Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

They all pondered that.

Chase sighed, shook her head. “J.C. — what do you think? Should this tape, with the killer’s request for attention, be buried?”

Harrow didn’t hesitate: “No.”

“You’d give in to him?” Jenny said, the disappointment in her voice palpable.

“I didn’t say that.”

Anderson, similarly disappointed, asked, “You’d air that foul thing?”

“I didn’t say that either.” Harrow moved up alongside the seated Byrnes. “We don’t air it... but neither do we bury it. We can’t shrug it off and pretend we thought it was a hoax.”

“What’s left?” Carmen asked.

Chase said, “Call the police, like good citizens.”

Harrow nodded. “We’re just TV performers, after all. This is a matter for the authorities.”

Richards said, “I speak for network legal when I say I agree with you, J.C. — I must insist upon you calling the police. And do not air this video.”

Pall said, “Stop and consider, Mr. Richards — everyone. I understand that if we were to give in, and air this thing, a maniac owns us. But remember, he does not ask us to keep the police out — in fact, he wants to go public... TV public.”

“Agreed,” Harrow said.

Pall went on: “But if we don’t air the video — if we fail to give him what he wants — we risk two women dying at this madmen’s hands next week.”

Looking sick, Byrnes said, “If word gets out that two women died because we didn’t air a video... then what becomes of Crime Seen , and UBC?”

“You might add the two women to that list,” Carmen said sharply.

Good for you , Chase thought.

Then Chase said, “J.C., the cops are understaffed and overworked right now. Even if they decide Don Juan presents a genuine threat, there isn’t a hell of a lot they can do about it.”

Pall said, “I hear the crime lab is backed way the hell up.”

“Meanwhile,” Choi said, “we sit on our hands? Really?”

Clearly Harrow had been mulling all this.

He said, “Crime Seen has the best team of forensic scientists anywhere, and thanks to Dennis here, some of the most cutting-edge lab equipment on the planet. Maybe we could... lend a hand.”

Byrnes’s eyes flashed. “Well... if you do ... it’s as part of the show. Cameras come along.”

Harrow shrugged. “You and UBC are paying the freight, aren’t you? Sure, the cameras come along.”

Anderson was shaking that surfer-boy blond head of his, saying, “The LAPD is not about to let us in on this investigation.”

Chase said, “Why, were we planning on asking permission?”

That got some smiles, but Anderson pressed: “Those small-town sheriff and police departments we ran into on the Kansas case, they were undermanned. They were happy for the help, and glad to rub shoulders with TV personalities.”

Choi said, “Is that what we are?”

Chase said, “You wish.”

But Anderson kept going: “LAPD are pros among pros, they’re good, and they live in, you know... Tinsel Town. They are not impressed by faces a heck of a lot more famous than ours. We step on the toes of the LAPD and there will be hell to pay.”

At least he said “hell,” Chase thought, not “heck.”

Jenny said, “So we go sub rosa.”

Everybody looked at her, surprised.

“Hey,” she said, with a shrug and a girlish smile. “You know what the bad guys say? It only counts when they catch you.”

Smiles blossomed on the Killer TV faces, even the skeptical Anderson’s; but Byrnes and the attorney remained somber.

The latter looked at his expensive watch, cleared his throat for effect, then said, “I, uh, just remembered I have another meeting. Anything you’ve said so far is strictly hypothetical, understood? Why don’t you people discuss the situation, while Dennis and I step out of the office.”

“No,” Byrnes snapped, “I want to hear this.”

“Actually,” Richards said, with a meaningful glance, “you don’t.”

Not used to being ordered around, the executive seemed about to protest when Richards held up two fingers, as if he were making the peace sign.

In his deepest, richest baritone, the attorney said, “Two words, Dennis — plausible deniability.”

Byrnes rose. “Funny thing is, I have an appointment, too.”

They left.

“Alone at last,” Choi said.

Taking the president’s desk chair, Harrow said, “Look, if the cops find out we’re working on this, the shit will be about chin high. Anybody got a problem with that? You might not get a job in real law enforcement again.”

Nobody said a word.

“Okay. Jenny, start tracing the sender of that foul thing. You can do that?”

“Depends on how smart he is,” Jenny said.

“We’ll assume extremely. Carmen, you start working on identifying the victim. Get a good screen capture of her face and discreetly distribute it. Rest of you, go through this video frame by damn frame. We need something and we’ve only got five days till air. After that, we’re going to have him on the prowl again.”

Chase asked, “What about the LAPD?”

“We cooperate. We do whatever they ask, short of staying out of the investigation. We don’t advertise that we’re conducting, as Jenny put it, our own sub rosa inquiry.”

“With cameras on us,” Chase said.

“Yes. Dennis gets his due. And what we’re up to eventually will come out — within five days, likely.” Harrow sent his eyes from face to face. “Everything comes to me first, then straight to the LAPD.”

Carmen said, “We’ll need an LAPD officer to be our liaison. I can look into that.”

“Do it.” Harrow rose, and so did everybody else.

Jenny collected the laptop from the desk.

Quietly, Harrow said to her, “I don’t want this video sent around by e-mail. Strictly DVD copies to our key team members.”

“Sure. I’ll get on that right now.”

“Then how soon do I call the police?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

He nodded.

Then to the team: “Let’s go, people. Clock is running and, the opinion of the Rolling Stones notwithstanding, time is definitely not on our side.”

Each team member had his or her own office — glorified closets, admittedly, but home when they weren’t on the road. The furniture was strictly functional, gray metal office gear, although some had brought in their own stuff, to lend the cubicles a personal touch.

Chase’s furniture was strictly what UBC had provided. Her only homey touches were a framed desk picture of Patty, her life partner who’d succumbed to cervical cancer two years ago now, and another of current squeeze, Nancy Hughes.

Also a philodendron that she had brought from Waco. The plant hadn’t taken over the office yet, but the threat was there. Feed me...

Choi somehow finagled a slightly larger space and seemed to have moved in, lugging in a dilapidated couch Chase refused to touch, let alone sit on (she had the feeling it had been lifted from a particularly nasty crime scene).

Before long, Jenny brought around a DVD for her, and Chase settled in with a bottle of vending-machine iced tea and prepared for a terrible afternoon at the movies.

She watched the disturbing images straight through, once. She had no doubt she was watching a genuine snuff film — a real murder captured on film. Or anyway, video.

Second time through, she turned her head away from the screen, not out of disgust (though she had plenty), but to take in only the sound, searching for any background noise that might provide a clue.