But not an instant longer. And as Rune walked down the corridor toward the exit the tears streamed fast and the quiet sobbing stole her breath as if she were being swept away, drowning and numb, in a torrent of melting snow.
"LOOK AT THIS. LIKE A DAMN DRAGON BURNED ME OUT."
Piper Sutton looked at her. "You and your dragons."
They stood on the pier, where the glistening, scorched hull of the houseboat floated, hardly bobbing, in the oily water of the Hudson.
Rune bent down and picked up a soggy dress. She examined the cloth. The collar was a little scorched but she might be able to cover it up with paint. She thought about the lawyer, Fred Megler, an expert at repairing clothes with pens.
But she sniffed the dress, shrugged and threw it into the discard pile, which looked like a small volcano of trash. Both the fire and the water from the NYFD had taken their toll. On the deck was a pile of books, pots and pans, some half-melted running shoes, drinking glasses. Nothing really valuable had survived, only the Motorola TV and the wrought-iron frames of the butterfly chairs.
"The 1950s were indestructible," Rune said, nodding at the frames. "Must've been one hell of a decade."
It was a stunningly gorgeous Sunday. The sky was a cloudless dome of three-dimensional blue and the sun felt as hot as a lightbulb. Piper Sutton sat on a piling she'd covered with a scrap of blue cloth--one of Rune's work shirts--before she'd lowered her black-suede-encased thighs onto the splintery wood.
"You have insurance?" the anchorwoman asked.
"Kinda weird but, yeah, I do. It was one of those adult things, you know, the sort that I don't usually get into. But my boyfriend at the time made me get some." She walked to the water and looked down at the charred wood. "The policy's in there someplace. Do I have to have it to collect?"
"I don't think so."
"I'm going to make some serious money there. I lost some really hyper stuff. Day-Glo posters, crystals, my entire Elvis collection ..."
"You listen to Elvis Presley?"
"That'd be Costello," Rune explained. Then considered other losses. "My magic wand. A ton of incense ... Oh God, my Lava Lamp."
"You have a Lava Lamp?"
"Had," Rune corrected sadly.
"Where're you staying?"
"With Sam for a while. Then I'll get a new place. Someplace different. I was ready to move anyway. I lived here for over a year. That's too long to be in one place."
A tugboat went by. A horn blared. Rune waved. "I know them," she told Sutton, who twisted around to watch the low-riding boat muscle its way up the river.
"You know," Rune said, "I've got to tell you. I kind of thought you were the one behind the killings."
"Me?" Sutton wasn't laughing. "That's the stupidest crap I ever heard."
"I don't think it's so stupid. You tried to talk me out of doing the story then offered me that job in England--"
"Which was real," Sutton snapped. "And got filled by somebody else."
Rune continued, unfazed, "And the day of the broadcast, when you ad-libbed, the tapes were missing. Even the backup in my credenza. You were the only one knew they were there."
Sutton impatiently motioned with her hand, as if she were buying candy by the pound and wanted Rune to keep adding some to the scale. "Come on, think, think, think. I told you I was on my way to see Lee. He asked me if you'd made a dupe. I told him that you had and you'd put it in your credenza. He's the one who stole it."
"You also went through my desk after Boggs escaped. Danny saw you--the electrician."
"I didn't want any of that material floating around. You were really careless, by the way. You trust too many people. You ..." She realized she was lecturing and reined herself in.
They watched the tugboat for a few minutes until it disappeared. Then Sutton said abruptly, "You want your job back, you can have it."
"I don't know," Rune said. "I don't think I'm a company person."
A brief laugh. "Of course you're not. You'll get fired again. But it's a peach job until you do."
"The local or the Network?"
"Current Events, I was thinking."
"Doing what? Like a script girl?"
"Assistant producer."
Rune paused then dropped a pair of scorched jeans into the trash pile. "I'd want to do the story. The whole thing. About the Hopper killing. And I'd have to include Lee this time."
Sutton turned back, away from the water, and stood up, looking over the huge panorama of the city. "That's a problem."
"What do you mean?"
"Current Events won't be running any segments about the Hopper killing. Or about Boggs."
Rune looked at her.
"Network News covered it," the woman said.
Rune said wryly, "Oh, that's right. I saw that story. It was about sixty seconds long, wasn't it? And it came after the story of the baby panda at the National Zoo."
"The powers-that-be--at the parent--decided the story should go away."
"That's bullshit."
"Can you blame them?"
"Yes," Rune said.
In her prototype Piper Sutton voice, Piper Sutton snapped, "It wasn't my decision to make."
"Wasn't it?"
Sutton took a breath to speak then didn't. She shook her head slowly, avoiding Rune's eyes.
Rune repeated, "Wasn't it?" And surprised herself again by hearing how calm she sounded, how unshaken she now was in the presence of this woman--a woman who wore suede and silk and bright red suits, a woman richer and smarter than she'd ever be. A famous commentator, who now seemed abandoned by words. Rune said, "You'd rather the competition did the story? Prime Time Tonight or Pulse of the Nation?"
Sutton stepped up on a creosoted railroad tie bolted into the pier as a car barrier. She looked in the water; her expression said she didn't like what she saw. Rune wondered if it was her reflection.
She said simply, "The story won't run on Current Events."
"What would happen if it did?"
"If you want to know I posed that exact question. And the answer was if it does the parent'll cancel the show." Then she added, "And I'll be out of work. You need a better reason than that?"
"I don't think I want my job back, no," Rune said. She'd found some of her old comic books; they'd miraculously survived both the fire and looters. She looked at the cover of a 1953 classic--"Sheena, Queen of the Jungle," who swung out of a tree toward a startled lion. The cat stared at her spear and radiant blonde hair and leopard-skin-clad hourglass figure--a physique that existed only in the luxurious imaginations of illustrators. "That's me." Rune held up the book. "Queen of the Jungle."
Sutton glanced at the picture.
Rune stacked the books in the small to-be-saved pile and asked, "Your conscience bothering you yet?"
"I've never had trouble sleeping at night. Not in forty-three years."
"You want my opinion?"
"Not really."
"You're caving, just to keep your paycheck."
Rune expected a tirade but what she got was a surprise--a small, hurt voice, saying, "I think you know it's not that."
And after a moment Rune nodded, understanding that Sutton was right. Sure, she'd bowed to the wishes of the executives. But the reasons were complex. She'd caved partly because she was hooked on the prestige and excitement that went with being a prime-time news anchor. Partly to keep a job that she'd fought hard for.
And partly--mostly--because Piper Sutton felt the world of journalism, and her ten million viewers, needed her.
Which of course they did. They needed the news handed to them by people like this, people they recognized, trusted, admired. An old boyfriend had once quoted somebody--a poet, she thought--who said that mankind can't bear too much reality. Well, it was the Piper Suttons of the world who cut reality into manageable little bites and set them out, pleasantly arranged, in front of the public.
"I put it in context." Sutton shrugged. "Boggs was innocent and you got him out. That's a good deed. But
it's still a small story. There's a lot of news out there, a lot bigger news. Nobody says I've got to cover everything."
"I'll produce it independently." Rune sounded more threatening than she had meant to.
Sutton laughed. "Bless you, babes, and more power to you. All I'm telling you is the story won't run on the Network. Not on my program."
Rune turned to face Sutton. "And if I do it, I'm going to mention the part about how they wouldn't do the story on Current Events."
Sutton smiled. "I'll send you the files and all backup, the stuff I saved from your desk. Give us your best shot. We can take it."
Rune returned to her pile of salvage. "It'll be a son of a bitch to do by myself."
Sutton agreed, "Sure will."
"You know, I could use a business partner. Somebody who was smart and knew the business. And was, like, abrasive."
"Like abrasive."
"You wouldn't be interested, would you?"
"Wait--you mean quit my job and go to work with you?" Sutton laughed, genuinely amused.
"Sure! We'd be a great team."
"No way in hell." The anchorwoman walked over to the messy pile and began to help Rune pick through it. She'd hold up an object and Rune would give her instructions: "Save." "Pitch." "Pitch." "Pitch." "Identity-unknown pile." "Save." "Save."
They worked for a half hour until Sutton straightened up and looked at her smudged hands with a grimace. She found a rag and started wiping them clean. "What time you have?"
Rune glanced at her working watch. "Noon."
Sutton asked, "You interested in getting some brunch?"
"I can't today. I'm going to the zoo with somebody."
"A date, huh?"
"Not hardly," Rune said. "Hey, you want to come?"
Sutton was shaking her head, which Rune figured was probably her reflex reaction to invitations of this sort. "I haven't been to the zoo in years," she said, laughing.
"It's like riding a bike," Rune said. "It'll come right back to you."
"I don't know."
"Come on."
"Let me think about it." Sutton stopped shaking her head.
"Aw, come on."
"I said I'll think about it," Sutton snapped. "You can't ask for more than that."
"Sure I can," Rune said.
The anchorwoman ignored her and together they crouched down in front of the pile of mystery artifacts and began picking through it, looking for more of Rune's damaged treasures.
about the author
Jeffery Deaver's novels have appeared on a number of bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, the London Times and the Los Angeles Times. The author of sixteen novels, he's been nominated for four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and an Anthony award and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington. Turner Broadcasting is currently making a TV movie of his novel Praying for Sleep. His most recent novels are The Stone Monkey, The Blue Nowhere (soon to be a feature film from Warner Brothers), The Empty Chair and Speaking in Tongues.
Look for his other suspense novels from Bantam Books: Manhattan Is My Beat, Death of a Blue Movie Star, Mistress of Justice and The Lesson of Her Death.
Deaver lives in Virginia and California and is now at work on his next Lincoln Rhyme novel.
Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.
hard news
A Bantam Book
All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1991, 2001 by Jeffery W. Deaver.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-30756959-2
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Random House, Inc., New York, New York.
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