Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [87]
“Oh, Ms. Sutton, Mr. Semple has called several times, there’re calls from all the local TV stations, and somebody from the Village Voice.”
The fucking Voice?
“And a Mr. Miller, with the Attorney General’s Office, then—”
“Hold all the calls,” Sutton hissed. “Ask Lee Maisel to come over. “Get me the legal department. I want Tim Krueger here in fifteen minutes. If any other reporters call tell them we’ll have a statement by noon. If any of them say they have an earlier deadline take his or her name and let me know immediately.” Sutton pulled her coat off. “And I want her. Now.”
“Who, Miss Sutton?”
“You know who,” Sutton replied in a whisper. “Now.”
RUNE HAD BEEN FIRED WORSE BUT THE SAD THING WAS that the other times she didn’t really care.
She’d screwed up often in the past, sure, but there’s a big difference between getting fired from a video store or restaurant and getting fired from a real job, one you cared about.
Usually she’d say, “Eh, happens,” or “Them’s the breaks.”
This was different.
She’d wanted to do this story. Badly. She’d lived for this story. She’d breathed it and tasted it. And now not only was she getting axed but she was getting fired because the whole thing had been a complete lie. The very core, the most very basic fact was false. The worst. It was like reading a fairy tale and then the writer telling you, Oh, yeah, by the way, I was just kidding. There’s no such thing as a demon.
Although she had proof there was such a thing. And his name was Randy Boggs.
Rune now stood in front of Piper Sutton’s desk. Also in the room was a tall, thin, middle-aged man in a gray suit and white shirt. His name was Krueger. Lee Maisel leaned against the wall behind Sutton, reading the Post account. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He looked at Rune with dark, impenetrable eyes and went back to the paper.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Sutton said. “Don’t embellish, don’t minimize, don’t edit.”
Rune explained about the fat man and Boggs and what happened on the houseboat. She added what Sam Healy had found out—that the police could find no leads to a Jack Nestor.
“So Boggs did it, after all,” Maisel said. “There was another killer but they were partners. Jesus.”
“Sort of looks like it.” Rune wasn’t counting “likes,” “sort-ofs” and “kind-ofs.” “When I saw them there, kind of hugging each other, I totally freaked. I mean …” Her voice faded.
Sutton closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, then asked the gray-suited man, “What’s the legal assessment, Tim?”
The lawyer said calmly, “I don’t think we have any liability. We didn’t fabricate evidence and the court decision was legitimate. I wish she”—not looking at Rune— “hadn’t gotten him released without telling anybody here. That adds another dimension.”
For the first time since she’d known him Maisel turned angry eyes on Rune. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to get Boggs sprung?”
“I was worried about him. I—”
Sutton couldn’t keep cool any longer. “I’ve told you from the beginning that our job isn’t to get people out of jail. It’s to report the truth! That’s the only job.”
“I just didn’t think. I didn’t think it would matter.”
“Didn’t … think.” Sutton stretched the words out for a vast second.
“I’m really—”
Sutton turned to Maisel. “So, what’s the next step?”
“Nighttime News.”
The lawyer winced. “It’s a New York story. Can’t we justify keeping it local?”
Maisel said, “No way. Time and Newsweek’ll cover it. You know what the other nets are going to do and forget about the Times. They’ll crucify us. It’ll be understated but it’ll still be a crucifixion.”
“We’ll have to preempt them,” Sutton said. “Put it on the News at Noon, then do a piece at five and have Eustice do it at seven. We tell all. We confess. Not a single word of excuse or backpedaling.”
Krueger said, “God, that’ll hurt.”
Maisel sighed.
The lawyer asked Rune, “You have any idea where Boggs went?”
“All I know is like he came from the South. Atlanta was where he was born and he lived in Florida and North Carolina but other than that …” She