Then the documentary went into the arrests, Plattener's silence, the cocky denials of Dirk Lawson, and the frustration of being unable to obtain the evidence that was dying with Calvin Denton. "But then Jessica really came through for us," Agent Kunsa said. "She marched right in there and confronted Plattener, face-to-face. I've never seen any kidnapping victim demonstrate that kind of strength before. But she did, by golly she went right in there and got enough information so that we could retrieve the bug he had planted in her office. And we also got the recordings that linked Dirk Lawson to Bea Blakely."
"I still don't know what to say," Mrs. Denton said with tears in her eyes. "We owe our family's existence to this woman. To Jessica Wright." She blinked rapidly in an attempt to keep her tears at bay. "Not only did she risk her life to keep my husband alive, but I saw her go into the intensive-care unit later and literally talk my husband back to life." She swallowed. "And now she's getting help for our little girl, and she's trying to help my husband, and help us to maintain hope as a family." She broke down.
Alexandra chronicled the gradual stabilization of Calvin Denton and the miracle of his being able to testify against Dirk Lawson. (He had to type his testimony with his one good index finger on his right hand, attached, happily, to his only unbroken limb.) Denton also sent the authorities to the intended hideout—the basement of an abandoned warehouse in Newark—and to evidence physically linking Lawson with the site. Denton would be going to prison and would be a cripple all his life. "I know better than anyone else what Calvin Denton was going to do to me, and how he intended to treat me," Jessica said. "And I know that I will be testifying on his behalf, because I will tell you something—that man has suffered hell itself. Not just with this situation, but for years, with his little girl. Not just with him knowing how much his family is suffering over this. But think about what it must be like for a man who always prided himself on being fit and athletic, to now be barely able to walk. Ever."
"The most condemning factor in a kidnapping is demanding a ransom," Agent Kunsa explained. "Once kidnappers do that—that's it. But in this case, there was no ransom demand, and that lessens the charges against Denton. And with Ms. Wright pushing so hard for his cause, that certainly can't hurt his situation."
Then they cut to the Manhattan district attorney. "In Dirk Lawson's case?" he said. "Oh, yes, we'll be going for the death penalty for the murder of Bea Blakely."
Lawson, Alexandra explained, was being held in Riker's Island, awaiting trial.
James Plattener's plea of insanity was struck down by the courts and he was transferred upstate to Attica Prison, where he is awaiting trial for the murder of a Niagara Falls cocktail waitress named Bambi Sharp, with whom he had tried to practice his social sexual skills with before meeting Jessica in person. (Unfortunately Ms. Sharp had evidently said something unkind and Plattener had slashed her throat and later dismembered her in his garage in Buffalo, packing her remains in three plastic storage containers and tucking her away in a storage locker with other family heirlooms.) Other charges were pending for Plattener in the courts—in Manhattan, the attempted murder of Calvin Denton, and in the federal, the kidnapping and assault of Jessica Wright.
"Interestingly," Alexandra said at the conclusion of the special, "James Plattener has had to be isolated from the general prison population in Attica. Because, you see, when it was announced that Jessica would not be returning to the air after her ordeal, several inmates promised to murder him."
Alexandra smiled and said, “And that's the report from all of us here at DBS, and DBS News. We'll see you tomorrow night for our regular news hour. Good night."
It was a remarkable television event and DBS was flooded with congratulations from newspeople around the world, not only for the special, but for the personal participation of Alexandra and Will in helping to track down and rescue their friend and colleague. And in the ratings war, "The Kidnapping of Jessica Wright" scored a 22.8 Nielsen rating, beating all competition.
32
On Saturday night, June 27, Langley Peterson threw an official farewell dinner for Jessica Wright at the Waldorf Hotel. Included among the guests was the whole Mondaythrough-Friday cast and crew of "The Jessica Wright Show" and "DBS News America Tonight." Following the sophisticated tradition established by Betty Ford, waiters and waitresses at this black-tie affair carried not only champagne glasses of Moet on silver trays, but champagne glasses of Perrier water, each with a piece of lime to clearly signal its nonalcoholic content. Trays of sumptuous hors d'oeuvres were passed. It was a giddy group, excited by the food and drink and finery, but it was also an unhappy group, one nervously dreading that final goodbye.
Dinner was served. Filet mignon or chicken or vegetarian. At the head table, Langley and his wife, Belinda, played host and hostess, Jessica, Will, Cassy, Jackson, Alexandra, Agent Kunsa, Agent Cole, Detectives Hepplewhite and O'Neal, Denny Ladler and Alicia Washington chatted on, looking out over the room, waving to colleagues and friends.
Jessica had gone crazy with a long green silk dress and spiked sandals, and between yet another new auburn wig and Cleo's makeup, she looked very much like her old self. Because her right hand was still healing, she also wore long white dress gloves. Will was wearing his tuxedo (standard gear for TV executives). Alexandra was in a long blue-sequined gown. Cassy was in a pale yellow one. Agent Kunsa kept fussing with his black bow tie (a real one) and white dinner jacket that he had been loaned from the DBS wardrobe. Hepplewhite was aglow in a tux, and Agent Cole surprised everyone with a black silk dress and daring neckline. Slim, in his rented tuxedo, had chosen a seat offstage, and so had Wendy, who frankly looked fantastic in a long black dress.
After dinner, as the dessert wagons were being rolled out, Langley got up to make a toast. First it was to the safe return of Jessica and the people who had found her—Hepplewhite, Kunsa, Cole, Rafferty, Waring, Cochran, Mitchell and gang—and then to the making of the documentary, "The Kidnapping of Jessica Wright," which had earned DBS their first number-one rating.
"This is the part I hate to get to," Langley said then. He paused for a long time, looking down at his note card, blowing air out of his cheeks. He looked up sadly to the group. "How do you say goodbye to someone who, it feels, gave birth to us? This is not to say, Jessica," he added quickly, "that you're our mama, but I think there are some who might say that you are some kind of mother."
The group burst into laughter.
"Seriously, I don't even know what to say. I was talking to my wife last night, and I said, what do I say? What can I say? And she said, just tell them how you feel. Well ... " He took off his glasses and dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. He put the glasses back on. "I feel heartbroken. I feel like we're all wondering, 'How are we ever going to go on without that crazed woman in Studio B?'"
A little laughter, but people had also started to tear up.
"If Alexandra is the shaping intellectual force of DBS, certainly Jessica is the heart—" His voice broke and, annoyed, he scratched his head and tried again. But stopped, took a breath and said, "There's no way we can ever thank you, Jessica. You've given us careers, you've given us a network, you've given us a pain in the neck, a pain in the ass—"
Laughter.
"And now a very bad pain in our hearts. Anyway, kiddo, we got you something. All of us. We took up a collection and then Cassy yelled at me that four dollars wasn't enough—"
Laughter.
"So we had to kick in a little from the emergency fund. And so, Jessica, from your friends and family here at DBS, I give you this present with our deepest gratitude, our love, and our best wishes—forever and ever."
The side doors of the ballroom opened and a group of employees rolled in a brand-new Mercedes convertible coupe. There were excited oohs and aahs, and when Jessica stood up to speak, everyone vaulted to their feet and the entire room went into thunderous applause that lasted almost five minutes.
By the time people stopped clapping, Jessica was compl
etely in tears. She kept blinking, trying to dab her eyes; Cleo ran up to do some repairs, and when the room finally grew silent, Jessica smiled. "Wow," she said softly.
Laughter.
Jessica shook her head. "Where do I begin? I guess by saying that when I arrived at DBS, that very first day, I was drunk. I was drunk because I was a drunk—"
"You still got great ratings," Langley quipped, making people laugh.
"Yes, well," Jessica said, "at a price. A high price. But now it's seven years later, I'm seven years sober, and I owe a great deal of everything good and wonderful in my life to you people at West End. You were kind to me, supportive, protective—And a lot of you were good role models. And what a life I've had these past seven years! You gave me a hit TV show, hundreds of new friends and family and the best kind of life possible. And then, as if that were not enough, you gave me my future husband, as well."
Cheers and applause.
"Yep. Me and playboy Rafferty are getting married. And you're all going to be invited to the wedding!" Cheers and applause. "The only thing is," she continued, "it may be kind of boring—because Dirk Lawson will not be handling the security."
Winces and oohs and laughter.
"Anyway, tonight we're blessed to have some very special guests here, FBI Agents Norman Kunsa and Debbie Cole, and Detectives Jefferson Hepplewhite and Richard O'Neal of the NYPD. I owe them my life. Um, this time, anyway. I've always owed my life to a great extent to Alexandra Eyes and Cassy and all those guys, but these outside people really went all out to find me and to help me put away the bad guys—something that really has helped me in getting closure on this whole ordeal.
"Urn_" she stopped to think, looking at the back wall of the room, then, "It's interesting how love works and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. Urn, as most of you and the rest of the whole wide world knows, I've had a fairly horrible love life—"
Laughter.
"I mean, it wasn't—I didn't, you know, sleep with animals or anything. I mean, animal animals—there were some guys that—" She cut herself off, clearing the air with her hand. "Let's just move on, shall we?"
Laughter.
"Anyway, I really never expected that I would ever fall in love. One of the great joys has been to realize, year by year, how emotionally shut down I've been. Not the hysterical emotions being shut down—I think we all know I still have more than my share of hysteria to offer—“
Laughter.
A wince. "Remember when I smashed my office window with the phone?"
Laughter.
"Anyway, now that I am perfect—“
Laughter.
"I realize that not only had I not ever fallen in love before, but that I had no idea that loving someone could be so simple. I always thought falling in love meant euphoria followed by depression and anger and conniving, and lots and lots and lots of tricking and trapping—"
Laughter.
"—followed by guilt and remorse, and then passion turning quickly into loathing and hatred." She shrugged. "So falling in love was not something I particularly felt I was missing in sobriety."
Laughter.
"I'm not going to go into details, but after seven and a half years of us saying, 'Hi, how are you?' in the halls of DBS, I fell in love with Will Rafferty. Of course, he fell in love with me, too, basically because I hit him in the head with a golf ball at the affiliates convention and he hasn't been the same since."
Laughter.
"What's been most interesting to me these past weeks, with the ordeal of my being stalked and kidnapped, was that Agents Kunsa and Cole, and Detectives Hepplewhite and O'Neal seem to belong to the same school of love that I used to. In that when something or someone seems too good to be true, then they must be too good to be true. And since they could see how devoted Will was to me, and how very much he loved me, they naturally assumed, then, that Will had to be a murdering, stalking psycho—which says what about me I'm not exactly sure."
Gales and gales of laughter, whoops and whistles.
"And so, I wish to thank them in particular, because, you see, they've done all the tricking and trapping and conniving with Will for me—So I don't ever have to do that. I can just marry him and love him with all my heart."
Everyone vaulted to their feet again, clapping and cheering. Jessica made Will stand up and wave at everyone. He remained next to her, holding her hand, blushing to the roots of his hair.
"Thank you, thank you everybody," Jessica said. "And just think of what we can name our children! Cole, Hepplewhite and Kunsa!" She stooped over, as if addressing a small child. "That's right, Kunsa sweetheart, you were named after the nice man who wanted to put Daddy in the electric chair."
Everybody laughed.
"Anyway," Jessica said, straightening up, waiting until the noise died down. "I've got to tell you, I've been in tears over my departure from DBS ever since I made the decision. It is just about the hardest thing I've ever done. And yet it seems to be what I need to do." She gestured to the car. "You guys got me the car, the benefits department said we could keep our pensions vested in DBS, Langley threw this big dinner, on and on—Everybody's been really wonderful and extremely generous. Particularly emotionally, for letting us go in the first place.
"And so," she continued solemnly, "I want to finish by thanking you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything—my life, my career, my husband, my happiness. And I want to tell you how much I love you all, how much I respect you and how terribly I will miss you." She turned to look at Alexandra and Cassy and the rest of the gang. "You guys are the best friends I have in the entire world. You're my family."
Everyone was in tears.
Jessica turned around, and with a very sad face concluded with, "The only problem is, I'm not leaving. I've got too many things left to do in this job, too much to say." At first no one reacted.
And then Alicia said, "Are you dissing us?"
"Yes, I'm dissing you, Miss Jive Talk!" Jessica taunted, waving her finger and then her fanny at her head writer. And then she grabbed the mike and belted, "THAT'S RIGHT GUYS, I'M NOT LEEEEEA-VIIIIIIIIING!"
"What? What?" Cassy said, stunned, looking around.
"So take the car back, Langley, and roll out some dough for a new set. 'The Jessica Wright Show' goes on!"
People were cheering and dancing around their tables. They had jobs again, they had a network.
In the chaos Alexandra went up to put her arm around Jessica, whispering, "You are in big trouble, my friend. You really had us going."
"I thought I was going," Jessica said. "But I can't. There's just too much left I want to do on the air."
"Did you know about this?" Alexandra asked Will.
"Well, let's put it this way," he said, "I'm telling you now that I think we need to get to West End so you can break this news on the air yourself."
"Oh—right. You're right!" Alexandra turned to Jessica. "Well—" She shrugged and kissed her on the cheek. "Welcome back."
"Come on, hustle," Will directed the anchorwoman. He kissed Jessica. "Bye, darling, see you at home."
Alexandra leaned over the head table to tell Cassy, "Well, I guess I'm staying."
Cassy smiled and turned to Langley. "Well, I guess I'm staying, too." She stood up. "And I'm going to go offer Wendy and Slim those security jobs we talked about."
Langley leaned forward to look at Jackson. "So, Jack, I guess I'm not leaving, either." He looked at his wife. "Sorry, Belinda."
''It's all right, darlin'," she assured him. "I don't think I was really up to home schooling and giving up Bergdorf's anyway."
"Somehow I had a feeling none of you would really leave," Jackson said to himself, sipping his wine, smiling at the scene in front of them.
People had surged around Jessica, and she was laughing and hugging people and accepting congratulations.
And, of course, Jessica was talking.
Always talking.
And making this world just a little bit better pla
ce.
About the Author
Laura Van Wormer grew up in Darien, CT and graduated from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She worked as an editor at a major publishing house before becoming a full-time novelist. Laura cordially invites you to visit her at LauraVanWormer.com
Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Page 30
