And then he laid the rest of the video: the haunting river shots and the body bag carried away, and that final poignant shot of Evelyn, the cutaway shot, when she was still alive with want—
When it went to black, Doug leaned back in his chair and exhaled. “Hell of a story,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He scratched his chin absently. “You know, you might check Nelson’s locker for that raw tape you’re missing. He’s been storing his best material for the audition reel he’s putting together for Alexa.”
That reminded me of the stand-up Alexa had shown me. He shot me fat, she’d complained, but on that stand-up, she’d been radiant against her backdrop, the old stone meetinghouse in Rock Creek Park that was still used for community gatherings. That was the meeting Ian Chase and Evelyn had attended, I realized.
“Of course this is Nelson’s work,” Doug was saying, as if he took my silence for argument. He pointed at the monitor. “Here, the soft focus around the edges, so you can’t help but look at the woman at the center. It’s his signature. Nobody shoots women so beautifully. It’s like he’s in love with their form.”
“Yes,” I said, lost to the memory, trying to hone in on the details: Alexa speaking into the microphone, and behind Alexa, people dressed in summer clothes, fluttery dresses and light-colored suits, some in shorts and T-shirts leaving the community center, walking past a line of police cars. One unmarked police cruiser was a beige Crown Vic, a newer model with a shadow in the front quarter-panel—
No, not a shadow. It was a dent.
Ronnie burst into the editing suite. “I found Ben,” she said, flush faced and excited. “He can’t do the story. He’s out of town. The Blue Ridge.”
That snapped me out of it. “The blue what?”
“Mountains,” she told me. “Backcountry camping. Said he’s been at sea level too long, and had to get out. So late last night he requested a few days off. Isaiah”—she hissed his name—“granted them.”
“Slow down. Let me think.”
How could he be out of town already? Just last night, not even twelve hours ago, he’d been in my office and we’d—what? Had sex? Made love? Oh, goddamn it all to hell. I rubbed the spot over my heart that hurt every time I let myself think of him.
“He can’t make it back in time,” she said, her voice rising. “It’s five fifteen now. The lead of our show, the entire first block is in jeopardy.”
I got up and put my hands on her shoulders. “This is mine to fix,” I told her. “I’ll call Mellay, and when we form a plan, I’ll let you know. Now go back upstairs and wait for my call.”
When Ronnie left, I asked Doug to check Nelson’s locker for the missing video. If he had to, give Nelson a wakeup call. “Whatever raw tape you guys can find related to that August meeting in Rock Creek Park. Can you ask him about that?”
That left me alone in the edit suite to place my call. Mellay picked up on the second ring. He sounded clearheaded and chirpy, delighted about the exclusive story and unconcerned about Ben’s time off. “Glad you called to discuss,” he said. “You done good, kid.”
“The story needs someone to voice it. What do you think of Alexa? At least until Ben gets back in town?”
“Nah, let’s not. Get Heather on the phone.”
I put my forehead on the editing console and banged it. Her inexperience was a burden, one more person I’d have to worry about. I needed a partner, not another hindrance.
“Heather’s most familiar,” he was saying. “She reported the story last night.”
“This is the big break in the case,” I argued, as calmly as I could. “And it’s mine—ours, exclusively. It’s a complicated story with moving parts and places to make mistakes if we aren’t careful. Look, Heather’s got talent. There’s no denying it. But how can anyone with so little experience be ready for a story like this?”
I waited for him to see it, but he didn’t.
“Your job is to keep Heather from making an error,” he said, and then recited her phone number, as if committed to his memory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WITH LITTLE MORE than thirty minutes to air, I worked the phone for last-minute statements, putting in calls to the police and the attorney representing Ian Chase, who was unavailable. I dialed the home number for Ian Chase until he picked up the phone. I read him a summary of our report and asked if he would comment. He told me to go to hell and hung up.
My final call went to Paige Linden. “An affair?” she said, groggily. “Evie and—and Ian? That’s . . . I don’t believe . . . are you sure? Who’s saying?”
“Police. Did Evelyn ever talk about Ian Chase?”
“No, that’s just bizarre. Ian? I’ve never even seen him with Evie.” She was moving around, banging into things, and then there was the sound of water running, a clink of a coffeepot onto its burner. “And you say Evie was . . . pregnant?”
“The medical examiner says so.”
“The night she disappeared, she was going to see Ian about a baby?”
“That’s the theory.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Paige?”
Still nothing.
“Are you there?”
“It’s just . . . wow . . . you think you know someone,” she whispered, and then: “I wish she’d told me, that’s all. I could have helped her. At least warned her off.”
I moved to the edge of my chair. “About what?”
She blew out a breath. “You didn’t hear this from me, but . . . Ian? He can be . . . a little rough.”
“What does that mean?” I said quickly, “and yes, this is so far off the record it’s already forgotten.”
“Okay. So. Ian and I dated years ago, and I was into him. Why wouldn’t I be? He’s smart, good-looking, politically connected. I thought we made a great couple. Come to find out, he’s into stuff. Now what, I don’t know exactly, but with me, he was a little rough. Just playing around, he called it, pushing boundaries. When it went beyond a certain point, I stopped seeing him. Now we’re friendly, because you want to be friendly with someone like him, and there’s this fear. What if he tells someone what he did to me? My colleagues would never take me seriously.” Her voice had trailed off. “Even so, I would have warned Evie.”
“You’re saying Ian Chase had a tendency toward violent sexual encounters with women?”
“Yes,” she said.
“But consensual?”
“For me, yes, until he went beyond a certain point. That’s when I broke up with him.”
“What was that point?”
She exhaled softly. “He hit me. Just missed my eye. That was the last time.”
————
After Heather finished the live shot and the studio lights went out, the newsroom staff mobbed her with congratulations. Objectively, I couldn’t complain. She’d done a fine live shot. She could read news in the most natural of ways and she would go far as long as she had good people to support her. She had it, whatever that magical, mysterious it was. That had to be admitted, too.
Sighing, I got up from the desk, and the group that had swarmed Heather now turned in unison to me. One person clapped, and the rest followed. Someone let out a whistle. My mouth started working funny, and I felt near tears. From fatigue, I told myself. After all, one does not cry in a newsroom. So I gave a pageant wave, mocking myself, and began a retreat to my office. I never made it. The phones were lighting up. Phase two of the game had begun.
Affiliates begged Heather to file reports for their stations. Friends from radio and print news called, poking around for information—like, yeah, I was going to offer up free dish. I told them to watch our news. A network correspondent I revered called me to ask for my help.
In the midst of all this chaos, I still couldn’t find my cell phone. So I was stuck at a desk in the newsroom, putting in calls to the US Attorney’s Office for comment, as well as calls to Michael, none of them returned. I didn’t worry that Michael was ducking m
e. Surely the investigation had sped up on him, and he was busy with it, but I needed to ask him about his car. If it was his cruiser parked in the background of Alexa’s standup, then he’d been at the meeting Evelyn Carney had attended. Wouldn’t he remember seeing her?
Isaiah approached my desk, waving my cell phone. “Yours, right?”
“Gimme.” I cradled it to my chest. “Where was it?”
“Manager from Chads said someone turned it in at the hostess stand. He recognized our station logo on the lock code screen and dropped it off with our front guard.”
“Really?” I hadn’t been to the bar since Friday with Ben. My phone had been with me all weekend. How had it gotten to Chads?
He tilted his chin down, looking at me over the top of his horn-rims. “You should take better care of what you love, my dear.”
My phone showed several missed calls from the same unknown number. The caller had left a message, and when I listened to the recording, it was Evelyn’s professor, Bradley Hartnett. He needed me to return his call. He had information about Evelyn. But when I hit return call, I got the voice mail of another man whose voice I didn’t recognize. I left a message anyway.
Later, Mellay ordered a celebratory lunch. He even gave his puffed-chest speech about what a great team we were, thanking Heather and me (in that order) for our exclusive reporting. We were stringing together reports that brought the viewers and slayed the competition. His speech was sprinkled with these kinds of warlike metaphors, how we can use this momentum to crush the enemy but watch our flanks and blah blah blah.
Heather stood up and said in her low, formal voice how grateful she was for everyone’s hard work and how much she loved being on Team Virginia. I found this particularly clever. Everyone knew Ben and I were partners. Not only because Ben could pull his own weight but because we’d worked together for years. Now she created confusion. What did it all mean? Was Heather now aligned to me? Where did that leave Ben? Where was Ben anyway?
Curious looks drifted my way.
And oh, how I missed him, today of all days. He would have loved the carnival atmosphere, the joking and camaraderie, and especially the free food. He’d yuck it up with the network execs and do live shot after live shot for affiliates. At his most elemental, Ben Pearce was a screen hog.
My chest constricted again. So I tried to do what I’d always done, pack away the feeling in the box containing disappointment and error and grievance, a box I labeled Distractions, but this particular feeling overflowed the box.
————
Just before the deadline for the afternoon show, the spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office returned my call. She wouldn’t comment on our report, but confirmed that Ian Chase was not under investigation by their office. She repeated the policy not to discuss personnel issues regarding employees, current or former.
That piqued my curiosity. “So are you saying he’s a former employee?” I said.
“Ian Chase is no longer employed by the Department of Justice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WE WERE HALFWAY through the six o’clock newscast, and our exclusive held. The newsroom was in high spirits. I was nervous. No official had yet gone on record. There weren’t even the typical Washington whispers from low-tier sources, people repeating gossip to appear in the know. Yes, Michael had promised not to tell anyone, and I’d never doubted his professionalism, but was he capable of keeping the lid on such an explosive story? I’d ask him if he returned one damn call.
Finally, one of the calls I’d been waiting for: J. Thomas Winthrop, the attorney representing Ian Chase. He invited me for cocktails at a private residence in a working-class neighborhood near Catholic University. I was to come alone and without a camera. It was a meeting he’d deny if asked and located in a curious part of town for a K Street attorney whose client list consisted of dirty politicians, bad-boy entertainers and athletes, businessmen with more money than sense, those sorts.
I couldn’t recall a case Winthrop lost. These days he mostly “fixed” reputations, which in this city was a far greater challenge than getting a jury to acquit. His success relied mainly on discrediting anyone whose narrative contradicted his portrayal of his client as an innocent lamb slaughtered by an overzealous government, incompetent police force, biased press corps, and you fill in the blank.
Winthrop was also famous for holding his tongue, and if he did talk to the media, it was only under circumstances he could control. I was worrying about those circumstances as I sped past Rock Creek Cemetery and the Old Soldiers Home, and then I was beyond the basilica and turning into the neighborhood. There was parking in front of a tall, narrow building that appeared to be an old chapel, replete with stained glass and arched windows. An attractive gym-fit forty-something opened the door. He wore pressed jeans and a navy hoodie of a texture that screamed comfortable affluence.
“Hey there, come on in,” he said, as if he knew me. “Jay’s getting cleaned up, long day. You’re early.”
“Occupational hazard, sorry.” I smiled and put out my hand, introducing myself.
“David,” he said. “Jay’s partner.”
I followed him into an astonishing place. Ceilings soared over twenty feet. One grand room combined a kitchen and living area with sculpted furniture, two love seats facing each other, a chair. A spiral staircase led to a loft. One wall was made up of massive arched windows framed in dark wood, its opposing wall with paintings of varying sizes, bright reds and vivid oranges that seemed to quiver with movement, arresting and sensual, hotly alive.
“I’m often late,” he was saying wryly as he flicked his wrist carelessly toward the wall of paintings. “Occupational hazard for us creative types—especially when the work’s going good.” He glanced upward and smiled, and his voice softened: “Ah, the man himself.”
J. Thomas Winthrop was shorter, thinner than I’d imagined, an older man with a shock of red hair brushed over his forehead. Wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses drew attention to the wonderful laugh lines around his eyes. There was something birdlike about the way he descended the stairs, quickly, in energetic hops.
After David let himself out, Winthrop and I got to business. He congratulated me on our most recent newscast. “The reporting is remarkably more detailed than what I’ve seen elsewhere. That can only mean you’re talking to someone within the inner circle of the investigation.”
“Mr. Winthrop—”
“Please call me Jay,” he said, moving behind a sleek black countertop that separated the kitchen.
“I don’t discuss sources. I’m here to negotiate the terms of an interview with your client.”
He tsk-tsked me. “Now that is where your youth shows,” he said affably. “Charging right out of the gate without looking both ways.”
“My youth?” It annoyed me. As if my age meant malleability, some weakness to exploit.
“I do my own research,” he said with modesty. “You are Virginia Diana Knightly, aged thirty-four, from a blue-collar town in a small state, and during your formative years, you were a ward of that state. Despite the foster home shuffle and different high schools attended, you managed to graduate top of your class with a full ride to J-school at American. Perhaps more impressive, your quick ascent in a cutthroat industry, if you don’t mind my calling it so, in which you are widely regarded as both intrepid and honest.” He took a breath, smiled charmingly. “It is this final attribute that gives me hope we can come to an understanding.”
So he did his homework. Big deal. Although it was nice of him to reveal I’d worried him enough to look me up.
“You know the name of the first boy I kissed, too?” I said dryly.
He laughed. “Now that I do not know. But I’m aware of a certain police official you’ve been seen about town with. Tongues are wagging, perhaps unfairly. You know how this city is.”
It made me furious. Those kinds of rumors devastated the female half of my profession. As if the only way we could get information was b
y having sex with a source.
So J. Thomas Winthrop was going to try to discredit me? Well, he could give it his best shot.
“Know what? I’d like to record this interview after all,” I said. “I’m a reporter of record, Mr. Winthrop. I only work against my interests when no other options exist. But you came to me. You want to talk to me.”
“No recording.”
So that was that.
“We’ve gotten off to a bad start,” he said, “and I can see I’ve disturbed you.”
“As you intended.”
“Actually, I had hoped you would deny it.” He lifted a glass full of ice and shook it. “But where are my manners? I haven’t even offered you a drink.”
“Nothing. Thank you.”
He poured club soda over the ice, squeezed a slice of lime, and carried his drink to the chair across from me.
“Do you care for David’s work?” he said, gesturing with his glass to the canvasses surrounding us. “A bit wild, I admit. But then David has a passionate soul.”
The paintings were wild and beautiful, and they made me feel. What I felt mostly was whiplash. I was angry this lawyer thought he knew something about me and could imply something about my sexuality, which belonged only to me—that pompous, self-righteous bastard—and now all the hot emotion of his partner’s work was trickling into my temper.
After a long swallow of his drink, he grimaced, thoughtful. “I cannot begin to comprehend what drives David to such agonies of creation, hours spent struggling with his whirlwind visions. If one brushstroke displeases him somewhere along the oh-so-fallible route from brain to hand to canvas, something that doesn’t live up to what he envisions, he destroys it all, shreds it. And though I am a person most comfortable with the constraints of reason, of rules, I find this turbulence attracts me. Of course I’m not alone. In this city, where the intellect is currency, I find most of my clients are like me, reasonable, perhaps even boring men—” Here, he gave an elegant lift of his hand again, smiling ruefully. “They are simple people who chase the passion they scarcely understand, and sometimes it gets them into trouble. And yet, it’s important to remember: a man cannot escape his nature. If by his nature, he’s not violent, no storm of passion could make him destroy what he loves.”
The Cutaway Page 16
