The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (55 page)

As soon as Jill mentioned Janet Cooke’s name, another piece in the puzzle fell into place. An article about the Janet Cooke case had been on Kellee Savage’s bookshelf in Indian Head. Cooke was a young journalist who had worked for the Washington
Post
in 1981. She won a Pulitzer for a story about child heroin addiction, but had to give the prize back when her paper learned that Jimmy, the eight-year-old addict Cooke had written about with such passion, didn’t exist. The story must have had a particular resonance for Kellee after she discovered that Karen Keewatin, the heartbreakingly determined hooker and mother in
Getting Even
, didn’t exist, and that, like Janet Cooke, Tom Kelsoe had used the lives and stories of a handful of people to create a character who would tear at the reader’s heartstrings and advance his journalistic career.

That morning, when Bernice Jacobs began leafing through my copy of
Getting Even
, it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that she was holding concrete proof that the story Kellee Savage had been putting together when she died was true. The tragedy of Bernice’s friend, Audrey Nighttraveller, a woman who’d been so severely beaten by a john that she was incapable of caring for herself, had simply been material for Tom Kelsoe. He had used Audrey’s life and the life of her sons as he had used the lives of countless unknown women and their families to create a book that would enhance his reputation. What he had done was, in Bernice Jacobs’s words, “worse than the worst thing the worst bloodsucker of a pimp ever did to any of us.”

And Kellee Savage was going to expose him. I thought of the Post-it notes in the journals stacked on the shelf in the barricaded office in Indian Head. Each one of them had signalled an article on a reporter’s use of a composite character. Dogged to the end, Kellee Savage had been preparing the foundations for her story. Now it was up to Jill and me.

It was Saturday, so I didn’t have any problem finding a parking place outside Nationtv. Kellee’s graduation portrait was in its Safeway bag on the dashboard. After I’d helped Jill unsnap her seatbelt, I handed the picture to her. “This is Kellee Savage, the student who discovered what Tom did,” I said.

Jill took the picture from me. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Let’s take this with us,” she said. “I want him to see it.”

Jill shook me off when I offered to help her get out of the car. She said she could do it on her own, but as she began her methodical, agony-filled ascent of the stairs outside Nationtv, I had to look away. I had watched her bound up those steps a hundred times; she had always seemed invincible.

Nationtv was deserted. Jill used her security card to get us in, and we didn’t see a soul as we headed across the cavernous lobby. When we got to the elevator, Jill checked her watch and turned to me. “We have five minutes,” she said. “I’m going to go to the control room. You’d better stay out of the way till we’re on the air.”

“But you
are
going to call the police, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am, but not until every viewer who tunes in tonight has a chance to watch that bastard twist in the wind. Jo, if we hand Tom over to the police right now, the story will be page one here, but I have to make sure that what he did ends up on the front page of every newspaper in this country. I owe it to Reed, and I owe it to Kellee Savage.”

“I’ll wait in the green room,” I said. “I can watch the show from the monitor in there.”

“When it looks like the time’s right, come into the studio,” Jill said. “If you sit on that riser behind the cameras, he’ll have to look at you. Be sure to bring the picture.” She ran her fingers through her hair. It was a gesture she often made when she was on edge, but this time, as she touched the back of her skull, she winced. “Sonofabitch,” she said softly.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “When the show’s over, let’s find ourselves a bottle of Glenfiddich and crawl in.”

Jill gave me a grim smile. “Promises, promises.” She pushed the elevator button, and we stepped in. “Let’s go,” she said. “It’s showtime.”

At some point within the past twenty-four hours, there had been a birthday party in the green room. Soggy paper plates, dirty coffee cups, and used plastic wine glasses littered the end tables and window sills, and on the coffee table in the middle of the room a big cardboard box leaked crumbs from the remains of a bakery birthday cake. I removed a plate full of half-eaten angelfood from the chair nearest the monitor and sat down.

The screen was already picking up images of the members of the political panel, taking their places, smoothing their clothes, adjusting their earpieces. Tonight, Glayne and Sam were both in Ottawa. Behind them I could see the shot of the Peace Tower Nationtv always used for its Ottawa segments. Usually, in the minutes leading up to airtime, there was laughter and nervous kibitzing, but tonight Glayne and Sam were all business. They might not have known exactly what was coming, but their tense silence was evidence that they foresaw trouble.

When Tom Kelsoe’s face appeared on the screen, my pulse quickened. His microphone was turned on, and I could hear him chewing out the young woman who’d attached it to his
jacket. She’d apparently caught the leather in the mike clip and he was berating her for her carelessness. The second hand of the clock on the wall behind the monitor was sweeping; in sixty seconds, the state of his leather jacket would be the least of Tom’s worries. The young woman disappeared from the shot. Tom settled in his chair, caught his likeness in one of the monitors, and assumed his public face. “Canada Tonight” was on the air.

The host of the show, Cameron McFee, was an unflappable Scot with an easy manner and a ready wit that made him a natural for live television. He couldn’t have had time to do much more than glance through the new introduction, but he read Rapti’s lines about the immorality of journalists who pass hybrids off as truth with real conviction.

Until Cam began to describe the Janet Cooke case, Tom looked alert but not alarmed. However, when Cam started to give details about how Janet Cooke had entrapped herself with her lies, Tom’s chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and sweat appeared on his upper lip. As the awareness hit him that Cam’s homily about unethical journalists was a prelude to real trouble, I could see the panic rise sharply. Attentive as a lover, the camera moved in for a tight shot of Tom’s face, found the desperation in his eyes, and moved closer.

At that moment, I could think of few activities more rewarding than watching Tom Kelsoe’s persona crumble, but I had a part to play too. I picked up Kellee’s photograph and started towards the studio. There were no police in the corridor, and I felt a tingling of apprehension. From what I’d seen on the monitor, Tom was close to the edge, and I would have welcomed the presence of some officers in blue. When I walked into the studio, Troy Prigotzke, a member of the crew on “Canada Tonight,” was standing in the shadows near the door.

I moved close enough to him so I didn’t have to raise my voice. “Troy, did anyone tell you that the police are supposed to show up here tonight?”

“Rapti did,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, but she didn’t elaborate. She just told me that it was Jill’s call, and that, when the cops arrived, I should make sure they got in.”

“Well, as long as you’re watching …,” I said, and I started towards the riser.

“Jo!” Troy’s whisper was insistent, and I turned. “All the outside doors to the lobby are locked,” he said. “Nobody can get in without a security card. Did Jill send somebody to let the cops in?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’d better get up there and check,” Troy said.

I went to the riser and sat down. When he saw me, Tom was in mid-sentence, but the sight of me seemed to derail his train of thought. He stumbled through a few more words, then fell silent. Our eyes locked. I pulled Kellee’s photograph out of the Safeway bag. Then I leaned forward and held it out to him.

I’d expected that the sight of his victim’s face would rock Tom. It demolished him. The photograph seemed to shatter whatever vestiges of ego were keeping him in front of the camera. I wasn’t ready for what happened next. He bolted out of his chair and started to run off the set. In a moment straight out of a sitcom, the wire on the lapel mike Tom was still wearing jerked him back. He ripped it off, then darted past me towards the door that led out of the studio. My most fervent hope was that he would collide with Troy and the Regina City Police, but I couldn’t take that chance.

I was on my feet in a split-second. By the time I got out of the studio, Tom had already made it past the green room and was heading towards the stairs. He spotted the two uniformed police officers emerging from the stairwell before they caught sight of him. It took the police a moment to get
their bearings, and by then Tom had doubled back and was running towards me. When he turned left at the corridor that led to the elevators, I was right behind him. So were the police and so was Troy Prigotzke. As I ran, I could hear their shouts and their footfalls behind me. On the wall facing us at the end of the hall was the same poster that I had seen the day before on the side of the city bus. Tom’s likeness, poised, ironic, eyes burning with integrity, hovered over us all as we raced along. I caught up with him in front of the elevators. As he reached over to punch the button, I jumped in front of him. “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

My intention was simply to block his way until Troy and the police reached us, but events spun out of control. It happened in a flash. I heard the mechanical groan of the elevator approaching; I felt the doors open behind me; then Tom Kelsoe pounded his outstretched hand against my collarbone and shoved me into the elevator. The police got there just as the doors were closing. My grandmother would have said they made it just after the nick of time. As the elevator started its ascent, Tom Kelsoe took a step towards me. He was panting with exertion, filling the small space with the smells of leather and fear.

I was breathing hard too. “Don’t make it any worse for yourself,” I said. “There are police all over this building.”

Tom laughed and punched the stop button on the panel beside the doors. The elevator lurched to a halt. “There are no cops in here,” he said.

For the first time since I’d fled the studio, I was afraid. I ran through my options. There weren’t many. For a woman of fifty, I was in good shape, but Tom Kelsoe was forty, and he had spent a lot more hours in the gym than I had. In the close confines of an elevator, I wouldn’t have a chance against him. I couldn’t even appeal to Tom’s highly developed sense of self-interest. He had already killed twice. He
had nothing to lose by battering me. All I had going for me was the possibility that, like all egotists, Tom would be unable to resist the chance to tell his tale.

I tried to keep my voice steady. “I’ve always told my kids there are two sides to every story,” I said. “Maybe it’s time I got your perspective on everything that’s happened.”

His fist seemed to come out of nowhere. I jumped aside, and the punch he’d aimed at me landed on the elevator wall. The pain goaded him. He pulled his fist back and struck again. This time, he connected. My head snapped back, and my nose gushed blood. I cried out. As soon as he saw that he’d hurt me, Tom Kelsoe was transformed. The fear and confusion went out of his face. He looked like a man who had come to himself. “Don’t patronize me, bitch,” he said. “And don’t you ever underestimate me.”

“Is that what Reed Gallagher did?” I asked, and my voice sounded small and beseeching.

“He thought I needed help,” Tom said, spitting out the word
help
as if it were unclean. “But Reed Gallagher was the one who was weak. When Kellee Savage came to him with her accusations, he should have thrown her out of his office. If he’d shown some balls then, the problem would have solved itself. But Reed said he had ‘an obligation to the truth.’ ” Tom shook his head in wonder. “The truth. As if anybody gives a rat’s ass about the truth any more. I tried to tell Reed that nobody cared if the characters in the book were composites. All people wanted was a chance to get their rocks off reading about a whore with a heart of gold. And they sure as hell didn’t care if I used Kellee’s interviews to give them their little catharsis.”

I could taste the blood in the back of my mouth. I swallowed. If I didn’t want to get hit again, I had to keep Tom talking. “But Reed didn’t see it that way,” I said.

“No,” Tom said. “Reed didn’t see it that way. Kellee Savage was useless, a total waste of skin, but Reed decided she needed an advocate. That’s how I got him to come to Scarth Street that night. I told him I’d had a change of heart, that I was ready to accept the conditions he and that little toad had decided upon.”

“What did they want?” I asked.

“Not much at all,” he said bitterly. “Just a public admission that Karen Keewatin was a created character and that Kellee Savage had been an invaluable colleague in researching the book. Can you conceive of anybody obtuse enough to cave in to those conditions?”

Thinking the question was rhetorical, I remained silent, but silence seemed to be the wrong response. Tom took a step towards me. “Well?” he said.

“No,” I said meekly, “I can’t imagine anybody that obtuse.”

Tom punched the air with his forefinger in a gesture of approbation. “Right,” he said. “I know you’ve got a somewhat negative opinion of me, Joanne, but even you will have to admit that I’m not stupid.”

“No,” I said, “you’re not stupid.”

“Well, apparently Reed lost sight of the fact. When I told him I’d decided to apologize publicly for what I’d done, he fell for it. In fact, he was
thrilled
. He said that he knew all along that I’d do the right thing, and that he’d stand by me and help me salvage my career. As if there would have been any career left to salvage after I’d gone through that charade.” Tom’s eyes burned into me. “He didn’t leave me any choice. I didn’t enjoy what I had to do, but it had to be done.”

My head was pounding. I thought of Reed Gallagher telling Julie that his greatest dream was to grow old with her. The words seemed to form themselves. “Why did you have
to humiliate him like that?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you just kill him?”