Jack Cavanaugh - Death Watch

“Miss St. James, how did you get here so quickly?” Chandra Smyth shouted.

The sergeant recognized Sydney’s name.

“Come with me,” he said. With a forearm, he shoved Ms. Chandra and her microphone aside, earning for his efforts angry words of protest which he shrugged off as he led Sydney away. Hunz attempted to follow. The policewoman stopped him.

“He’s with me,” Sydney said.

The sergeant looked Hunz over. “Sorry,” he said.

Sydney pulled up short. “I’m not going anywhere without him,” she said.

“He your lawyer?” the sergeant asked.

Sydney said nothing. Neither did she move.

The sergeant took another look at Hunz. “All right,” he said, and motioned him through the police cordon.

The sergeant led Sydney to a man in a gray suit. Short and stocky, he wore a no-nonsense facial expression as he stared up at the roof and Billy Peppers. Just as they reached him, he lifted a walkie-talkie and demanded an update.

While they waited for Gray Suit to conclude his transmission, Sydney looked up at the roof. Billy sat on the ledge, his feet dangling, surveying the scene below. The CNN camera lights must have attracted his attention, because he was staring straight at Sydney.

She imagined it wasn’t hard for him to spot her. After all, it was dark, there was no moon, and all the emergency workers were dressed in dark colors. Her blonde hair must have stood out like a struck match in a pitch-black forest.

When he saw her, he smiled. A mouthful of white teeth were framed by black lips stretched wide. He stood up, a move that agitated the crowd below. Then he spread his arms wide, as though to greet Sydney with a hug, or invite her to join him on his precarious perch.

A shiver shook Sydney, chilling her insides and draining her extremities of blood until they were ice cold. At that moment, a gust of wind arrived from Lake Michigan. It whipped the flags on two impressive poles in front of the hotel. Billy’s open shirt, the one on top of several layers of shirts, flapped happily with the flags.

“What is it, Sergeant?” Finished with his conversation on the walkie-talkie, the man in the gray suit turned his attention to them.

“This is Sydney St. James,” said the sergeant.

Gray Suit looked her over with a critical eye. Purely professional. He was registering details, forming opinions, and filing away information in some file cabinet in his head. “Why you?” Gray Suit asked Sydney.

“What do you mean, why me?”

“What does he want from you?”

Sydney said, “All I know is—”

Hunz cut her off. “Exactly who is it we’re talking to?” he said. “Who are you and what is your position here?”

Gray Suit scowled as though asking questions was his private domain and Hunz was trespassing. “You her lawyer?”

“A friend,” Hunz said.

Gray Suit’s jaw ground back and forth. Sydney had heard of men who chewed people up and spat them out, and she’d always thought it was a figure of speech. To look at Gray Suit, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

The sergeant jumped in. “This is Assistant Chief of Police Leonard Caplan,” he said. “He’s in charge of this whole shebang.”

“Well?” Caplan barked. “Can we get on with it now?”

“I don’t know why he chose me,” Sydney said.

“You know him?”

“I recognize him.”

“From where?”

“He watched us do a live broadcast in Pasadena.”

“He watched you. You’re certain it’s the same man?”

“Fairly certain. He was carrying a Nike shoe box that night too.”

Caplan nodded as he chewed on this. “So after seeing you do a live broadcast, he thought it would be nice to invite you to a tea party on the roof of the Hotel Hilton in Chicago?”

“He emailed me yesterday,” Sydney said. “He claimed he had information on Death Watch. We"—she gestured toward Hunz—“failed to connect with him. Then, when we did a little investigating, we discovered he lives on the street and volunteers at a rescue mission.”

“In Chicago?”

“In LA.”

“What’s he doing in Chicago?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“I don’t buy it. He asked for an LA reporter thirty minutes ago and now here you are?”

“Coincidence. We’re here on a totally unrelated matter.”

“You mean news story, don’t you?” Caplan ground his jaw. He spat on the ground. “I don’t like it. Not one bit.”

He squared himself and stood inches away from Sydney.

“This is some kind of media stunt, isn’t it? A rivalry between two television stations. Or maybe the payoff on a lost wager.”

Sydney didn’t answer immediately. Guilty people tended to answer too quickly. She looked him dead in the eye. “We just brought a pregnant woman, a friend, from LA to Chicago so that she could deliver her child at home before she dies. Believe me, Assistant Chief Caplan, if I had any choice in this matter, I would be at her side right now, not here.”

They locked eyes.

Caplan grunted. He turned his back, walked a distance, and spoke into the walkie-talkie. A minute later, he returned.

“You’ll talk to this guy?” he asked.

Sydney looked up at Billy. His hands were by his sides. He was looking down at her from a distance of ten stories. The reality of what she was being asked to do hit her. She was a reporter, not a counselor. What did she know about negotiating with a suicide jumper? What if he jumped while she was talking to him? What did he want with her anyway?

She was certain of one thing: She didn’t want to do this.

“I can ask him what he wants,” she said.

In less than a heartbeat—a very short time considering Sydney’s heart was hammering furiously against her chest—Caplan moved into action.

To Hunz: “You, stay where you’re at.”

To the sergeant: “Take the lady up to the roof.”

To Sydney: “And you—no stunts. Promise him anything. Get him to back away from the ledge. We’ll take it from there.”

Caplan walked away, speaking rapidly into the walkie-talkie.

Sydney looked to Hunz.

For what? Assurance? A word of encouragement? A last piece of professional advice? All she knew was that at that moment she craved a positive word from a familiar face.

Hunz flipped open his cell phone. “I’ll get everything set up for the live feed later tonight,” he said, walking away.

“Yeah,” Sydney said to his back.

Get everything set up for his last on-the-air report, the one that would culminate in his death.

Sydney felt the burn of shame. Hunz was the one who was dying, and here she was wanting to be reassured.

She watched him go. Business as usual from the looks of him. She should have said something supportive. But what? Tell him it would be all right? Cream-puff words, all sugar and no substance. Besides, he’d already moved on, and she needed to do the same.

“This way, ma’am,” said the sergeant.

With a heavyhearted sigh Sydney followed the sergeant toward a glass facade that rose up before her like an enormous glacier.

At each level between street and rooftop Sydney’s doubts compounded. In the lobby she was struck by a niggling uncertainty as she was escorted to the elevators. Upon reaching the tenth floor the niggle grew to mature apprehension as the elevator doors opened to police with rifles and face shields, while curious hotel guests stood in their doorways in their robes. By the time Sydney climbed the final flight of stairs and emerged on the roof, her doubt had mutated to full-fledged fear.

An expansive canopy of stars opened overhead. This high up there were no buildings to restrict the view, or the wind. It whipped her clothing with authority, reminding her that this was its territory.