Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

She giggled. "Uh-huh."

"What happened?" His voice fluttered.

The humor was leaving quickly. "Happened?"

"Jesus, how come you didn't get your segment in? 'Easy Justice.' It should've gone into the computer by three. It was already a day late. Wehad to have it there by three. You know that."

Her eyes swept around the studio. Was he saying what she was hearing? "I did. I gave it to Charlie around four. But he said that was all right."

Morrie looked at a clipboard. "This is a problem. It ain't in there now. We got eleven minutes of blank airtime starting at eight-oh-four-thirty-six."

"Check again." Her voice was edged with panic.

"I just did check. Five minutes ago."

"Check again, check again!" No laughing, no lumbering bears, no amoebae. Adrenaline had wakened her completely.

Morrie shrugged and made a call. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to her, "Zip."

"How did it happen?"

"The way it usually happens is the producer doesn't get the tape in on time."

"But Igot it in." She ran through her vague memory. She didn't think she'd screwed up. It was too major a mistake even for her. It was like the pilot forgetting to lower the airplane's wheels before landing.

Anyway, there were other tapes. She had a dupe of the final cut. This was an inconvenience not a tragedy.

Her hands were shaking. Morrie listened into the phone again. He looked up and said to her, "All right, your butt is safe so far. Charlie says he remembers you delivering it. He put it in the computer but somehow it's vanished. You have a dupe?"

"Sure."

He said into the phone, "We'll get another one up to you in five minutes." He hung up. "This's never happened before. Thank you, dear Lord, for dupes."

The gratitude was premature. The dupe was missing too. Rune's voice was shrill in panic. "I put it there. On my desk." She pointed frantically to an empty corner.

"Oh, man."

"I put it rightthere."

He stared skeptically at the bald spot.

She said, "I'm not making this up."

"Rough cuts?" Morrie was looking at his watch. "Shit, we don't have time. But we maybe-"

She opened a drawer. "Oh, no," she muttered breathlessly.

He said, "They're gone too?"

Rune was nodding. She couldn't speak.

"Oh, boy. Oh, shit. Eleven minutes of blank air. This's never happened before. This's never happened."

Then she thought of something else and ripped open her credenza.

Theoriginal tape she'd done of Bennett Frost, the new witness, and the dupe ofthat were also gone. All that remained of the story about Randy Boggs were scripts and notes and background interview tapes.

"We've been robbed," Rune whispered. She looked around in panic, feeling a terrible sense of violation. "Who was it?" She looked at Morrie. "Who'd you see on the set today?"

"Who'd I see?" he echoed shrilly. "A dozen reporters, a hundred staffers. That intern kid with the blond hair who was helping you with the story. Piper was here, Jim Eustice, Dan Semple… I mean, half the Network walked through here today." Morrie's eyes strayed uneasily toward the phone and she knew what he was thinking: Somebody had to call Piper Sutton. The large quartz wall clock – timed, for all Rune knew, to the pulse of the universe – showed that they had forty-four minutes until

to air. Forty-four minutes until it became the first prime-time television program in history to air eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of blank space.

The only thing that kept Piper Sutton from exploding through the double doors into the newsroom was the live broadcast ofNighttime News With Jim Eustice, the Network's flagship world news show, now on-air thirty feet behind Rune.

But still she stormed up to Rune's desk. During the broadcast the veteran anchorman was so damn reassuring and smooth that even the crew enjoyed watching him. Tonight, though, only the head engineer and the producer kept their eyes on his craggy, square face. Everyone else in the huge studio gazed at Sutton and Maisel, as they hurried toward theCurrent Events desks like surgeons answering a code blue.

"What the fuck happened?" Sutton asked in a shrill whisper.

"I don't know." Rune felt the tears start. She dug her short nails into her palms furiously, with the pain the urge to cry lessened. "Somebody robbed me. They took everything."

Maisel looked at the clock above the control booth. "We don't haveanything! Nothing at all?"

"I don't know what happened. I turned the tape in-"

Morrie said delicately, "She did. Charlie got it. He programmed it in. Sometime after four it

disappeared."

"Son of a bitch. How long was that segment?"

Morrie consulted his clipboard but Rune answered from memory. "Eleven minutes, fourteen."

Sutton whispered furiously, "You should always make backups, you should-"

"I did! They were stolen too. Everything. Even the original tapes…"

"Fuck," Sutton spat out. Then she turned to Maisel, whose mind must have been in the same place and known what she was thinking. There were three other stories programmed forCurrent Events that evening. But Maisel said they had nothing else finished that could be used as a replacement for "Easy Justice." He said, "We'll have to cancel the show."

"Can we go with Arabs in Queens?" she asked.

He said, "We never finished editing. We stopped all postpro for the Boggs story."

"What about the former-mayor profile?"

"Mostly unshot and a lot of unattributed quotes. It's legally hot."

"The Guardian Angels piece?" she snapped.

"We've got footage but there's no script."

"It's outlined?"

"Well, in general. But-"

"I know the story." She waved her hand. "We'll do that."

"What do you mean?" Maisel asked, frowning. "Do what?"

"We do the original three stories plus the Guardian Angels."

Maisel's voice rasped, "Piper, we'll have to cancel. We can slot a rerun." He turned to Morrie and started to say something. But she said, "Lee, a rerun of a news show? We'll go with the Angels."

"I don't understand what you're saying, Piper. We don't have a script. We don't have footage of you. We-"

"We'll go live," she said.

"Live?"

"Yep."

Maisel looked at Morrie. "It's too late, isn't it?"

He answered calmly. "We can't do half and half. We can shut off the computer and queue up the tapes by hand, using a stopwatch. Like in the old days. You'll have to be live in all of your on-camera commentary. Hell, the commercials too and you know how many fifteen-second buys there are duringCurrent Events. It'll be a nightmare."

"Then it'll be a nightmare." the anchor woman said.

"But, Piper," Maisel said, "we can slot something else."

She said evenly, "Lee, every TV guide, cable guide and newspaper in America shows that we're running a newCurrent Events tonight. You know what kind of questions it'll raise about the program if we go to a rerun or slip in something from syndication?"

"We'll say technical difficulties."

"There are no technical difficulties on my show."

"Piper-" Rune began.

But Sutton didn't even hear her. She and Maisel hurried off and Rune, uninvited, stayed behind, in her cubicle. She curled up in her chair, the way Courtney did sometimes, drawing her legs up. She thought of all the work she'd have to do over again. She felt numbed, stunned, like somebody had died.

Uh-uh, she thought. Like someone wasabout to die.

Randy Boggs.

At 7:58p.m. Lee Maisel was sitting in the huge control booth overlooking theCurrent Events set. The booth was filled with three times its normal staff (most of whom were from the Jim Eustice crew and had experience with the rare and demanding art of live production).

Maisel hadn't done live producing for years and he sat forward, sweating and uneasy, like the captain of a torpedoed ship still doing battle with an enemy destroyer. He was holding an expensive digital stopwatch in his hand, gripping it tightly.