself.

  “Personally, I like to think out of the box,” she went on. “And Evie does make a different impression. The first day I introduced her, you should have seen my coworkers, all respectable middle-aged men, well informed about workplace rules, reduced to fawning idiots. At first glance of her, their brains checked out, one by one.”

  She described Evelyn’s dress as conservative enough, her suits the right color and length. “But when you’re built like Evie, you have to be concerned with fit. I showed her how to camouflage. We softened her makeup, tidied her hair. We even nixed her shoes, which were a little too Sex and the City for a law firm in Washington.”

  That I understood: there was the District, which was young and hip, and there was Washington with the white buildings, which was anything but. The two never mixed comfortably. The big law firms belonged resolutely to Washington.

  “But she’s great with clients,” Paige said. “Especially the men. The more powerful they are, the better she is. I think she sees them as a challenge, like a puzzle to solve, and they love her for it.”

  “Anybody love her a little too much?”

  “Stop right there,” she said quietly. “Maybe Evie has a certain appeal, but she has never behaved inappropriately with a client.”

  “How would you know?”

  She lifted her cup and leveled an icy gaze at me over the rim. The steam pinked her cheeks. I caught hints of cinnamon and cardamom, a bite of pepper.

  “I’ve already told you,” she said. “I’m her mentor. I’m also her boss, and those clients whose behavior you’re questioning are my clients.”

  “Any way I could get their names?”

  Her cup clanked down on the table and she leaned toward me aggressively, saying, “This is about Evie. Not my clients.”

  I wasn’t so sure. According to Ben’s source, Evelyn left her husband for a man whose name the investigators weren’t ready to give up. This suggested the police were giving him special consideration. Perhaps one of the clients Evelyn won over?

  “Did Evelyn mention being afraid of anyone in the workplace?” I said. When she ignored the question, I went on: “How about the husband, Peter?”

  She rocked back, seemingly content that I�
��d backed off about her clients for now. Her long fingers tapped on the arms of the chair.

  “I really don’t know,” she said. “We work long hours, without break, often through shared meals. A few times, I took her out to celebrate after a win in court. You’d think all that time together would create intimacy, but she never spoke of her personal life, certainly not of Peter, except to mention when he was away. Apparently he goes overseas for months at a time, some kind of military deployment. That’s when she’d ask for extra work, more hours to bill out.”

  “You called Evelyn your friend,” I said, disappointed. “You gave the impression that you were close.”

  Her stern expression was replaced by a smile. It was a really lovely smile. “As friendly as work allows. Have you ever worked in a law firm?”

  When I admitted I hadn’t, she explained her firm’s rigid social structure. It was much like a caste system with the three founding partners at the pinnacle, presiding over everyone else. Beneath them were the partners and then the associates ranked according to their years in service to the firm. Evelyn was a first-year associate, barely above the support staff—paralegals and secretaries, and the like.

  “So we really can’t hang out,” she said. “It’s frowned upon to socialize with anyone except your peers, and no one moves up and down, except by the whims and follies of our founding partners. A stupid system, if you ask me, where three people have such power, even determining who I can be friends with. Still, I let it be known in no uncertain terms that Evie, as my hire, was under my protection.”

  “So you were concerned about Evelyn? Someone was a threat?”

  “That’s not what I mean.” She glanced over her shoulder, even though we were the only patrons left in the shop, and the barista had ducked into the back room. “As I said, I brought Evie in, but last fall she was reassigned to work for my nemesis. A real piece of work, believe me. Makes every woman at the firm feel she has no future. I didn’t want her to chase Evie away, too.”

  “Wait. Her?”

  She leaned forward on her elbow and said in a confidential tone: “Bernadette Ryan.”

  I shook my head. The name didn’t ring a bell.

  “Founding partner,” she went on. “A very big name in the political world with extraordinarily big money clients. When she tells the other partners to jump, they jump.”

  “You worried for Evelyn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because this Bernadette has gender preferences?”

  “For men.”

  “Yet here you are, a partner.”

  “Here I am,” she said, and laughed. It was a triumphant sound, full of the same music in her voice. “Bernadette tried to cheat me out of the fast track to partnership that I’d been promised, the sole reason I chose my firm. She went behind my back, actively campaigned against me, pressured the other partners into voting for anyone except me.”

  “And she lost?”

  Her intense eyes seemed to glitter. “Oh yes. I won.”

  “Why would she try to cheat you?”

  “I don’t question why some women are competitive with others,” she said, shrugging. “It’s too stupid to contemplate. I only wanted to protect Evie from enduring what I’d had to. Evie’s an intelligent woman and a good lawyer, but there’s something gentle about her. That makes her more vulnerable to office politics than I ever was.”

  The barista came out of the back room and began wiping down the espresso machine. I glanced at the clock on my phone. There was only an hour until deadline, and I had little to show for it—some nonreportable background, a better feel for Evelyn in her workplace, and video of the vigil I had yet to carry uptown for editing.

  “What about Ian Chase?” I said. “What does he think?”

  That surprised her. “You know Ian?”

  “Sure, he’s an AUSA downtown. I saw you talking with him tonight. You seemed at odds.”

  “I asked him about the search,” she said, “but he denied knowing anything. Investigators aren’t talking to him.”

  Now I was surprised. Police and prosecutors were on the same team. They gossiped and shared information, formed alliances and friendships. Even if Ian’s office hadn’t formally discussed the Carney case with police yet, Ian should’ve been able to find out anything he wanted with one phone call to headquarters. It would be considered a professional courtesy. It was also the way the city worked.

  “He’s probably lying about what he knows,” she said. “Look, Ian and I go way back. We dated eons ago, and we’re still friends—because you want to be friends with a guy like Ian—but truth is, that’s typical Ian, hitting me up for information, needing to be in the know.”

  “Because Ian’s office has an interest in the search?” I said. That would mark a significant change in the case if the Homicide Section had become involved.

  “No, he didn’t say that.” Her fingers twisted the silver necklace as she thought about it. The longer she thought, the more agitated she appeared. “The questioning was pretty casual.”

  “What’s his interest?” I said. “If it’s not professional, it’s personal?”

  Now the pendant was swinging back and forth on the necklace, like the flick of a cat’s tail. “No, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “If his office isn’t involved in Evie’s search, I haven’t the foggiest idea why he was here.”

  ————

  With my wallet gone and no cash for a cab, I called our news desk and begged a ride from our courier, who dropped me off in our station’s horseshoe driveway. I hurried inside, heading straight for the edit suites, where I found my editor, Doug Fordham, waiting in the doorway with his hand out.

  “Not much time here,” he said.

  I slapped the video into his palm. “Enough.”

  We picked out a good shot of Paige Linden talking to the police captain at the vigil, and then we were searching for the video of Ian Chase. If the head of the Homicide Section was at a missing woman’s vigil, I wanted to show him, even if I had no idea why he was there.

  Doug paused at a shot. “That him?”

  “No.”

  He scrolled through more video. “If you could describe him better.”

  “Blond? Hell, I didn’t get a good look,” I said. “Pull up file footage on the server, so we can see his face.”

  “We’re up against deadline,” he muttered as he swung his chair from the edit machine to the computer. He typed with a fury, complaining about how any minute someone would call down to yell at him about missing his slot. “I’ll blame it on you,” he warned as he stopped on a still photo. “That him?” When I said, “No, I don’t think—no,” he began typing and talking under his breath: “I’ll sell you out in a heartbeat. Don’t think I won’t.”

  I laughed. “I’ll take the fall.”

  A headshot filled the monitor. I got up dizzily and moved closer to the screen: there, Ian Chase’s official portrait from the Department of Justice. And then another of Ian standing in front of DC Superior Court, and Ian at a black-tie fund-raiser.

  Ah, of course.

  He was in the story with the cutaway shot I was looking for. I remembered the podium shot of Ian addressing a gathering. Behind him were several feds in suits and a white shirt from US Park Police. Cut to an audience shot of Evelyn Carney, gazing outward, rapturously—maybe at Ian? I didn’t know. I couldn’t see beyond the frame.

  “Virginia? You okay?”

  “Can you finish without me?” I said, already out the door.

  I ran back to my office and logged into my computer and there, the story slug:

  Rock Creek Serial Rapist

  Dateline: August 5

  Location: Community Center, Rock Creek Park, NW DC

  Summary: Police task force meets community leaders, re: sex assaults of female joggers in park. Latest victim, twenty-year-old Susan Wilkes of NW DC, died Tuesday from injuries.

  The news package opened with footage from a lonely park path, a shot of a gurgling cr
eek surrounded by summer foliage and yellow crime scene tape fluttering in the breeze. Next, a wide shot of police officials glad-handing like the politicians they could be. A jump cut to Ian Chase speaking at a podium—yes!—a handsome man with narrow patrician features and short blond hair, perfectly coiffed. I turned up the volume for his talk about the attacks, but couldn’t concentrate on his voice or the words, because I knew what was coming next . . .

  And there she was—hallelujah!—in that cutaway that’d been nagging at me: Evelyn Carney, a young woman caught in an unguarded moment, her face flushed with excitement, all big eyes and wild, dark hair. She might wear a plain charcoal suit and high-buttoned blouse all she liked, but she drew the eye and kept it. Those near her were a background’s afterthought: the gray-haired man mopping sweat from his forehead, and on her other side, an elegant older blonde in a gold brocade jacket, the rest of the crowd blank faced and bored looking, wilted by the summer’s heat.

  The generic crowd shot, I thought, except for her. Evelyn Carney was different. Her delicate shoulders were thrown forward, her attention riveted.

  Who was the object of it?

  It might be Ian Chase. It might not be. During the editing process, video was routinely taken out of sequence, so that in this shot, Evelyn could be looking at anyone. It was impossible to know from an edited story.

  The raw video would tell, but it wasn’t in the system. Had it been accidentally deleted or trashed to make space? Maybe someone had forgotten to load it. These things happened all the time.

  I went back to the edited story and copied it onto a flash drive and clipped that drive to a lanyard around my neck. Before shutting down the computer, I took one last look at Evelyn. The video only brought the same questions: Who are you looking at? What is it that you so obviously want? Did you get it?

  And then, probably the most difficult to answer: Why the hell do I care?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I DIDN’T WANT to talk to Commander Michael Ledger. In fact, my plan had been to avoid him for the rest of my life and go nowhere near the circle in which he moved, and if I saw him on the street, turn and go the other way. That was the intention, anyway. The story made him unavoidable.