Authors: Iris Johansen
Kendra slowly sat down on the piano bench. Shit. Some days, her successes weren’t enough to erase the disappointment of her failures.
“You handled that very well,” Adam Lynch said as he stepped out from the small observation room. Kendra had been aware of his entering from the hallway outside, but she was too involved in her conversation to pay him much mind.
“My sessions are private, Lynch. You can’t just barge in here like this. I know for a fact that the hallway door to the observation room was locked.”
“Really? So how did I get in?”
“You picked it, of course. Well done. It’s supposed to be a tamper-proof lock.”
“No such thing.” He crossed the studio, which was outfitted with a piano, a drum set, a xylophone, and a pair of guitars on stands. “I would have rung the bell, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“How very considerate.”
“I heard you went to the FBI field office last night. You talked to Griffin.”
“Word travels fast. So you probably know as much about the conversation as I do.”
“I figure he pissed you off, you pissed him off, then you went your opposite directions. Does that about sum it up?”
“Yeah, that’s about the shape of it.”
“I also know about the case in Redondo Beach.”
“Is that supposed to be significant? As far as I know, Griffin was supposed to reach out to the local PD.”
“He already did. That’s why I’m here.”
Kendra stood up. “So why isn’t Griffin talking to me about this himself?”
“To be honest, he doesn’t consider it worth his time.”
Her half smile was bittersweet. “So what else is new?”
Lynch pulled out a flash memory stick and motioned toward a tablet computer sitting on one of the music stands. “May I?
“Knock yourself out.”
He picked up the tablet, inserted the stick, and pulled up a series of photos. He showed them to Kendra. “Look familiar to you?”
“These are the official police crime photos for the Redondo Beach murder scene. I’ve already seen those.”
“Probably not all of them. Redondo Beach PD sent over everything the photographer had. This is exactly the way the bodies looked when the building manager found them. No military hand signals, nothing like that.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I talked to the building manager myself less than an hour ago. I e-mailed a couple of these to him. And there was a whole crowd of people there. You know what it’s like at those scenes. I seriously doubt they were repositioned.”
Kendra took the tablet and swiped the photos. “I’m telling you, yesterday I saw half a dozen photos that—” Kendra stiffened, her eyes glued to the screen. “No way.”
“What is it?”
She swiped through a few more of the crime-scene pictures. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“The pictures I looked at yesterday … They weren’t of this room.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Neither do I.” She showed him one of the photos with a long shot of the apartment interior. “The room’s layout and furnishings are identical in these and the pictures I saw yesterday, so it may be the same building. But the pattern of the crown molding is different here. And I believe the lamp shade is a slightly different shape. This is a cone, and the one I saw yesterday was more tubular.”
He studied the photo. “Are you certain? You didn’t notice the difference when you looked at those photos yesterday?”
“The differences may not have been visible in the official police crime photos I saw. There are a lot more shots here. And even if they were visible, it’s been a few weeks. They’re not details that would have necessarily stuck with me at the time.”
He nodded. “Okay, so we’re back to the original question. What does it mean?”
Kendra paced across the room. “There are only a couple possibilities. Either someone went through the trouble of staging those pictures to bring to the reporter…”
“… Or the reporter staged them to present to you,” Lynch finished.
“But why? In either of those scenarios, why would someone go to the time and trouble? Unless…” Her gaze flew to meet Lynch’s. “You don’t think…”
He took the tablet from her hands and quickly navigated to The Kinsley Chronicle.
“Shit,” he said. He turned the tablet around to show her the news site’s page one headline: “Deluded FBI Consultant Believes Executed Inmate Still Alive.”
Kendra felt her face flush with rage. “She screwed me. Unbelievable.”
“It’s extremely easy for me to believe,” Lynch said. “But I’ve always been a hell of a lot more cynical than you.” He turned the tablet back around and skimmed the article.
“How bad is it?”
“Really bad.” He read in silence for a few more moments. “She’s painting you as a nutjob. There’s a healthy sprinkling of nasty quotes from police sources, both named and unnamed. Probably every cop you’ve made look bad over the years. The ‘deluded’ quote comes from one of them. And you’re quoted all the way through, but in such a way to make you appear as hysterical as possible. Why in hell did you give her an interview?”
“I didn’t.” Kendra snatched the tablet from him and quickly read the story. It was packed with snarky, half-truths and outright lies. “That reporter, Sheila Hunter, played me. Under any other circumstances, I never would have talked to her. She found just the way in.”
Lynch nodded. “She presented herself as an ally in a situation where allies have been scarce for you. And what’s more, she came to you seeming to have evidence that you’ve been sorely lacking.” He shrugged. “As much as I join you in despising her right now, I have to admire her strategic abilities.”
“Spoken like the master of manipulation you are. They don’t call you ‘the Puppetmaster’ for nothing.”
“Have I ever told you how uncomfortable I am with that nickname?”
“Only because it reveals an ability you’d prefer to keep hidden. And at this moment, your comfort really isn’t all that important to me, Puppetmaster.” Kendra grabbed a stack of notebooks and shoved them into her leather satchel.
“What now?”
“I’m going to talk to Sheila Hunter.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Just try to stop me.”
“I will.” He grabbed her wrist as she tried to push past him. “I’m telling you, it’s a bad idea. You can’t win.”
“You think I should just shrink away without a word of protest?”
“I’m not saying that at all. But you don’t want to give her fodder for a follow-up story. Trust me, you’ve given her too much already.”
“Well, what I’m about to give her, no news organization could ever print.”
“Wanna bet? If you go at her like a lunatic, not only will she pick out some choice quotes, she’ll record the whole thing. Just as I’m sure she did yesterday. And if you sound sufficiently deranged, that audio file will be all over the Web by the end of the afternoon.”
“I can’t let it go, Lynch.”
“At least let me go with you.”
“No, this is between me and her.”
“And possibly hundreds of thousands of readers. You’re not used to dealing with the media.”
“I usually just ignore them.”
“Excellent strategy. That’s exactly what you should be doing right now.”
She thought for a moment. He was probably right. She knew all wisdom dictated he was right. But what about justice, dammit? Didn’t that count for anything?
She turned toward the door. “Sorry, I just can’t do that. I’m talking to her alone. Lock up behind you, won’t you. You obviously won’t need a key.”
She left the studio.
* * *
“SHEILA … SHEILA HUNTER!”
Kendra ran across the plaza that fronted the Imperial Avenue headquarters of Hobart News, the media conglomerate that owned The Kinsley Chronicle. Two phone calls from her car was all she needed to know where to find Sheila, and the reporter was now practically sprinting from the building.
Sheila pretended not to hear her, but Kendra cut her off. “It was all a big lie,” Kendra said fiercely. “That picture that you showed me yesterday.”
“Dr. Michaels, I have a meeting I need to—”
“Tough. You have a meeting with me right here, right now.”
Sheila pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped it. “Look, I’m running late, so whatever you want to say to me—”
Kendra grabbed her hand and turned it around to look at the phone’s front screen. A recording app was working away, with two graphic spools slowly spinning. Kendra pushed the apps red
STOP
button. “You do not have permission to record this conversation. Just as you didn’t yesterday.”
“I stand by my story,” Sheila said.
“Stand by it, don’t stand by it, I really don’t give a damn. The core of your story is correct. I believe Eric Colby is still alive. But until your piece appeared, he didn’t know I knew. That was a major advantage I had over him. He didn’t know I was looking for him, and now there’s a strong possibility he does.”
Sheila’s lips curled in a disbelieving grin. “Dr. Michaels, everyone but you seems to know that Eric Colby is dead. I really did watch him die.”
“And yet you mocked up those photos to offer me proof that suggested otherwise.”
She shrugged. “I knew it was the only way I could get an interview with you. It was a gaping hole in my story.”
“How did you even do those pictures?”
“A friend of mine is a real-estate agent, and she got me into an identical unit in that building.”
“
Almost
identical,” Kendra said.
“Close enough. A bit of Photoshop helped out, too.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t let me have copies. You didn’t want me to be able to study them for too long.”
“Well, they did their job.”
“Your ‘story’ doesn’t even qualify as news. It’s gossip mongering.”
“I beg to differ. The woman who captured one of the most notorious serial killers in our state’s history now insists that his execution didn’t really happen? If that’s not news, what is?”
“It will be news when I find him. And your half-baked story is only going to make it more difficult. Does your employer know that you lied and manufactured evidence to get me to talk to you?”
“The Kinsley Chronicle doesn’t want to know. Do you really think they care what their reporters do to get stories? In this case, they handed me the story and told me the slant they wanted on it. They want buzz, page hits, and advertising dollars, not necessarily in that order. Your story will give them all those things.”
“My story? Don’t you even care that—” Kendra stopped, then said, “I can’t believe you. What if I’m right about Colby, and if he kills again before I can find him? How will they feel then? How will you feel?”
“Didn’t you read the story? Didn’t you see that every law-enforcement official I interviewed is positive that Eric Colby was put to death?”
“I read it.” She took a step closer and got into Sheila’s face. “You made me believe you were into a much bigger, much more horrible story that I really didn’t want to be true. I actually thought you were helping me to save lives.”
Sheila lowered her voice to a hiss. “But you do want it to be true, Kendra. You’re not fooling me or anyone else. You want it to be true so that you can prove you’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. Even if it means that people have to die.”
Kendra was stunned at the sheer malevolence of the woman. “You’re so wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Couldn’t I? Well, it doesn’t matter. Do you think I care? I have the power of the press, and everyone will believe me anyway.”
Sheila whirled and strode away.
* * *
EVEN IF IT MEANS THAT
people have to die.
The words were still pounding in Kendra’s head as she drove back to the condo. It wasn’t true, but that’s exactly what those cops thought, she realized. They thought she only wanted to prove herself.
Lynch was right. It had been a mistake to talk to Sheila.
But she’d probably do it again.
Shake it off. Nothing that horrible woman wrote or said made a damned bit of difference.
If only that was true.
Even if it means that people have to die …
As Kendra entered her parking garage, a text message appeared on her phone from Beth.
THE PARTY’S AT OLIVIA’S
.
This made her smile. Beth was making friends. Her years in virtual isolation certainly hadn’t impeded her abilities on that count.
She went to the third floor and immediately heard the pulsing music coming from the condo at the end of the hall.
Kendra rapped on the door and let herself in. Beth and Olivia Moore were seated at the dining-room table with half a dozen shot glasses lined up in front of them.
“Wow,” Kendra said. “It
is
a party.”
Beth raised a glass in her direction. “Why didn’t you tell me your friend was so cool?”
“I knew you’d find out soon enough.”
Olivia smiled. “How are you, Kendra?”
They knew about the story, Kendra realized. Olivia’s stunning, olive-toned face gave it away immediately. She had known Olivia since they were children together at the Woodward School for the Vision Impaired in Oceanside. They had been close since the day they’d met, and when Kendra had been granted the miraculous gift of sight, her only regret was leaving her friend behind in the darkness. Olivia was never anything but supportive of her friend, but Kendra knew that her deepest wish was to find a way to regain her own sight someday. Sadly, the stem-cell technique that had worked for Kendra wasn’t an option for Olivia.
“You know about The Kinsley Chronicle story,” Kendra said. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t.”
Olivia turned toward Beth. “I told you she’d know. That’s one problem with being friends with Kendra Michaels. It’s tough to keep secrets.”
Beth nodded. “The story popped up on my iPad. I couldn’t believe it. Olivia here had to talk me out of driving over and pounding that wench into the ground.”
Olivia shrugged. “Didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“You’re right,” Kendra said. “One assault and battery charge is enough for the week.”
“But I felt exactly like Beth so I dug out my magnetic dartboard, and Beth and I set it up with an appropriate target.” She gestured to the wall in the living room. “Care to take a go?”