The Cutaway

by Christina Kovac

  “Don’t know about a restaurant. I was on M Street.”

  M Street was a handful of blocks south of the restaurant. The hostess told investigators she’d seen Evelyn leave the restaurant and head south on Wisconsin Avenue, the last known sighting by the only reported witness. Now Lil’ Bit was saying she’d seen Evelyn after the hostess, which made Lil’ Bit’s account critical. So I threw out what I wasn’t even sure I had: “You know Ben Pearce? He wants to meet you. He’s very interested in hearing your story.”

  “Ben Pearce?” There was awe in her voice. That’s how it always was. The women went for Ben. We set an interview time for two hours hence.

  Problem was, I couldn’t find Ben. He didn’t pick up his cell phone or landline, when he should have picked up. He always picked up. As anchor in charge of bulletins during news emergencies, he was contractually required to.

  So Ben was avoiding me.

  That left me with no choice except the bait and switch. I asked around the newsroom for Isaiah. One of the writers thought he’d seen Isaiah head up to archives, our seventh-floor warehouse of old tapes and even older film. I took the stairs and went through the door that banged shut and kicked up dust. To my left was a black-draped studio left unused for years, its cameras huddling in the center like penguins against an Antarctic winter. No Isaiah.

  I went down the corridor lined with posters of canceled shows and headshots of long-gone correspondents. At the end of the corridor, pillars of boxes were stacked as high as the ceiling, each box marked with a story slug: DC Police Headquarters Shooting, Air Florida Crash, Mount Pleasant Riots, Million Man March, Chandra Levy Missing—on and on the stories went, many stories from before me, barely remembered, all of them considered a big deal at the time.

  Around the corner, Isaiah was sitting on a box marked Marion Barry Trial with his feet propped up on Government Shutdown 1995. Across the Persian Gulf War, the first one, his lunch was spread.

  The room held the kind of silence you got from places left undisturbed.

  “Isaiah?” I whispered.

  He turned his head as if it pained him.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Thinking.”

  I moved to sit on a box but noticed it was marked 9/11. So I lifted it to where it would be protected above the others.

  “Are you all right?” I said, sitting next to him.

  “It’s surprising how quickly the end comes.” He paused and said, “My job, of course.”

  “Mellay’s not getting rid of you. You’re critical to the news operation.”

  “Nobody’s critical to anything.” Behind his black horn-rims, his gentle eyes held mine. “I tried to teach you everything I knew. Neither of us had anybody, so I thought we could need each other. But you don’t anymore.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I had a mentor once,” he said, as if to himself. “Quentin worked forty-two years in the biz, first when we were radio and made the switch over to television. He lived and breathed the news and taught me to do the same. The company had to force him to retire. On his last day there was a big cake in the newsroom, lots of toasting and drinking. We all drank in the newsroom back then. We were so happy for Quentin. He was always talking about his boat, this eighteen-footer, and now that he was retired, he was going to spend all day fishing the Potomac. But after the party, he took the stairs to the roof and he jumped.”

  He was looking into the distance at someplace I couldn’t see. I rested my hand on his shoulder, which had carried me so far, this man who’d been everything to me—teacher, ally, friend—and I had no idea how to make this better for him.

  “What happens next?” he said, sighing. “People said I was important because of this. Without it, I guess I’m nothing.”

  “Nobody’s making you leave your work. Didn’t you hear the big speech Mellay gave in the newsroom yesterday?”

  “I heard it all right.”

  “My star is on the rise again, and you go where I go. That’s a promise.” I stood, brushing the dust from the back of my skirt. “Now I need you to get Ben on the phone.”

  He shook his head. “Ben’s off today.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate to cut into his minivacation, but I’ve got a story with now two people killed and an interview with a possible witness in only two hours’ time. That person will only talk to Ben.”

  “He’s not on vacation,” Isaiah said angrily. “He requested three days to deal with personal business, days that I granted. Today is his third day.”

  “This interview requires Ben. I need him.”

  “You should have thought of that before you pulled that stunt with the correspondents dinner.”

  It felt like a slap. “What does that mean?”

  He stood now, too. His head was down and his chin tucked to his chest. He glared at me over the top of his glasses. “It means Ben has a life other than this place, and he’s smart enough to know it. It also means that in all his years here, he has never once asked me for a favor. Never once taken a personal day. The guy takes his vacation, that’s it, and always it’s to go home to work on his family’s ranch. Because he’s not what you make him out to be. Some pretty-boy slacker—”

  “I have never suggested—”

  “Oh yes, you most certainly have.” His finger pointed at me. “You joke about it often, and it’s always funny and not a little unfair. He asked me for time off—asked me, not you—and I granted it. Now you’ll just have to figure out how to get by without him.”

  I leaned back against a column of boxes, reconsidering.

  “No, Virginia.”

  “May I borrow your phone?”

  “No means no.”

  “I just want to run it by him,” I said, exasperated. “How can he know he doesn’t want to do it if he hasn’t even heard what it is?”

  He still wouldn’t budge, so I told him I’d get someone else’s phone. Surely he was only postponing the inevitable and making my deadline tighter. Nelson was my next target. Once I found Nelson, I’d have his phone in five seconds flat.

  “This is wrong,” he said, but held out his phone.

  On the second ring, Ben picked up with: “I know it’s you.”

  “As in . . . me?”

  “Yes, you.” His voice was surly. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. My only surprise is that Isaiah still lets you run roughshod.”

  “Will you let me apologize?”

  “No you may not,” he said. “Your apologies wear me out.”

  I told him about Lil’ Bit. He had no interest in interviewing her.

  “But she saw Evelyn,” I pleaded. “She’ll talk to no one except you.”

  “Why hasn’t she gone to police with her story?”

  “Apparently they won’t listen. She must not fit their mold of credibility.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the DC Police,” he scoffed. “Most of their witnesses have credibility issues. Bet they think she’s a lunatic.”

  But in his voice, there’d been a pause, and in that pause I detected his curiosity.

  “What if she was the last person to see Evelyn Carney?” I said, and when he hesitated again, I knew he was close: “If we don’t get her now, we may never know.”

  “It’s my day off,” he complained.

  I gave him Lil’ Bit’s address.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I GIVE IT a year max before somebody bulldozes it,” Nelson was saying.

  We were on the curb outside of Lil’ Bit’s house. This block had once lent its name to an infamous drug crew with members long dead or locked up at Lorton Prison. Now it was an area of dizzying transformation, or revitalization, as some people liked to call it. Homes were being destroyed to build shops and high-rises (as high as the US Congress saw fit to let the District build), resulting in a fretful mix of modernity and fixer-uppers not fixed since the ’68 riots. The urban pioneers had begun to eyeball even those, seeing only the promise and none of the tro
ubles that had come before.

  Lil’ Bit lived at the end of the alley in what she’d called a carriage house. More accurately, it was a converted garage in desperate need of fresh paint. From the eaves of its sagging roof, an acoustic guitar swung from a wire.

  A short woman opened the front door. She was in her early twenties, wearing a faded 9:30 Club T-shirt exposing her paunch. She had blond hair and a pale, doughy face I had seen before. “You’re Lil’ Bit?”

  Her black-lined eyes darted away. “Yeah. So?”

  “You bumped into me at Evelyn Carney’s vigil in Georgetown. Nearly knocked me over. And I’m pretty sure you lifted my wallet.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  It was so outrageous I laughed. So she might be a thief. Let’s just hope she wasn’t a liar.

  “That’s not the rock star,” she said, craning her head to look at Nelson coming up the walkway with his cartful of equipment. He lifted the cart onto the porch and rested his hip against it.

  “Cool,” he said, tapping the body of the guitar and set it spinning. “We doing this, or what?”

  “First I’m gonna need to see the money.” She put her thumbnail to her mouth, turning the heel of her hand. The fingernail on her pinky was curled like a scoop.

  “No money,” I said, and introduced Nelson. “He’ll be shooting your interview today.” Over her shoulder, I had a view of the interior of the front room. It was small and dark and would be difficult to light. But if anyone could make it work, Nelson could. “Mind if we set up while we wait for Ben Pearce? He’ll be here any moment.”

  Inside smelled of cigarette smoke and Chinese takeout. Nelson began setting up by the only window, which looked onto the brick wall of a neighboring house.

  Lil’ Bit clacked across the parquet. At the bottom of a set of stairs, she called out: “Maaaa—”

  Above, a bed frame creaked, and with it, a faint voice grumbling.

  “Maaaa,” Lil’ Bit called again. “Them TV people are here.”

  “Quit that hollering.” It was a woman’s voice from upstairs.

  “Don’t be all pissed off when you see me on TV,” Lil’ Bit singsonged. “All you gotta do is get down here, and you be on TV, too.”

  “I’m trying to get some sleep,” the woman yelled.

  Lil’ Bit stomped up the stairs. I heard their argument through the ceiling. Nelson signaled for help to set up before it all fell apart. In my haste, I knocked into an orange milk crate holding dozens of celebrity magazines, People and InStyle and Star, some dog-eared and others with water glass marks, celebrity shots torn in sheets now fanned across the parquet. I scooped up the magazines and slid them back into the crate.

  Nelson was arranging chairs beside the window when someone knocked on the door. It was Ben.

  “You came,” I said, relieved. “Thank you.”

  He stepped past me. He smelled freshly showered, and his thick dark hair was still damp and wavy with it. He glanced at the ceiling through which we could hear much yelling. “What have we here?”

  “Not sure. She hasn’t allowed me to preinterview her.”

  He regarded me coolly. “So I’m going fishing on my day off, but not on my boat.”

  Upstairs, there was a shriek followed by a slap. Everything went silent, and then the sounds of footsteps across the floorboards—boom, boom, boom, boom—followed by heavier, slower steps and a door slamming. Lil’ Bit stomped down the stairs. At the bottom, she grabbed the newel post, staring dumbstruck at Ben. She wore bright pink gloss on lips that quivered.

  Ben crossed the room and held out his hand, introducing himself. He took her by the arm as though they were at a cotillion and led her to one of the ratty chairs that Nelson had set by the window. He held it out for her.

  My perch was against the far wall, out of the shot, where I could watch Nelson make his last-minute adjustments with the lighting and Ben disarm Lil’ Bit with personal questions she hadn’t let me pose. She told him her name was Sarah Harden. She was twenty years old and had lived in this house her whole life. No, she wasn’t in college. She hated school. Kids had been mean to her, calling her trash, even though her people had been on this block for a hundred years, longer than anybody’s. When he asked if she wanted to go to college or if she had work ambitions, she stared at Ben as if no one had ever asked her such a question and he might provide some answer.

  “Excuse me,” he said, holding his white notepad in front of her shirt, so Nelson could set the white balance. “So tell me about the night you saw Evelyn Carney.”

  “There were a lot of stars out that night. I was sitting on the steps at M Street. You know, the Exorcist steps where they made the movie? Nobody bothers you there.” She was warmed by his attention. Her chest rose and fell as she spoke with the excitement of her telling. “The lights on the bridge were starry, too. That’s when I saw that Evelyn Carney woman.”

  Ben squinted past the lights to me, asking: “Do you have a picture?”

  I pulled Evelyn’s flier form my satchel, unfolding it, and handed it to Ben without a word. “This is the woman you saw?” he asked her.

  She smiled up at him, her glossy pink lips over sharp little teeth. “That’s her. She was walking through the stars on the bridge. The lights had—whadayacallit?” She made a sweeping gesture, flinging her arm outward.

  Nelson came out of his crouch behind the camera. “No kidding? The lights had trails?” He was referring to the photographic effect of capturing the movement of light with a long exposure, like making a moving car’s taillight appear like a red trail. But I figured she was describing the effects of being high as a kite, hallucinating. That, along with her curved fingernail scoop and suspected theft of my wallet, was making me increasingly uneasy.

  “Yeah, but the woman . . . Evelyn”—Lil’ Bit corrected herself—“she stopped when everything else was moving. Her face was all lit up and everything moving around her and she just disappeared. Like the night took her or something.”

  “The night did?” I said, unable to help myself.

  Ben cut me a silencing glare.

  Her lips curled in disgust. “That’s how I seen it.”

  “Okay, I’m ready to go,” Nelson said. “We’re at speed.”

  “Let’s start again from the beginning,” Ben coaxed. “Tell me everything you remember.”

  She shook her head. “Not when she’s looking at me all funny. Like she don’t believe a word I say.”

  “Don’t worry, she looks at me like that, too,” he said, leaning forward and smiling, as if they were sharing a secret. “Ignore everyone else. It’s just me and you talking.”

  She told the same story. This time, it was recorded.

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” Ben said. “Maybe you can help. How’d you see Evelyn’s face? It was dark. You were on the steps. Wasn’t the M Street traffic between you?”

  “There’s no traffic on a Sunday night. How it always is.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But from so far away? How can you be sure it was Evelyn Carney? Not a woman who resembled her?”

  She put her head down, saying nothing.

  “Is someone tapping a foot?” Nelson said. “I’m picking up tapping.”

  Lil’ Bit stilled her foot.

  “Take your time,” Ben said.

  She winced. “I forgot to say I seen her before the bridge.”

  “That’s all right. I forget things all the time.”

  “She walked by me on the Exorcist steps,” she whispered.

  We waited for more. Ben reached out and clasped both of her small hands and twisted at the waist to talk to Nelson. “How’s Sarah framed? You got her tight from the chest up?”

  “You’re not in the shot,” Nelson said.

  Ben turned back to her and said: “You were doing real good there. Now tell me about the steps.”

  When Lil’ Bit started talking again, he pulled her hands toward him, and when she paused, he pushed her gently awa
y. It was this weird rowing motion I’d never seen done before, not in any interview, but it got her talking, the story rushing out in a flow no one could halt. She said Evelyn had been walking fast, as if she were scared or upset about something, it was hard to tell. Lil’ Bit followed her across the street and onto the bridge. Just to make sure she was okay. Now maybe she did ask Evelyn for some spare change, but that was nothing more than panhandling. Was she hungry, Evelyn wanted to know, and Lil’ Bit agreed she sure could use something. Evelyn reached into her little purse, not bothering to count the bills, and handed the money over to Lil’ Bit, everything she had, nice as you please.

  Ben was as skeptical as I was, asking the follow-up question three different ways. Lil’ Bit answered the same way each time: she had no idea why Evelyn gave her that money. Most people walked past her, cutting their eyes away, but not Evelyn. She just said to get some warm food and God bless and kept going across the bridge. Lil’ Bit turned back to the city.

  “You believe me, right?” And then she turned her attention to me: “I see you thinking I was gonna rob her. You’re just like the police.”

  “Detectives talked to you?” Ben said.

  “Bald white cop got those jelly rolls down the back of his neck,” she said, waving at her nape.

  “Detective Miller,” I told Ben. Miller was the lead detective in the Evelyn Carney case.

  “Yeah, him. All I’m trying to do is help myself by helping them and get ahold of that reward they promised, but he says ‘stop playing me little girl. You keep up, you find yourself in a heap of trouble. You being the last person to see Evelyn Carney and all.’ ”

  But there was no evidence she was playing them. In fact, everything she told us matched precisely what the police were saying. The only new information was that Evelyn Carney had made it onto Key Bridge, which did nothing to turn the investigative theory on its head.

  “What did you say to him that you aren’t telling us?” I said.

  She pulled her hands from Ben’s, folding her arms across her chest. A stubborn look crossed her face. I pushed away from the wall and circled the camera, now close enough to catch the scent of her cherry lip gloss, bringing with it an elbow-sharp childhood memory: the sale aisle at Happy Harry’s, a yearning for rollerball lip gloss that cost the dollar I didn’t have, the yearning so profound I slid my bitten nail beneath the glued edge of its package and slipped the gloss into my pocket before making my way, terrified, past the security guard. Cherry became the scent of poverty and fear, and it was coming off of Sarah Harden in waves, and no wonder: she was young and alone, a witness in a city that killed its witnesses, and her tough-girl camouflage called Lil’ Bit was a flimsy defense.