Rogue Justice (14 page)

"It better not come to that," Savannah said.

Freeman nodded. "Yeah, good God, let's hope not."

Chapter 15

30 March, 11:30 AM PDT

King 5 TV, Seattle, Washington

The station's makeup room was located down the hall and around the corner from the studio control center, deep in the bowels of the building. Jia-li Han sat on a padded stool in the second bay, squinting into a brightly-lit mirror. She barely recognized the image staring back. Her face was scratched and bruised, her hair a fright. Dark puffs crowded bloodshot eyes. She took a deep breath, opened the black vinyl make-up kit lying in front of her and began by applying the dry mineral base. There was a time when the station employed a hair and makeup artist, but the job had been eliminated during the latest round of budget cuts. Jia-li didn't mind, not really. She had always done her own makeup, preferring a simple, classic look.

Typically, it took her about ten minutes, start to finish.

Today would take a little longer.

She'd been forced to sit on this incredible story for more than a day now, something to do with the police needing to wrap up some loose ends on the pirates' investigation. So far, their identities still remained a mystery. Predictably, the frustrating delay had set off the usual tug of war between the media and cops—the one involving the public's right to know versus the department's need to withhold information. Jia-li's bosses and the chief of police had finally settled on noon today. It wasn't her usual time slot, but this story couldn't wait a minute longer.

Surprisingly, there had been no other reported sightings of the colossal whales, at least so far, creating a rather curious dilemma. On one hand, there was the "exclusivity factor," the stuff big stories were made of, stories that won awards, important awards, maybe even the granddaddy of them all, the Pulitzer Prize. On the other was the "credibility issue." Would Jia-li's adoring public believe her? She wouldn't be the first reporter to exaggerate the facts of a story for personal gain. And Jason Taylor hardly qualified as an ideal witness, not with two black marks against him: fiancé and tort lawyer. Her news director, Ned Calkins, had expressed his own brand of skepticism, although he came around rather quickly after conferring with Detective Cloyd Steiger. The fact that Jia-li had convinced a grizzled Seattle homicide detective she was telling the truth seemed to put Calkins at ease, at least enough to give her the green-light.

Jia-li glanced over at the clock. 11:53. She remembered her first live report a dozen years earlier, and the thousand-yard stare she'd seen in the mirror moments before airtime. Now, despite all she'd been through on the boat, she felt confident, poised, prepared. Seconds later, there was a knock on the door. Calkins poked his head inside.

"Ready to roll?" he asked. It was the same question Ned
always
asked before each newscast. And Jia-li answered the way she
always
answered. "Good to go, chief."

"Great," Calkins said, smiling. "Listen, we go live at noon with your report; then at six tonight, we'll bring in the marine biologist for an extended interview. Unless—"

"Unless
what
?" she asked, knowing Calkins would backpedal fast if her story didn't connect with viewers, if she didn't come across as completely legit.

"Nothing," he replied, sheepishly. "I'll send a chopper to pick up Dr. Kincaid in a bit."

Jia-li's face flushed red, but this was no time to argue the point. "Okay, Ned, that sounds good."

Shortly before noon, Jia-li entered the spacious studio. She said hello to the stage manager and took her usual seat behind the news desk, the distinctive King 5 logo affixed to its glossy face. She checked her watch—two minutes to air. Closing her eyes, she was back on the big yacht, each image building on the last in a logical pattern. Then her mind began playing tricks, those same images now coming to her in a disjointed series of flashbacks. She fought off panic as she desperately tried to reconnect the dots, to regain the snapshot clarity that had been there just moments ago.

"Twenty seconds," a voice shouted from the dark.

Jia-li looked deep into the camera, took several quick breaths.

"Four, three, two... go, Jia-li."

And right then, everything came together.

"Good afternoon, Seattle. Welcome to King 5 News at Noon. I'm Jia-li Han and I have a story to tell. It began the day before yesterday with a fateful decision to..."

Over the next twenty minutes, Jia-li recounted her improbable tale with all the passion and professionalism that had become her trademark. She held nothing back, save for her strange encounter with one of the mighty creatures sometime after the initial attack. There had been no time to even process those feelings, let alone comprehend their meaning.

She wrapped the story with an intriguing tease, guaranteed to pull in an even larger audience. "So, where did these colossal whales come from? And what does it all mean? Stay tuned, there's more to come on the news at six when you'll meet a renowned expert on killer whales. You won't want to miss
that
interview. I'm Jia-li Han... and I'll see you right back here at six."

The lights dimmed, but there wasn't a sound in the studio.

In fact, no one moved a muscle.

Even the hardcore union workers remained frozen, shaking their heads in disbelief.

Chapter 16

30 March, 5:30 PM PDT

King 5 TV, Seattle, Washington

After spending much of the afternoon researching killer whales, Jia-li now turned her attention to her famous guest. She had interviewed Katrina Kincaid before on the subject and the woman knew her stuff. They'd spoken early that morning. After hearing Jia-li describe her harrowing encounter with the colossal beasts, Dr. Kincaid had agreed to appear as a guest, seemingly undeterred by opinions the skeptics—and some of her own colleagues—would surely express. And indeed, the naysayers had come out in full force, popping up on cable news networks soon after the noon report had aired, most claiming the story was either a hoax or a gross exaggeration.

But all that had changed—at precisely 3:30 p.m.

It was then that jaw-dropping images of the mighty orcas were uploaded to the Web. Within minutes, killer whales were all the rage, easily topping the list of most popular subjects on every major search engine. The dazzling photos had been taken by a thrill-seeking couple who'd ventured into Puget Sound in a powerful speedboat hoping to catch a glimpse of history. Ted and Jenny Lagrange weren't alone—hundreds of other curiosity seekers had come up with the same idea—but only the Lagranges were lucky enough to strike gold.

And from what Jia-li could see, it was a spectacular show.

Shortly after four o'clock, Jia-li, news director Ned Calkins, and the station's general manager huddled together in a small conference room plotting strategy. Calkins, it turned out, knew the mayor of Port Angeles, the town the Lagranges called home. He agreed to contact the family, and twenty minutes later King TV's vice president for business affairs was headed for the North Olympic Coast to negotiate a deal with the local couple. It included a dozen photos and an exclusive interview.

Jia-li suggested she leave for Port Angeles immediately after her interview with Dr. Kincaid, but the GM nixed the idea after learning that the Coast Guard had banned all non-commercial traffic in Puget Sound, citing safety concerns. Instead, he directed Calkins to begin an aggressive promotional campaign built around a momentous event airing "live at five" the following afternoon. The ban, the GM reasoned, would all but eliminate any chance of additional sightings—at least during the next twenty-four hours—while providing him with sufficient time to assemble a worldwide grid of television networks to carry the feed.

This was the story of a lifetime, he said, and needed to be treated accordingly.

Jia-li felt like she was on an express train to some distant galaxy. Right now, however, she needed to keep her feet firmly planted on earth, prepare for the moment at hand: the 6:00 p.m. interview with Dr. Kincaid, an interview that had just taken on immeasurably greater significance. Jia-li shut off her iPhone and sequestered herself in an empty edit bay down the hall from the studio to review her research notes.

As a reporter, she'd always believed in doing her homework, a lesson firmly implanted in her head during four years at Columbia's School of Journalism. The key to a great interview, her favorite professor liked to say, was to make the subject open up, become a co-conspirator. Seek light, not heat. That meant being prepared, knowing the topic intimately, and asking good questions. And who could ever forget his oft-repeated mantra,
"If your mother says she loves you, get a second source."

What Jia-li had learned about killer whales was eye-opening. She found the creatures to be at once fascinating and incredibly complex. Perhaps most compelling of all was their history. Killer whales, she'd learned, weren't really whales at all. In fact they were the largest member of the dolphin family. Official name: Orcinus orca. Orcus was a mythological Roman god of the netherworld; orca, Latin for "the shape of a barrel," which approximated the whale's body shape.

The name "killer" reportedly traced its origin to an ancient Roman scholar named Pliny the Elder, who cited the whale's enormous mass and savage teeth. Over the centuries, their fierce reputation only seemed to grow, causing them to be mercilessly hunted. Between 1950 and 1980 alone, commercial whalers from Russia and Japan took more than two thousand orcas, some of them captured live and sold to aquatic theme parks. Many didn't survive the journey, others died within the first few years of captivity. The practice of hunting orcas included a rather ugly history in North America as well, though the practice had long since been outlawed.

Not so in other parts of the world.

Their exploitation, it seemed, knew few boundaries.

As Jia-li jotted down an exhaustive list of questions, her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. It swung open to reveal Ned Calkins, smiling like the proverbial cat who ate the canary. "Hey, the chopper landed a few minutes ago. I personally escorted Dr. Kincaid to the Green Room, made her comfortable. I gotta say she looks more like a grad student than a famous scientist, but what the hell, I'm sure she'll be great. And so will you. Go get 'em, tiger."

Jia-li buttoned her silk, navy jacket, walked into the studio, and greeted her guest with a warm smile and big "thank you." They then settled into a cozy living-room set some thirty feet from the news desk. The backdrop was a spectacular skyline shot of Seattle, the famous Space Needle front and center.

The stage manager adjusted their microphones, and, as he stepped away, three robotic cameras shuttled into position.

"Okay, ten seconds," a voice shouted. "Everybody settle." Then, "Three, two... go, Jia-li."

"Hello again," she said, smiling "And welcome to this special edition of King 5 News at Six. Joining me now is one of the world's most renowned experts on killer whales, Dr. Katrina Kincaid." Jia-li formally thanked Katrina for coming, quickly established her academic and professional credentials, and then said, "As you know, doctor, a lot has happened in just the past couple of hours. Much of the world has now seen the enormous creatures I spoke about earlier today. Please, give us your thoughts."