No One Will Hear You

by Matt Clemens

  Harrow said, “We’ll get Jenny right on tracing it, after this meeting.”

  “Done deal,” Jenny said.

  With a nod toward the laptop, Harrow said, “Does anyone doubt we’ve witnessed the birth of a serial killer?”

  Pall, the profiling expert, said, “Not necessarily his debut. More a coming-out party.”

  “A serial killer we spawned,” Byrnes said, face as gray as clay.

  A rich baritone rumbled in like thunder.

  “There are those,” the attorney said, “who may think the network itself is behind this, to boost ratings and ad revenue.”

  “Ratings?” Anderson said. “Revenue? Why would anyone think that? You’ve already heard us say this is no fake.”

  Richards said, “How many shoulders would you have to tap, down on the street, before you found somebody who thinks the moon landings were staged? And somebody else who thinks the president was born in Kenya?”

  Harrow said, “All due respect, Mr. Richards, I don’t think our audience is that cynical. They know we’re sincere about what we do on Crime Seen.”

  “J.C.’s right,” Carmen said. “No significant number of viewers will think that we elaborately faked this video, much less set a serial killer loose to goose ratings.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a show created ‘killer’ ratings,” Richards said. “A Brazilian TV host, one Wallace Souza, was indicted for hiring hit men to provide him material to cover on his reality show.”

  “No,” Choi said, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” Richards said, calm as a funeral director.

  Chase, anger spiking her voice, said, “Are you suggesting we copied this Brazilian dipstick’s MO? What sort of absurd—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Ms. Chase,” Richards cut in. “I am here to advise Mr. Byrnes, and yourselves, of the legal ramifications of this unfortunate situation. And to provide you with some … call it, informed kibitzing.”

  Choi said to the attorney, “If we do come under fire, or suspicion, or whatever … are you going to represent us?”

  But Carmen answered for him, “No. His job is to protect UBC.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” Choi asked Richards.

  This time Pall answered for the attorney: “Yank our show off the air and sweep that video under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “No, they won’t do that,” Choi said, cockiness returning. “We make them too much money.”

  Carmen said, “We could also cost them a lot of money.”

  “I agree,” Pall said. “We have apparently inspired one of our viewers to ‘try out’ to be our next ‘guest’ villain. Even if legal payback proves impractical for the parents of the victim, the attacks on us and UBC from the media would be as merciless as what that maniac did to that poor girl.”

  They all pondered that.

  Chase sighed, shook her head. “J.C.—what do you think? Should this tape, with the killer’s request for attention, be buried?”

  Harrow didn’t hesitate: “No.”

  “You’d give in to him?” Jenny said, the disappointment in her voice palpable.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Anderson, similarly disappointed, asked, “You’d air that foul thing?”

  “I didn’t say that either.” Harrow moved up alongside the seated Byrnes. “We don’t air it … but neither do we bury it. We can’t shrug it off and pretend we thought it was a hoax.”

  “What’s left?” Carmen asked.

  Chase said, “Call the police, like good citizens.”

  Harrow nodded. “We’re just TV performers, after all. This is a matter for the authorities.”

  Richards said, “I speak for network legal when I say I agree with you, J.C.—I must insist upon you calling the police. And do not air this video.”

  Pall said, “Stop and consider, Mr. Richards—everyone. I understand that if we were to give in, and air this thing, a maniac owns us. But remember, he does not ask us to keep the police out—in fact, he wants to go public … TV public.”

  “Agreed,” Harrow said.

  Pall went on: “But if we don’t air the video—if we fail to give him what he wants—we risk two women dying at this madmen’s hands next week.”

  Looking sick, Byrnes said, “If word gets out that two women died because we didn’t air a video … then what becomes of Crime Seen, and UBC?”

  “You might add the two women to that list,” Carmen said sharply.

  Good for you, Chase thought.

  Then Chase said, “J.C., the cops are understaffed and overworked right now. Even if they decide Don Juan presents a genuine threat, there isn’t a hell of a lot they can do about it.”

  Pall said, “I hear the crime lab is backed way the hell up.”

  “Meanwhile,” Choi said, “we sit on our hands? Really?”

  Clearly Harrow had been mulling all this.

  He said, “Crime Seen has the best team of forensic scientists anywhere, and thanks to Dennis here, some of the most cutting-edge lab equipment on the planet. Maybe we could … lend a hand.”

  Byrnes’s eyes flashed. “Well … if you do … it’s as part of the show. Cameras come along.”

  Harrow shrugged. “You and UBC are paying the freight, aren’t you? Sure, the cameras come along.”

  Anderson was shaking that surfer-boy blond head of his, saying, “The LAPD is not about to let us in on this investigation.”

  Chase said, “Why, were we planning on asking permission?”

  That got some smiles, but Anderson pressed: “Those small-town sheriff and police departments we ran into on the Kansas case, they were undermanned. They were happy for the help, and glad to rub shoulders with TV personalities.”

  Choi said, “Is that what we are?”

  Chase said, “You wish.”

  But Anderson kept going: “LAPD are pros among pros, they’re good, and they live in, you know … Tinsel Town. They are not impressed by faces a heck of a lot more famous than ours. We step on the toes of the LAPD and there will be hell to pay.”

  At least he said “hell,” Chase thought, not “heck.”

  Jenny said, “So we go sub rosa.”

  Everybody looked at her, surprised.

  “Hey,” she said, with a shrug and a girlish smile. “You know what the bad guys say? It only counts when they catch you.”

  Smiles blossomed on the Killer TV faces, even the skeptical Anderson’s; but Byrnes and the attorney remained somber.

  The latter looked at his expensive watch, cleared his throat for effect, then said, “I, uh, just remembered I have another meeting. Anything you’ve said so far is strictly hypothetical, understood? Why don’t you people discuss the situation, while Dennis and I step out of the office.”

  “No,” Byrnes snapped, “I want to hear this.”

  “Actually,” Richards said, with a meaningful glance, “you don’t.”

  Not used to being ordered around, the executive seemed about to protest when Richards held up two fingers, as if he were making the peace sign.

  In his deepest, richest baritone, the attorney said, “Two words, Dennis—plausible deniability.”

  Byrnes rose. “Funny thing is, I have an appointment, too.”

  They left.

  “Alone at last,” Choi said.

  Taking the president’s desk chair, Harrow said, “Look, if the cops find out we’re working on this, the shit will be about chin high. Anybody got a problem with that? You might not get a job in real law enforcement again.”

  Nobody said a word.

  “Okay. Jenny, start tracing the sender of that foul thing. You can do that?”

  “Depends on how smart he is,” Jenny said.

  “We’ll assume extremely. Carmen, you start working on identifying the victim. Get a good screen capture of her face and discreetly distribute it. Rest of you, go through this video frame by damn frame. We need something and we’ve only got five days till air. After that, we’re go
ing to have him on the prowl again.”

  Chase asked, “What about the LAPD?”

  “We cooperate. We do whatever they ask, short of staying out of the investigation. We don’t advertise that we’re conducting, as Jenny put it, our own sub rosa inquiry.”

  “With cameras on us,” Chase said.

  “Yes. Dennis gets his due. And what we’re up to eventually will come out—within five days, likely.” Harrow sent his eyes from face to face. “Everything comes to me first, then straight to the LAPD.”

  Carmen said, “We’ll need an LAPD officer to be our liaison. I can look into that.”

  “Do it.” Harrow rose, and so did everybody else.

  Jenny collected the laptop from the desk.

  Quietly, Harrow said to her, “I don’t want this video sent around by e-mail. Strictly DVD copies to our key team members.”

  “Sure. I’ll get on that right now.”

  “Then how soon do I call the police?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  He nodded.

  Then to the team: “Let’s go, people. Clock is running and, the opinion of the Rolling Stones notwithstanding, time is definitely not on our side.”

  Each team member had his or her own office—glorified closets, admittedly, but home when they weren’t on the road. The furniture was strictly functional, gray metal office gear, although some had brought in their own stuff, to lend the cubicles a personal touch.

  Chase’s furniture was strictly what UBC had provided. Her only homey touches were a framed desk picture of Patty, her life partner who’d succumbed to cervical cancer two years ago now, and another of current squeeze, Nancy Hughes.

  Also a philodendron that she had brought from Waco. The plant hadn’t taken over the office yet, but the threat was there. Feed me. …

  Choi somehow finagled a slightly larger space and seemed to have moved in, lugging in a dilapidated couch Chase refused to touch, let alone sit on (she had the feeling it had been lifted from a particularly nasty crime scene).

  Before long, Jenny brought around a DVD for her, and Chase settled in with a bottle of vending-machine iced tea and prepared for a terrible afternoon at the movies.

  She watched the disturbing images straight through, once. She had no doubt she was watching a genuine snuff film—a real murder captured on film. Or anyway, video.

  Second time through, she turned her head away from the screen, not out of disgust (though she had plenty), but to take in only the sound, searching for any background noise that might provide a clue.

  Chase was well aware that Jenny and her computer could do this better than such old-school methods, but she listened hard anyway. And anyway there was still plenty her human brain could process that an electronic one couldn’t. She got nothing out of it, though. She repeated the process and again zippo.

  Turning the sound down this time, she started working through the video a frame at a time.

  The video was high-def. At least that small detail told her something—this killer either had some money or was a thief. Home-video high-def camcorders had come down in price, but were not cheap.

  No sign that the woman, during the sex act, sensed anything wrong until the last second. Nor any indication the victim knew she was being recorded.

  Still, this was the acting town, so who could say? The camera stayed in a fixed position, hidden, possibly behind two-way glass.

  Next time through, Chase studied the room itself. Walls were dark, furniture limited to the brass bed and a barely visible nightstand, covered with some sort of filmy fabric, atop which sat what appeared to be a simple glass vase filled with roses.

  She focused on the flowers. Aside from that philodendron, she knew squat about plants. Roses came in colors and there were scads of varieties, but that was the extent of her expertise.

  Bed against a wall. Not a hotel room—Don Juan had a place of his own, she figured. She looked for shadows that might give away the position of a window or the sun or any damn thing …

  … but there was nothing.

  This bastard would kill again if they didn’t stop him; he would accelerate, as promised, if they didn’t get him before he knew Harrow had not acceded to his demands.

  There had to be something in this video, but Chase was damned if she could find it. Sitting back and sighing and shaking her head, she hoped the rest of the team was having better luck.

  Then she started again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Amari felt something twist inside her as she watched this morning’s corpse return to life. Not quite vibrant life, because the blonde seemed druggy to Amari. Still, the woman appeared to be enjoying the sex she shared with her barely glimpsed lover.

  She made a mental note to make a priority of checking the victim’s tox screen. She already suspected that Don Juan had dosed his victim with flunitrazepam, better known by the trade name Rohypnol, more commonly called roofies.

  When the video ended, Harrow closed the lid of the laptop with a somber finality.

  Polk sat with a wide-eyed, bloodless expression, still trying to process what he’d just seen.

  They were in Harrow’s office at UBC. Harrow was behind his desk, and network president Dennis Byrnes and attorney, Lucian Richards, Jr., bookended Amari and Polk, in visitor’s chairs.

  Amari said to Harrow, “When exactly did you receive this, Mr. Harrow?”

  “One of our writer-producers, Carmen Garcia, showed it to me early this afternoon She interrupted a meeting I was having with Dennis.”

  Amari nodded. “But you didn’t call the police until when?”

  “I’m sure you know when the call came in.”

  Byrnes said, “We wanted to get an educated opinion on what this thing is, before calling you.”

  “Well, it’s somebody cutting a woman’s throat, Mr. Byrnes, and then stabbing her repeatedly.”

  “Lieutenant Amari, we get a lot of prank and crank tips at Crime Seen. We needed to try to ascertain if this was genuine or staged, before possibly wasting your time.”

  “Just what scientific standards did you use to deduce whether or not this is footage of a real murder?”

  Harrow said, “You probably know we have a top forensics team, culled from law enforcement all around the country. We got their read on it. Subjective but informed.”

  The lawyer, Richards, said, “Mr. Byrnes also called me in for an opinion. I’m no forensics expert, but if this is genuinely someone committing murder to try to blackmail his way onto one of the network’s shows, getting a legal read on the situation was prudent.”

  Amari’s half smile joined an arched eyebrow. “Obstructing justice is prudent in your view, Counselor?”

  “Obstruction of justice was hardly our intention. We called you, and you’re sitting here now, and we’re cooperating. Why are we splitting hairs over a few minutes?”

  “Your intention here is pretty clear, Counselor. Mr. Byrnes was trying to figure a way not to get burned by this thing … and you made him call us.”

  “Actually,” Byrnes said, raising a forefinger in a point of clarification manner, “I didn’t make the call….”

  She frowned at the exec.

  Harrow leaned nearer her. “I did.”

  “Why you?” Amari asked.

  “Because I’m at the top of the Crime Seen food chain.”

  “Not over the network president, you aren’t. What made any of you decide to call at all? You could’ve buried this thing. Deleted it, and if somehow you got called on it, dismissed your actions by saying you thought it was a hoax.”

  He nodded toward the laptop. “I think a young woman is dead, and somewhere a family is wondering why they haven’t heard from their little girl.”

  Amari said nothing, just cast a glance toward Polk, who was watching the exchange intently, but staying out of it.

  Harrow caught the look.

  “You already knew,” he said.

  Byrnes said, “Already knew what?”

 
Both Amari and Harrow ignored that.

  “I already knew,” she admitted with a nod.

  Byrnes insisted: “Knew what?“

  The lawyer answered in his sonorous rumble: “That the woman was dead.”

  Harrow said, “You found her. Where?”

  Amari’s smile was gentle despite the tension. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”

  Harrow smiled back. “Sometimes I forget I’m the media now. I was a cop for a long, long time.”

  “I could tell you off the record.”

  Polk said, “Lieutenant, I don’t think—”

  She raised a hand to silence her partner.

  “Off the record,” Harrow said quietly. “Have you identified her?”

  Amari gave him the broad outline—the body at the Hollywood sign, the roses, the note, the booby-trapped control box.

  “I appreciate this,” Harrow said.

  “Don’t be too grateful. That’s no more than’ll be on the LAPD press release. You’re just getting it a few hours early.” She nodded toward the laptop. “Obviously we need that video.”

  He shrugged. “My computer expert, Jenny Blake, will arrange to give your techs access to everything you’ll need. In the meantime, we can give you a DVD.”

  “Appreciate that. And we’ll want to talk to Ms. Garcia. But there’s one more thing. Something you won’t like, Mr. Harrow.”

  “Try me.”

  “You and your people—your so-called Killer TV forensics superstars? You need to stay away from this investigation.”

  Byrnes sat exclamation-mark straight. “Lieutenant, Crime Seen is, in its way, a news show. We reserve our constitutional right to cover a news story … and this is most definitely a news story.”

  Amari glared at the exec. “First of all, Crime Seen is not a news show. It’s reality TV. Don’t piss in my ear, Mr. Byrnes, because I know rain when I hear it.”

  Byrnes shifted in his chair.

  “Second, if you interfere with this investigation in any way, you will soon learn how serious a charge obstruction of justice can be. And all of you connected to that video, and the decision on how and when to bring the LAPD into it, will quickly find out just how much fun it is cooling your heels as material witnesses in lockup.”