Nancy Grace - Death on the D-List

“Doesn’t matter… we don’t have time to promo before air…” she reminded him.

“Okay. I’m on it. By the way… where are you?”

“At the salon… remember? The root emergency? I can’t do everything… you’ll have to handle it.”

Sookie’s attention was already drifting; she was looking in the mirror at her roots and, shockingly, observed they were more gray than dark brown. She assumed something was wrong with the lighting… probably the fluorescents beaming off the crown of her head.

“We have time! We can promo it as Live interview with Leather Stockton .”

“But it’s not live, Tony. We can’t.”

“But Sookie, it was live when we shot it… remember? The viewers won’t know… They’ll think Leather Stockton must not be dead … and they’ll have to watch because they’ll have heard all day she is dead!”

“So when Standards and Ethics starts whining and complaining, that’s our out. That it was live when we shot it?” Sookie feigned attention to the show’s details, but couldn’t peel her eyes away from several gray hairs along the part of her hair.

“Sure! Plus, better to ask forgiveness than permission… Right?! That’s what you always say!” Tony had it all figured out.

“Okay. Handle it… I have to go… somebody’s beeping in.”

She was gone.

Leather Stockton’s last interview.

What would the lower font read? Bullet to the Brain of TV Beauty ?

He had to get the dot-com people on the phone right now to start the promos. Picking up his cell and land line, he started punching digits simultaneously. Once one began to ring, he put it on speaker and started typing furiously onto his BlackBerry.

This would be tough. He’d need the whole staff on board. He’d order them pizza to make it okay.

Russo was in Heaven.

THE HARRY TODD SET WAS ICY COLD. GOOD THING SHE’D WORN A suit jacket and blouse to top her usual jeans and cowboy boots. Hailey noticed all the other women in the Green Room, totally decked out with intricate hairdos and over-the-top makeup and jewelry. Even though she knew she didn’t fit in to the scene, no way would she have slipped on the hideous gold lamé blouse Tony Russo tried to force on her again. Ridiculous. Plus, it smelled slightly of sweat. He’d obviously used it on other guests that didn’t meet his “eye” for TV ratings.

Whatever. She didn’t want to fit in with this phony bunch, although she was looking forward to meeting Todd; she’d watched him for years.

After sitting there for about fifteen minutes on a sofa before a live TV audience who talked among themselves, occasionally stirred up by one of the producers on a megaphone who was trying desperately to get them riled up, Todd made his entrance.

He was flanked by three staffers who were prepping him even as he walked up on the set.

“Hello, Hailey.”

Her first reaction was astonishment. His face seemed unreal and he was so tiny. His bleached-blond hair stood up in a stiff spike down the center of his head and the rest was combed thinly around it. A gold chain peeked from his open collar… He seemed so much more robust on camera. She’d heard rumors he stuck to some fad diet in the false belief that thinner was younger, but now she believed it.

Hailey stood and reached out to shake his hand. He conspicuously did not take her hand, so she casually let it drop by her side.

Hmm… Maybe he’s a germaphobe. Poor thing. The staffers laid out several thick, yellow sheets of paper before him on his anchor table. Reading them upside down from across the table, Hailey realized they were the exact questions he was being spoon-fed to ask, word for word.

Within two minutes max, the intro music to the show started. The audience producer motioned everyone to start clapping.

Did that include her? She couldn’t think of a reason to clap, so she sat completely still, trying to maintain a half-smile as the lights maxed on to bright, right into her eyes, to the point she could hardly look up.

A deep baritone voice came out of nowhere overhead, reporting the headlines of Stockton’s murder and announcing the live show that night. The voice introduced Harry Todd first, then her.

Her chest tightened as she listened.

“… and after being the target of a serial killer herself, she goes on the offense and murders the murderer! In cold blood! Murder weapon? A dentist’s drill! Today, her secret past life revealed … Why she killed a killer! Because she was a crime victim herself … her fiancé gunned down! Now… she fights back against crime!”

Hailey was mortified. She was no murderer … She had defended herself, brought down a twisted killer, and nearly lost her life doing it. And why did they drag Will into it? Tony had promised this wouldn’t happen. In the bright lights, she could barely see past the anchor desk. The studio audience, the aisles leading to the exit, everything was completely obscured by the harsh lights… She couldn’t see her way out. After the quick intro, Harry Todd lobbed the first question.

“So, Hailey Dean, before you’ve been touted as a victims’ rights champion, but you killed a man in cold blood… What’s your response?”

Okay. That was it. Gloves off.

“Mr. Todd, I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts, but you, sir, are woefully misinformed. I did not kill a man in cold blood…”

“That’s what the reports say!” he broke in. Hailey ignored him and plowed ahead.

“I defended myself against a man twice my weight and a full foot taller than me, a man who murdered defenseless women in cold blood, strangling the life out of them, and ripping them open with a sharpened poultry lifter. Mr. Todd, maybe your producers should feed you the correct information, but that killer had his hands around my neck, and frankly, I’m glad he’s dead.”

Before she could go on, the studio audience burst into wild applause, unprompted.

She tried to look out past the blinding lights shining into her face and into the audience to signal a silent thank-you, but she couldn’t see any of them. Instead, she made eye contact with Todd, who was obviously angry the audience was siding with her and not him.

What a pompous ass… Exercising immense self-control, Hailey did not give him a swift kick under the table… She could’ve always acted like it was an accident… These cowboy boots could really do some damage.

“So killing someone, stabbing them in the temple with a drill doesn’t bother you… You’re happy about it?”

“I’m happy to be alive, Mr. Todd, if that’s what you’re asking. And yes, while I never, ever condone violence, I am, let me say, relieved that a man who stalked, tortured, and murdered innocent women is now gone off the face of this earth and if by my own hand… Then so be it. I’ll answer come Judgment Day, certainly not to you, Harry Todd.”

His long, thin face was turning blotches of beet red, and Hailey spotted sweat trickling down the left side of his forehead, cutting through the thick, tan pancake makeup they slathered onto his face, neck, and hands to give him a more human skin tone.

Todd looked at the prompter blankly, the deer-in-the-headlights look, desperately listening for somebody, anybody , to give him a cue as to how to respond. He even held his right hand up to the nearly invisible plastic earpiece fitted in his right ear, in the hopes his line producer in the control room would give him a sharp comeback. Hearing nothing to bail him out, he looked down at the questions laid out plainly in front of him.