The Cutaway

by Christina Kovac

  So began my first day as news director.

  ————

  I slipped in through the rear door by the loading dock and came up the back stairs rather than the elevator, hoping to avoid my staff, at least until I’d dried out and put myself together for questions I didn’t feel like answering yet. That was my hope, anyway. But I came around the corner to find Heather Buchanan, Mellay’s young protégée, waiting outside my office. She was slouching on the floor with her back to the wall, as if she’d been there for some time.

  She wore a buttoned cardigan, no makeup, and her glorious blond hair was pulled back tight. The black frames of her glasses were thick. I was impressed. She looked less the beauty queen and more the nerdy kid, and it was a smart way to approach me.

  She asked for a letter of recommendation. “Nick Mellay said you might give me one if I promised to leave without a fuss.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Now that Nick is gone,” she said, showing nerves now. “I know you don’t like me.”

  “Let’s be honest. I disliked your method of using Mellay. It’s harmful to you and totally unnecessary, although it does suggest you have no idea how naturally talented you are.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “What I also don’t like?” I went on. “Riding the coattail of some lame news director who wants to turn you into eye candy with a short shelf life. It’s a terrible future for anyone, and ridiculous for someone with your talent. What you need is a mentor, someone who will teach you to gather news, build sources, and learn how to balance stories fairly and think objectively. You have to learn to report before you can become a good anchor, but those are all things Isaiah or I could teach you.”

  “Y-you’d teach me?” she stammered.

  “Honestly, Isaiah’s more patient and easygoing. With me, there are no shortcuts, and I don’t give a damn how pretty you are. All I care about is competence, and frankly, that’s all you should care about, too. If you’re good at what you do, no one can steal it from you, and you’ll carry your skill wherever you go. Being good at what you do is the closest thing to freedom a woman can find.”

  I put the key into the lock and opened the door. “Let me know what you decide,” I said, dismissing her.

  ————

  It was that time of transition, when one story file closes and another begins. I paused over Evelyn’s file, not yet ready to let her go. Instead, I eased back in my chair and closed my eyes and let myself see her as I had in the beginning—Evelyn walking on that same dark street I frequented, her coat swirling about her, her hair as wild and tangled as her feelings, searching for the help she’d never find . . .

  She’d been so close. If only she could have made it across the bridge.

  Why had that mattered so much to me? I still couldn’t say.

  Or maybe I was asking the wrong question again. Maybe it wasn’t who she was or what she meant. Maybe it was what I’d wished to be for her and for all the lost women who are flung into a world vaguely hostile to them, women harassed and assaulted and sometimes killed for their female bodies, a violence that never ended. I’d protect them all, if I could, even though I hadn’t been able to save Evelyn. She was dead before I knew her name.

  Evelyn Carney made me remember. Not just the work I wanted to do, but also how good the work could be when it was a power that helped, not hurt. Maybe she even reminded me how good I could be.

  That was what I never dared say: I wanted to do good work in the world. That sounds pretty naÏve, I guess, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted it so badly.

  My office door creaked open, and Isaiah peeked in. He gave me a soft smile, gazing over the top of his glasses. “Hey, boss,” he said. “You’re late for your own meeting. Not an auspicious start.”

  I shot up from the desk, shrugged on my jacket, and stepped into my wet shoes. We cut through the newsroom to the conference room with its glass walls through which we could see the full staff assembled. Every seat was taken except ours. The rest were standing. There was a palpable energy.

  When Isaiah reached for the door, I stopped him. What the hell, I thought. I couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t happen.

  “Why did you give my phone to Paige Linden?” I said quietly. “Please don’t deny it. She knew about my father, which she could have only gotten from you, since I only entrusted you. Also, you returned my phone to me.”

  He put his head down. He didn’t say anything.

  I felt my face getting hot. “You gave her my phone, and she put a spy app on it.”

  He went around the corner, away from the glass walls and prying eyes of the staff. I dogged his heels across the newsroom and into the stairwell, where he paced on the landing.

  “I didn’t realize how dangerous she was,” he said. “My first hint of any problems was your request for Paige’s background check. This, by the way, was after you dashed out to meet her, which I only learned when I saw your attack reported on our news. I found out about the bugged phone in the same report.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “So this is my fault?”

  “You stopped talking to me.” His outrage was striking, bouncing off the hard surfaces of the stairwell, the concrete landing and metal steps, the cinder blocks painted an underwater green. “While you were visiting your father, she called the station looking for you. Like any other call, I asked if I should track you down, if she needed you urgently. She said not to bother you during a family emergency. She also told me you had the story wrong. That Ledger was using you and our shows to destroy an innocent person with whom he had a political vendetta, and that our show’s reputation would surely suffer. She said Ledger tricked you, which wasn’t surprising. You’d fallen for his tricks in the past.”

  “She lied to you,” I said. “That’s what she does.”

  “So I watched you when you came back. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and you know what? You were acting just as she described, running yourself crazy, obsessing over this woman, and Ledger was using you. All of this was observably true. What’s more? You were hiding things. There was a time we used to talk about everything, and during the Evelyn Carney story, you just stopped. You cut me out of the loop.”

  His words were hurtful—and true—but his mouth trembled. That worried me. His mouth showed weakness, not anger at all, and he still hadn’t given me a straight answer about the phone.

  “How could you give Paige Linden my phone?”

  “The night you took Ledger to the correspondents dinner, you left your phone in your office, so I took it. I did that. You wouldn’t come clean about Ledger, so I looked through your history. It was over drinks at Chads.”

  “Paige Linden was with you?”

  “I was so angry with you,” he said. “Remember that day up in archives? I told you how bad things were. You knew Mellay was making cuts, but did you even ask what kind? He told me there was room for only one of us—you or me.”

  “Let me guess. Paige helped you look for something incriminating on my phone, so Mellay could pick you?”

  “So I could confront you,” he said. “So I could make you stop putting the show in jeopardy—or else.”

  “That Evelyn Carney story saved us.”

  “How could I have known it would turn out that way? I trusted Paige because you’d trusted her. You’d done the credibility checks. She was your source. She knew Ledger’s private numbers and helped me go through the phone.”

  He put his head down again and ran his palm across his scalp, his problem-solving gesture, although what there was to solve, I had no idea. It was a fait accompli.

  “When I got our drinks at the bar, I left the phone on the table,” he said. “It was out of sight only a couple of minutes. I had no idea what she’d done. I’m so sorry.”

  His words echoed in the stairwell. I’m sorry. So sorry.

  I rubbed that spot over my heart where my press passes hung. “I didn’t keep my promise to you. You’re right. Mellay was coming after you, a
nd I didn’t protect you.”

  When he looked up at me, his face was full of suffering. “I’m sixty years old,” he said. “I have no family. I have nothing except this one employer I’ve worked for my entire career. Who will hire me after this? Where do I go? Do you know what I have to look forward to? Do you?”

  Suddenly I hated the business within the business, the climbing and deals and scheming for basic survival. Someone like Isaiah should’ve been beyond all this. In a world that made sense, he’d be coasting until he chose to let go. For his years of dedication to the news, he deserved at least that.

  And you had to look at the totality of a person’s life, didn’t you? Through the years, he’d done so much for me. He’d protected and mentored me. He taught me everything I knew about the news. He treated me as his own, as a father might.

  We had to forgive our fathers, didn’t we? Because they were taught to appear strong even when they weren’t and fearless when riddled with our same fears, and sometimes that fear made them do terrible things. Sometimes our fathers betrayed us.

  “Stealing my phone is a fireable offense,” I told him.

  He lifted his chin for the punch. “So it is.”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  When I turned to leave, he grabbed my arm and held me firmly. “You’re not firing me?”

  “Ah, no. You’re not getting off that easy,” I said, and left him standing there, slack-jawed, alone in the stairwell. I crossed the newsroom and went into the conference room, and everyone stopped talking. So they’d already known what I was about to say. Of course, they did. They were newspeople, the best in the city.

  I took my seat at the head of the table. “First, I’d like to confirm the rumor.” I paused to take them all in, my gaze moving from each face, one to the next, my staff. They were all so dear to me. When I got to the chair left vacant for Ben, I glanced away.

  “The good news is that you know who I am, and that I don’t change, and everything will be as it always was for the most part . . .”

  My voice drifted off. The announcement about Ben would have to wait. Besides, any minute now he might come sauntering in, his Grizzlies cap flipped backward, grinning his good morning. He’d slouch in his chair and consider the stories being pitched before sharing his opinion about what to pursue. I had always relied on his judgment and his calm, his sense that this was a great game that we would surely win, or at least pull off by show time. He’d made it all so fun.

  I put my head down and pretended to flip through the newspapers on the table in front of me. Ben wasn’t running late. He was gone. I’d sent him away. Somehow, very stupidly, I had broken my own heart.

  “Virginia?” Nelson prodded.

  They were all staring at me, waiting for their marching orders. The door opened, and Isaiah came in. He took his seat to the right of me.

  “You’re here, good,” I said. “Tell us, Isaiah, what’s the news today?”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With profound gratitude to my extraordinary agent and friend, Dan Conaway. Thank you for finding me. This would not be this without you.

  Deepest thanks to my editor, the brilliant Dawn Davis, publisher of 37 INK, for her clarity of vision, steady hand, and terrific taste in shoes.

  Thanks also: to Judith Curr and the wonderful team at Atria Books: Lisa Keim, David Brown, Hillary Tisman, Albert Tang, and Woodrow Dismukes. And the folks at Writer’s House, especially Taylor Templeton for her fine reads.

  To my circle of talented writer friends for sharing their insights: particularly James Mathews, who was with me from the beginning of this journey and got me to Hildie Block, who helped me through that first really rough draft; and Jim Beane, Catherine Bell, Carmelinda Blagg, Dana Cann, and Kathleen Wheaton. Thank you all.

  Most of all, to my family, for their unflagging love and patience, especially Sharon Taylor, who gave me my first words; Kimberly Sneed, who never questioned my sanity; and Lauren Loebach and Jaclyn Loebach, both of whom inspire and give me hope for a better future.

  And of course, always and above all, to Joe Loebach.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Christina Kovac worked for seventeen years managing Washington, DC, newsrooms and producing crime and political stories in the District. Her career as a television journalist began with Fox 5’s Ten O’Clock News, and after that, the ABC affiliate in Washington. For the last nine years, she worked at NBC News, where she worked for Tim Russert and provided news coverage for Meet the Press, the Today show, Nightly News, and others.

  Christina Kovac lives with her family outside of Washington, DC.

  The Cutaway is her first novel.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Christina Kovac

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  First 37 INK/Atria Books hardcover edition March 2017

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  Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

  Jacket design by Laywan Kwan

  Front jacket photograph by Ilona Wellmann/Arcangel Images

  Back cover images © Shutterstock

  Author photograph by Tina Krohn

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028309

  Kovac, Christina, author. The cutaway / by Christina Kovac. New York : 37 INK, 2017.

  pages cm

  PS3611.O74942 C48 2017

  ISBN: 9781501141706 (trade pbk. : alk. paper) 9781501141690 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-5011-4169-0

  ISBN 978-1-5011-4171-3 (ebook)