Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“Izzy, why are you doing this? We fired you.”

“I’m working on it for Jane. Because I think it might tell us who killed her. Because I know I didn’t. And most importantly, it was one of Jane’s last stories. I want to do this for her.”

Silence.

“Do you want me to take it to another station?”

A pause. “I’ll meet you at the station.”

When I pulled into the parking lot of Trial TV, I was as nervous as I had been my first day.

No news trucks, except for Trial TV’s own, sat outside. But then again, the news stations covering Jane’s murder probably had more than enough exterior shots of the place by now. And certainly no one expected me to come back.

The security guard frowned when he saw me, but my badge still worked. They hadn’t deactivated it yet. I walked down the linoleum hallway. The walls had been painted sometime this week, and although the smell of fresh paint lingered, file cabinets were pushed against the walls, white cardboard boxes on top.

The first person I ran into was Ted, the cameraman who worked with me that first day.

He stopped, raised his eyebrows. “How are you doing, Izzy?”

“Been better.”

“I bet.” He said it kindly. “I’ve got to tell you, I think it’s ridiculous that they’re looking at you for Jane’s murder.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

He pulled at his mustache. “I thought you really had some natural talent for this business. I’m sorry about what happened. Is there anything I can do?”

I thought about it. “Would you be my shooter on something if I get the go-ahead from C.J.? It’s something to do for Jane.”

“Hell, yes. Let me know.”

I thanked him and kept walking down the hallway, passing the sets. Eventually I came to the newsroom. There weren’t as many people as there were during the week, and the reception I got wasn’t as warm as the one from Ted. There were a few half waves. A couple of surprised looks. One or two people said hello but didn’t stop to talk. Maybe no one knew exactly how to react. For that matter, I hardly knew what to do myself.

I found C.J. in the green room, talking to a man in a pin-stripe suit who looked like a lawyer, probably a guest in an upcoming segment.

C.J. stepped out of the green room when she saw me, closing the door behind her. “How are you doing, Izzy?” She frowned, and without waiting for an answer, said, “What’s the story?”

I told her about the list of names, what Carina Fariello had told us, what Dr. Hamilton had confessed to me. I told her about confronting Jackson Prince.

She pushed her glasses up on the top of her head. “So it’s Prince’s word against this doctor?”

“Maybe Prince’s word against a lot of doctors.” I told her how I’d called Dr. Ritson, and then Dr. Hay and Dr. Dexter and a few others. I had gotten through half of Jane’s list. Mayburn promised to tackle the rest for me. “At first I hit the same wall Jane did with the doctors. No one would talk. Some of them had heard about Jane’s death, a few hadn’t, but when I told them that her death might have been linked to this story, a few started talking. Most were vague, not exactly giving me as much as Dr. Hamilton did, and some said they would only talk off the record.”

C.J.’s brown eyes were entirely focused on me now. “Will any of these doctors give an interview?”

“I know Dr. Hamilton will. She feels terrible about Jane. I’m pretty sure that Carina Fariello, the accountant for Prince, will speak about it, too.”

C.J. took the glasses off her head and chewed on one of the ends. She kept looking at me, slightly nodding, clearly thinking over everything I’d told her. “Let’s do it,” she said finally. “I’ll be the producer for you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We’ve got to do it for Jane. And this story has to be told. It’s the kind of thing that could win an Emmy.”

“Are you serious?”

She smiled. “I am.”

I smiled a little, too, but it felt wistful. “Jane had an Emmy.”

“Yeah. She won it for a great story about a vice cop who was dealing heroin. I worked that story with her. Did you ever see it?”

I shook my head.

“Jane was amazing. Absolutely at the top of her form.” She sighed, stared over my shoulder for a moment, her eyes full of grief for Jane. But then her expression shifted, and she looked back at me with something that seemed like pleasure. “Jane would be proud of you,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. And I’m proud of you, too.”

“That’s one of the best compliments you could give me.”

For the first time I felt a kinship with C.J. My cell phone rang then. I took it from my purse and looked at it. Theo Jameson.

“I can’t believe Jane is dead,” Theo said.

“I can’t believe you’re just calling me back now.” I put my hand over the phone and gestured to C.J. that I had to take the call. Thank you, I mouthed to her.

She gave me a thumbs-up. “Go get ’em.”

“I’m really sorry,” Theo was saying. “I didn’t check messages at all while I was gone. Really no way to do it. Anyway, I just got back. I’m still on our plane.”

I walked through the studio, back down the main hallway. “Our plane, like your own private plane?” Despite my fear, who was cracking her knuckles now, ready to get back into high gear, I was impressed.

“It’s just a corporate share. Anyway, we’re just pulling into Midway. Man, I’m in shock about Jane. What happened?”

I went outside, got in Grady’s car and poured out the whole story to Theo, my words tripping over themselves. Finally I got to the end.

“I feel sick,” he said. “I can’t believe someone would do that to her.”

“I know. The thing that’s nuts is that the cops seem to think I might have done that to her.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t really understand it, but part of it has to do with the fact that the cops think I’m lying about where I was last Friday night. That guy Mick that we met admitted yesterday that he was with Jane Friday night, and I thought that would put me in the clear, but the detective on the case seems to be saying it didn’t matter and that I’m still a possible suspect.”

“That’s intense, Izzy.”

“I know.”

“You could be in some serious trouble.” He didn’t say it in a threatening way, or even in a holy-cow-get-away-from-this-girl kind of way. He said it matter-of-factly, and my whole body welcomed it. Nearly everyone-Sam, Q, my mom, Spence-had been trying to tell me not to worry. They believed in me so much, which was amazing. But their utter belief led them to think that the situation was going to go away. And it wasn’t. To hear someone say the real truth-that I could be in deep trouble-was refreshing. Almost as if I could stop hoping that it was going to go away and just deal with the fact that it was here.

“I know,” I said again. “Want to hear something else?”

“Yeah.” And I could tell he did.

I told him how the day after Jane died, I’d gone on-air as the host of Trial TV. “And then they fired me,” I said.

“Because you might be a suspect in Jane’s murder?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn, girl. I can’t get over this. Where are you?”

“I’m about to go home. The press might be there, but I don’t care anymore. I have nothing to hide. And I need to be in my own house and think about what I should do next. And I really need you to tell people that we were together that night.”

“I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

T he press must have thought I would never return. A few news trucks were still parked in front of my place, but the masses were gone. Luckily, my garage was behind the building. I drove around the block and down the alley. I got out, moved my scooter and then parked Grady’s car. The problem with the garage, however, was that it was detached. The only way to enter the main building was to walk around the garage to the front door. I knew the minute the people in the news vans saw me, they would be out of their vehicles. Fast.