Falling Star (15 page)

His eyes widened, as if he'd just seen that
he was about to be run over by a Mack truck. When he could finally
talk, he sounded a lot less sure of himself. "Nobody's gonna buy
it, Kelly."

"Oh, no?" She stood up real close to him, so
close she could smell his fear. "You don't think I'm a good enough
actress to pull it off?" She hoisted her satchel strap higher on
her shoulder. "I've got three words for you, big boy. Remember the
Manns." Then she turned on her heel and stalked out of KXLA's
loading dock, leaving Howard Bjorkman staring after her, stunned
into silence.

Monday, July 8, 2:36 PM

"But, Ruth, don't you see that it's a
fabulous idea?" Natalie was insistent. "I've come up with the
perfect angle to land an interview with Hope Dalmont."

Natalie paced in front of Ruth's desk,
imagining the journalistic stir she'd create by nailing an
interview with the actress about to wed Monaco's Prince Albert.
"I'll grant you, though, that getting her is a long shot."

"That's the understatement of the year." Ruth
ambled around to the front of her gray metal desk and leaned back
against it, straightening the bright yellow sweater she'd paired
with black stirrup pants. "Hope is today's Grace Kelly. And she
hasn't given a single interview. If she's shunning Barbara and
Diane and Maria and Katie, no offense, but what makes you think
she'll talk to you?"

"Partly because this is LA, Hope's hometown
and not exactly small potatoes, and partly because I've come up
with a great angle. How much the orphaned bride-to-be misses her
long-dead mother as she prepares for her wedding day. Who better to
understand that than another woman who's gone through the same
thing?"

Ruth shook her head. "You're grasping at
straws. I know you want to do something dramatic to get back on
track, but this—"

Natalie stopped listening. Over the last week
she'd exhaustively analyzed the Hope Dalmont idea and convinced
herself she had to give it a go, as idiotic as it might seem on the
surface. Landing Hope Dalmont would be a journalistic coup of
mammoth proportions, like Barbara Walters landing Monica Lewinsky.
Nobody would remember the flubbed remote. Or the 8 point 3 on the
Richter scale mistake. Natalie Daniels would be back on top. Even
if Tony failed to renew her, another station would snap her up.

She squared off against Ruth. "Just imagine
how the ratings would skyrocket if I land this interview!"

"True, but—"

"Tony would have to sit up and take notice."
He'd scramble to renew me
, she added silently,
three
months before my contract's up
.

"The problem is I don't see any way to pull
it off."

Their conversation was interrupted by an
insistent beeping. Instantly both women checked the identical
pagers on their waistbands. "Me," Ruth muttered, then pushed a
button and squinted down at the display. She began to circle back
around her desk. "You know, Natalie, for weeks I've been talking to
Hope's PR people and trying all the usual tricks to bypass them and
get right to her. Flowers, personal notes—that sort of thing. But
no go." Ruth picked up her phone. "I just think it's a nonstarter.
Hold on a sec. I have to take care of this."

Natalie eyed the monitor bolted into an upper
corner of Ruth's office, on which talk-show guests were throwing
their chairs. It was a good thing the monitor was bolted to the
wall because there was no unoccupied flat surface. Like Ruth's
home, her office was chockablock with doodads and thingamabobs, all
under the heading PERSONAL MEMENTO.

Natalie resumed her pacing, another thought
wriggling into her brain.
This is something Kelly Devlin would
never be able to pull off. Isn't it about time to remind her who's
the star here?

Natalie smiled and headed for the second
phone in Ruth's office, deciding on impulse to call Geoff. Even if
Ruth wasn't keen on the idea, Geoff would be. He loved it when she
came up with kick-ass story ideas. Showed "gumption," he told
her.

Shows Scoppio was dead wrong when he told me
I've "gone soft" from being in the anchor chair.

She punched in Geoff's direct number and
instantly he picked up.

"Hi, it's Natalie."

"Hey!" She could hear the creak of his ergo
chair. "What's shaking?"

"I have an idea you're going to love."

"Shoot."

"What do you think," she paused for dramatic
effect, "about my interviewing Hope Dalmont?"

"How do you propose to do that?"

Briefly she outlined her idea.

"I don't like it."

"What?"

"I don't like it. First, it won't work.
Second, you don't do that celebrity-fawning horseshit."

"It's not . . . Geoff, she's the most sought
after interview out there! If I—"

"
If
you land her, which is highly
unlikely to begin with, you get to ask her such probing
journalistic questions as who designed her wedding gown and how
will she redecorate the palace. Why not go back to investigative
pieces? That's where you shine."

"I'm not talking about not doing
investigative pieces." She was frustrated. "Just landing Hope
first."

"Don't bother. Let the Kelly Devlins of the
world do that stuff."

That ticked her off.

"Play to your strength, Natalie," he went on.
"Hard-news reporting."

She remained silent.

"You're not going to listen, are you?" he
asked.

"No."

"Fine, just don't waste a lot of time chasing
her. Gotta take this next call, Nats." He hung up.

She replaced the receiver, deflated. So
neither Ruth nor Geoff was behind her.

But she didn't want to give up on the idea.
She wanted to do something big, something to resuscitate her
reputation. To wipe that snide grin off Kelly's face. Not to
mention off Tony's.

She sat down and logged on to the nearest
computer. She'd take part of Geoff's advice. She wouldn't spend
eons pursuing Hope but she had one idea she wanted to try.

Ruth hung up her phone, curiosity on her
face. "What're you doing?"

Natalie was momentarily silent, pecking at
the keyboard and squinting at the screen. She was trolling through
one of the numerous logs maintained by the Assignment Desk, which
listed addresses for recent live shots. "Here it is. 848 Stradella
Road."

Ruth narrowed her eyes. "That's the address
of Hope Dalmont's estate. What're you up to?"

Natalie scribbled the address on Ruth's KXLA
memo pad, beneath the station logo of a satellite dish next to a
palm tree. Only after she tore off the sheet did she meet Ruth's
suspicious eyes. "Giving it one good shot."

*

Kelly pushed the rest of her chili dog into
her mouth and sank back against the cracked blue Naugahyde of ENG
Truck 2's passenger seat. She wiped her hands on the useless
rectangle of paper napkin Fatburger had provided. What a revolting
meal. The kind she ate only when hunger pangs drove her over the
edge.

It was 1:40 AM on a Monday night—no, Tuesday
morning—and she hadn't eaten since lunch, thanks to this hostage
crisis at an elementary school. It just wouldn't end! And she had
to wait and see how it "played out" so she could feed the morning
shows, whose producers were apparently on tenterhooks for her live
reports. Whose producers apparently didn't give a damn that she'd
already been there for twelve effing hours.

And she was supposed to be grateful! This was
a hot story, a lead story, a high-stakes story, the kind of story
reporters would kill to cover.

Right. Because some third-grade summer
schoolers got holed up by a gun-toting deadbeat dad? Like that
didn't happen all the time.

Kelly kicked open the truck's door.
Thanks
a lot, Howard Bjorkman
. He probably thought he was doing her a
favor by assigning her this story. Or more likely he was so
terrified she'd bust him for "sexual harassment" that he was
shitting in his pants from dawn till dusk and prayed this would
convince her to go easy on him.

She hopped out of the truck, ignoring the
mound the chili dog had made in her stomach, and headed toward the
run-down beige brick pile that looked like every public school in
America, except for the cop floodlights that tonight were lighting
up the facade like Disneyland's Magic Castle. She felt like she'd
been staring at it her entire life. Two nondescript stories, its
windows pockmarked by brightly colored construction paper cut into
all shapes and sizes, the masking tape that stuck them to the
windows looking like wadded-up bubble gum. The school was rimmed in
front and on both sides by browned-out lawn, which gave way after a
yard or two to wire fence, then to sidewalk and parking lot. Every
inch of asphalt had been taken over since lunchtime by a motley
crew of cop cars and satellite trucks, the latter kept fifty yards
away by yellow crime tape.

Kelly sidled up to Harry, one of the older,
wiser photogs lined up at the tape. "Anything new?"

Harry shrugged. Like all the photogs he was
held hostage by his camera. Kelly and the other reporters could,
and did, hang out in the trucks, but the shooters had to stay on
guard in case something went down. Which could happen at any time.
There were no second takes and a photog who missed the action
wasn't a photog for long.

Harry fiddled with the bulky camera battery,
checking the power. "The cop PR guy says they'll hold a newscon
around 4 AM. I guess the negotiator will come on camera then,
too."

That would be 7 AM on the East Coast. Perfect
for the national correspondent bigwigs to go live for the network
morning shows, all of which were drooling over this kiddie hostage
crisis. She and the other small-fry local reporters would use sound
bites for their early-morning newscasts, most of which started at
5.

"So nothing's happened since 4 PM." She
visualized the sad state of the video they had for the morning. Not
a single new frame.

"But that shooting stuff this afternoon was
pretty powerful," Harry reminded her, running his thick tongue over
his lips.

Kelly watched spittle gather at the sides of
Harry's mouth. The man was disgusting. And how could he get so
excited over this shit?

"I love the audio of the gunshots, and the
screaming." Harry shook his gray head from side to side, apparently
recalling those moments of high drama. "Man, that rookie's in
trouble."

On that, Kelly could agree. The shooting had
erupted after some rookie numbskull just out of cop school got
spooked and started firing off his gun when a car in the
neighborhood backfired. The gunman must've thought it was a raid or
something because then he started shooting. He was screaming like a
wild man, the kids were screaming, the teachers were screaming.
Kelly thought it was fantastic audio. She'd made heavy use of it
during the live shots and at 10.

But since then, it'd been boring as hell.

"I hope we're not still here at 4 AM." But
even as she said it she knew that at the rate things were going,
they'd be there long past then.

Harry just shrugged again. She could feel the
disapproval emanating from his fat, down-jacketed self, his
amazement that she wasn't as psyched by this hot news story as he
was. Apparently he didn't realize that he was a pathetic turd who
lacked something so basic as a life.

She abandoned Harry to pace behind the line
of photogs. She recognized most of them but had never spoken with
any. It was pointless networking with techies: they couldn't do a
damn thing for you, not unless they worked for your station.

She started to feel cold again. July in
southern California and it was freezing at night. The photogs and
most reporters kept backup clothes in their vehicles but she never
bothered. She carried makeup and a mirror; that was all she really
needed. By rights she should be anchoring anyway, not still
reporting after two goddamn years.

Even the cops looked bored. Why didn't they
get off their butts and storm the building? Or get their negotiator
to dream up some brilliant idea? Kelly snorted softly. They were
probably just too comfortable, lolling around half in and half out
of their cop cars, drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

To try to warm up, she half jogged along the
sidewalk on the school's north side, also cordoned off by crime
tape. A few black-and-whites were parked on that side of the
building but no cops were in evidence. She kicked at a loose piece
of asphalt, which ricocheted off a tree and landed near something
shiny.

She bent down. A high-beam flashlight. How
weird, out here by the schoolyard. A cop must've dropped it. She
picked it up and flipped the switch. It worked. She played with it,
sending a beam of light in arcing circles down the street.

Then it hit her.

Why not? Maybe she could make something
happen, speed this thing up. Get home before dawn.

She looked around. Nobody. She shrugged. It
was worth a shot.

She switched on the flashlight, then raked
the beam across the darkened windows of the second floor. Where was
the gunman, anyway? Probably asleep while everybody else was
outside freezing to death. She finished with the second floor and
went to work on the first.

Nothing.

Shit. This was never gonna end.

She turned to head back to the truck but
decided to give it one last go. On went the flashlight. This time
she sent the beam in wild raging circles across both floors, up and
down, left and right, round and round . . .

Wake up, you idiot!
she screamed
silently.
Talk to the stupid negotiator so we can all go
home!

Then she heard a pop. Then a series of
pops.

Holy shit! Shooting.