When Day Breaks

by Mary Jane Clark

  “I’m so glad you’re happy, Mr. Whitaker,” said Eliza. “Where is Lauren now?”

  Stuart indicated over his shoulder. “She wanted to go over something with her cameraman. She’s still back there.”

  CHAPTER 106

  After repeatedly calling Eliza’s cell phone and getting no response, Annabelle called B.J. back.

  “Eliza doesn’t answer,” she said, her voice close to frantic. “She must have turned off the phone. I’ll call 911 and keep trying to reach her.”

  “All right,” said B.J. “And I’m going to head up to the Cloisters myself.”

  “Should I call Cloisters security?” asked Annabelle.

  “It couldn’t hurt,” he said as he sprinted out of the editing room.

  CHAPTER 107

  Wow. It’s beautiful up here,” said Eliza as she stood at the top of the cliff, looking south at the George Washington Bridge and the lights of Manhattan.

  “Not a bad place to spend eternity, huh?” asked Lauren as she joined Eliza in admiring the view. “I’ve always been a sucker for a sparkling skyline.”

  The two women stood together, gazing out over the Hudson below, enjoying the magnificence, but feeling the cool night breeze blowing off the river.

  “Ready to go?” Eliza finally asked.

  “Just about,” said Lauren. “But would you mind terribly if I paced out the area that I’ll be showing the audience in the morning one more time? I know you want to get going, but I’d feel more secure if I do it now, and then I’ll be able to sleep better tonight.”

  “I remember what it was like doing your shift,” said Eliza, trying to be understanding though wanting to leave in the worst way. “It was so hard to get a good night’s sleep. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks so much, Eliza,” said Lauren. She turned to the cameraman, who was packing up his lighting gear. “It’s all right, Bob,” said Lauren. “You can leave now.”

  CHAPTER 108

  The Cloisters security guards combed the museum looking for Eliza Blake.

  “She left a while ago,” Rowena Quincy said after one of the guards informed her of the distressed call from Annabelle Murphy. “Let’s check outside.”

  Rowena and the guards hurried out to the front of the building. A dark blue sedan was waiting at the door. Rowena signaled for the driver to roll down his window.

  “Have you seen Eliza Blake?” Rowena asked hurriedly. “About five foot seven, brown hair, pretty. She was wearing a light-colored chiffon dress?”

  “You don’t have to describe her for me, ma’am,” said the driver. “She’s my boss. But I haven’t seen her yet. I just got here to pick her up.”

  CHAPTER 109

  The skirt of Eliza’s dress rustled in the evening breeze as she waited. Under the spotlights Lauren practiced how she was going to walk and what she was going to say when the camera followed her around the site of the memorial park in the morning. Eliza had to give it to Lauren. The new cohost of KEY to America didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

  Finally Lauren was satisfied. She walked over to Eliza.

  “Okay. Ready now,” Lauren said. She bent down to pick up her purse from the ground. As she stood up again, a gust of river air blew her hair in her face. Lauren raised her arm and brushed back the errant hair with the back of her hand. On the pale skin of Lauren’s palm, Eliza noticed the five angry-looking cuts.

  “Those are just like the scratches that Cons—” Eliza stopped herself as she looked into the killer’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 110

  The car sped up the West Side Highway. B.J. wove in and out of the relatively sparse traffic. Once under the George Washington Bridge, he started looking for the exit for Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters.

  As he steered the car off the highway and began the climb up the steep drive to the Cloisters grounds, he passed a few cars coming out. But when he rounded the turn that led to the museum, he could see the flashing lights of police cars up ahead.

  CHAPTER 111

  Lauren looked down at the wounds on her open palm.

  “You don’t know how sorry I am that you saw this,” she said.

  “My God, Lauren,” said Eliza, aghast. “What have you done?”

  “You’re our illustrious KEY News anchor,” said Lauren. “You figure it out.”

  “You killed Constance. You took the unicorn, and you planted it on Boyd,” Eliza said, incredulous and slightly dazed as her mind began to put the pieces together. “Why? Why ever would you do it?”

  “Constance was my competition,” said Lauren.

  “You’re not serious,” said Eliza.

  “Oh, yes, I am,” said Lauren. “I’m very serious. If Constance actually went over to Daybreak, do you think anyone would watch me? Our ratings were poised to plummet. And I would be blamed. And replaced.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” said Eliza.

  “My career and reputation are everything to me, Eliza.”

  “Well, your career and reputation are going to be worth absolutely nothing now,” said Eliza.

  Lauren opened her purse. Eliza backed away as she pulled out a syringe.

  “You are crazy, absolutely crazy, Lauren.”

  “It won’t hurt too much, if you stay calm, Eliza,” said Lauren, edging closer. “I’ve watched many animals put down, and as long as you keep them calm, the end comes pretty peacefully.”

  Eliza considered her options. Her back was to the cliff. She considered running forward, but to get past Lauren she would have to run close enough to be jabbed by the needle.

  “So you killed the poor guy who worked in the animal shelter,” Eliza said, buying time, trying to come up with a plan.

  Lauren didn’t answer.

  “And Ursula Bales?”

  “They got in the way, Eliza. They could have identified me.” Lauren stepped closer, causing Eliza to back up farther, trying to calculate how many more feet there were behind her before the ground dropped off.

  “Lauren, put that needle down,” Eliza pleaded. “Please, Lauren. We can get you help.”

  Lauren laughed. “I don’t need any help. Things are still going to work out just fine.”

  “If you kill me, Lauren, everyone will know you did it. My driver is waiting for me by now, the camera guy knows he left us up here alone—even Stuart Whitaker knows I was on the way to find you.”

  “I’ll figure something out. I’m an awfully good liar,” said Lauren. “I’ll tell them you slipped and fell off the cliff. It was all a terrible accident. A terrible, terrible accident.” Lauren’s lips curled in a sarcastic smile. “Just think what those ratings will be tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER 112

  By now B.J. had joined the search.

  “Hey, Bob!” he called to the man loading some camera gear into the back of a KEY News car. “Have you seen Eliza?”

  “Yeah, I saw her,” said the cameraman. “I just left her and Lauren a little while ago.”

  “Where?” asked B.J.

  The cameraman pointed. “Up there, where that character wants to build the shrine to Constance.”

  CHAPTER 113

  Lauren closed in, the syringe in her hand.

  “Don’t fight me, Eliza,” she said. “This is working out better than I could have planned. I didn’t know we’d end up here alone together tonight. I’d only brought the syringe with me as a precaution. But now I can use it, then roll you over the cliff. It will be better that way, Eliza. You’ll be dead for certain instead of risking the possibility that you’d survive the fall, paralyzed but still alive. You would have hated that.”

  Eliza tried to stay calm. “But if you inject me with that stuff, an autopsy will show what killed me,” she said. “Everyone will know you were up here with me. Everyone will know you are responsible.”

  Lauren considered Eliza’s words. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. I guess we’ll just have to take a risk. I’ll risk that the fall from a couple hundr
ed feet onto the rocks won’t kill you, and you’ll risk spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair or worse.”

  At that, Eliza took her chance and lunged forward. She aimed for Lauren’s midsection, hoping to knock her down. As she made contact, the syringe went flying out of Lauren’s hand, up into the air, while Lauren stumbled backward.

  Eliza cringed, fearful that the needle would land on her. In that instant, Lauren regained her footing and reached out, not wanting Eliza to have the opportunity to get it first, certain she’d be able to catch it. The syringe came down, point first, jabbing Lauren in the palm before bouncing off and tumbling to the ground.

  Eliza got up but was pushed down again. Lauren jumped onto her chest. The women wrestled on the grass, rolling over, each time getting closer to the cliff’s edge. Lauren smashed her elbow down as hard as she could into Eliza’s side, causing her to cry out in pain.

  Using all her strength, Eliza brought her knee up, jamming it into Lauren’s stomach. Lauren loosened her grasp just enough that Eliza was able to wriggle free. Eliza scrambled to an upright position and began to run. But she was disoriented. Eliza thought she was running toward safety. Instead she was running toward the edge of the cliff.

  Lauren struggled to get up and follow, holding her stomach, running clumsily, focused on Eliza and nothing else. Suddenly Eliza stopped and turned to face her attacker. At the last moment, she stepped to the side, dodging Lauren as she lunged at Eliza again. Lauren didn’t know that Eliza had realized they were at the cliff’s edge until she found herself falling through the air, tumbling over and over again, her body battered by boulders, rocks, and vegetation, on the trip to the ground below.

  THURSDAY MAY 24

  EPILOGUE

  Good morning,” Eliza Blake’s voice welcomed the television audience. “It’s Thursday, May twenty-fourth, and this is KEY to America, coming to you this morning from the Cloisters in New York City.”

  Eliza stood before the camera, still wearing, at Linus’s insistence, the chiffon cocktail dress she’d worn the night before.

  “It will be like Jackie Kennedy wearing the pink suit with the dried blood on it from Dallas back to Washington,” he’d said. “It’ll bring the horror home to the audience.”

  The fact that Lauren Adams, badly injured, had been taken away by ambulance, the fact that the woman Linus supposedly loved would, if she recovered, be tried for three murders, the fact that the cohost of his broadcast was clearly not the idol he’d been building her up to be for the American public—none of that seemed to be terribly important to him as he barked his orders to the KTA staff. For Linus the overriding fact was that virtually every television in the country was tuned to KTA this morning. Though the sweeps period, when ratings determined advertising rates, had ended just the day before, this was still a rare opportunity. Linus was determined to give the audience one helluva show and, in the process, steal viewers away from the other morning programs, hopefully forever.

  Eliza recapped the events of the night before, voicing over the video of where she and Lauren had confronted one another, the future resting place of Constance Young. Eliza narrated the shots taken of the spot where Lauren had tumbled over the cliff—not a sheer drop, and broken by yards of brush and saplings, but brutally punishing just the same—and pictures of the police cars with flashing lights that had swarmed over the Cloisters’ grounds.

  Knowing that she would definitely be a witness in any future legal proceedings, Eliza was careful about describing what had happened between herself and Lauren. As a journalist she wanted to be truthful and thorough, but as part of the story herself Eliza did not want to say anything that could jeopardize a fair trial.

  “KEY News reported yesterday that Ursula Bales, who worked for Constance Young and who was also murdered, had left behind a needle-point canvas she was working on,” said Eliza.

  The entire needlecraft appeared on screen, while Eliza read the poem aloud.

  Lady of allure,

  A lonely shining star,

  Determined and so sure,

  And worshipped from afar.

  Men wooed her as a queen,

  Sought after for her charms,

  Known only on the screen,

  If rarely in her arms.

  Left lying in a pool,

  Left sinking like a stone,

  Ending up so cool,

  Dying all alone.

  Careful not to tell,

  Yet I was there as well.

  “Ursula Bales will never be able to testify at any trial, but her testimony, in the form of an acrostic poem, speaks volumes. Take the first letter of each line and read them in sequence—they spell out ‘L. Adams Killed CY.’”

  “Here you go, Kimba, my love.”

  Boyd put a saucer of fresh milk out for the cat and turned his attention back to the television. He sighed with relief as he listened to Eliza Blake tell the world that he’d been falsely accused.

  The telephone rang, and Boyd reached for it, hoping it was his mother. She’d been so worried.

  “Hiya, Boyd,” said the male voice. “Congratulations, brother.”

  “Who is this?” asked Boyd.

  “It’s Jason. Jason Vaughan.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you. You cost me my job, you know.”

  “Hold on a minute. I have something that you might be interested in.”

  “I doubt that,” said Boyd.

  “Just listen to me. I’m writing a new book about Constance Young’s murder, and you were looking like a prime suspect, weren’t you? I’d like to give you the chance to tell your side of the story, and I’ll certainly make it worth your while.”

  Boyd didn’t skip a beat. “No way. I’m hoping I might still be able to resurrect what’s left of my career at KEY News.”

  At the end of the first half hour, during the break for affiliates to report their local news and traffic conditions, Eliza signaled to a production assistant to bring her a phone.

  “Is Janie up yet, Mrs. Garcia?”

  Eliza listened to the answer.

  “All right,” she said. “That’s good. Don’t wake her. But when she does get up, tell her she doesn’t have to go to school this morning. Tell her that Mommy will be coming home as soon as I finish here, and we’ll spend the rest of the morning together. She can go in to school after lunch for the afternoon session.”

  Eliza nodded as she heard the housekeeper’s response.

  “Yes, Mrs. Garcia. I’m fine. But whatever you do, keep Janie away from the television this morning. I want to explain things to her myself.”

  As she handed the phone back to the production assistant, Eliza wondered just how she was going to do that.

  “I’m not answering that,” said Faith aloud to herself. “If one more reporter calls, I’m going to scream.”

  She watched in resignation as her son picked up the phone anyway.

  “Mom!” he called out. “It’s a man!”

  Faith shook her head and took the receiver from Ben. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Hansen, this is Stuart Whitaker. I heard the news on the television and wanted to call you. This must be so distressing for you. I know I was hoping it had been an accident, and I am sure you must have been as well.”

  “Can you hold a minute, please, Mr. Whitaker?” Faith put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Brendan, you’re going to miss the bus. Hurry up.”

  Faith sat at the kitchen table and uncovered the phone. “My sister is dead, Mr. Whitaker,” she said dully. “I guess it doesn’t much matter how it happened. But I do want to thank you again for last night. I appreciate that you want to give Constance such a lovely final resting place.”

  “Well, it is I who need to thank you, Mrs. Hansen, for allowing Constance to spend eternity like the queen she was.”

  Linus walked over and signaled to Eliza to take off her microphone. She complied.

  “I want you to consider coming back to KTA,” he said.

  Eliza mar
veled at the machinations of the executive producer’s mind. Constance Young had been dead less than a week, Lauren Adams had been hauled off just hours before, and already Linus was looking ahead, plotting who would be the best replacement.

  Though not surprised, Eliza didn’t want to dismiss the offer out of hand. There were lots of reasons that going back to the morning show could be good for her. She would actually be able to be waiting most days when Janie got home after school, have dinner with her daughter, and supervise homework at night. Getting up so painfully early wasn’t any fun, but the rewards of having a routine more conducive to motherhood had their appeal.

  While she got tremendous satisfaction from anchoring the Evening Headlines, and while the position arguably carried more prestige, Eliza had loved her previous stint on KTA and the wide range of stories and interviews she’d been able to do. Evening Headlines was so grave all the time, while KEY to America provided a balance of fun sprinkled among the serious news stories.

  “Is that something you would consider?” Linus asked.

  “I’ll think about it at least,” said Eliza. “But even if I decided that I did want to switch, my contract isn’t up for a while.”

  “Look,” said Linus, “I’m sure something could be worked out with the powers that be—if you decide you actually want to make the change.”