Hand of Fate (17 page)

Aaron looked awful--his eyes were shadowed, and it looked like he hadn't shaved since Jim died. "Just let me know what I can do to help," he said. "We need to catch the guy who did this to Jim and string him up. And not the fast way either, where your neck gets broken when
you fall. I want him to feel what it's like to strangle to death." He sat down across from them and pressed his fingertips against his closed eyelids.

Allison needed answers, not tough talk. A few softball questions might help Aaron calm down and focus, not on revenge, but on facts. And who knew? Every now and then a softball question got hit out of the park.

"I wanted to ask you how KNWS managed to broadcast yesterday when the station was shut down. Did you use one of those live remote trucks you see at events?"

Aaron dropped his hands, and some of the tension in his face smoothed out. "No. A live broadcast comes right back through the studio, so that wouldn't have worked. We've got a transmitter site out in Damascus, and the engineers put something basic together. Greg--that's the guy who runs the equipment--he grabbed a sound board and a couple of microphones before he left."

"Pretty quick thinking," Nicole observed, making a note. Later she would write up a report and share it with Allison.

Aaron shrugged. "If you work in live radio, you have to be quick on your feet. Thank goodness Greg was. He flipped the switch to the national feed, so we were never off the air. And locally, we were back up with a cobbled-together program within four hours. We came back here last night after you guys gave us the all clear, but there was never a gap in broadcasting. If you're off the air for more than sixty seconds, you're history. Listeners will change the dial, and you might never get them back."

"So what does a program director do?" Allison asked.

"Just like it sounds. I direct the programming. I'm responsible for hiring, firing, and overall supervision of staff. It's everything from controlling the on-air sound to the really important stuff, lik
e d
eciding who gets stuck working on Christmas." He managed a weak smile.

"And how long have you known Jim Fate?" Allison asked. "His name's not Jim Fate."

"It's not?" Allison said. She and Nicole exchanged a look.

"It's Jim McKissick. That rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? All those s's don't sound too good hissed into a microphone. When I hired Jim twelve years ago, I told him to change his name. Not only was it wrong for radio, but it was already associated with the other station in town where he'd worked."

"Did he leave that station so he could get his own show on yours?" Nicole asked.

Aaron snorted. "He left that station because he got a pink slip. Him and all the other on-air folks. A big chain of radio stations bought it up. That's their standard operating procedure. Buy a station, fire all the talent, and then use one guy sitting in Texas or Nebraska or whatever to do shows for towns in a half-dozen different states. It's called voice tracking, but what it means is it's all robots and computers and prerecorded, and the only real people in the studio are the traffic reporters. They try to customize the program to make it sound as if the host is actually local, but when you listen, they can't even say the names of nearby towns and roads."

Allison tried to lead him back onto the path. "You said Fate's real name was Jim McKissick?"

"Yeah. I told him he needed something punchier, something unique to our station. I didn't want people thinking we were taking somebody's leftovers. Of course, who was I kidding? That's all our station was at that point. Leftovers. That was back when we were one of those stations that plays classic hits from the sixties, seventies, and more!" Aaron boomed out the last few words like a hammy announcer, then sagge
d b
ack in his chair. "This was way before he was `Jim Fate with The Hand of Fare, heard in thirty-eight states.' I thought I was doing Jim a favor when I hired him, but it turned out that he was doing me one."

"What do you mean?" Allison asked.

"It was kind of an accident, but Jim has ended up being this station's bread and butter. When I hired him, our Arbitron ratings were in the toilet, and we were hanging on by the skin of our teeth."

Allison winced at the mixed metaphor, but Aaron didn't notice.

"At that time, Jim did pretty much what you would expect for the kind of station we were back then. Took requests, did a little bit of patter between songs--nothing that anyone would remember the next day, let alone the next minute--and read the news at the top and bottom of the hour.

"Then one day the lead story was about an old lady who had been dropped by the nursing home staff on the way back from the bathroom. But they didn't fess up about what they had done. Instead of taking her to the doctor, they just put her back in bed and tried to convince her that it had all been a bad dream. Yeah, right. A bad dream that left her right leg broken in two places. Eventually gangrene set in. When they finally took her to the hospital, it was too late, and she died."

Allison was sickened. "That's awful."

"Jim thought so too. After he read the story, he made a few choice comments about it on air. It was definitely not part of the script. I remember sitting in my office and thinking I was going to have to give him a talking-to during the next break. At that time we were the go-to station for any dentist or office building that didn't want to shell out for Muzak. They knew we could be counted on to play unobjectionable thirty-year-old hits that everyone had heard a million times before and that no one paid any attention to. I was worried we might have lost our toehold in the one niche we had.

"But instead people started calling in. And they weren't mad about what Jim said. They wanted to talk about it. I think that was the first time in the station's history that anyone wanted to talk about anything that we played or said. Before, they didn't even notice. So when these people started calling, we put a few of them on the air. Then more people called in. And the whole thing snowballed. The more people listened to Jim, the more he talked. That was one man who was never neutral about anything. He always had an opinion, and the more anyone tried to argue with him, the stronger it got. You could never get Jim to back down. Never. It was great. Talk radio thrives on conflict.

"Well, that was all it took. Three months later, The Hand of Fate was a real morning talk show. We ended up completely changing our format. No more classic lite hits. Now we've got a guy who does financial advice, a garden lady, two guys with a sports show, a couple that gives dating advice, and a shrink who yells at people to get their act together. And Jim and his show. Less than a year after he made those first comments, he was airing on a dozen local networks. Now he's syndicated. The Hand of Fate airs on 120 affiliates, and Jim's my golden boy." Aaron heaved a sigh. "Was. Was my golden boy. Now I don't know what we'll do."

Allison said, "1 heard Victoria Hanawa filling in for him yesterday:'

Aaron shrugged. "She doesn't have that out-there quality that Jim does. Did. She's more the voice of reason. And that's not necessarily the voice you want to tune in to. Reasonable isn't as entertaining. It doesn't really matter to me what someone says on the air. It doesn't have to be right or wrong. It just has to get people to listen. In the end, it all boils down to the ratings. The higher the number, the more we can charge for commercial advertising time. And that's the only thing that keeps us in business."

Thinking of Cassidy, Allison said, "I have a friend who is a TV reporter, and she says the same thing. It's all about ratings." "Exactly," Aaron said. "And even then it's not enough to have a hug
e n
umber of people tuning in to your show. They have to represent the right demographic group if the station's going to make money. Most ad agency media buyers target the twenty-five to fifty-four age bracket. And women aged twenty-five to thirty-four are pure gold. They're the ones who control the purse strings. That's one reason we brought Victoria in last year. Jim's listeners tend to be older and male. Victoria was supposed to help us skew more toward people like herself?'

"You said supposed to?' Nicole observed. "That didn't work out?"

Aaron sucked air in through his teeth. "Our numbers haven't risen that much. And Jim didn't really cotton to the idea. He felt it washmm . . . something of an intrusion. He didn't exactly make things easy for Victoria. But she's a real trouper. You've probably heard that she stayed even when Jim ordered us to leave. She risked her own life to be with him for those last few minutes. It was . ." Aaron's voice cracked, and he paused for a minute, his lips pressed together as he struggled for control. "It was horrible to look at him and know that he had to be dying and that you couldn't help him. When I left, he already looked awful. And when I looked back, Victoria had her hand up against the glass, and Jim was on the other side, pressing his hand against hers, with the glass in between."

Aaron put his hand over his eyes, and they watched as his shoulders heaved with a silent sob. He finally straightened up, his eyes wet and red.

"Why would Victoria take the risk of staying?" Nicole asked. "Were they more than just coworkers?"

Aaron blinked. "I don't know, and I don't want to know. I mean, technically, Jim wasn't Victoria's boss--I was. Sure, it was Jim's show
,
but when it comes to talent, I'm the one who hires and fires. Jim has always had an eye for the ladies; that's all I can tell you."

Allison and Nicole made eye contact. Allison knew they were thinking the same thing. In other words, yes.

"Did Jim have any enemies?"

Aaron shrugged. "He ticked people off on a regular basis. But mad enough to kill him? Killing someone for being a blowhard or for riding roughshod over a caller--that's pretty hard to fathom."

"How about Quentin Glover?" Nicole asked.

"I'm sure he wasn't happy, but he's facing an indictment. He's got too much on his plate to be worrying about Jim Fate."

Allison said, "What about Brooke Gardner?" The transcript had been pretty damning, once you knew the truth behind it. "She killed herself after appearing on the show."

Aaron's face darkened. "The story is not that simple. That's why her family settled out of court. That girl had a whole raft of problems." "What do you mean?" Nicole asked.

"She had a drug habit and let a number of men come and go through that apartment. Her ex was trying to get custody. She was afraid all that was going to come out."

Allison didn't let it show on her face, but she was revising her opinion of Aaron. He seemed like the kind of man who went with what was expedient, who toted up the balance sheet before making any decision. How much of his grief was about Jim's death--and how much was about losing the golden goose? That gave her an idea.

"Did you have keyman insurance on Jim?"

Aaron looked blank. "What's that?"

"It's a kind of insurance that a company can take out on someone key to the business. Then if that person dies or is incapacitated, the insurance pays the company."

He raised his shoulders. "I don't know. You'll have to ask our accountants. We do carry liability insurance against lawsuits. That's what paid off when Brooke Gardner's family decided to settle:'

"How about the other staff?" Nicole asked."How did they get along with Jim?"

He pursed his lips. "Pretty well. No more arguments than at most workplaces."

"There were arguments?" Nicole raised an eyebrow.

"Well, not really arguments. People learned it was better not to get into a discussion with Jim. He had that way of never stopping, never letting go. He would just talk over you until you gave up."

After they told Aaron he could go, Allison turned to Nicole. "What do you think?"

"I'm thinking we might want one of our accounting specialists to go over the books. If you read between the lines, it sounds like the station might have been in financial trouble. They brought Victoria in, but it didn't help."

"And if they did have keyman insurance," Allison said slowly, "then Jim might have been worth more dead than alive."

Chapter
25

KNWS Radio

Back in the interview room, Nic looked at Allison and shook her head in mock amazement. "Okay, for suspects we now have station management, the Gardners, Representative Glover, Craig, NOD winners, and now Victoria. And don't forget Leather Hat Guy."

Allison laughed. "Maybe for this next interview we should concentrate on finding out who couldn't have killed him."

"Who's up next?" Nic asked as she massaged a knot on her inner thigh. Because she was still recovering from being shot in the shoulder, her Thai boxing instructor was focusing on the lower half of her body. Thanks to the training Nic had begun at Quantico, she was already good with her fists, but Muay Thai also used shins, knees, and elbows as weapons. The past weekend she had been too slow to block a kick and learned firsthand exactly how much pain the nerve that ran from the groin to the knee could produce.

Allison looked at the schedule. "Next up is an intern who was assigned to work directly with Jim. Willow Klonksy."

"Willow Klonsky? Doesn't exactly sing, does it?" Nic wondered which part of her name the girl would take after. Hippie chick Willow or plodding peasant Klonsky?