Death On the Dlist (2010) (6 page)

THE
HARRY TODD
SET WAS ICY COLD. GOOD THING SHE’D WORN A
suit jacket and blouse to top her usual jeans and cowboy boots. Hailey noticed all the other women in the Green Room, totally decked out with intricate hairdos and over-the-top makeup and jewelry. Even though she knew she didn’t fit in to the scene, no way would she have slipped on the hideous gold lamé blouse Tony Russo tried to force on her again. Ridiculous. Plus, it smelled slightly of sweat. He’d obviously used it on other guests that didn’t meet his “eye” for TV ratings.

Whatever. She didn’t want to fit in with this phony bunch, although she was looking forward to meeting Todd; she’d watched him for years.

After sitting there for about fifteen minutes on a sofa before a live TV audience who talked among themselves, occasionally stirred up by one of the producers on a megaphone who was trying desperately to get them riled up, Todd made his entrance.

He was flanked by three staffers who were prepping him even as he walked up on the set.

“Hello, Hailey.”

Her first reaction was astonishment. His face seemed unreal and he was so tiny. His bleached-blond hair stood up in a stiff spike down the center of his head and the rest was combed thinly around it. A gold chain peeked from his open collar . . . He seemed so much more robust on camera. She’d heard rumors he stuck to some fad diet in the false belief that thinner was younger, but now she believed it.

Hailey stood and reached out to shake his hand. He conspicuously did not take her hand, so she casually let it drop by her side.

Hmm . . . Maybe he’s a germaphobe.
Poor thing. The staffers laid out several thick, yellow sheets of paper before him on his anchor table. Reading them upside down from across the table, Hailey realized they were the exact questions he was being spoon-fed to ask, word for word.

Within two minutes max, the intro music to the show started. The audience producer motioned everyone to start clapping.

Did that include her? She couldn’t think of a reason to clap, so she sat completely still, trying to maintain a half-smile as the lights maxed on to bright, right into her eyes, to the point she could hardly look up.

A deep baritone voice came out of nowhere overhead, reporting the headlines of Stockton’s murder and announcing the live show that night. The voice introduced Harry Todd first, then her.

Her chest tightened as she listened.

“. . . and after being the target of a serial killer herself, she goes on the offense and
murders the murderer! In cold blood! Murder weapon? A dentist’s drill!
Today, her secret past life
revealed
. . . Why she killed a killer! Because
she was a crime victim herself
. . . her fiancé gunned down! Now . . . she fights back against crime!”

Hailey was mortified.
She was no murderer
. . . She had defended herself, brought down a twisted killer, and nearly lost her life doing it. And why did they drag Will into it? Tony had promised this wouldn’t happen. In the bright lights, she could barely see past the anchor desk. The studio audience, the aisles leading to the exit, everything was completely obscured by the harsh lights . . . She couldn’t see her way out. After the quick intro, Harry Todd lobbed the first question.

“So, Hailey Dean, before you’ve been touted as a victims’ rights champion, but you killed a man in cold blood . . . What’s your response?”

Okay. That was it. Gloves off.

“Mr. Todd, I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts, but you, sir, are woefully misinformed. I did not kill a man in cold blood . . .”

“That’s what the reports say!” he broke in. Hailey ignored him and plowed ahead.

“I defended myself against a man twice my weight and a full foot taller than me, a man who murdered defenseless women in cold blood, strangling the life out of them, and ripping them open with a sharpened poultry lifter. Mr. Todd, maybe your producers should feed you the correct information, but that killer had his hands around my neck, and frankly, I’m glad he’s dead.”

Before she could go on, the studio audience burst into wild applause,
unprompted.

She tried to look out past the blinding lights shining into her face and into the audience to signal a silent thank-you, but she couldn’t see any of them. Instead, she made eye contact with Todd, who was obviously angry the audience was siding with
her
and not him.

What a pompous ass . . . Exercising immense self-control, Hailey did not give him a swift kick under the table . . . She could’ve always acted like it was an accident . . . These cowboy boots could really do some damage.

“So killing someone, stabbing them in the temple
with a drill
doesn’t bother you . . .
You’re happy about it?”

“I’m happy to be alive, Mr. Todd, if that’s what you’re asking. And yes, while I never, ever condone violence, I am, let me say, relieved that a man who stalked, tortured, and murdered innocent women is now gone off the face of this earth and if by my own hand . . . Then so be it. I’ll answer come Judgment Day, certainly not to you, Harry Todd.”

His long, thin face was turning blotches of beet red, and Hailey spotted sweat trickling down the left side of his forehead, cutting through the thick, tan pancake makeup they slathered onto his face, neck, and hands to give him a more human skin tone.

Todd looked at the prompter blankly, the deer-in-the-headlights look, desperately listening for somebody,
anybody
, to give him a cue as to how to respond. He even held his right hand up to the nearly invisible plastic earpiece fitted in his right ear, in the hopes his line producer in the control room would give him a sharp comeback. Hearing nothing to bail him out, he looked down at the questions laid out plainly in front of him.

“So, Hailey, tell me about your childhood.”

Hailey looked at him dumbfounded. Was he crazy? That question didn’t follow . . . It didn’t make any sense.
My childhood?

At first she looked around for just a split second or two. Was this a joke?

Then, looking directly at Todd from across the three feet or so of table that separated them, she saw he was still looking down, red-faced, at the yellow cards lying in front of him. He hated her, she could tell, but
why
?
Obviously, he was unprepared for the interview and was doing nothing more than reading canned questions some staffer had written for him, regardless of whether they were relevant to the conversation.

That was the first rule of questioning a witness on the stand, Hailey had learned in court. Be prepared with questions, but respond to the witness’s answers, or any jury would have just as bad a reaction as she was having right now.

It was nearly laughable, how hard she had prepared for today, memorizing facts, figures, and statistics about violent crime across the country. She knew he was a virulent death penalty opponent, and having sent over a dozen or so killers to meet their Maker, she assumed that was the source of his animosity toward her.

Even though all these thoughts registered in just seconds,
enough daydreaming.
She shook it off . . . She was under attack.

“It was very happy, Harry,” she replied sweetly. No need for vinegar when honey would do.

Todd obviously picked out another prepared question, re-shifting his weight in his chair. It was black leather and melted into the background of his set, making his appearance on camera even sharper under the bright lights and against the dark backdrop. Her own chair was beige. He leaned toward her to lob the next salvo.

Just as he inhaled for the question, music piped in through Todd’s earpiece and also into the studio audience, signaling they were headed to break in one or two seconds.

He was thwarted. No time for an insightful comeback. In what had become a contest of sorts, she’d obviously won round one. Rather than chat during the break, Todd was listening to direction in his ear and pretending she wasn’t there.

“No.” He said it staring into the camera. “No. That won’t work for me. What else do you have?” He paused. He still wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

“No. Not that either. Send Rachel down.”

Without looking at her, Todd got up unceremoniously and left the set.

Was this normal?

The audience was chatting among themselves. Even with the scorching lights bearing down on her, it was icy cold on the set. She felt a presence behind her, and turning, there was Tony, standing only inches from where she was seated, her back to him.

“Hi . . . How do you think it’s going? When are we going to get to the fight against violent crime?” She looked up into his face and noticed stubble growing under his pale chin, where he had obviously missed a spot shaving.

“Cover your mike.” He whispered it into her hair.

“What?” She whispered it back although she didn’t know why they were whispering.

“Hailey, listen,
cover your lapel mike with your hand!
”

She did as she was told and looked back at him.

“I don’t want the control room to hear me. As long as you’re miked, they can hear you all over the building if they want to . . . on the in-house channel. Listen, Harry’s got it out for you, I guess I should have told you before, but you know, he’s got a record.”

“What? A record?”

“Yeah. He’s a klepto. He can’t help himself. It doesn’t matter what it is, shaving cream at Duane Reade, hair gel’s his favorite steal, socks at Bloomingdale’s, even a portable CD player he stuck down the front of his pants once at RadioShack.”

“Down his
pants
?
”

“Oh yeah, they have the whole thing on store surveillance video. All the security were watching him . . . I mean he
is
a celebrity . . . Then he stuffs the CD player down the front of his pants. I’ve seen the video. The whole staff watches it all the time. It’s hilarious. He doesn’t know we’ve got it.”

Hailey tried to take it all in. That’s one thing she hadn’t thought to do before her appearance before millions of Americans: run the star’s rap sheet.

“Then there was the iPhone he took right off a display at the Apple Store across from Central Park . . . Oh yeah, and some DVDs he put in his briefcase the other day at Barnes & Noble . . . in the music section. There’s more . . . a lot more. It goes back for years . . . most of it gets swept under the rug, but he actually has a couple of convictions. He hates police and prosecutors . . . thinks they’re all straight from hell. He never even wants them on panel legal discussions. I had to make him.”

“Why doesn’t the press make more of it?”

“The convictions are under his
real
name, Harold Isaac Finkler. He was booked under Isaac. Plus, they all plead down to citations or get handled behind closed doors. You’d really have to know where to look. Anyway, bottom line, he hates you.”

“Then
why did you put me out here?
”

“Oh! Don’t take it personally!
It’ll be great TV!
”

If looks were daggers, Tony would be dead right now.

“Oh, and he’s in the control room right now, up there.” Tony gestured upward and ahead, into the darkness.

“
Don’t look!
They’ll know I’m warning you!”

She quickly looked down at the table and the handwritten notes she’d worked on for hours, then brought with her.

“Warn me about what? What could happen? More lame questions?”

“No. He’s up there right now, and they’re loading him up with some ammo to shoot you down. Be ready.”

“Ammo? What ammo? For what? Shoot me down how?”

No answer. She turned to look at him, but he was gone, evaporating into the darkness behind her. She took her hand off her lapel mike and steeled herself. Literally within seconds, Todd came back and slipped into his chair, revealing nothing. She noticed his makeup was repaired, now thicker than ever. He looked like he’d just come off hours lying on the beach, his face an unnatural brown. His hands and neck were browner than before, too. She wondered if viewers would notice the difference.

The music started and the audience cheered when a pale guy in skinny black jeans, black tennis shoes, and a black T-shirt walked before them with an “Applause” sign. They clapped wildly, some wolf-whistling their enthusiasm for all things Todd.

When the music started to fade, Todd looked directly at the camera and read verbatim off the prompter as Hailey read along herself, silently of course.

“Welcome back. With us, special guest Hailey Dean. She went from small-town prosecutor to national headlines after the stabbing death of a well-known defense attorney . . .
stabbed dead at the hands of Hailey Dean
, who is giving us her first-ever national interview about the night
she committed murder.
”

Before he could finish the rest of the read, Hailey spoke up loudly.

“Mr. Todd, you continue to misinform the viewers and I absolutely will not stand by silently. That is absolutely not what happened. First, correction. Obviously you don’t make it past the city limits of New York City or read the papers or you would know Atlanta is no small town. In fact, sir, nearly a million people live in Atlanta, not including the metro area. And, I did not commit murder. Whoever is feeding you questions in your ear needs to fact check. I was unarmed, and in self-defense stabbed a serial killer with a dentist drill, turned on, in the temple. It’s as simple as that. Check the police report, if you know how.”

Before he could interject, she went on.

“And, I was invited to be with you today to discuss the fight against violent crime in our country, crime that takes the lives of thousands of men, women, and especially, children. It can be stopped, I firmly believe. More people die of homicides in the U.S. each year than they do in our most current war.”

As if he’d heard nothing she said, he blurted out the next question, trying to maintain his best newslike demeanor while trying to stop her from talking.