All this happened within ten seconds. Nobody inside the plane had a chance. The Lear Jet exploded while the passengers and pilots were still strapped into their seats. All aboard were killed instantly.
As the Lear Jet was skidding, Shannon Michaels was trapped inside the overturned Cadillac. He sat upside down, bleeding from the head but still thinking clearly. Either he would crawl out of the car, or he would die. When he heard the terrible screeching of the plane’s steel body meeting concrete, he realized he had only seconds to make his escape.
Shannon managed to unbuckle his seat belt, but the inflated air bag had him pinned against the driver’s seat upside down. He reached into his pocket for the box cutter. The sharp razor would be able to puncture the bag. As he pulled the cutter out, Shannon Michaels heard a tremendous roar and felt intense heat—the backdraft from the explosion. The Lear Jet had begun disintegrating and the shooting flames were engulfing the Cadillac. Shannon felt something hot oozing onto his body from above him. Parts of the car were actually melting and the floor, which was now the ceiling, was a mass of scorched dripping iron.
A pain unlike any he had ever experienced seared through him. Every pore in his body seemed to be on fire. The box cutter fell from his burning hand as Shannon screamed in agony. Instinctively, he rotated his head, desperately searching for an escape route. His pain intensified. Suddenly, the heat was causing his brown contact lenses to disintegrate into his eyes. He blinked frantically, but saw nothing. With his last bit of desperate energy, he twisted his body trying to free himself. A slab of sizzling white hot metal fell directly on his head. Death for Shannon Michaels came one second later.
As Tommy O’Malley and Jackson Davis stood watching the conflagration, Ashley began to sob uncontrollably. The two men cast their eyes downward but said nothing. What was there to say? The airport fire engines wailed in the distance, and flames lit up the night. Watching the explosion and fire had almost a hypnotic effect on those present. Police radios crackled, but the cops themselves remained silent.
Finally, after the firefighters and rescue teams had arrived and the flames began to subside, Tommy put his arm around Ashley Van Buren and hugged her tightly. She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. Tommy stroked her face while remembering that Tony Lomanto, his psychologist friend, had come eerily close to predicting the outcome of the case: “If you can enrage him,” Tony had said, “he could give you the opening you need . . . but that’s a dangerous strategy. You might survive, but the guy could hurt others around you.”
It had happened that way. And as Tommy thought back upon what had transpired that evening—about the human carnage that Shannon Michaels had caused—he felt no satisfaction in knowing that Michaels had received his due, that he could kill no more.
In his heart, Tommy knew he had done his best. But he also knew that it had not been enough.
* * *
EPILOGUE
ST. JOHN, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS
FEBRUARY 1995
It was the clearest sea Ashley Van Buren had ever gazed upon. Sitting in a plastic sand chair, her feet submerged in the azure waters of Caneel Bay, she looked out through her sunglasses at a real-life postcard picture. For the first time in six months, she was relaxed, totally relaxed.
Life had changed dramatically for Ashley Van Buren. Her page one stories on the Shannon Michaels murder case not only stunned the city of New York, but were syndicated nationwide. Almost immediately, book agents were after her, closely followed by movie people. Following weeks of being wooed, she signed contracts which guaranteed her close to half a million dollars, and she didn’t even have to write the book. A professional collaborator, a “ghost” in writing parlance, would be brought in to help her bang out the text. Ashley could even continue working at the Globe while the book-writing was under way.
Hollywood was a similar story. Ashley was flown to Los Angeles and courted by some of the most powerful filmmakers on earth. She stayed in a lavish suite at the Belair Hotel and schmoozed with Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, and Oliver Stone, among others. It was a fantasy run that would lead to still another book—one that she herself would write. She had kept meticulous notes on her Hollywood seduction.
Ashley had offered to share her tremendous good fortune with Tommy O’Malley and Jackson Davis, but the two detectives were adamant about not cashing in. Every time she told them of another incredible offer, they mocked her—even threatened to tell the National Enquirer nasty things about her if she didn’t quit bugging them about signing contracts. The attitude angered her.
In the end, Ashley did manage to get Tommy and Jackson nice consulting fees on the movie project, but they weren’t even grateful. They made her pay for every dinner at which the project was discussed, and they ordered the biggest steaks allowed by law.
After four days in the Caribbean sun, Ashley’s skin was medium brown. Her orange-leaf-pattern bikini set off her sunglow nicely. She took a sip of Evian and sighed contentedly. If only life could be like this all the time, she thought.
The sun was descending—it was after four—and Ashley decided to pack it in. She dragged her chair back from the shoreline, and proceeded to her oceanfront bungalow. Stripping off her bathing suit, she walked into the huge shower. She pulled the lime green curtain across the entrance, and set the water for a tepid seventy-five degrees. The spray felt great against her skin as she ducked her head underneath the nozzle. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the tingling sensation of water flowing against her body.
Suddenly, another sensation intruded. Ashley felt two large hands wrap themselves around her breasts and hot breath on the back of her neck. She opened her eyes wide and giggled. “I thought you drowned out there, Snorkel Man.”
Tommy O’Malley was naked and at attention. “Drowning is not an option,” he said, “unless, of course, you beg me to perform unnatural acts right here in this shower.”
Ashley laughed and kissed Tommy O’Malley hard on the mouth. Her painful, dangerous ordeal had turned into one of the most joyous times of her life. True, she still had her bad days emotionally. In fact, the horrendous scene of the fire on the airport runway would never leave her—and was occasionally triggered by the mere sight of an airplane in flight. But her time with Tommy O’Malley since the Lauderdale tragedy had given her a sense of peace she had never experienced before.
Out of confusion and chaos, Ashley Van Buren had found clarity and happiness. And, as she wrapped her slender arms around Tommy’s thick neck, she hoped those new feelings would deepen and last forever.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For me, writing a first novel was a harrowing experience. The following people provided me with invaluable information and/or encouragement that kept me going, even though, at times, the project looked hopeless. Those listed are not in any kind of logical order.
Maureen O’Reilly, Detective John Schlagler, Detective Daniel Rodriguez, Detective Gaeton Fonzi, Jane Dystel, Gloria Jean Sessler, Mary Ann Yastremski, Dr. Kathy Levinson, Jim Reynolds, Makeda Wubneh, Deidre O’Brien, Erica Orloff, Jay Garon, Liz Smith, Bill Bratton, Col. David Hackworth, Arthur Hailey, Vincent Bugliosi, Catherine Crier, Janet Pawson, Art Kaminsky, Byna Zimmerman, Lou and Mary Jo Spoto, and Keith Paglen.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BILL O’REILLY, a two-time Emmy Award winner for excellence in reporting, is a twenty-year veteran of the television industry. He served as national correspondent for ABC News and as anchor of the nationally syndicated news magazine program Inside Edition before joining Fox News Channel, where he is currently executive producer and anchor of his own primetime news program The O’Reilly Factor. The author of the huge bestsellers The O’Reilly Factor, The No Spin Zone, and Who’s Looking Out for You?, he holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University.
* * *
ALSO BY BILL O’REILLY
<
br /> The O’Reilly Factor:
The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous
in American Life
The No Spin Zone:
Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America
Who’s Looking Out for You?
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PRAISE FOR THOSE WHO TRESPASS
“I have always enjoyed Mr. O’Reilly on TV, where he now toils for Fox News. And he has written a fiction that has been [widely] praised. Oh, yes, and Liz Smith also loved this one!”
—LIZ SMITH, syndicated entertainment columnist
“As real and exciting as the streets of New York City. A mystery thriller that only one of New York’s finest could solve.”
—WILLIAM BRATTON, former NYC Police Commissioner
“O’Reilly knows his cop killers and his canny female reporters . . . and weaves a harrowing tale of revenge and murder. A chilling dissection of the world of network news that has me locking my office door!”
—CATHERINE CRIER, host of Fox News Channel’s The Crier Report
“Want to know how knives are sharpened and competitors sabotaged inside those outwardly urbane TV newsrooms? O’Reilly knows it all, and tells you. Electrifying stuff.”
—ARTHUR HAILEY, author of Airport, Hotel, and Detective (160 million books in print)
“A speed-read thriller that unmasks the cutthroat world of television news. So real you’ll forget it’s fiction.”
—VINCENT BUGLIOSI, author of Outrage and Helter Skelter
“Action, suspense, and a gripping first-rate tale. O’Reilly’s thriller takes the reader into a world that has been shrouded in secrecy—up until now. A must-read, but don’t expect a lot of sleep until you’ve reached the end.”
—COLONEL DAVID HACKWORTH, Newsweek magazine contributing editor and America’s most decorated living soldier
“A debut novel that centers on what many disgruntled couch potatoes dream about—the murder of several high-level network correspondents and execs.”
—NEW YORK POST
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First paperback edition originally published in 1999 by Onyx, an imprint of Dutton NAL, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Onyx.
THOSE WHO TRESPASS. Copyright © 1998 by Bill O’Reilly. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, contact: Onyx, Penguin Putnam, Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Visit our website at www.broadwaybooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Reilly, Bill.
Those who trespass : a novel of murder and television /
Bill O’Reilly.—1st Broadway Books trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
1. Police—New York (State)—New York—Fiction.
2. Television broadcasting of news—Fiction.
3. Television journalists—Fiction.
4. Women journalists—Fiction.
5. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 6. Revenge—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3565.R3865T47 2004
813'.54—dc22 2003057866
eISBN 0-7679-1809-6
v1.0
* * *
eBook Info
Title:Those Who Trespass
Creator:Bill O'Reilly
Publisher:Broadway Books
Format:OEB
Date:2004-01-23
Subject:Fiction
Identifier:ORei_0767918096
Language:US English
Rights:Copyright 1998
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Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder Page 32