Live to Air

by Jeffrey L Diamond

  “That’s preposterous.”

  Sampson cut her off. “Ms. McGregor, why did you hide the videotape? Why did you conceal the parts of the confession where Pavel Feodor denies killing Cynthia Jameson?”

  “I—I—I—,” she paused, unable to speak, beads of sweat dripping down her forehead, as Sampson calmly pointed to a monitor the crew had set up on a table between the two of them.

  “Ms. McGregor, one of my producers, Mindy Herman—I think you know her—has loaded the videotape into this playback machine. The portion I’m going to show you corresponds to the missing page 71. I want you to watch it with me and then tell me what happens when your two detectives, Edward Jenkins and Randy Tempko, can’t get Mr. Feodor to admit to killing Cynthia Jameson. This will just take a moment.” He hit enter and rolled the video.

  McGregor peered into the monitor and watched in stunned silence as Randy Tempko stood up and screamed at Feodor, “I don’t believe you. You’re guilty and a fucking liar, and I’m going to beat the truth out of you.” Then Tempko shoved Feodor to the floor, punched him in the stomach, and viciously kicked him, opening the bullet wound in his leg. As Jenkins tried to pull him off, shouting over and over for somebody to turn off the camera, blood splattered the floor and smeared the walls.

  Sampson stared at the assistant district attorney. “Do you care to comment on what we just saw, Ms. McGregor?”

  She glared back at the anchorman—at a loss for words.

  “You have nothing to say, Ms. McGregor? You must have some comment?”

  She continued to sit quietly, now looking at the monitor.

  Sampson calmly pushed on. “Your detectives, Ms. McGregor, beat Pavel Feodor into a bloody mess, all captured right there on that videotape. Is that why you decided to hide it from the jury?”

  “No, no, no! That’s not it at all!”

  “Is it because you wanted to get a conviction at any cost?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So why did you doctor the tape and make it seem like he was confessing? It’s easy to do. We duplicated the clip you showed the jury in one of our edit rooms. The interrogation was recorded with an old camera. The video is fuzzy, so you can’t see Mr. Feodor’s mouth moving, but you can certainly see the police beating him. Why didn’t you show that to the jury, Ms. McGregor?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sure you’ve got it all wrong, Mr. Sampson.”

  Ethan glanced at Mindy, stunned the ADA was stonewalling as the cameras captured her in one lie after another—her case and career going down in flames.

  “Were you withholding evidence to frame Pavel Feodor?” Sampson said, drilling away.

  “No! No! I would never do that.”

  “But I think you did, Ms. McGregor. Your entire case is built on lies, and I don’t understand why.” He pulled two more documents out of his folder—Officer Colin Haggerty’s police report and the real autopsy report. He handed them to the ADA. “Recognize these? They, too, are signed by you and stamped by your office in the upper right-hand corner—like all the other documents in the court record.”

  Ethan tapped Herb on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Zoom in real tight on her face. She’s about to unravel on camera.”

  “I see the stamp,” she said stammering. “It’s from my office, but I don’t know how it got there.” She wiped her brow and licked her lips.

  “And what do these two documents say about the murder, Ms. McGregor?”

  She looked from the documents to Sampson then back to the documents, her eyes blinking uncontrollably.

  “I’ll tell you what they say,” Sampson said. “They say there was no blood on Cynthia Jameson’s body. That she was brutally beaten that night. And that she was dead long before she was shot. So Pavel Feodor couldn’t possibly have killed her. Somebody else murdered Cynthia Jameson.” Sampson paused to let his line of reasoning sink in. “So let me ask you one more time. Why did you frame Pavel Feodor? He’s innocent, isn’t he?”

  That was it. The ADA couldn’t take any more. She exploded in a fit of rage, screaming into the camera. “You’re twisting the facts, Mr. Sampson. I don’t like your questions. And I don’t like you. I have nothing more to say!”

  “But we’re not finished yet,” Ethan said, removing his headset as she stood and tore off her microphone. “Keep going, Peter. Ask your next question.”

  “Ms. McGregor, don’t leave,” Sampson said sternly as chaos broke out on the set. “I wanna know why you hid Officer Haggerty’s police report. Why you hid the real autopsy report? Why you changed the evidence and rigged the trial?”

  “No more questions!” she said, still screaming.

  Ethan rushed onto the set, hoping to placate the ADA, hoping to get her to sit down, but McGregor kept moving, more furious than ever.

  “And what about Feodor’s connection to the Russian Mob?” the anchorman said, not giving an inch. “Wasn’t he part of the Kolkov crime syndicate? The cops knew—and our sources at the DEA say you knew about it too—that they told you in a meeting that the Russians were behind the heroin deal the night Cynthia Jameson was murdered. Why didn’t you pursue that lead? Why did you hide it from the jury?”

  “No comment! No comment,” McGregor said as she stumbled over a cable and knocked over a light stand.

  “What other games did you play, Ms. McGregor?” Sampson shouted, standing and joining Ethan who was motioning to his cameramen to keep rolling. “Did you conspire with Detective Jenkins? Did you tell him to alter the evidence? And what about Frankie O’Malley? Were you working with him? We have undercover footage tying him to the Russians. Were you working with the Mob? Did you know they hired a prison guard named Jimmy Bento to kill Pavel? Or was somebody else pulling the strings? Who are you protecting, Ms. McGregor?”

  “No comment! No comment! No comment,” she shrieked, finally making her escape, slamming the door behind her as she stormed out of the law library, followed by Nelson Brown and her team of shell-shocked assistants.

  Ethan was almost too stunned to react, then turned to his crew. “Stop rolling and not a word about what just happened until we’re out of the building. I don’t want to be accused of coming in here with an agenda and ambushing the ADA. If that gets back to Paul, it’ll haunt us for the rest of the production. Let’s wrap and get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”

  As the crew began breaking down the set, Sampson calmly put his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Nice job, Ethan. Your research was flawless. Your questions superb. We caught the ADA in one lie after another.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t show her the pictures,” he said, disappointed. “And we didn’t ask her what she was doing with the deputy mayor last night.”

  “We’ll show them to Jameson and see how he reacts,” Sampson said, smiling. “I’m gonna head back to my apartment and put on a clean suit. Gotta look my best for the next interview. Call me on my cell if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the deputy mayor’s at three o’clock sharp.”

  “No you won’t,” Mindy said as she bounced onto the set. “I just got a call from David. The deputy mayor canceled.”

  “What do you mean?” Ethan said, crestfallen. “He can’t pull out now. What happened, Mindy?”

  “He thinks we’re on a witch hunt, that we’re doing a smear job, and he doesn’t want any part of it.”

  “Do you think he knows about the pictures?”

  “How’s that possible?” Mindy said. “Besides, his press secretary didn’t mention anything about the pictures when she called David.”

  “Can we get him to reconsider?” Ethan said.

  “Probably not. Rosenberg said his decision is final. The deputy mayor’s not gonna change his mind, Ethan.”

  “So what do we do now?” Sampson said questioningly.

  “We do the hour without him,” Ethan said, already rethinking the special. “You just did a blockbuster interview with Nancy McGregor. You already have most of the oth
er principal characters on camera. And your exclusive with Pavel Feodor is the kind of television everybody and his brother wants to see. We don’t need Jameson or his wife. Give me a couple of hours to add the ADA to the sound bite structure, then we’ll start writing the script. I’ll make it work.”

  CHAPTER 35

  ETHAN WAS SITTING IN JOEL’S editing room holding a cup of cold coffee, flipping through his script. He’d just finished screening the first act with Peter and Mindy and was worrying about the interview with Cynthia’s three friends. Susan Knoxville, Annabel Taylor, and Sebastian Robbins were emotional and articulate and described in vivid detail all-night study marathons, fraternity parties, and clubbing at the trendiest nightspots, but none of them seemed to know anything about Cynthia’s parents or her two younger siblings or her privileged upbringing as an heiress to one of the richest and most powerful dynasties in the city. The images of Cynthia smiling in the home movies and family photos certainly helped—bringing her to life on the screen—but Ethan knew he was missing something, the stories behind the pictures, the memories only a mother and father could share.

  But that was never going to happen.

  The deputy mayor and his wife refused to budge.

  They wouldn’t sit down for an interview.

  No matter how many times he called.

  Frustrated, he turned to Peter. “What do you think?”

  “The act is flat,” Peter said dispassionately. “The whole special is flat. And if the deputy mayor decides to pull the images, then we’re really in trouble.”

  “Well, so far we still have permission to use them,” Ethan said hopefully. “So we don’t have to worry about that—not yet. Is there anything better in your interview with Cynthia’s friends?”

  “Nope. That’s the best of it,” Sampson said disappointedly. “It was almost as if they were coached not to say anything about Cynthia’s private life.” Sampson chewed on the end of a pencil, reflectively. “Maybe we should describe the pictures with a little more oomph in my narrations. Maybe if you find out a little more about what she’s doing, we can compensate for not having the deputy mayor or his wife on camera. That’s a failure on your part, Ethan. A big failure.”

  Ethan ignored the personal dig and turned to Mindy. “What do you think? Any rabbits in your hat? Maybe a high school friend? A cousin? An aunt or uncle who can talk to us about Cynthia? Peter’s right. We need somebody to bring the special to life. Paul’s gonna want more details about her relationship with her family.”

  “I’ve reached out to my contacts, and so has David,” Mindy said contemplatively. “Nobody’s willing to tell us anything beyond what we already know. We’re at a dead end, Ethan. A complete dead end.”

  “So what are we gonna do?” Ethan said, craving a cigarette.

  “Maybe we should just tell Paul we can’t give him the hour,” Peter said. “Maybe we should shoot for two or three acts and kill the idea of a special.”

  “It’s a little late in the game for that,” Ethan said soberly. “The network’s been promoting us around the clock. We’ve got to deliver the full hour.” Then his iPhone pinged and an email landed in his mailbox from David. Ignoring Sampson, who was still ranting to himself, he opened the message:

  Hey, Ethan. I have news–some good and some bad. First the bad news. I’ve run out of options on my search for Leonard Toakling and Colin Haggerty. The coroner is nowhere to be found, and the cop was really pissed he’d talked to you in the first place. He told me in no uncertain terms to leave him alone. So it’s a no-go with those guys for interviews. Now the good news. I found Jacob Lutz and am sitting in his living room. Can you get your ass over here right away? He lives at 2900 Broadway in Morningside Heights. He says he’ll do an on-camera interview, but only with you. So I brought a camcorder and a tripod. I’ll be ready as soon as you get here. Hurry before he changes his mind.

  Ethan typed a quick response, then grabbed his briefcase. “That was David. No interviews with Toakling or Haggerty. We’ll use the documents—the autopsy and crime report—and say we couldn’t get them to go on camera. Will you add that to the script, Peter?”

  “Of course. Right away. But where are you going?”

  “David just found Jacob Lutz,” he said hurriedly. “I’m sure he has insights about Cynthia and her family that’ll help us flesh out Act I and the rest of the special. I’m headed out to interview him.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Mindy said.

  “No. We need to split up the workload if we wanna make the deadline. You work with the editors while Peter does the rewrites. Then we’ll all regroup when I get back.”

  • • • • •

  A half hour later, Ethan stood at the front door of Jacob Lutz’s apartment. Finding Cynthia’s boyfriend had been a top priority—not only because he knew about her family—but because he was the last person to see her alive, and Ethan wanted to know what she was doing all alone in the Meatpacking District in the wee hours of the morning on the night she was murdered.

  He rang the doorbell, and Lutz invited him in.

  A small man, no more than five foot six and a hundred and fifty pounds, Jacob was handsome with neatly combed black hair and bright hazel eyes that shined like the stars. He was wearing tailored gray slacks, an open-collared blue oxford shirt, and brand-new Italian loafers. “Mr. Benson,” he said, thrusting out his hand.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Ethan said cordially. “I’m glad we finally found you.”

  Lutz’s lips curled in a forced smile. “Sorry about that. I’ve been out of the country and just found out you’re doing a story about Cynthia.” He motioned for Ethan to follow and led him into a large, well-appointed living room. David was standing at a tripod adjusting the electronics on a Panasonic DV cam.

  “Hey, Ethan. We’re almost ready to go,” he said, pointing to the camera. “It’s only a one-chip, but it’s the best I could do on short notice. I had to grab whatever was available before I came over to meet Jacob.”

  “That’ll do just fine,” Ethan said as he looked around the room. Jacob was certainly wealthy—super wealthy, in fact—just as the deputy mayor had told him when they met. Original artwork hung on the walls, oriental rugs covered the floors, Venetian lamps sat on the tables, and expensive designer furniture was perfectly placed to take advantage of the natural light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. A trust fund baby, Ethan thought. No wonder Jameson was impressed. He was the perfect match for his daughter.

  “Shall we sit and chat a few minutes before we do the interview?” Lutz said uneasily. “There are a couple of things I need to tell you.” He pointed to a couch with a beautiful view of the Columbia University campus. “I was in love with Cynthia. Madly in love with her. She was bright, outgoing, and absolutely beautiful. Everything a guy could ever want in a woman.” He sighed wearily. “But there was something else about her that I didn’t see at first. Something sad, fragile, almost imperceptible, that took me a long time to figure out.” He paused and looked off out the window.

  Ethan waited a second, then said softly, “Where did you meet Cynthia, Jacob?”

  Lutz took a deep breath. “In constitutional law. She was studying to become a lawyer and so was I, but I’m sure her father must’ve told you just how proud he was of his little girl,” he said sarcastically.

  Ethan was taken aback by the harsh tone in his voice. “As a matter of fact, he told me his daughter was planning to follow in his footsteps and enter public service.”

  “That’s what he tells everybody,” Lutz said bitterly. “And I’m sure he seemed quite sincere. But I bet he won’t talk about his daughter on camera.” He raised an eyebrow. “Am I right?”

  Ethan stared at the young man cryptically. “How’d you know that?”

  “Because the deputy mayor never talks to anybody about Cynthia in front of cameras,” Lutz said, grabbing a cigarette from a silver case. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead,” Ethan sa
id, lighting his own Marlboro. “Why won’t he consent to an on-camera interview, Jacob?”

  Lutz laughed nervously. “Because he worries he might slip up and that some reporter might learn the truth.”

  “What truth?” Ethan said, puzzled.

  Jacob’s face turned harsh. “That they hated each other.”

  “What do you mean they hated each other? I’ve never heard anybody say that.”

  “Of course not,” Jacob said, laughing. “Bernard Jameson is a son of a bitch, a control freak, and very good at hiding their secret. I know because I saw them fighting many times.” He took a long pull on his cigarette. “He berated her. Humiliated her. And threatened—at least once that I can remember—to cut off her money if she ever went public.”

  Ethan shot David a quick glance. “I don’t understand, Jacob,” he said cautiously. “If she ever went public with what?”

  “That he physically abused her. How’s that for a shocker? The big-time politician is really a big-time child beater.” He took a long pull and snuffed out his cigarette. “In fact, she told him shortly before she was murdered—and I was there, watching as the confrontation unfolded—that she was going to tell the whole world what he did to her.”

  “Did Cynthia’s mother know about this?”

  “She knew, but she looked the other way,” Jacob said, his shoulders sagging. “Tragic, isn’t it? Cynthia was alone with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide from her father.”

  “Maybe we should roll the camera?” David said, interrupting a long pause. “Then you won’t have to go through this twice, Jacob. Would that be easier for you?”

  Lutz didn’t respond. He just lit another cigarette, tormented.

  “Let’s hold off a moment, David,” Ethan said, leaning over and placing his hand on Lutz’s shoulder. “I know this is difficult, but I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with Cynthia’s murder.”