Hand of Fate (18 page)

The answer turned out to be neither. Slender and model pretty
,
Willow was dressed in a black skirted suit, ivory blouse, and a single strand of pearls. Her makeup was flawless, her dark hair pinned up in a French twist. She looked like she was about to pose for a stock photo that would be labeled "young businesswoman." But when she shook hands with Nic, her palm was damp.

"I understand you're an intern here," Nic said, taking the lead. "Is that a paid position?"

"I get college credit," Willow said in a low voice. "I'm a senior in the broadcasting program at Reed."

Nic revised Willow's age down five years. She raised an eyebrow. "No offense, but you don't really look like a Reedie."

Reed was a top-drawer private college that attracted extremely bright kids with Birkenstocks, progressive ideas, and a liberal attitude toward drug use.

Willow offered them a smile, her first. It changed her face, softened some of the edges. "I don't necessarily dress like this when I'm not at work." Her tone became more serious. "And I don't necessarily take part in all the after-school activities you hear about."

"So you're working here for free?" Nic asked. Maybe white girls whose parents had lots of money could afford to do glorified volunteer work while they attended a college that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Every hour Nic hadn't been studying while she was in college, she had been making milk shakes, mopping floors, entering data into a computer. She barely remembered her courses. Every now and then her parents had been able to give her a twenty or two, or sometimes just a bottle of shampoo.

Willow leaned forward. "You don't understand. I am so lucky to be here. There were more than two hundred applicants for this position. Being an intern is about the only way to get around that whole catch-22: 'Can't get a job without experience, can't get experienc
e w
ithout a job.' Because I've worked here, I'll be able to show on my resume that I do have relevant experience."

"What are your duties?" Allison asked.

"They. told me I would be booking guests, doing some research and editing, sound gathering, audio production ..." Willow let her voice trail off.

Nic said, "And in real,life?"

Willow raised one shoulder and smiled. "About what you would expect. I answer phones, and sometimes check the newswires for stories. But I'm mostly a gofer. I go out for coffee and sandwich runs."

"So how did Jim Fate like his coffee?" Allison asked.

Willow replied without hesitation. "Twenty-ounce latte with four shots, extra hot, no whip, with three sugar packets. He was very firm about that. No Splenda or Equal. It had to be sugar."

"So Jim was a man's man, huh?" Nic said. "Not afraid of a little sweetener?"

A smile quirked Willow's mouth. "Jim wasn't much afraid of anything."

Nic wondered if that trait had gotten Jim Fate killed. "How long have you known him?"

"I met him when he interviewed me and the other finalists for the job. But I've been listening to him since I was in middle school. In fact, he's the main reason I decided to major in broadcasting. He spoke the truth without fear."

Willow was so earnest that Nic practically expected her to put her hand over her heart.

"What was Jim like to work with?" Allison asked. "Was he a good boss?"

"He liked to explain to me how radio worked, what listener
s w
anted versus what they said they wanted. He liked to tell me why something was wrong, and how it should be changed."

"Sounds like pretty one-sided conversations," Nic observed. She had worked for a lot of people like that in her time. Some of the older guys at the Bureau still treated her like she was wet behind the ears.

"But that's what I'm here for," Willow said earnestly. "To learn about how things really work in the real world."

"What are your plans now?" Allison asked. "Will you stay here?"

"I don't know." Willow sighed. "Aaron says I can stay. But my dad wants me to quit. He's worried that it's not safe here. He keeps asking me, what if someone sends another package? Aaron says they are going to contract with a company that will X-ray any package before it comes to the building, but my dad's afraid something will slip through, or that some crazy guy will just show up at the front desk and start blasting away with a machine gun."

Nic could understand that. If this girl were her daughter, she would already be gone.

"Did Jim Fate have any enemies?" Allison asked.

Willow's answering smile seemed faintly patronizing. "You must not have listened to the show very much. He made a lot of people mad. I saw some of the letters Jim threw in the trash after reading them. People would say that they hoped he would get cancer or that lightning would hit him or that God would strike him dead."

"Given that Jim made people so mad, were you surprised that he opened the package? Why didn't he have you screen things for him?" Nic asked.

Willow shrugged. "Jim always opened his own mail. He made that clear to me the first day."

Allison asked, "Isn't that just the kind of thing you have a gofer for?"

Her cheeks pinked. "He got a lot of, um, things, in the mail. Personal things."

Nic raised an eyebrow. "Personal things?"

Willow looked down at her lap. "One time I saw him open a package, and a pair of lace panties fell out. Maybe he just wanted to check out everything on his own so he could decide what to do with it without everyone knowing about it."

"It sounds like he was a player," Nic said.

Willow's smile was rueful. "Kind of. I guess I didn't pick up on that when I was in middle school."

Allison said carefully, "If you don't mind me saying so, you're very attractive. Did Jim ever express an interest in you?"

Her lips twisted with disgust. "Jim Fate? He's old enough to be my father! In fact, my dad's only two years older than him."

"But you didn't really answer the question," Allison pointed out. "Just because Jim Fate was older doesn't mean he didn't have eyes in his head. Did he ever flirt with you, ask you out, touch you inappropriately?"

"Flirt? Jim flirted with any woman from seventeen to seventy. But if I had thought there was anything more there, I would have cut him off right away."

Looking at Willow's curled upper lip, Nic had no doubt she was telling the truth.

"Now, you were there when Jim died, is that right?" Allison asked.

"Yeah." The girl swallowed. "Aaron was talking to me and Chris--that's the call screener. There was a break for the top-of-the-hour national news feed, and Victoria got up to get her tea. The next thing I knew, Jim was pressing the Talk button and telling us we had to leave, that there was sarin gas."

"You've heard that it wasn't sarin, right?" Allison asked.

"Yeah, but at the time, I think all any of us could think of was that we were all going to die. You could tell Jim was trying to hold his breath. It was awful. His eyes were all wide and pleading, just staring at us through the glass."

"But Victoria stayed, right?" Nic said. "She stayed with him until the end."

"That certainly took a lot of courage," Allison added.

Willow raised both shoulders slightly. "That's the one thing I wanted to tell you. Maybe Chris or Aaron won't mention it you, but I thought it was strange."

"What's that?" Nic's antennae quivered.

"Even though I don't open his mail, once it's been sorted, I take it all in to Jim, and he opens it during the breaks. And that's what I did yesterday."

"Yes, yes," Nic said, trying to hurry her to the good part.

"But that package--the package with the poisonous gas--wasn't one of the ones I gave him. It was Victoria who gave it to him right before she left the studio to get her tea."

"What are you saying?" This could change everything. Nic remembered what Chris had said about Jim and Victoria arguing. "Are you saying that Victoria knew what was in there? That she gave it to him deliberately? That she's the one who caused his death?"

Willow's face crumpled. "I don't know. Maybe the mail sorter did put it in her box instead of his. But I mean--everyone knew they had had some kind of fight. They were barely speaking to each other. But, you know, Victoria is so nice! I can't see her being a--a murderer."

Nic tried to picture it through Victoria's eyes if she had been the killer. Imagined handing over the package and then walking as quickly as you could away without breaking into a run. Knowing that as soo
n a
s your coworker tore it open, he was dead. And that maybe whoever else was in the room with him would be dead as well.

But if Victoria were the killer, then she would have known just how much gas was in there. Maybe it was only enough to kill one man. And couldn't she have had a backup plan? Nic remembered what Tony had said. Had Victoria had a loaded syringe of Narcan hidden in her pocket or purse, ready to give herself the antidote if she accidentally inhaled some of the gas too?

But why had she stayed behind, stayed with Jim as he died? Was that the act of a killer?

Then Nic thought of another possibility. Maybe Victoria had decided that pretending to care would be the best alibi she would ever have. Had Jim spent his last few moments on earth drawing comfort from his killer?

Chapter
26

KNWS Radio

After Willow left, Allison said, "She dresses pretty nice for someone who works behind the scenes." She wondered if Willow came from money. Probably, since she was going to Reed.

"You know what they say:" Nicole said. "'Dress for the job you want to have: She doesn't want to always be going out to get coffee or sandwiches?'

"Yeah, she's got that hungry look," Allison agreed. "Kind of like Cassidy. But there's something else. Didn't you get the feeling we were just looking at the surface?"

"Well, she was wearing a lot of makeup."

Allison pushed Nicole's shoulder. "That's not what I meant. I don't know. It's just that she seemed artificial somehow."

"She's--what? Twenty-one or twenty-two years old." Nicole shrugged. "At that age, she's just pretending to be an adult."

There was a knock on the door, and then Victoria entered the conference room. Victoria's mixed heritage had resulted in a strikingly beautiful woman. She was tall and slender, with high cheekbones, tip-tilted eyes, and dark, straight hair that fell past her shoulders. Allison wondered how much of a coincidence it was that Victoria and Willow--the two women who worked most closely with Jim--were both so good-looking.

Victoria's black eyes were shadowed, and in her left hand she carried a crumpled tissue. "I want to help you catch whoever did this," she said as she sat down across from them.

"I was surprised to hear you on the radio yesterday morning," Allison said.

"Haven't you ever lost yourself in your work? When I'm on air, I don't have time to think about myself. Talking about Jim was like having a therapy session I didn't have to pay for."

Although she nodded sympathetically, Allison wondered just how high the ratings had been. "Tell me about the day before yesterday," she said.

"It started out like an ordinary day." Victoria blinked, and the next second tears were in her eyes and her voice was rough and sarcastic with suppressed emotion. "It was basically like every other day, only one minute I'm watching Jim die in front of my eyes, and the next some guys in white hooded suits are dragging me out of the building and spraying me down on the sidewalk with a fire hose." She dabbed at her eyes.

"I know how difficult this must be for you," Allison said, patting Victoria's free hand. "Why don't you tell us about a more normal day. How would that go?"

"Sorry." Victoria wiped her eyes again. "Jim and I would usually come in three or four hours before the show began. Chris helped too. Good talk radio takes prep. We would look at the Drudge Report, the New York Times, the Oregonian, the wire services, clips from TV shows that had run the night before ..." Her voice trailed off. "And then we would start to build the show. Jim always says there are three rules for great topics. One is picking a question that could be reasonably answered from at least two points of view. Like, should we build more nuclear power plants or more windmills? The second rule is, will th
e a
udience understand it? Like, should we have a national sales tax or a national income tax? And the third is, does it engage the listener? You have to tell them what's in it for them. Will they get higher taxes or better schools or free broadband or what? If you do it right, then they're eager to call in." Victoria massaged her temples. "And then we would make a show sheet. We scheduled a new topic roughly every half hour. Jim likSd to overbuild every show. To have more topics, more informatioi, than he could possibly use."

"Who decidgd on the topics?" Allison asked. She rubbed her own temple, mirroring Victoria, to build a bridge of nonverbal rapport. When Victoria tilted her head, so would Allison. If Victoria winced, Allison would do the same. Everything Victoria said, Allison affirmed with a nod or a subtle smile. Without words, she was telling her, You and me, we're in this together.