Dancing in the Dark (18 page)

Diane sat upright, trying to focus as Matthew continued talking.

“Carly Neath has been found, Diane. She’s dead.”

By the time Diane arrived at the police station, Matthew had written
a script for her. Gary Bing recorded her narration and ran with the tape to the satellite truck that
had just arrived from New York City. The narration was fed to the
Broadcast Center to be edited with various video elements that had
already been fed in for Diane’s
Evening
Headlines
piece along with video recorded yesterday at
Lavender & Lace and some of the tent shots taken on Bath Avenue.
Meantime, Sammy Gates set up the gear to record the police press
conference and transmit Diane’s live portion of the report.

“The police said they would have a presser at seven o’clock,” said
Matthew, looking at his watch. “It’s seven-oh-five. We better figure
out what you’re going to say if they don’t talk in time.”

Diane looked down, appearing to study the ground as she tried to
compose what she would say when Harry Granger tossed to her from the
studio in New York. The minutes ticked away, and still no police
spokesperson came out to address the hastily assembled media.

Gary returned from the satellite truck and outfitted Diane with a
wireless microphone and a tiny plastic earpiece. Once she inserted the
earpiece, she could hear directions from the control room and whatever
Harry Granger would ask her from the
KEY to
America
studio.

“Five minutes, Diane,” the warning voice came.

She gave the thumbs-up signal to Sammy’s camera lens, knowing her
image was flowing to the receivers at the Broadcast Center. She
switched her cell phone to vibrate so it couldn’t ring during the live
shot.

“Let’s have a mike check, Diane, please.”

“Testing. One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one.”

She turned to check the empty podium set up on the sidewalk in front
of the police station.

“Two minutes, Diane.”

She pulled a mirror out of her purse, reapplied her lipstick, and
smoothed her hair.

“One minute.”

She could hear the story before hers wrapping up. Next she heard
Harry Granger’s deep voice introducing he
r.
Diane
swallowed as she waited for the toss.

“KEY News Correspondent Diane Mayfield is in Ocean Grove, New
Jersey, with the story. Diane?”

“Good morning, Harry,” she began, her face somber. “Already in the
grip of a record heat wave, this small beach community is now gripped
by terror and fear—fear that there is a murderer on the loose. Early
this morning, the body of twenty-year-old Carly Neath was discovered on
the grounds of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association—the same place
where another young woman was found Friday morning after she had been
missing for three days. Leslie Patterson was alive; Carly Neath, who
never returned home after a babysitting job Friday night, wasn’t as
lucky.”

At that point, the control room switched to the edited video
package. For the next minute and a half, Diane listened through the
earpiece to her own voice narrating the story that was being fed out to the entire KEY network. Matthew’s
script covered all the bases, leading with Carly’s disappearance after
babysitting at one of the tents, talking about the townwide search that
had followed the search for Leslie Patterson just days before. The
script said local police had suspected Leslie Patterson of faking her
own abduction, but with the disappearance of a second victim, now found
dead, the investigation had taken another turn.

Diane knew the package was almost over. The camera would be coming
back to her. She listened for the last words she had recorded. “The
outcue is: ‘mortal danger that lurks in Ocean Grove,’ ” came the voice
in her ear.

She heard the closing words, waited a beat, and began speaking into
the camera. “A police spokesperson is expected to come out any moment,
Harry, to give us more details on the situation. Authorities have their
hands full here. This is the height of the vacation season, and this
town has almost twice the population it has in the winter months.
That’s a lot of frightened folks, Harry, and they want to feel safe
again.”

“What about Leslie Patterson, the young woman who was thought to
have cried wolf?” the anchor asked. “She must take some comfort that
people believe her now.”

“We talked with Leslie this weekend, Harry. Of course, that was
before Carly Neath was found. But Leslie said that was the worst part
of an ordeal which included being held against her will for three days
and nights and forced to dance, blindfolded, with her abductor. Worse
than anything she’d been through, she
said, had been the fact that people thought she was lying about it all.”

Within moments of her signing off, Diane’s cell phone vibrated.

“Nice piece.”

She recognized the voice and winced.

“Just make sure you get exclusives for us. I don’t want the
day-of-air broadcasts to rob
Hourglass
of
its thunder.”

“Don’t worry, Joel. There’s plenty of misery to go around down
here.” Diane shook her head and rolled her eyes at Matthew. “Though
this isn’t the story we thought it was going to be, Joel. You sent me
down here to cover a girl who cried wolf. Now it looks like we’ve got a
young woman who was telling the truth and a killer on the loose.”

“Not to worry.” Joel’s voice had a twisted lilt to it. “This could
work out even better. Give our
Hourglass
broadcast another dimension.”

“You mean…”

“I mean,” Joel interrupted, “we already have the stories about the
girls who really
did
cry wolf.
Yours can focus on what it’s like to be telling the truth and have no
one believe you.”

Owen Messinger spooned cornflakes into his mouth as he watched Diane
Mayfield on the television screen. He was going to have his work cut
out for him with Leslie when she came for group therapy today—that is,
if she came for group therapy.

If she had already seen herself as unfairly persecuted by everyone
who hadn’t believed her, her story getting national attention would
only create further psychological issues for her to address. If Leslie
had ever craved attention, she was certainly getting it now.

Stashing the cereal bowl in the kitchen sink, Owen took a can of cat
food from the pantry and emptied its contents into the aluminum bowl on
the floor. “Okay, Cleo, I’m leaving your food out, baby,” he called.
“Daddy’s gonna be home late tonight.”

He exited through the kitchen door, forgetting that he had left his
cell phone recharging on the counter. He got into his black Volvo and
adjusted the air-conditioning as high as it would go. Another scorcher
was on the way.

It was a short drive to the office. When Owen pulled int
o
the parking lot, he noticed two police
cruisers parked near the entrance of the professional building. He
parked the car in his reserved space, went directly into the building,
and took the elevator to the third floor.

The door to his office was wide open.

“What’s going on here?” Owen asked as he surveyed the overturned
furniture in the reception area.

“Oh, Dr. Messinger,” said Christine with relief. “I’ve been trying
to reach you, but there was no answer on your cell. This is what I
found when I came in.” His assistant made a sweeping gesture at the
disarray.

Owen looked past her, through the doorway to his office. The police
officers were taking stock of the chaos in the room. “Can you tell if
anything’s missing?” asked one of them.

Taking his key ring from his pocket, Owen unlocked his desk drawers
and checked each one. “Nothing has been touched here, thank goodness,”
he said.

“How about anywhere else? Anything missing?”

Owen looked over at the bookcase and saw the gaping space where his
patient binders used to be. All of his treatment notes were gone.

“Leslie. If you’re going to go to work today, you have to get up.”

Hearing her mother’s shrill voice call up the stairs, Leslie groaned
and turned over in her bed. She was still tired and didn’t want to get
up.

“I’m not kidding, Leslie. If you don’t hurry, you won’t have time
for breakfast.”

That’s fine by me
,
thought
Leslie as she rubbed her eyes. She lay on her back, staring up at the
ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars she had affixed there a
good ten years ago. No wonder she was depressed. This was a kid’s room,
not a woman’s. But if she had any hope of getting away from her
parents’ nagging and treating her like a child, she had to have an
income of her own.

She forced herself to get out of bed, her bare feet landing on one
of the hooked rugs her mother was so proud of making. Pale pink
rosettes sprinkled the cream-colored background. Leslie looked from the
rug to the pink walls and the white furniture painted with clusters of
tiny flowers and made a vow.

When she got a place of her own, there would be none of this frilly,
girlie stuff.

She took off the T-shirt and gym shorts she’d slept in and stood
before the mirror. As she turned from side to side, examining her body
from different angles, Leslie promised herself she was going to eat as
little as she possibly could today. That would be no small feat with
her mother and Larry Belcaro watching her like hawks.

In the shower, the warm needles of water pounded against her tightly
stretched skin. The towel felt rough against her back as she dried
herself. Running the toothbrush around her mouth, she liked the way the
white paste made her teeth look brighter.

She chose a short, brown cotton skirt and peach-colored blouse to
wear for her first day back in the office, in part to please Larry. He
always complimented her when she wore peach. He said it made her brown
eyes look especially warm and pretty.

“Leslie. When are you going to get down here?”

“I’ll be right there, Mom.”

Spinning in front of the mirror again and sucking in her stomach and
cheeks, Leslie wasn’t satisfied with her appearance, but she couldn’t
do anything more than she already planned not to do.

Audrey Patterson scooped a large serving spoon of scrambled eggs
onto her daughter’s plate, followed by three strips of bacon and a
buttered English muffin.

“Orange or pineapple juice, Leslie?”

“Orange, please.”

As her mother turned her back to go to the refrigerator, Leslie
ripped off a piece of her muffin, snatched a strip of bacon from her
plate, and dropped them into the canvas tote bag she’d carefully lined
with wax paper the night before and positioned on the floor next to her
chair. As Audrey poured the juice into her daughter’s glass, Leslie
noticed her mother’s eyes scanning her plate. Leslie slipped her fork
under the scrambled eggs and put some in her mouth.