You Can’t Stop Me (5 page)

He just looked at her.

She gestured, and her nervousness showed. “J.C., you’ve told me a dozen times you believe in my potential. I’m just asking for the chance to prove you right.”

Was that a smile? Small, barely discernible, but…a smile?

She sat forward. “Give me the name of the man at that seed company, and I’ll follow the lead wherever it goes. I’ll give you the info,
all
the info, and you can decide who deserves the story—Shayla or me. Is
that
blackmail?”

He considered that, then asked, “Why didn’t you just ask me for the name of my plant guy? Make up a reason, or just not go into what you’d found?”

“I owed you more than that.”

Harrow grunted a laugh. “Call Settler Seed in Dekalb, Illinois—your old stamping grounds. The man you want is Dr. Brent Caldwell. Tell him I sent you. See what you can get, and be back here within twenty-four hours.”

She burned with pleasure, pride, enthusiasm, and outright glee, but remained coolly professional as she said, “Yes, sir.”

Rising slowly, forcing herself to move deliberately, she eased toward the door.

The sound of Harrow’s voice stopped her. “Carmen?”

Turning, she said, “Yes?”

“The killer cut off Mrs. Ferguson’s finger. My wife didn’t suffer that…indignity.”

“No.”

“But her killer
did
take her wedding ring.”

“Mrs. Ferguson’s killer did too—he just took the finger along with it.”

A deep crease formed between Harrow’s eyes. “Why, do you suppose?”

“If it’s the same killer…and I think it is…he’s devolving.”

“And if he’s devolving…”

“He’ll accelerate. There’ll be more killings. Soon.”

He was nodding, slowly. Then he said, “Get back to it.”

And she did.

Shortly before the special live-broadcast season finale of
Crime Seen!
went on air, Dennis Byrnes—early forties, close-clipped black hair, languid gray-green eyes, five o’clock shadow, thousand-dollar Armani suit (charcoal)—surveyed his kingdom.

During a broadcast, the control room was surprisingly silent but for the piped-in studio sounds, even though a dozen technicians hovered over control boards and personal monitors, the audio world sequestered in a booth off at right. The near silence was punctuated by commands from director Stu Phillips, who perched stoically in the center of the back of three tiered rows—the eye of the storm. In his late fifties, Phillips had been at both NBC and CBS, where his fortunes had fallen in favor of younger men, and thanks to the competition’s shortsightedness, UBC had snagged a real pro.

Byrnes liked to brag that “UBC is a young network, but we don’t put up with ageism,” though he neglected to mention that he could get away with paying older pros like Phillips half, or less, of what the big boys had.

Behind the director, show-runner Nicole Strickland leaned against the back window wall, her arms folded, her mouth a tight, thin, straight line. The slenderly shapely, striking woman’s tousled red hair vied for attention with her green eyes. This evening she wore a sharply cut, cream-colored Dolce & Gabbana suit with matching Jimmy Choos. Byrnes relished having a beautiful woman as his hatchet man.

Also against the back wall, in the center where an aisle cut down the three tiers of techs, stood Byrnes himself, with a perfect view of the large plasma screen (labeled:
PROGRAM
) above the bank of similar oversized monitors, whose screens were sectioned into eight windows reporting individual camera shots, remote feeds, and cued-up prerecorded material. The
PROGRAM
flat-screen reflected the finished product going out over the airwaves.

Crime Seen!
had saved two very juicy cases for the finale, and Byrnes would be shocked if this were not the highest-rated episode of the season. He watched with half-lidded eyes as Carlos Moreno demonstrated that two young girls had not been kidnapped, as their mother had reported, but were murdered by her and buried on a piece of farmland owned by the mother’s parents. Footage of her arrest—not seven hours before—was the capper.

In the second segment, Angela Batten outed the CEO of an insurance company that for years had been defrauding its policyholders by substituting new language in renewal documents—just the sort of story of corporate greed getting busted that tapped into Main Street America’s rage against Wall Street. Few in the viewing audience were aware that
Crime Seen!
itself came to them courtesy of the big oil corporation that was UBC’s Big Daddy.

Byrnes knew these two juicy and very different stories would each be front-page fodder on tomorrow’s
USA Today
, with
Crime Seen!
getting plenty of play. He was neither psychic nor overconfident—just this morning, the network prez had been interviewed for both stories.

Finally all that remained was J.C. Harrow’s season farewell, which, as scripted, was a laundry list of the miscreants the show had helped bust, all wrapped up in Harrow’s rugged, Midwestern “I’m a victim too, but I’m getting back at ’em” persona.

With pleasure if not affection, Byrnes regarded his unlikely, ruggedly photogenic star on the monitor, where Harrow could be seen casting a film noir shadow against a brick backdrop with a single barred window—cheesy but effective.

The former lawman sported a navy blue blazer that looked unpretentious, although it was no off-the-rack number, worn over a lighter blue button-down dress shirt, open at the collar; his jeans were faded, worn—Everyman attire that Wardrobe had slaved over.

Piercing blue eyes stared out at America as Harrow said, “My colleagues in the booth are going to have to forgive me for breaking from script…”

Byrnes, paying half-attention before, suddenly stood as straight as an exclamation mark, and was heeding his star’s every word, every pause, every gesture.

“…but some late-breaking news has changed the circumstances of tonight’s live broadcast.”

Byrnes snapped at the director, “What the hell?”

Phillips, in a headset, his eyes blinking a Morse code SOS, glanced back helplessly at his boss.

Byrnes leaned so far forward at the top of the aisle, he had all his weight on the toes of his four-hundred-dollar Bruno Magli loafers. He might have been a diver preparing for a double gainer.

“You all know that, for almost six years, I’ve been searching for the person or persons who killed my family.”

In the booth, the director couldn’t help himself, and told his cameraman to push in closer on their host.

“Recently, a member of the
Crime Seen!
staff found what she thought might be a clue tying another crime to the deaths of my wife and son. This is the first new evidence that’s been turned up in the case in many, many months.”

Byrnes yelled, “Did you know about this? Did any of you
know
about this?”

The director shook his head, but his attention was on the drama unfolding before them all. Those involved in technical aspects of the broadcast ignored their big boss; others, just standing observing—like show runner, Nicole Strickland, now edging away from the network exec—merely shook their heads and melted into anything handy.

“Next season,” Harrow was saying, “we will be following this clue, and working hard to uncover other evidence, in a concerted, focused effort to track down the killer or killers of my family….”

Byrnes said, “
Great
idea, Nicole, bringing in a live audience for this episode.”

“And we’ll be doing it right on this show. You will be with us every step of the way—helping us track down the murderer of my wife and my son.”

Gasps from the studio audience interrupted the star.

Picking up, Harrow said, “UBC has pledged to buy us the equipment we need, and to pay for the finest crime-scene team I can put together to investigate this case—a veritable superstar task force of criminologists and crime fighters.”

Byrnes threw his hands up. “UBC pledged what?”

“We’ll start assembling the team, and investigating, as soon as the show ends tonight…and we will work as long as we have to. Join us in September when we start
Crime Seen!
, season two, by bringing you up to date on our progress on this case over the weeks ahead.”

His eyes narrowing, Harrow added, “Finally, a special message to one person—the killer of my family. I’m coming for you…and I’m coming soon.”

Then the credits were rolling, which often signaled the control room getting rowdy, but right now it was like church—in more ways than one, because several people were praying.

The screen faded to black as the show went off the air.

Byrnes said to Nicole, “Get him. Now.”

She nodded, cell at the ready, turning away, speaking quietly; then, cupping the phone, she said, “He’ll be in his office. He says…he’s expecting you.”

“No shit.”

Soon the exec was moving down the corridor, which would normally be filled with staffers quickly finishing up and getting the hell out. With the season over, the network had arranged a wrap party at the newest swank LA bistro, El Viñedo, to which they should all be on their way.

But Byrnes found the hall lined with cast and crew.

As his gaze swept over them, their eyes either found something very interesting in the carpeting to focus on or turned toward lead reporter Carlos Moreno.

Byrnes’s frown withered his staff the way sunlight did vampires. “What’s this about?”

But Moreno, six feet tall with short spiky black hair, was impervious to the exec’s gaze. His eyes locked unblinkingly on Byrnes’s. “We’re here to support our boss,” he said.

Byrnes never flinched. “That’s very gratifying, Carlos…since
I
am your boss.”

“We support J.C.”

A few nervous nods backed up that claim.

“All right, duly noted,” the network president said, keeping his tone even, nonconfrontational. It was a union town, after all. “I’ll see you all at El Viñedo.”

People peeled off the wall and headed down the hall and around the corner—hostages released after a siege—though Moreno stood firm.

Byrnes met the man’s gaze. “You don’t think I should fire J.C.’s ass?”

“Nope.”

“What
do
you think I should do?”

“Give him what he wants. He’s an accidental genius. He didn’t mean to, but he just handed you and me and all of us the biggest potential ratings winner in history. If he’d come to you first, you—”

“But he didn’t come to me.”

“Dennis! So what? He isn’t your standard TV whore. You were well aware when you hired him that J.C. took this show hoping to find his family’s killer.”

“And here I thought it was the truckload of money we backed up and dumped at his feet.”

The reporter rolled his eyes. “Right, Dennis. Money.
That’s
what makes J.C. Harrow tick.”

Byrnes frowned, but had no response ready before the reporter gave him a little salute and ambled off down the hall.

The exec strode down the corridor to the dark-wood door with the name
J.C. HARROW
in banker-like gold lettering. For a split second, Byrnes considered knocking, then decided
screw it
, and went in.

Behind his desk, J.C. Harrow appeared as relaxed and confident as a man who had just scored his biggest success, and not committed career suicide on national television.

Byrnes didn’t bother to sit down, just strode up to the desk and gave his star a cold, confrontational glare.

“I just want to know one thing,” Byrnes said.

Harrow did not take the bait. He just waited silently, leaning back in his chair, his expression not quite smiling, but certainly self-contained.

“Why did you piss it all away on a whim, J.C.? You could have come to me, we might have put something together, instead you skyjack the airwaves. Weren’t we
good
to you?”

For a long time, Harrow said nothing, then, “That’s more than one thing, Dennis. If you want an answer to any of those questions, pull up a chair and sit down.”

Byrnes had a moment—a moment where he had to choose between losing it entirely, going off like a geyser, or behaving like a grown-up.

So he pulled up a chair, crossed his legs, folded his hands, and (
goddamnit!
) smiled at his star. “Please, J.C. Enlighten me.”

“UBC has been great,” Harrow said. “The money is generous, and I like the work. But, Dennis—I didn’t piss
anything
away.”

“Nothing but your career and your starring gig on the number-one-rated show on this network.”

“Explain,” Harrow said, not at all confrontational.

Byrnes shook his head. “Can you really think there’s any reason I’m here other than to fire your ass?”

“You wouldn’t need to be here, if firing me was all you had in mind. Or anyway, you wouldn’t
still
be here.”

Byrnes had no response to that.

Harrow shrugged, rocking slightly in his chair. “Anyway, why would you fire me?…I may be a relative novice in this business, but I know enough to be sure of one thing—I just guaranteed to double your ratings in the fall.”

Byrnes sat forward, seething but in control. “You go on the air and commit my network to unknown, enormous expenses, you rewrite—off script and on air—the format of our top show, and you wonder why would I fire you? Do you think when word gets out any network would ever trust you in front of a camera again?”

“Maybe not a
live
camera,” Harrow said, with a puckishness unusual for the ex-cop. “Anyway, Dennis, I don’t think you’ll let the word get out. You know that I wouldn’t take as much blame for this as you would—for allowing it to happen.
I’m
not where the buck stops.”

“That sounds uncomfortably like extortion.”

“Dennis, much as I like you, I’m not much for taking lessons in morality and business ethics from television executives.”

“…Maybe there are circumstances where I’d consider putting you back on the air…but I’m not paying for some ‘superstar’ private forensics team or any other wild-eyed ideas….”

Harrow sat back again, shrugged. “You can take me off the air, Dennis, but I’ll have another network signing me up for a new show by end of workday tomorrow…on my terms, right down to the ‘superstar’ forensics team.”

Byrnes started a sigh somewhere around his toes, and finally it emerged. “Why didn’t you come to me with this idea?”

“And have you say no? And hold me to my contract? I do apologize for the tactics, but they were necessary. Your priority is the show—mine is finding my family’s killer. I believe I came up with a way that serves both our interests.”

Byrnes shook his head. “I can’t believe you would commercialize the murders of your own family….”

Harrow’s laugh was a bitter thing. “Give me a goddamn break, Dennis. You’ve been commercializing my family’s death since day one of this show. And I’ve been letting you do it, because it’s a relatively harmless means to an end that is everything to me.”

For the first time he could remember, Byrnes found himself in a room with someone he could not stare down, facing someone who wasn’t afraid of him. Like any jungle predator, Byrnes could smell fear and pounce. Only this time, the fear he sensed in this room was his own.

“You played me for a fool tonight,” Byrnes said.

Harrow shrugged. “I know, Dennis. And if that means you have to let me go, to save face, and let the chips fall wherever the hell, well then…no hard feelings. You’re doing what you have to do. Like I am.”

The star rose, and came around to extend his hand toward his seated boss. “Whatever you decide, I owe you for the platform you’ve provided me. Thank you.”

Stunned, Byrnes took the proffered hand, shook it, and said, “I’m not going to fire you, J.C.,” the words almost a surprise to himself as they came out. Without letting go of his star’s hand, he said, “But ever screw with me again, J.C., and I will end you in this business. Do you understand?”