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"This is the part that burns me up most," Agent Kunsa said.

"I had worked with Lawson before, when he was with the Bureau, and it honestly never occurred to me that he could go bad. He was a good agent. But, man oh man, what a scumbag he turned out to be."

The authorities of course had no idea that the former FBI agent they were relying on to coordinate security for the event was, in fact, coordinating with a former CIA operative to set up a successful kidnapping. The last-minute choice of Rockefeller Center as the site of the party was not last minute at all, but was the very site Lawson had selected months in advance.

In another ironic twist, the party did attract the stalker, Leopold, and he had known exactly where it was going to take place because he had been listening in when it had been explained to Jessica in her office.

"Contrary to everyone's belief," Alexandra said, "Leopold had not gone there to stalk or kidnap Jessica, but to protect her from the danger he knew was present at West End. Someone had murdered Bea Blakely, and Leopold didn't know who."

So on the Monday before the party, Plattener hacked into the Niagara Power Project system to sign out a truck in master electrician Mark Brewer's name and went up to Niagara Falls to pick it up. He drove down to New York City and waited to hear where the actual site of the party would be on Tuesday. As an assistant commissioner, Plattener had high-security clearance and access to the electrical plans of every major building and building complex on file with the state. When he heard where the party was to be, he simply called up the Rockefeller Center plans on his computer to familiarize himself with the layout and decide on the best vantage points to watch.

Leopold was there early that afternoon, surveying the area.

"What caught his eye," Agent Kunsa said,

"was a Con Edison work project roped off in front of the NEC building on Sixth Avenue. There was only one worker there, and he knew that they were always assigned in pairs. So he called and checked and found out there was no work detail assigned to the site, and so he knew the guy had to either be a part of the security effort for the party or the guy was a potential threat.

Leopold was outside the party, on the upper level over the rink, listening in on the security walkie-talkies. (The security cameras had caught him several times, and it was eerie, watching him, knowing what was to come from this very nondescript, mild-mannered man. ) When Leopold heard over the walkie-talkie frequencies that Jessica had been nabbed and pulled through the maintenance door, he had a very good idea where the kidnapper was taking her, and he was waiting in his own van when Denton and his hostage came out of the NBC building and took off in the Con Edison truck.

He followed them to the downtown lot and watched as Denton walked Jessica into the tool shack. Leopold went to the front gate to close it, affixing the open padlock hanging there and locking it. Then he hid.

He watched Denton help Jessica into the back of the truck and then drive to the front gate. Looking baffled, Denton jumped out to examine the lock, at which time Leopold hailed him, asking if he could help.

Denton asked him if he had the key to the gate. Leopold said yes, walked over, and instead of taking the key out, struck Denton in the face with a wrench. When the former CIA operative fell to the ground, Leopold proceeded to beat him almost to death. Then he took Den- ton's keys and unlocked the back of the Con Ed truck and found Jessica sound asleep on the stretcher. He brought his van up next to the Con Ed truck and rolled the stretcher with Jessica on it into his van. Then he dragged Denton's body into the back of his van, leaving Denton on the floor.

Finally, Plattener used the lock cutters from the Con Ed truck to cut the lock off the gate and head out of town.

Then the documentary took a moment to introduce Salt Springs, an idyllic park located just over the New York state border in Pennsylvania. For centuries Indians had associated magical powers to the waters that bubbled up from the earth here, which Plattener's mother, Lillian, so many years ago, had also come to believe in.

"And so this night, under the cloak of darkness," Alexandra said, as the screen showed the strange beauty of the spot, "Leopold had veered off Route 17 to Salt Springs, where he endeavored to cleanse Jessica with the magical waters, and to make her his."

"I saw the van pull in," the witness who had called the hotline said.

"I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and I saw the lights. I didn't think much about it-there's always kids parking there. But then I couldn't sleep. I-There was just something that bothered me. It was a school night, you know? And it was very late. And so I got up again and looked out and I saw this woman stumbling around with this guy and I thought maybe she was drunk or drugged or something. And I thought, gosh, I better get down there. This doesn't look good, what is he doing to her? So I went downstairs and hurried outside, but when I called out, the guy slammed the door and took off. I saw most of the license plate and came back in and wrote it down on the pad in the kitchen." He shrugged.

"Then I saw the press conference about Jessica Wright being kidnapped, my wife and I looked at each other, and then I ran to the phone to call in."

"And now you're a multi-millionaire," Alexandra said.

He beamed.

"Well, yeah."

"Which just goes to show, it pays to get involved."

He grinned.

"Well, yeah."

In the van, Alexandra continued, Leopold injected Jessica with a sedative to knock her out for the rest of the night. He drove her to Buffalo, to the now abandoned mental hospital where his mother once worked. He moved Jessica up to the suite of rooms he had prepared for her, and locked Denton's body in a room next door, leaving him to die.

The documentary now focused on how the FBI, NYPD and DBS News worked together to profile Leopold, track the van to Niagara Power and put all the information together to zero in on James Plattener. Meanwhile, at the network, when the authorities were preparing to race upstate to find Plattener, DirkLawson was genuinely frantic.

"Only now did Lawson realize," Alexandra paused for effect, "that Calvin Denton, the kidnapper he had hired, did not have possession of Jessica, but that the real Leopold did. As to what had happened to Denton, he had no idea, but he knew that he needed to find out before anyone else did--for Denton was the one person who could tie Lawson to the kidnapping."

After a commercial break the documentary resumed with a clip from one of Jessica's shows where she bemoaned her essentially useless nature and "inability to hold a real job." Then Alexandra and Jessica took viewers through the rooms where Jessica had been kept captive. Jessica detailed how she had heard the moans of the dying man next door and had tunneled through the wall to find Denton. In a re-creation, they showed how she had dragged him through the wall, how she had made up a bed for him on the floor, hiding him in her room, and had not only attempted to nurse him to the best of her ability, but had demonstrated extraordinary kindness.

"You would have done the same thing," Jessica responded when Alexandra questioned her compassion.

"When you hear that certain pitch--animal or human--you know you have to try and help. You just can't let someone die."

Alexandra then detailed Jessica's relationship with Leopold in her captivity, her attempt to simultaneously win his trust and make him relax, and her ongoing attempt to keep him away from the man Jessica called Hurt Guy, who was lying under her bed moaning in the next room.

When Leopold's attentions turned overtly sexual toward her, however, she frankly admitted "I bolted for daylight and nearly got volted to never-never land. But I'll tell you, anything was better than being touched by that guy."

The drama of the rescue assault on the old Buffalo Psychiatric Center was illustrated through film footage from that night. It highlighted how, after Jessica's rescue, Detective Hepplewhite and Alexandra Waring had stood by to witness Dirk Lawson's attempted murder of Calvin Denton.

Then Alexandra showed how Will and the local rookie had made the mad dash for the end of the runoff pipe and how they had waited hours and hours for Leopold to finally crawl out at dawn.

"We knew that if the perp were to use that old runoff pipe as a means of escape," the rookie cop said, "that we had to act fast. The hospital grounds are so massive, I knew the others would be tied up for hours. And so I thought I just better go with Mr. Rafferty. I was pretty confident I could handle the situation, and fortunately, that's how it turned out."

Then the documentary went into the arrests, Plattener's silence, the cocky denials of Dirk Lawson, and the frustration of being unable to obtain the evidence that was dying with Calvin Denton.

"But then Jessica really came through for us," Agent Kunsa said.

"She marched right in there and confronted Plattener, face-to-face. I've never seen any kidnapping victim demonstrate that kind of strength before. But she did, by golly she went right in there and got enough information so that we could retrieve the bug he had planted in her office. And we also got the recordings that linked Dirk Law- son to Bea Blakely."

"I still don't know what to say," Mrs. Denton said with tears in her eyes.

"We owe our family's existence to this woman. To Jessica Wright." She blinked rapidly in an attempt to keep her tears at bay.

"Not only did she risk her life to keep my husband alive, but I saw her go into the intensive-care unit later and literally talk my husband back to life." She swallowed.

"And now she's getting help for our little girl, and she's trying to help my husband, and help us to maintain hope as a family." She broke down.

Alexandra chronicled the gradual stabilization of Calvin Denton and the miracle of his being able to testify against Dirk Lawson. (He had to type his testimony with his one good index finger on his right hand, attached, happily, to his only unbroken limb. ) Denton also sent the authorities to the intended hideout--the basement of an abandoned warehouse in Newark--and to evidence physically linking Lawson with the site. Denton would be going to prison and would be a cripple all his life, "I know better than anyone else what

Calvin Denton was going to do to me, and how he intended to treat me," Jessica said.

"And I know that I will be testifying on his behalf, because I will tell you something--that man has suffered hell itself.

Not just with this situation, but for years, with his little girl. Not just with him knowing how much his family is suffering over this. But think about what it must be like for a man who always prided himself on being fit and athletic, to now be barely able to walk. Ever. "

"The most condemning factor in a kidnapping is demanding a ransom," Agent Kunsa explained.

"Once kidnappers do that--that's it. But in this case, there was no ransom demand, and that lessens the charges against Denton. And with Ms. Wright pushing so hard for his cause, that certainly can't hurt his situation."

Then they cut to the Manhattan district attorney.

"In Dirk Lawson's case?" he said.

"Oh, yes, we'll be going for the death penalty for the murder of Bea Blakely."

Lawson, Alexandra explained, was being held in Piker's Island, awaiting trial.

James Plattener's plea of insanity was struck down by the courts and he was transferred upstate to Attica Prison, where he is awaiting trial for the murder of a Niagara Falls cocktail waitress named Bambi Sharp, with whom he had tried to practice his social sexual skills with before meeting Jessica in person. (Unfortunately Ms. Sharp had evidently said something unkind and Plattener had slashed her throat and later dismembered her in his garage in Buffalo, packing her remains in three plastic storage containers and tucking her away in a storage locker with other family heirlooms. ) Other charges were pending for Plattener in the courts--in Manhattan, the attempted murder of Calvin Denton,

and in the federal, the kidnapping and assault of Jessica Wright.

"Interestingly," Alexandra said at the conclusion of the special, "James Plattener has had to be isolated from the general prison population in Attica. Because, you see, when it was announced that Jessica would not be returning to the air after her ordeal, several inmates promised to murder him."

Alexandra smiled and said, "And that's the report from all of us here at DBS, and DBS News. We'll see you tomorrow night for our regular news hour. Good night."

It was a remarkable television event and DBS was flooded with congratulations from newspeople around the world, not only for the special, but for the personal participation of Alexandra and Will in helping to track down and rescue their friend and colleague. And in the ratings war, "The Kidnapping of Jessica Wright" scored a 22. 8 Nielsen rating, beating all competition.

v^/n Saturday night, June 27, Langley Peterson threw an official farewell dinner for Jessica Wright at the Waldorf Hotel. Included among the guests was the whole Monday-through-Friday cast and crew of "The Jessica Wright Show" and "DBS News America Tonight." Following the sophisticated tradition established by Betty Ford, waiters and waitresses at this black-tie affair carried not only champagne glasses of Moet on silver trays, but champagne glasses of Perrier water, each with a piece of lime to clearly signal its nonalcoholic content. Trays of sumptuous hors d'oeuvres were passed. It was a giddy group, excited by the food and drink and finery, but it was also an unhappy group, one nervously dreading that final goodbye.

Dinner was served. Filet mignon or chicken or vegetarian. At the head table, Langley and his wife, Belinda, played host and hostess, Jessica, Will, Cassy, Jackson, Alexandra, Agent Kunsa, Agent Cole, Detectives Hepplewhite and O'Neal, Denny Ladler and Alicia Washington chatted on, looking out over the room, waving to colleagues and friends.

Jessica had gone crazy with a long green silk dress and spiked sandals, and between yet another new auburn wig and Cleo's makeup, she looked very much like her old self. Because her right hand was still healing, she also wore long white dress gloves. Will was wearing his tuxedo (standard gear for TV executives). Alexandra was in a long blue-sequined gown. Cassy was in a pale yellow one. Agent Kunsa kept fussing with his black bow tie (a real one) and white dinner jacket that he had been loaned from the DBS wardrobe. Hepplewhite was aglow in a tux, and Agent Cole surprised everyone with a black silk dress and daring neckline. Slim, in his rented tuxedo, had chosen a seat offstage, and so had Wendy, who frankly looked fantastic in a long black dress.