Hand of Fate (16 page)

And some of those people might work at KNWS.

First up was Chris Sorenson, the call screener. Allison opened the door and waved him in. Chris was about five foot nine, with medium-brown hair and a face that was neither fat nor thin. Only his large, green eyes, fringed with dark lashes, saved him from being completely unremarkable.

The color hit Nic like a fist to the gut. She drew in a sharp breath, reminded herself that the past was past. Only this man's eyes were the same color--nothing else.

"Are you the one who sits in that little room next to Jim's?" she asked, trying to drag her mind back to the here and now. When he nodded, she said, "Do you think you could show us how the whole setup works?"

He nodded again, and the three of them walked down the hall. A few employees watched curiously as Nic took down the yellow POLICE LINE ISO NOT CROSS tape. She let Chris and Allison in before taping it back in place, ducking under, and closing the door. Someone had picked up the clutter of medical supplies, but everything else looked much the same as it had the day before.

In the control room next to the studio where Jim had died, a man gave them one look through the glass before going back to adjusting his dials and gauges."That's Greg," Chris said. "He runs the board, you know, adjusts audio levels, takes network feed and traffic reports. We have two other studios, so he's working with someone down the hall."

"Can he hear us?" Allison asked.

"Not unless we want him to."

"And you sit here?" Nic pointed at a small desk that held two computer screens and a telephone with multiple lines. It sat underneath a square window that looked into the radio studio. "And Jim was--where?"

Chris slowly walked into the radio studio until he had his back against the wall, facing the window. "Right here. A host always needs to see his call screener." With a faint shiver, he stepped out of Jim's spot. He moved around the table. "This is where Victoria sits. She has her back to me."

"For a long time it was just you and Jim, right? How did you get this job?"

"I was working at another station, but I always liked Jim's show. Usually I'm so tired of people talking that I only listen to music in the car and at home, but for Jim's show I made an ,exception. Then one day he fired his call screener." Chris chuckled and shook his head. "Live and on air. Typical Jim. As soon as my shift was over, I drove over here and applied. I ended up talking to Jim directly. I guess h
e l
iked what I had to say, because two weeks later, I started working here. And that was four years ago."

"Were you a little anxious," Allison asked, "knowing that your predecessor had been fired?"

Chris shrugged. "Jim always said you either like this business or you get out. I like it. And I like Jim." He pressed his lips together. "Liked Jim," he said softly.

"How do you decide who gets to talk to Jim?" Allison asked. "Or do you put almost every caller on the radio?"

"No, I have to choose. My job is to figure out who would be good on air and who would be horrible." Chris ticked the requirements off on his fingers. "I want people who are on topic. Who are coherent. I don't want people who are going to freeze up when they hear Jim Fate use their name. Some people don't make any sense. Some can't get to a point. And some use colorful language that the FCC would frown upon."

"What if someone does swear once they're on-air?" Nic asked.

"There's a short delay before anything is broadcast. See this button?" He took two steps back into Jim's space and pointed. "Push it once, and it cuts off the last three and a half seconds. Press it twice, you get seven. That's the most you can get, but that's usually enough. And then the computer stretches out their words like taffy until the time's made up." He bunched his fingertips, touched his hands together, and then pulled them apart.

Nic moved back to the doorway to look at Chris's phone. "Do you have caller ID?"

"Sure." Chris nodded. "It comes in handy when Jim bans someone from calling in for two weeks. Of course, the hard-core ones will just borrow someone else's cell phone. But I can still tell. I remember voices really well."

Nic made a note. "How much hate mail would you say Jim got?"

"Oh, dozens every day. Maybe more. Largely anonymous. Jim would pick out the most outrageous one for his NOD award."

"Was he ever afraid that someone was going to do what they threatened?"

"Jim?" Chris looked surprised. "He thought it was funny?' "Do you think one of those people killed him?" Allison asked. Chris's answer was immediate. "No way."

"Why not?"

"Because the people who get mad, they get mad in the moment. They shoot off an e-mail right away and get it out of their system. Killing Jim like that took planning. It wasn't a crime of passion."

Nic nodded in agreement. Fashioning a deadly gas grenade was not a spur of the moment act. "How many calls can you take at any one time?"

"An hour of talk radio is actually forty-one minutes after you take away the weather, traffic, news, commercials, and promo. So in an hour, you might be able to take twenty calls. Jim always said there was no point in having more than six waiting on the phone lines. And if he had someone on air who couldn't get to the point, he would get impatient and dump them."

"I'll bet that made some people unhappy. All of a sudden they are talking to a dial tone."

"Oh yeah," Chris agreed. "Then they would call back and really ream me out. Like I was the one who cut them off." His green eyes flashed from Allison to Nic. "But it would be ridiculous for someone to kill Jim over that."

"People have been murdered over spare change." Nic shrugged. "How about people who have been angry about shows Jim has run about them?"

"I got several calls from Brooke Gardner's parents right after sh
e k
illed herself. But I never put them on. It wouldn't have made Jim look very good, especially after their grandson turned up. And then recently Quentin Glover has been calling, yelling that Jim has to back off, that Jim is ruining him, that Jim's going to be sorry if he doesn't shut up."

"Really?" Nic and Allison exchanged a glance.

"I guess at one time they actually used to be friends, back before Glover got caught with that mistress. Jim went to college with Glover's wife, Lad. The affair turned Jim against him. It didn't matter to him that Lad took Glover back. Once Jim's made up his mind, it stays made."

"Do you have
. A
ny regular crazy callers?" Nic asked.

Chris looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe Craig. He's a regular caller and also a nut. He always disagrees with Jim. Jim could come out against Satan, and Craig would call to say he's wrong. He's always got his Bluetooth on, and he's always in his car. Jim has even had him come into the studio every now and then. It's good for entertainment on a slow news day. It generates calls."

"Anyone else?" Allison asked.

"Jim has more than his share of crazy fans. One guy we always see lurking around the background every time we do a remote broadcast. He's pretty distinctive--he always wears a leather hat with this wide brim. We just call him Leather Hat Guy. He paces back and forth and watches us, but sooner or later he'll get close enough to snatch whatever junk we're giving away: refrigerator magnets, key rings, window decals."

"Do you know Craig's last name?" Nic wrote as she spoke. "Or how about the Leather Hat Guy? Do you know his name? Has he ever called in to the show?"

"No, no, no, and not that I know of." Chris shifted from foot to foot.

"But they're both just lonely guys who have to turn on the radio to hear any other voice besides their own. There's no way they would kill the guy they think about so much. I mean, for some people, it's like their lives revolve around the show. They get upset if Jim takes a day off."

"Who fills in when that happens?" Allison asked.

"Victoria, but for a lot of listeners, it's not the same. Some people don't like to listen to a woman, to be frank. They say her voice is too shrill or that she's not serious or smart enough."

"Dc, you think that?" Nic asked. "That Victoria doesn't have the voice or the smarts that Jim had?"

Chris looked away. "She doesn't have the same edge Jim does, that's for sure. Jim's all about getting in someone's face. People want the arguments, the excitement. They want a knock down, drag out fight. And Victoria doesn't offer that. Not on the radio, anyway."

Allison took a new tack. "Maybe whoever targeted Jim was someone in his personal life. Tell us a little about that."

Chris lifted his empty hands, palms up. "I don't know much. Jim wasn't the type to kiss and tell."

"What about him and Victoria? Did they ever date?" Nic asked. Chris opened his eyes wider, the picture of innocence. "I don't really know."

"Come on, you look through that window right there at the two of them for hours at a time," Nic said in a tone that implied she already knew the answer. "You can see how they talk to each other, how they look at each other, how much they touch."

"Exactly. Do you think Jim is going to do anything while he knows he's got me and the board op guy and maybe the reporters and the station manager watching him? No way. Besides, if Jim had any relationship at all, it was with his listeners. They were a lot more real to him than people he actually saw day to day."

"What about the other people who work at the station?" Allison asked. "How did they get along with Jim?"

After a long pause, Chris said softly, "Maybe you should talk to Victoria."

"We'll be talking to her later." Nic cocked her head. "What do you think we should talk to her about?"

"Ask her how well she got along with Jim." He looked away.

Nic hated coyness. "Look, we need you to tell us whatever you know."

He straightened up. "Okay, for each show Victoria goes in with three or four folders, one for each segment. They have research she wants to have handy, points she wants to make, stuff like that. And as the show goes along, her papers tend to get spread out." He pointed at Victoria's place. "See that Talk button? A couple of times, her folders ended up on top of it. She didn't know it, but I could hear everything she and Jim were saying. And what I heard was them arguing."

Nic looked up from her notes. "What about?"

"Victoria was maybe a little starry-eyed. You know that saying about people not really wanting to know how sausage is made? She didn't really understand how the talk business works. That there's a give-and-take."

"What kind of give-and-take?" Nic asked. "And who's giving and who's taking?"

His mouth twisted, as if he would have been happier to continue winking and nudging. "Okay. Jim had LASIK eye surgery awhile ago. So for a few weeks he talked up the surgery, kept saying how easy it was and how he wished he had done it yeirs ago."

Nic saw the light. "And he got that LASIK surgery for free. In return for talking it up."

Chris nodded. "Exactly. Jim always said one hand washes th
e o
ther. But Victoria doesn't understand that sometimes you have to do things to keep the sponsors happy. It's not always about news value. You don't do a live remote from the opening of a big chain store because it's news. You do it to help out on the advertising side of things. The wall between advertising and editorial came down a long time ago. It's all just content, and if it gets you listeners and advertisers, then you know it's working. Victoria liked to talk about the freedom of the press, but no one just hands you a microphone and says, 'Go for it.' Nothing is for free."

"So you're saying Victoria didn't understand the business side," Allison said.

Nic knew Allison well enough to know that she sympathized with Victoria.

"Yeah. She was always talking about fairness and transparency." Chris's eyes flicked up to the ceiling. "Like they would have hired her if she wasn't a thirty-one-year-old woman who was easy on the eyes and half Asian. They hired her to get the ratings up and to bring in more young women listeners."

"What will happen now?" Nic asked.

Chris shrugged. "For right now, she's host. And the station might keep her on, if the ratings stay high once everyone has gotten over wanting to talk about Jim's death. She acts like she's just taking the baton from Jim's fallen hand or whatever. But now she gets to take the show in a whole new direction. And that never would have happened if Tim hadn't died."

Chapter
24

KNWS Radio

As a prosecutor, Allison knew never to interview a potential witness by herself. If she did, and the witness said something different on the witness stand, she couldn't take the stand herself to counter him. She couldn't be both prosecutor and witness, which is why she needed Nicole.

More than that, she and Nicole made a good team. Allison was skilled at building connections with people, whether they were victims, witnesses, or even perpetrators. While it wasn't as simple as good cop, bad cop, Nicole brought completely different strengths to an interview. She sat back and listened with all her being, which made some people feel off balance. They could tell they were being put under a microscope.

The next person to be interviewed was the program director, a tall, thin man in his midfifties. "I'm Aaron Elmhurst," he announced when he opened the door. He reached out to shake their hands as Allison and Nicole introduced themselves.