Hostage (23 page)

“The girlfriend…” Lyle looked out and into the dark. “Unfortunately it took about seven more years before AIDS killed the little old lady, with whom he’d slept three times.”

Todd saw the intensity in Lyle’s eyes. He saw the anger and knew precisely what it meant.

“Your mother?”

“Exactly. She died three years ago, and it wiped us all out—me and my two sisters—both emotionally, of course, and financially.” He turned and stared right into Todd’s eyes. “So don’t even get me started on what I think of people like Johnny Clariton.” Lyle popped open the locks. “Just call me if you know anything.”

“I will,” said Todd, opening the door and climbing out. “And I’m sorry about your mom, I really am.”

“Yeah, well, it was about as awful as things get.” He took a deep breath, exhaled. “Just remember, call me if anything comes up. I’m actually pretty good at these kinds of situations. After all, I used to be a marine.”

“Now there’s some reassuring news.”

As Lyle quickly sped through the parking lot and out the other exit, Todd stood there, watching the pickup disappear into the night. He then turned, looked at the low white building, the array of satellite dishes. How the hell was he supposed to go in there and in twenty minutes start blathering about the day’s events, how Clariton was still missing, how tense the situation was, how Todd had been right in the heart of it all?

He took a deep breath, knew that as soon as he stepped into the building he’d be overwhelmed. First things first, he thought, heading toward his Cherokee, which was still parked in the third row. Before his work swept over him he’d try calling Rawlins from his car phone.

Todd ran his left hand through his hair. Dear God, he was tired. Worried about the Clariton interview, he’d awakened first thing this morning, and then the day’s events had hit one right after the other, each one more highly charged than the last. Actually, Clariton’s abduction seemed as if it had not taken place just this afternoon, but days ago.

Reaching his vehicle, Todd slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. As he went to unlock the door, however, he stopped. Through the window, he could see that the vehicle wasn’t locked. Odd, he thought, for he always secured it. Then he saw a large manila envelope placed on the driver’s seat. Todd hesitated and considered the magnitude of what had happened thus far today. Had someone broken in and left something? Something such as what? He’d received threatening mail more than once—particularly since he’d come out of the closet—and the idea of a letter bomb zipped through his mind. No, you’re just being paranoid, he told himself. He turned his head, tried to get a better look. Light from a tall lamppost was spilling through the windshield, and Todd could clearly make out some handwriting on the envelope, handwriting that Todd immediately recognized.

Remembering just who had a copy of his car key, Todd tore open the driver’s door, grabbed the envelope, and read:

Dear Todd,

Unfortunately I’ve gotten caught up in something, and for that reason I’m sure you’ll find this tape of interest. Please, please, please, just remember how good we were together.

My love,

Rawlins

In a near panic Todd ripped open the envelope and pulled out a single videocassette. Written on it in someone else’s handwriting was: “Show at nine tomorrow morning on Channel 10 or, as they say, he’s a goner.” This definitely didn’t make any sense. What had Rawlins done after he’d left Todd’s condo—gone out somewhere and picked up this video, then come all the way out here to drop it off? Quite obviously. Perhaps Rawlins had come out here hoping to catch Todd before the 10:00 PM news. Perhaps he’d been here and had actually gone into the studio.

Todd slammed shut his car door and then, videocassette and envelope in hand, dashed toward the studio. He jogged in and out of the rows of cars, past the line of Channel 10 vehicles, and up to the side entrance, where he took out his pass card and swiped it through the magnetic reader. The door buzzed open, and Todd hurried inside and down the hall toward the newsroom.

“Hey, Mr. Mills!” said the janitor, a young guy, who looked up from his vacuuming. “Everyone’s looking for you!”

Todd ducked in the first door on his right, entering the large newsroom. Hurrying past the huge coffeepots and piles of daily newspapers, he headed straight through a sea of cubicles for his office.

“There you are, Todd!” called someone from a cubicle.

Two or three other people called after him as well, but Todd didn’t stop. What the hell had Rawlins brought out here? What could be on the tape? It could be something about AIDS. Or—and this was what he most feared—it could be something about suicide.

“Jesus, Todd, where have you been?” called Nan Miller, a diminutive woman and the producer of the late news. “You’re on in seven minutes! We’re planning on you—”

“Not tonight!”

Todd raced past her desk, past the assignment desk, and into his office, closing the glass door behind him. He dropped himself in his chair and glanced one last time at the note on the manila envelope—what the hell did Rawlins mean?—before stuffing the envelope in the waste can under his desk. He then rolled over to the VCR, jammed the tape into the machine, and turned on the monitor. Immediately the image of a very thin blond woman burst onto the screen, and Todd gasped and lunged forward, touching the glass, trying to understand. He recognized her at once, of course, just as he recognized the disheveled man sitting next to her on the floor.

“What the hell do you mean, not tonight?” demanded Nan, bursting into his office. “Don’t you realize how crazy it’s been here? We’ve been doing almost continual coverage of this, and you’re—” She saw the image on the screen. “Oh, my God, that’s Clariton.”

It most definitely was. And Todd was too shocked to say anything, do anything, but watch. That woman was one of the three who’d abducted Clariton this afternoon, there was no doubt about that. And that was the congressman himself right next to her. So this had to have been made sometime after Clariton was abducted.

“Where did you get this?” demanded Nan, unable to take her eyes from the screen.

“My car,” mumbled Todd. “Someone left it there.”

“When?”

“Just now. Just when I came in.”

“Is that one of the kidnappers?”

Todd nodded, said, “Shh.”

He couldn’t stop the tape. It just kept rolling, each moment worse than the one before. Someone else came into Todd’s office, then two, three, five more people pushed their way in, all of them jammed around the small monitor, all of them watching in shock. Finally, a general cry of horror filled the room as the blond woman on the tape finished recounting her story, pulled out the syringe of blood, and broke into a scuffle with Congressman Clariton.

“Oh, my God!” gasped Nan. “That was their blood!”

“I hate Clariton,” moaned another, “but that’s murder!”

“What’s happened to our world?”

Todd was as stunned as them all, for though he’d doubted Clariton would survive the kidnapping, he hadn’t imagined anything as perverse as this. Whether they’d actually succeeded in injecting him, however, was unclear, and after he punched off the tape he just sat there groping with one and only one question: What did any of this have to do with Rawlins?

“So you just got this, Todd?” pressed Nan.

He nodded. “Seconds before I came in here.”

“That means the police don’t even know about it.”

“No, they don’t.” He ejected the cassette, stared at it, and read, “ ‘Show at nine tomorrow morning on Channel 10 or, as they say, he’s a goner.’ ”

The silence that followed was broken by one of the assistant producers who’d crowded into Todd’s office. “What a scoop! Channel Ten scores again!”

Frank, the assignment editor, nearly shouted with glee. “This is unbelievably hot! We’ll do a special report, maybe get some other AIDS activists to comment.”

“Someone should alert the network about this one!”

“Yeah, right! We’ll send something out over the wire before the ten o’clock news. My God, we only have five minutes, but—”

“No!” shouted Todd, jumping up. “Now get out of here, all of you! What do you think this is, some sort of carnival game?”

One of them said, “But—”

“Out!”

Nan turned toward the others and in her best controlling producer voice shouted, “Go on, get out! He’s right, we can’t use it, not just now anyway. Not tonight. This is far too serious. We have to contact the police first.”

Clutching the tape, Todd slumped back in his chair as everyone but Nan filed out. He held the tape against his gut, squinched his eyes shut, and thought: Rawlins, Rawlins, Rawlins. How in God’s name did you get ahold of this?

“Do you know,” he asked, “if anyone tried to get in the building to see me recently?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I’ll ask around.” Nan touched his shoulder and said, “What is it, Todd?”

“I… I…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t get what’s going on. I mean, how did I end up with this tape?”

“How did you?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, it was in my car, just sitting there on the seat.”

“No note, no nothing?”

It had happened before. When Michael was murdered, Todd’s personal life and every bit of dirty laundry had been dragged out not only by the police, but by Channel 7, the station he’d then been working for. His host of problems had become public sport, and he damn well wasn’t going to let it happen again, not yet, not given the challenges Rawlins and he were about to face.

“Nothing, just this tape,” replied Todd. “Listen, I’m not going on air tonight, I can’t. You can have someone else report on me, you can have Terri say that I’m recovering or something, that I’ve spent a good amount of time helping the police. Something like that. I don’t care. You can even say we received a tape—say WLAK received it, not me. But I’m not going in front of a camera.”

“Todd, you know how big this is.”

“I don’t give a—”

“Please, just think about it.”

“No, I won’t go on, period! End of discussion.” He rubbed his eyes. “You better go call the police. Tell them they have to come out here. I’ll talk to them, but only out here. I’m going to close my blinds. I just have to rest. I just have to calm things down for a few minutes. This day has been insane.”

“I’ll say.”

Without another word Nan hurried out. As soon as he heard her shut the door, Todd turned and went over to the glass wall of his office and looked out. About a half dozen people stared back, and he lowered the miniblinds, then closed them completely. When he was sure no one could see in, he reached under his desk and pulled the envelope from the wastebasket. He didn’t think anyone would have noticed him carrying it in, and he started to tear it in half, but stopped. No, the police might search his trash, tape it back together or something, so he took the envelope, folded it three times, and stuffed it in his coat pocket. He’d get rid of it later, perhaps ditch it in the men’s room. Next he pulled out his shirttail and, not even considering if he was destroying evidence, wiped clean every bit of the black video box. In a few minutes he’d take the VHS tape to one of the engineers and have him make a proBeta dub, but for now he put the tape back in the player, rewound it, and watched it one more time.

As the images of the blond woman and her assault on Clariton rolled a second time on the monitor, Todd reached for a pair of headphones, which he plugged into the VCR. Again he listened to Tina’s story. Again he heard the sad fate of her daughter, as well as Clariton’s repulsive remarks. This time, though, Todd paid closer attention to what else he could hear. There were two other men in the room—surely the guys who’d abducted Clariton this morning—and one of their voices was oddly familiar to Todd. What caught Todd’s attention in particular, however, was that odd background sound, the noise of something humming or rolling. It wasn’t coming from just that room either. No, it was emanating from somewhere else in that building. And it was familiar, most definitely. Todd clinched his eyes shut and clasped his hands over the earphones as if to press the sound deeper into his head.

Just where the hell had he heard that before?

Another one bites the dust. And, oy, what a mess. I mean, talk about a bunch of gloppy blood. It took all three of us to get Tina’s body tucked into a couple of Hefty two-plies. And it took all three of us a good long while to swab up the bathroom. Who could have imagined that the life of such a beautiful gal could have ended like that, a simple fall and a gash to the head?

I just hope when I croak that it’s going to be a little more dignified. I mean, I don’t mean to be vain or anything, but it’s such an ugly way to go, this AIDS. And so fucking drawn out. I mean, you can linger, bounce back, linger, bounce back, linger… etc., etc., and so on… for months. No, I did Curt right. Here, have a teeny sip of cyanide, and it’s lights out. Boom. I mean, his end was long and sad enough as it was, so why should he have been forced out of his home and left to molder in some hospice? It’s what he wanted least of all, and I guess I agree. Who wants to die in some strange place surrounded by strange people and strange things? Not I, thank you very much. No lingering in some cold, sterile departure lounge. I’m going when I want.