You Can't Stop Me. Max Allan Collins
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owed you more than that.”
Harrow grunted a laugh. “Call Settler Seed in Dekalb, Illinois—your old stamping grounds. The man you want is Dr. Brent Caldwell. Tell him I sent you. See what you can get, and be back here within twenty-four hours.”
She burned with pleasure, pride, enthusiasm, and outright glee, but remained coolly professional as she said, “Yes, sir.”
Rising slowly, forcing herself to move deliberately, she eased toward the door.
The sound of Harrow’s voice stopped her. “Carmen?”
Turning, she said, “Yes?”
“The killer cut off Mrs. Ferguson’s finger. My wife didn’t suffer that…indignity.”
“No.”
“But her killer did take her wedding ring.”
“Mrs. Ferguson’s killer did too—he just took the finger along with it.”
A deep crease formed between Harrow’s eyes. “Why, do you suppose?”
“If it’s the same killer…and I think it is…he’s devolving.”
“And if he’s devolving…”
“He’ll accelerate. There’ll be more killings. Soon.”
He was nodding, slowly. Then he said, “Get back to it.”
And she did.
Chapter Six
Shortly before the special live-broadcast season finale of Crime Seen! went on air, Dennis Byrnes—early forties, close-clipped black hair, languid gray-green eyes, five o’clock shadow, thousand-dollar Armani suit (charcoal)—surveyed his kingdom.
During a broadcast, the control room was surprisingly silent but for the piped-in studio sounds, even though a dozen technicians hovered over control boards and personal monitors, the audio world sequestered in a booth off at right. The near silence was punctuated by commands from director Stu Phillips, who perched stoically in the center of the back of three tiered rows—the eye of the storm. In his late fifties, Phillips had been at both NBC and CBS, where his fortunes had fallen in favor of younger men, and thanks to the competition’s shortsightedness, UBC had snagged a real pro.
Byrnes liked to brag that “UBC is a young network, but we don’t put up with ageism,” though he neglected to mention that he could get away with paying older pros like Phillips half, or less, of what the big boys had.
Behind the director, show-runner Nicole Strickland leaned against the back window wall, her arms folded, her mouth a tight, thin, straight line. The slenderly shapely, striking woman’s tousled red hair vied for attention with her green eyes. This evening she wore a sharply cut, cream-colored Dolce & Gabbana suit with matching Jimmy Choos. Byrnes relished having a beautiful woman as his hatchet man.
Also against the back wall, in the center where an aisle cut down the three tiers of techs, stood Byrnes himself, with a perfect view of the large plasma screen (labeled: PROGRAM) above the bank of similar oversized monitors, whose screens were sectioned into eight windows reporting individual camera shots, remote feeds, and cued-up prerecorded material. The PROGRAM flat-screen reflected the finished product going out over the airwaves.
Crime Seen! had saved two very juicy cases for the finale, and Byrnes would be shocked if this were not the highest-rated episode of the season. He watched with half-lidded eyes as Carlos Moreno demonstrated that two young girls had not been kidnapped, as their mother had reported, but were murdered by her and buried on a piece of farmland owned by the mother’s parents. Footage of her arrest—not seven hours before—was the capper.
In the second segment, Angela Batten outed the CEO of an insurance company that for years had been defrauding its policyholders by substituting new language in renewal documents—just the sort of story of corporate greed getting busted that tapped into Main Street America’s rage against Wall Street. Few in the viewing audience were aware that Crime Seen! itself came to them courtesy of the big oil corporation that was UBC’s Big Daddy.
Byrnes knew these two juicy and very different stories would each be front-page fodder on tomorrow’s USA Today, with Crime Seen! getting plenty of play. He was neither psychic nor overconfident—just this morning, the network prez had been interviewed for both stories.
Finally all that remained was J.C. Harrow’s season farewell, which, as scripted, was a laundry list of the miscreants the show had helped bust, all wrapped up in Harrow’s rugged, Midwestern “I’m a victim too, but I’m getting back at ’em” persona.
With pleasure if not affection, Byrnes regarded his unlikely, ruggedly photogenic star on the monitor, where Harrow could be seen casting a film noir shadow against a brick backdrop with a single barred window—cheesy but effective.
The former lawman sported a navy blue blazer that looked unpretentious, although it was no off-the-rack number, worn over a lighter blue button-down dress shirt, open at the collar; his jeans were faded, worn—Everyman attire that Wardrobe had slaved over.
Piercing blue eyes stared out at America as Harrow said, “My colleagues in the booth are going to have to forgive me for breaking from script…”
Byrnes, paying half-attention before, suddenly stood as straight as an exclamation mark, and was heeding his star’s every word, every pause, every gesture.
“…but some late-breaking news has changed the circumstances of tonight’s live broadcast.”
Byrnes snapped at the director, “What the hell?”
Phillips, in a headset, his eyes blinking a Morse code SOS, glanced back helplessly at his boss.
Byrnes leaned so far forward at the top of the aisle, he had all his weight on the toes of his four-hundred-dollar Bruno Magli loafers. He might have been a diver preparing for a double gainer.
“You all know that, for almost six years, I’ve been searching for the person or persons who killed my family.”
In the booth, the director couldn’t help himself, and told his cameraman to push in closer on their host.
“Recently, a member of the Crime Seen! staff found what she thought might be a clue tying another crime to the deaths of my wife and son. This is the first new evidence that’s been turned up in the case in many, many months.”
Byrnes yelled, “Did you know about this? Did any of you know about this?”
The director shook his head, but his attention was on the drama unfolding before them all. Those involved in technical aspects of the broadcast ignored their big boss; others, just standing observing—like show runner, Nicole Strickland, now edging away from the network exec—merely shook their heads and melted into anything handy.
“Next season,” Harrow was saying, “we will be following this clue, and working hard to uncover other evidence, in a concerted, focused effort to track down the killer or killers of my family….”
Byrnes said, “Great idea, Nicole, bringing in a live audience for this episode.”
“And we’ll be doing it right on this show. You will be with us every step of the way—helping us track down the murderer of my wife and my son.”
Gasps from the studio audience interrupted the star.
Picking up, Harrow said, “UBC has pledged to buy us the equipment we need, and to pay for the finest crime-scene team I can put together to investigate this case—a veritable superstar task force of criminologists and crime fighters.”
Byrnes threw his hands up. “UBC pledged what?”
“We’ll start assembling the team, and investigating, as soon as the show ends tonight…and we will work as long as we have to. Join us in September when we start Crime Seen!, season two, by bringing you up to date on our progress on this case over