by Lis Wiehl
“But the food industry in this country is putting profits before safety,” Victoria protested.
“With all due respect, Hanawa, if we let the federal government handle it, they will insist that everyone who buys anything at a grocery store sign a release form and be issued their very own government-approved barf bag. Just another example of disenfranchisement.”
Victoria’s mouth started to form an answer, but it was time for the top-of-the-hour break. Chris pointed at the clock and then made a motion with his hands like he was snapping a stick.
Jim said, “And you’ve been listening to The Hand of Fate. We’re going to take a quick break for a news, traffic, and weather update. But before we go, I want to read you the e-mail from the Nut of the Day: ‘Jim, you are a fat, ugly liar who resembles the hind end of a poodle. Signed, Mickey Mouse.’”
He laughed, shielding himself from the sting. In this business, you knew that words could hurt you. Even if you were only forty-one and in good shape, with the kind of traditional broody Irish looks that made most women look twice.
“Fat? Maybe. Ugly? Well, I can’t help that. I can’t even help the hind-end-of-a-poodle business, although I think that’s going a bit far. But a liar? No, my friend, that’s one thing I am not. While I’ll give this a pass today, you’ll need to get a little more creative than that if you want to win the NOD award. And America’s Truth Detector will be right back in a moment to hear from you.” He pushed back the mike on its black telescoping arm.
As the first notes of the newscast jingle sounded in his ears, Jim pulled the padded black headphones down around his neck. He and Victoria now had six minutes to themselves before the third and final hour of the broadcast.
“I’m going to get some tea,” she said, without meeting his eyes. Jim nodded. In the last week, there had been a strained civility between them when they were off mike. On air, though, they still had chemistry. Even if now it was the kind of chemistry you got from mixing together the wrong chemicals in your junior scientist kit.
On air, everything was different. Jim was more indignant and mocking than he ever was in real life. Victoria made vaguely dirty jokes that she wouldn’t tolerate hearing off mike. And on air, they still mostly got along, bantering and feeding each other lines.
Victoria grabbed her mug and stood up. Even though she was half Japanese, she was five foot ten, with legs that went on forever. Handing him a padded envelope from a publisher, she said, “This was in my box this morning, but it’s really yours.”
When she pushed open the heavy door to the screening room, the weather strip on the bottom made a sucking sound. For a minute, Jim could hear Chris in the screener’s booth talking to Willow, the intern, and Aaron, the program director. Then the door closed with a snick— there were magnets on the door and frame—and Jim was left in the silent bubble of the studio. In addition to the magnets and the weather stripping, the walls and ceiling were covered with blue, textured soundproofing material that resembled the loop side of Velcro.
Jim grabbed the first piece of mail from his in-box and slit it with a letter opener. He scanned the note inside. “Dad’s seventy-fifth birthday . . . love to have a signed photo,” yada yada.
“Happy Birthday, Larry!” he scrawled on a black-and-white headshot he pulled from dozens kept in a file folder. “Your friend, Jim Fate.” Paper-clipping the envelope and letter to the photo, he put them off to the side for Willow to handle. Three more photo requests, each of which took about twenty seconds to deal with. Jim had signed his name so many times in the last ten years that it was routine, but he still got a secret thrill each time he did it.
There were still about three minutes left, so he decided to open the package from the publisher. He liked books about true crime, politics, or culture—with authors he could book on the show.
Jim pulled the red string tab on the envelope. It got stuck halfway through, and he had to give it an extra hard tug. There was an odd hissing sound as a paperback—Talk Radio—fell onto his lap. A book of a play turned into a movie—both based on the true-life killing of talk show host Alan Berg, gunned down in his own driveway.
What the—?
Jim never finished the thought. The red string had been connected to a small canister of gas hidden in the envelope. Now it sprayed directly into his face.
He gasped. With just that first breath, Jim knew something was terribly wrong. He couldn’t see the gas, couldn’t smell it, but he could feel its damp fog coat the inside of his nose and throat.
He swept the package away. It landed behind him, in the far corner of the studio. Whatever it was, it was in the air. So he shouldn’t breathe. Jim clamped his lips together and scrambled to his feet, yanking off the headphones.
It was just like what had happened in Seattle three weeks earlier. Fifty-eight people had died from sarin gas in what seemed to be a botched terrorist attack.
His chest already starting to ache, Jim looked out through the thick, glass wall into the control room on his right. Greg, the board operator, was half-turned away, gobbling a PayDay bar. He was watching his banks of equipment, ready to press the buttons for commercials and national feeds. In the call screener’s booth directly in front of Jim, Aaron was still talking to Chris and Willow, waving his hands for emphasis. Jim was unnoticed, sealed away in his bubble.
He forced himself to concentrate. He had to get some air, some fresh air. If he staggered out, would the air there be enough to dilute what he had already breathed in? Would it be enough to clear the sarin from his lungs, from his body?
Would it be enough to save him?
But if he opened the door, what would happen to the people out there? Chris, Willow, Aaron, and the rest? He thought of the firefighters who had died in Seattle. Would invisible tendrils of poison snake out to the dozens of people who worked at the station, the hundreds who worked in the building? Greg in the control room, with its own soundproofing, might be safe if he kept his door closed. For a while, anyway. Until it got into the air ducts. Some of the people who died in Seattle had been nowhere near the original release of the gas. If Jim tried to escape, everyone out there might die too.
Die too. The words echoed in his head. Jim realized that he was dying, that he had been dying from the moment he first sucked in his breath in surprise. It had been, he thought, somewhere between fifteen and twenty seconds since the gas sprayed into his face.
Every morning, Jim swam two miles at the MAC club. He could hold his breath for two minutes. How long had that magician done it on Oprah? Seventeen minutes, wasn’t that it? Jim couldn’t hold his breath for that long, but he was sure he could hold it longer than two minutes. Maybe a lot longer. The first responders could surely get him some oxygen. The line might be thin enough to snake under the closed door.
Jim pressed the Talk button and spoke in a slurred, breathy voice. “Sarin gas! Call 911 and go! Don’t open door!”
They all swung around to look at him in surprise. Without getting any closer, he pointed to the package in the corner.
Chris sprang into action with the catlike reflexes of someone who worked in live radio—someone used to dealing with crazies and obscenity spouters before their words got out on the airwaves and brought down a big fine from the FCC. He punched numbers into the phone and began shouting their address to the 911 operator. He’d pressed the Talk button, so Jim heard every word.
“It’s sarin gas. Yes, sarin! In the KNWS studio! Hurry! It’s killing him! It’s killing Jim Fate!”
Behind Chris, Willow took one look at Jim, her eyes wide, and turned and ran out of the studio.
In the news tank, Greg backed away from the window. But in the screener’s booth, Aaron moved toward the door with an outstretched hand. Jim staggered forward and held the door closed with his foot. His gaze met Aaron’s through the small rectangle of glass set in the door at eye level.
“Are you sure? Jim, come out of there!”
Jim knew Aaron was yelling, but the door filtered it i
nto a low murmur, stripped of all urgency.
He couldn’t afford the breath it would take to speak, couldn’t afford to open his mouth in case he accidentally sucked in air again. His body was already demanding that he stop this nonsense and breathe. All he could do was shake his head, his lips clamped together.
Chris pressed the Talk button again. “They’re sending a hazmat team. They should be here any second. They said they’re bringing oxygen.”
Jim made a sweeping motion with his hands, wordlessly ordering his coworkers to leave. His chest was aching. Greg grabbed a board and a couple of microphones and left the news tank at a run. Aaron took one last look at Jim, shook his head, and then left. A second later, the fire alarm began to sound, a low pulse muffled to near nothingness by the soundproof door.
Chris stayed where he was, staring at Jim through the glass. The two of them had been together for years. Every morning, Chris and Jim—and more recently Victoria—got in early and put the show together, scouring the newspaper, the Internet, and TV clips for stories that would light up the lines.
“I’m praying for you, man,” Chris said, then released the Talk button. He gave Jim one more anguished look, then hurried out.
Jim wished he could follow. But he couldn’t run away from what the poison had already done to him. His vision blurred. Time was slowing down. He was so tired. Why did he have to hold his breath, again? Oh yes, sarin.
When he looked back up, he saw that Victoria was still in the screener’s room. She moved close to the glass, her dark eyes seeking out Jim’s. Angrily, he shook his head and motioned for her to go.
Victoria pressed the Talk button. “I don’t smell anything out here. The booth is practically airtight, anyway.”
Jim wanted to tell her that “practically” wasn’t the same as really and truly. It was the kind of argument they might have on air during a slow time, bantering to keep things moving along. But he didn’t have the breath for it.
A part of Jim’s brain remained coldly rational even as his body sent more and more messages that something was badly wrong. He hadn’t breathed since that first fateful gulp of air when he opened the package. A vacuum was building up in his head and chest, a sucking hollowness, his body screaming at him, demanding that he give in.
But Jim Fate hadn’t made it this far by giving in when things were tough. It had only been a minute, a minute-ten maybe, since he’d pulled the red string. But then he did give in to another hunger—the hunger for connection. He was all alone and he might be dying, and he couldn’t stand that thought. He moved to the glass and put his hand up against it, fingers spread, a lonely starfish. And then Victoria mirrored it with her own hand, the anger between them forgotten, their matching hands pressed against the glass.
There was a band around Jim’s chest, and it was tightening. An iron band. It was crushing him, crushing his lungs. His vision was dimming, but he kept his eyes open, his gaze never leaving Victoria.
With her free hand, Victoria groped blindly for the Talk button. “Jim, you’ve got to hold on,” she yelled.
Jim’s heart contracted when he heard how hoarse she sounded. She had to leave!
He lifted his hand from the glass and made a shooing gesture, again wordlessly ordering her to leave. Instead she pushed the Talk button again and said, “I hear sirens. They’re almost here!”
But his body was ready to break with his will. He had to breathe. Had to. But maybe he could filter it, minimize it.
Without taking his eyes from Victoria, Jim pulled up the edge of his shirt with his free hand and pressed his nose and mouth against the fine Egyptian cotton cloth. He meant to take a shallow breath, but when he started, the hunger for air was too great. He sucked it in greedily, the cloth touching his tongue as he inhaled.
He sensed the shoots of poison winding themselves deeper within him, reaching out to wrap around all his organs. His head felt like it was going to explode.
No longer thinking clearly, Jim let his shirttail fall away. It didn’t matter, did it? It was too late. Too late. He tried to take another breath, but his lungs refused to move.
He staggered backward. Grabbed at his chair and missed. Fell over.
Horrified, Victoria started screaming. A shiver ran through Jim’s body, his arms and legs twitching. And then Jim Fate was still. His eyes, still open, stared up at the soft, fuzzy blue ceiling.
Two minutes later the first hazmat responders, suited up in white, burst through the studio door.
CHAPTER 2
Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse
Federal prosecutor Allison Pierce eyed the 150 prospective jurors as they filed into the sixteenth-floor courtroom in the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse. A high-profile case like this necessitated a huge jury pool.
The seats soon filled, forcing dozens to stand, some only a few inches from the prosecution table. Allison could smell unwashed bodies and unbrushed teeth. She swallowed hard, forcing down the nausea that now plagued her at unexpected moments.
“Are you all right?” FBI special agent Nicole Hedges whispered. Nicole was sitting next to Allison at the prosecutor’s table. Her huge, dark eyes never missed anything.
“These days, I’m either nauseated or ravenous,” Allison whispered back. “Sometimes at the same time.”
“Maybe the Triple Threat Club can find someplace to meet that serves ice cream and pickles.”
The club was an inside joke, just three friends with connections to law enforcement—Allison, Nicole, and TV crime reporter Cassidy Shaw—who were devoted to justice, friendship, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.
The courtroom deputy called for everyone to rise and then swore them in en masse. Allison eyed the would-be jurors. They carried backpacks, purses, coats, umbrellas, bottled water, books, magazines, and—this being Portland, Oregon—the occasional bike helmet. They ranged from a hunched-over old man with hearing aids on the stems of his glasses to a young man who immediately opened a sketchbook and startled doodling. Some wore suits, while others looked like they were ready to hit the gym, but in general they appeared alert and reasonably happy.
There would have been more room for the potential jurors to sit, but the benches were already packed with reporters who had arrived before the jury was ushered in. In the middle of the pack was a forty-ish woman who had a seat directly behind the defense table. She wore turquoise eye shadow, black eyeliner, and a sweater with a plunging neckline: the mother of the defendant.
After those lucky enough to have seats were settled in again, Judge Fitzpatrick introduced himself and told the jury that the defendant had to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that she did not need to do or say anything to prove her innocence. It was solely up to the prosecution, he intoned solemnly, to prove their case. Though Allison had heard the words at every trial, and the judge must have said them hundreds of times in his nearly twenty years on the bench, she still found herself listening. Somehow Judge Fitzpatrick always imbued the words with meaning.
When he was finished, he asked Allison to introduce herself. She stood, offering up a silent prayer, as she always did, that justice would be served. She faced the crowded room and tried to make eye contact with everyone. It was her job to build a relationship with the jurors from this moment forward, so that when the time came for them to deliberate, they would trust what she had told them.
“I am Allison Pierce. I represent the United States of America.” On some of the potential jurors’ faces, Allison saw surprise as they realized that the young woman with the pinned-back dark hair and plain blue suit was actually the federal prosecutor. People always seemed to expect a federal prosecutor to be a silver-haired man.
She gestured toward Nicole. “I’m assisted by FBI special agent Nicole Hedges as the case agent.”
Nicole was thirty-three, the same age as Allison, but with her unlined, dark skin and expression that gave away nothing, she could have been anywhere from twenty-
five to forty. She was dressed in her customary dark pantsuit and flats.
The judge then pointed out the defendant, Bethany Maddox, who wore a demure pink and white dress that Allison was sure someone else had picked out for her. The courtroom stirred as people craned their necks or got to their feet to get a glimpse. Bethany smiled, looking as if she had forgotten that she was on trial. Her defense attorney, Nate Condorelli, stood and introduced himself, but it was clear that the would-be jurors weren’t nearly as interested in Nate as they were in his client.
Today was the first step in bringing to justice the pair the media had dubbed the Bratz Bandits, courtesy of their full lips, small noses, and trashy attire. What was it with the media and nicknames for bank robbers? The Waddling Bandit, the Grandmother Robber, the Toboggan Bandit, the Runny Nose Robber, the Grocery Cart Bandit—the list went on and on.
For a few weeks after their crime, grainy surveillance video of the pair had been in heavy rotation not just in Portland but nationwide. The contrast between two nineteen-year-old girls—one blonde and one brunette, both wearing sunglasses, short skirts, and high heels— and the big, black guns they waved around had seemed more comic than anything else. On the surveillance tape, they had giggled their way through the bank robbery.
The week before, Allison had heard Bethany’s parents on The Hand of Fate, the radio talk show. The mother had told listeners that the two young women were not bandits, but “little girls that made a bad choice.”
Bethany’s mother had seemed surprised when Jim Fate laughed.
The father, who was divorced from the mother, had sounded much more in touch with reality, and Allison had made a mental note to consider putting him on the stand.
“God gives us free will, and it’s up to us what we do with it,” he had told Jim Fate. “Any adult has to make decisions and live with them—good, bad, or indifferent.”
