Nathan's Run (1996) (10 page)

Jed shrugged, his feelings hurt. He was a cop, not a columnist. He didn't deal in gossip; every detail had a bearing on a case. But he had known Warren long enough to know his meaning. He flipped his notebook closed. "No, I suppose that's about it. But there is more news."

"And what might that be?"

"Turns out we've got a videotape after all."

"I thought the camera was broken."

"The camera in the Crisis Unit was. But we were able to catch Master Bailey on his way out through the in-processing area."

"Were other cameras working, too?"

"Not all of them. The rec hall camera was off-line as well. All the others seem to be in good shape. But the Bailey kid only passed through that one zone. Plus, we've got another couple of seconds of him exiting the back door. You want to see the tape? I've got it set up in the conference room."

Both men rose together, Michaels following Hackner out of the office. The squad room beyond the glass partitions of Warren's office was crammed with twice the number of desks it was designed to contain, providing space not only for Michaels's eight subordinate detectives and the clerical staff, but also for three building inspectors, a probation officer and a displaced Welfare staffer who never seemed to move up on the priority list for space at her own agency. Wedged into a third-floor corner of the forty-year-old Civil Defense Building, the view from the windows was dominated by the Adult Detention Center on one side and a sprawling magnolia tree on the other.

"So how come the only cameras that weren't working were the ones we needed to see?" Michaels asked, navigating a serpentine route through the maze of desks.

Hackner shrugged. "Pretty convenient, isn't it?"

"I want you to look into that angle, okay, Jed? I want to know if somebody helped him. Start with the uncle."

Hackner agreed. "I've already got Thompkins trolling that line."

They entered the conference room opposite Warren's office and closed the door. The television was on, the tape cued. With the press of a button, the image on the TV screen wiggled and danced while the heads in the VCR took up the slack. In the fuzzy black-andwhite shadows typical of security cameras, Michaels watched an empty room he recognized from the night before as the in-processing area. From the upper right-hand corner of the screen, a boy appeared, looking ridiculous in a hugely oversized pair of coveralls. He looked frightened; his movements were simultaneously quick and hesitant. He was barefoot. His clothes were smeared with what could have been ink, or even chocolate syrup in the colorless image, but what everyone knew was his victim's blood.

"Stop the tape," Michaels commanded. An instant later, the boy on the screen stopped, his legs slightly skewed from his torso, a fuzzy electronic line bisecting the two halves. "Bailey said on the radio that the guard-the supervisor-took away his shoes. Why did he do that? Is that standard practice?"

Hackner shook his head. "Don't know for sure yet, but I don't think so. If we believe Bailey's story on the radio, could be that Harris was just trying to be nasty. I'm meeting with Johnstone this afternoon to find out what I can."

Michaels motioned with a nod. "Go ahead. Start the tape again."

The boy's body became whole again, and he darted straight for the camera, looking over alternating shoulders with every step. He moved like a dog encountering a shadow in the night, not sure whether to stand and fight or to run away. The boy on the screen was visibly startled when he noticed the camera. He turned completely around, presumably checking to see who would be following him.

When Nathan turned back to the camera, Michaels's heart stopped beating for just the briefest of moments. The expression in Nathan's eyes was one he had seen before.

"Stop the tape!"

The command was louder this time. The body was cut in half again, more severely this time, but the face and eyes were untouched by the interference. Nathan's eyes spoke of fear and uncertainty, the wrinkled brow showing greater age than the smooth features should allow. Beyond the blood and the fear was the face of a young boy begging for help.

Michaels had seen that very expression dozens of times from the face of another insecure, introverted twelve-year-old who'd once depended upon him for so much, but now was silent forever. An image flashed though his mind of that other boy's face-now expressionless-reclining against a satin pillow, looking so uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit, a ridiculous gap around the shirt collar. So confined in a narrow box.

Michaels felt suddenly light-headed, and lowered himself clumsily into a chair at the conference table. His face was drained of color.

Hackner reached out to help his friend into the chair. "My God, Warren, are you all right?"

Michaels thought he shook his head, but in reality didn't move. "I don't know, jed." His eyes never left the screen. His throat was thick. "Look at his face, Jed. Look. He's got Brian's eyes."

Jed saw it, too. The likeness was remarkable, though not so much in the eyes as in the expression. He felt awful for not catching it during his previous viewings of the tape. He could have warned Warren up front, or even avoided that portion of the tape. Jed felt genuine pain for him.

"I'm so sorry, Warren," Hackner said. "I'll turn it off."

"No, don't:' Michaels said firmly, having regained his composure before ever really losing it. "Jesus, Jed, I thought I was past it. I can't keep reacting like that. I'm okay. Let's watch the rest of it."

Jed kept a careful eye on his boss as he restarted the tape. Once again, the electronic image melded together, just long enough for the boy to slip quickly out of the frame. There was a quick editing blip on the screen, and then they were looking at the exterior of the exit. In the foreground were a portion of the driveway and a short sidewalk. In the background was a door, which opened slowly to reveal the hero of this little television drama as he slipped out of the door, relocked it, and then sprinted out of the picture. One more blip, and the screen was blank.

Neither man said anything for a long moment while Hackner thumbed the power button and killed the television. "Well, boss, what do you think?"

Michaels sighed loudly, rubbing his face with both hands. "I think I wish I hadn't watched it. That tape's going to make my job a lot harder. Does the press have it yet?"

"What, are you kidding? Petrelli's hounds were all over that tape like flies on dog shit. He's got a movie of a blood-soaked murderer. My guess is they had it to the news stations even before we had copies made."

Michaels chuckled softly. "I don't know about you, Jed, but what I saw looked less like a murderer than a frightened puppy." He could just imagine the look on Petrelli's face the first time he viewed the tape and realized that his minions had already turned it over to the press. It wasn't going to be pretty, but Warren would have paid a hundred dollars just to be there.

"J. Daniel's going to shit pickles."

With the briefest movement of his head, Michaels returned to the business at hand: catching the whipped puppy who was making Petrelli sweat so much. Rising abruptly out of his chair, he led the two-person parade back toward his office. "One thing I want you to check up on, Jed, is the telephone records to that radio show. Every time a call is made to an 800 number it's got to be logged into a computer somewhere. I want you to tap into that computer and find out the number where that call originated. We'll trace it and get the kid back home."

Hackner moaned. He had done similar searches before, most recently for a fraud case, only to be inundated with hundreds of telephone numbers, each of which had to be checked. The case he recalled was an investigation of a small consulting business, and that investigation had taken a week to complete. The Bitch had a nationwide audience, attracting probably a thousand calls an hour. There weren't enough police officers in the world to complete that kind of investigation in anything close to a reasonable time.

"We'll need a court order," Jed stalled. "We won't stand a chance against a radio station."

"Get them to volunteer the information," Warren suggested without breaking his stride. "Be persuasive. You know, invaluable service to their community, that sort of thing."

"They'll never buy it, Warren."

Michaels stopped abruptly. Jed missed a collision by inches. "Look, Jed, we've got a job to do, and so far we haven't been doing it. We don't have a clue where this kid went, so don't tell me what we can't do until we've at least tried, okay? You were at the meeting this morning, and I think I was pretty clear. I want Nathan Bailey in custody tonight. Understand?"

Jed sensed that the others in the squad room were desperately trying not to hear. He turned and left without saying a word.

Five minutes later, Michaels left as well, telling his secretary that he could be reached on his cellular phone.

Chapter
12

Over the last five years, Denise Carpenter had interviewed hundreds of guests, ranging from the famous to the infamous, but never had she received such a response as the one generated by her conversation with Nathan. Her plans to discuss the president's foreign policy would have to wait for another day. The lines were so jammed that other 800 numbers with the same three-digit exchange were unable to receive calls, creating a nightmare of enormous proportions for the phone company.

On the other side of the glass, Enrique was struggling to manage the tidal wave of calls, coaxing those who'd been on hold for over an hour to hang in there while screening the few additional callers who'd been able to get through. For Enrique, the universe of callers fell neatly into only two categories: sincere and crackpot. His job was to make sure that the only people who got to talk on the air with Denise were stating their legitimate beliefs, and were able to remain topical. This was not the time to discuss the moral aspects of capital punishment, as Maureen from Seattle had wanted; nor was it the time to discuss the weaknesses of the foster care system in Des Moines, as Charlie had wanted to do. In practice, it was impossible to keep callers on the topic once they started talking, but that was okay, so long as they started out on the right track.

Then there were the sickos. Like William from Bakersfield, who wanted to point out the most efficient ways to kill with a knife, or Paula from Bangor, Maine, who wanted to see Nathan hoisted slowly by a noose so that he could suffer the way he had made Ricky suffer.

Enrique's job was to find a trace of sanity among a group of listeners who seemed to exhibit that trait only rarely. Once found, he then had to convince them to hang on the line while Denise spoke to each of them in turn. What most callers didn't realize was that the talk radio business was not first come, first served. Once they made it past Enrique, he entered their names, cities of origin, and a brief description of what they wanted to talk about into a computer terminal on his side of the window, which simultaneously displayed the information on a screen on Denise's side. , She then made the decision, sometimes arbitrarily, as to which callers would be spoken to first. He'd make suggestions, but she'd listen to him only about half the time. It was not unusual for a caller to remain on hold for the entire four hours of the show, only to be told thanks but no thanks. That job, of course, also fell on Enrique.

Enrique had met The Bitch when she was still a program assistant, and even thought for a brief while that he was in love with her. She'd just broken up with her husband, and Enrique had had exceptionally strong shoulders to cry on. As Denise's career blossomed and she healed emotionally, he tried dozens of times to summon the courage to ask her out, but he could never make the words form in his throat. They were "just friends"-intensely dear friends. Like brother and sister.

As Denise rose to stardom, Enrique followed closely behind in producerdom, each day engineering the opportunities for his boss to sound great on the air. The Bitch was a hit in syndication for two reasons: First, because Denise was the most talented on-air personality that he had ever seen, and second, because he was the best producer in the business. It wasn't bragging if it was true.

But even the best in the business couldn't keep up with this volume of calls. On his side of the window, there was total bedlam; on hers, total silence, pierced only by the sound of her own voice. People often asked Enrique if he got jealous, him doing all the work and Denise getting all the credit. His answer was always the same, and completely honest. There was no room for jealousy on a team. And in a business measured by individual achievement, theirs was the only real team around.

A tap on his shoulder startled Enrique. He turned to see one of the summer interns standing next to him, holding a pink telephone message slip. Annoyed at the interruption, Enrique pulled one earphone away from his head. "What is it, Tim? We're in the middle of a show here."

"Uh, it's, uh, Tom, sir."

Enrique's reply was a silent look that eloquently stated how little he cared what the hell Tom's name was. NewsTalk 990 worked their summer interns like slaves, allowing them to hang around the station for no pay, in return for the privilege of working twelve to eighteen hours per day. The station did it because it was free labor. The students did it because they knew there was a line a hundred deep just waiting to take the places of people who were stupid enough to put sleep or a social life ahead of their dreams of broadcast stardom.