Dead File (30 page)
“Yes. It was wonderful,” Sandie said. “I didn’t even realize how much I love the ocean.”
Whoa! Maxi mentally exclaimed. Complete sentences. Totally coherent. You’ve come a long way, baby. “You’re so much better today,” is what she said.
“And getting better every day, I hope,” Sandie replied. “I need to get to where I remember everything. And I want to go back to work.”
“You know that Gillian is dead,” Maxi said quietly, in case she’d forgotten that since yesterday.
“Oh, yes—I know. I don’t remember it,” she said, as if reading Maxi’s mind. “But I know it from the news, and from Dad, and the newspapers.”
“You’re reading the newspapers?”
“Yesterday, for the first time,” Sandie offered, and she broke into a proud smile. Then she immediately sobered. “I read the story about Goodman Penthe being with Gillian the night before she died. The story gave you credit for reporting what he had to say about that night, on Channel Six. I saw you on that report, Maxi.”
“Did you know Goodman Penthe?”
“He’d come in to the office to meet with Carter and Gillian a few times.”
“Sandie,” Maxi said, spurred on by the nurse’s conjectures as to why this woman whom she hardly knew kept asking to see her, “maybe I can help you remember. Tell me what you do know about everything that’s happened.”
“All I know is what I’ve been told, and what I’ve read or seen on the news,” she said. “The last thing I actually remember is going out to lunch on the day Gillian died.”
“What do you remember about that lunch?”
“I went to the cafeteria downstairs in the building and had a tuna sandwich and a Diet Coke. Then I walked over to Ninth Street, to a button shop I know in the garment district. I like to walk on my lunch hour, and I needed a new set of buttons for a suit jacket.”
“Then?”
“Then I remember walking back to the building and taking the express elevator to my floor. Gillian’s floor. And that’s all. Isn’t that weird? I am so clear on everything that happened up to that point; then it’s a complete blank.”
“It’s not weird, Sandie. It’s not that uncommon after what you’ve been through.”
“That’s what they’re telling me. Dr. Hamatt says don’t sweat it. It’ll come. Or not. And if not, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my brain, or that it’ll haunt me all my life. If it doesn’t come back to me, just forget about it, he says, and move on.”
Forgetting about it and moving on was not going to advance the story, Maxi mentally flashed, then inwardly chastised herself for such thoughts. The curse of the journalist.
“Do you remember anything about being back in your office after lunch?” she asked gently.
“No. Not a thing.” Sandie sighed. “I know what happened, of course. I know that I’m the one who found Gillian’s body. That I must have screamed, and somebody called the police, I guess . . .”
Maxi’s heart went out to Sandie for what she must be going through. Poor woman was trying so hard to remember that she’d resorted to
guessing
what must have happened in order to piece things together. She waited, letting Sandie fill the silence.
“I know Gillian’s beautiful new crystal award got broken. And the police came—”
“Award?” Maxi asked.
“The award the chamber of commerce had given her just the week before, when she spoke at their luncheon—she was so proud of that one.”
“Do you remember the award breaking?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Sandie said, frowning. “I saw it on the news. And I know they didn’t find any foul play involved. That Gillian died of natural causes. Probably a congenital heart defect, I heard on one report. Tragic. She was so young, so brilliant. I can’t imagine what it’s like at the Rose company now, without Gillian.” B.J. came in carrying a tray and set it down on the coffee table. A platter of chicken sandwiches on whole wheat, cut in quarters. A dish of sweet midget pickles. A plastic deli container of cole slaw. A pitcher of lemonade. She set out plates, forks, glasses, napkins, salt and pepper. And all three women dug in.
C
arter Rose was perplexed. More than perplexed, he was nervous. Kendyl had left work yesterday afternoon with out even letting him know, and she hadn’t come in at all this morning. He’d tried phoning her, at her apartment and on her cell. He’d left messages. After work he’d stopped by her apartment building and asked the guard on the desk to call upstairs, but he was told she wasn’t answering. “Well, is Ms. Scott in?” he’d asked. The guard said he didn’t know. Of course he said he didn’t know; it was the Remington, the premier snooty high-rise in the Wilshire corridor, a mega-discreet security building. Very expensive. He knew, because he was paying her rent.
Now he was really worried. This morning he discovered that he’d left the intercom line open and the phone on Speaker. He did that sometimes, and Kendyl always caught it. He tried to remember what went on in the office yesterday afternoon after he’d gone over today’s agenda with Kendyl.
Then he remembered. Jesus Christ, could she have overheard his call to Leilani? Fuck. That meant big-time damage control.
He’d sent Leilani packing this afternoon, back to Maui. She had intended to stay in town for a few days after completing her photo shoot for a pineapple company this morning: Wholesome
Miss Hawaii looks like this because she grew up eating fresh pineapple. Yeah, right.
Carter had planned to pick up the cost of her stay for a few extra days. Now that was much too risky—no telling what Kendyl was up to. He’d told Leilani that something had come up and he had to leave the country, and he had his driver take her to the airport. He’d make it up to her next time, he said. And he made a note to himself to have Mrs. Paul at Tiffany send her a classic stainless Rolex watch. All women loved them.
The door to his office opened. Damn, the temp at Kendyl’s desk was an airhead, letting somebody in without checking with him first.
It was the police.
P
oole, get in here. You too, Harris!” Pete Capra yelled from the door of his office. Maxi had just come in from lunch with Sandie Schaeffer; Wendy was sitting at her computer terminal in the newsroom, producing the Six.
“Can it wait?” Wendy yelled back. “I’m jamming.”
“No, it can’t fucking wait!” Pete bellowed across the news-room for all to hear. Wendy rolled her eyes, got up, and followed Maxi into Pete’s office. He slammed the door shut behind the two of them.
“Henders is on his way over here to pick up Rob Reordan,” he said tersely. “Maxi, you’ll anchor the Six alone.”
“My God, this is his last day,” Maxi said. “He’s supposed to be doing his big good-bye-to-the-viewers speech—”
Pete cut her off. “Two Burbank uniforms are waiting for him outside the door to his condo,” he said. “He knows something’s up—and I’m sure he knows exactly what it is.”
“So he won’t be dumping his hard drive in the L.A. River on his way in?” Wendy asked.
“Nope, the cops have orders to follow him here.”
“Why not just take him in from his place?” Maxi asked.
“Yeah, I don’t want to look at him,” Wendy groused.
“I don’t like the idea of him being carted off the lot, either,” Pete said. “Jesus, we’re a news organization. This arrest is big news, and we have a fucking exclusive on it. If we’re responsible journalists, we’ve got to cover the fucking story.”
The two women knew that beneath the bluff and bluster, Pete Capra was at his core a responsible journalist.
“Skip wants to pick him up in Burbank,” Pete explained. “Reordan lives at the beach, and that’s LAPD. But he did the theft here in Burbank. Skip says if we keep it in his jurisdiction, he might be able to contain it a little better.”
“He’s dreaming,” Wendy said. All three of them knew there’d be no containment once this one got rolling.
“What made you decide to do this?” Maxi asked Capra.
“I thought about it for thirty seconds—it’s the right thing to do. Reordan is a public figure in a time when a rogues’ gallery of public figures—CEOs, politicians, priests—are just so many Humpty Dumpties. Well, our Humpty Dumpty’s gonna have to take the fall. We’re not gonna hide him, and we’re not gonna save him. And since this is his last day at the station, it’s our last chance to nail him here.”
“I’m sorry, boss,” from Wendy.
“Not your fault, Wen. A thief’s a thief. Get back out in the newsroom and produce the show.”
“Do you want me to pull some tape on Rob and put a story together for the Six?” Maxi asked.
“Christ,” Pete muttered. “Yeah.”
Sitting in the backseat of a squad car rumbling downtown to the Men’s Central Jail, Carter Rose used his cell phone to call a powerful lawyer he knew socially, Robert Hanger. Up until now, he hadn’t attempted to hire a criminal attorney because to him, doing so would seem to suggest that he was guilty of something—it would be all over the news. He was told by someone in the law office that Mr. Hanger would call him back.
What had happened was clear. Kendyl had gone to the authorities. Foolish woman. He wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. The publicity would be bad, but he would walk away from this, he was sure. He would survive.
Goodman Penthe was close to closing the deal to buy Rose International. After he sold the business he’d dump the house and forget about the sophisticated penthouse apartment in downtown Los Angeles; he’d go to plan B. Move out of the area completely. Somewhere big and anonymous, where business was business and nobody cared about your past, just your net worth and your business prowess. Texas, maybe. And he’d launch BriteEyes and laugh all the way to the bank.
These thoughts kept his spirits buoyed as he was put through the ignominious booking process: the fingerprinting, the mug shots, the strip search. As he was taking off his watch his cell phone rang. He looked at the booking officer, who shrugged, so he took the phone out of his pocket and answered it. It was Robert Hanger.
“Thank God it’s you, Bob!” he said. “I’m at Parker Center. I’m under arrest, can you believe it? For shooting my wife’s assistant. I didn’t do it and I can prove it. They’re booking me right now. I need you to get down here right away. Hurry.”
“I can’t,” Hanger said. “I have a conflict of interest.”
P
ete Capra was holed up in his office with Detective Skip Henders. Wendy sat at her computer in the newsroom, producing the Six. Maxi was back in an edit bay, viewing tape of Rob Reordan anchoring, accepting an award, coaching a Little League team. She’d pored through dusty jackets that had been stored in the tape library for years and was scanning cut stories from back when the man was a young, slim, dark-haired reporter covering the famous Baldwin Hills Dam break back in the fifties. Her editor had asked what was up. This was Rob’s last night on the air, she’d said, and she was putting together a retrospective reel for the close of the show.
Maxi built a four-minute piece, then wrote the track but didn’t record it, because Rob hadn’t shown up at the station yet and nobody but herself, Pete, and Wendy knew what was going on. If her voice track tipped an audio engineer at this point, the news would be all over the station like wildfire. In minutes they’d have the story in Cleveland, and everywhere else in the country where L.A. newsies had pals. She would voice over the pictures live.
She labeled the tape, slugged it ROB REORDAN, put it on the playback shelf for the Six, then duped an intro with a roll cue, along with a tag, to Wendy’s computer. If the arrest went down while they were on the air, Pete would call Wendy in the booth, Wendy would alert Maxi via the Telex in her ear, and Maxi would read a copy of the intro she’d slipped into the pocket of her suit jacket. Wendy would call for the tape, and the tech in playback would find it on the Six O’clock shelf where Maxi left it. Wendy would give him Maxi’s two-word roll cue from the booth, and he’d roll the Reordan tape on the air. Staffers would hear the story at the same time L.A. viewers heard it.
Six o’clock, and Rob Reordan still hadn’t come into the station. Maxi slid into Makeup, then onto the set. The Six O’clock open played, then she led with the arrest of Carter Rose that afternoon in connection with the attack on Sandie Schaeffer. That bulletin had rolled on the wires just before they went to air; newsroom staffers were upstairs digging for the details.
On the set, Maxi was reading an intro to business editor Doug Kriegel with the show’s second lead, another Enron arrest, when Wendy’s voice blasted in her ear. Anchors were used to talking and listening at the same time.
“Pick up the phone,” Wendy was saying. “It’s Capra.” When the Enron tape rolled, Maxi snatched up the phone that was blinking on the set. “Yeah, boss.”
“I’m yanking Kriegel’s tape. Rob Reordan was just found inside his condo—dead. Gunshot to the head. Self-inflicted.”
“Jesus,” Maxi hissed.
“Report it,” Capra ordered. “Now.” The phone slammed down in her ear.
She looked up and saw herself in full close-up on the monitor. “We interrupt this report for breaking news,” she ad-libbed. “We have just learned that veteran Los Angeles anchorman Rob Reordan has been found dead, inside his home, the victim of an apparent suicide. We’ll have details as they become available. Reordan, who anchored the Six and Eleven O’clock News, had been with Channel Six for more than four decades. . . .”
She felt tears forming behind her eyes, but she swallowed them, and kept going.
S
aturday morning, no alarm set to wake her, and Maxi straggled her way up to consciousness feeling an ominous fore-boding, a blackened, musty cloud that seemed to put a stranglehold on her soul in that zone between half-sleep and wakefulness. Then she came fully awake and remembered: Rob Reordan.
Her station, as well as all the other L.A. stations, had run with the story—right through prime time and on into the Eleven O’clock News. Other news operations showed paramedics rolling the body out of Rob’s condominium building. Reporters speculated on the cause of suicide by a man whom the city revered. It came out that this was to be his last day at Channel Six; he was scheduled to do farewell speeches on both the Six and Eleven O’clock News. A journalist at one of the independents had unearthed a fairly recent investment scam where Rob Reordan had lost a lot of money. Another station had a live interview with Reordan’s doctor, who cited several ailments. Failing health could have been his reason, said the physician, who came off as shamelessly grasping at his fifteen minutes of fame.