“I guess seven o’clock,” I said. “That’s when I’m supposed to show up.”

“I need you here now.”

“C.J., you know about Jane, right?”

“Yes.” Her voice went somber. “Yes,” she said again. “And I heard you found her. That must have been hideous. I’m so sorry, Izzy.”

It was the first time I’d heard empathy, compassion or anything like it from C. J. Lyons. “Thanks. I’m sorry for you, too. I know you guys were close.”

“Yes. This is gut-wrenching.”

“I know.” I thought for a second. “C.J., I’m confused why you’re calling me. You don’t even work at Trial TV.”

“I do now. As of one this morning. And, like I said, I need you in here. Now.”

29

A mid a somber newsroom, C.J. was snarling orders and gesturing with a clipboard when I got there. She had short black hair and dark-rimmed eyeglasses that were pushed up on the top of her head. She was dressed, as she often was, in jeans, a fitted black jacket and no-nonsense shoes. Interns scurried away from her, scribbling notes. Reporters appeared shell-shocked, but they nodded and scattered to cover the stories C.J. was assigning.

She smiled a little when she saw me. “Izzy.”

She raised the one arm without the clipboard and gave me a fast embrace with a couple of quick pats on the back. Not the best hug I’d ever gotten, but the only one I’d ever received from C.J.

“Can you believe this?” Her eyes were full of agony. I could tell she hadn’t slept, either.

I shook my head. I felt like sobbing again. My eyes darted around the newsroom, and I saw people whispering, pointing. I would always be known as the woman who found Jane Augustine dead.

“Oh, girl,” C.J. said, spotting the tears in my eyes. “We’re all a mess.”

“I know. I’m sorry. And you knew her for so much longer than I did. How are you?”

I saw tears glisten in C.J.’s dark eyes. “I can’t talk about it. I feel like I’ll never be able to talk about it.”

I nodded. “I spent hours with the police yesterday, and it was just…it was just terrible reliving it.”

“C.J.!” someone yelled “You want a live shot on the Rivera story?”

She turned around and hollered back at them. Somehow it was a relief to have someone taking charge, doing their job, acting for even a second as if this was just another day at Trial TV.

“Here’s the deal,” she said when she turned back to me. “I got a call last night from Ari Adler. Tommy Daley quit after he heard about Jane.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He said that Jane was the only reason he had come onto the network, and without her he didn’t want to be here. So Trial TV lost two of its most important people in one night.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. The network has only been running for a day, and it’s falling apart at the seams. Ari asked me to come on and keep things moving.”

“I’m glad. This network was everything to Jane.” I thought of Jane this weekend, after she’d found the noose in her house. She wouldn’t even call the police because it would have meant bad press for Trial TV. She wanted to do everything she could to make the network a success.

“I’m here to do whatever I can to help,” C.J. said. “We’re running some taped segments now, but we go live again at seven o’clock.” She peered into my eyes. “Can you keep working?”

I glanced over C.J.’s head to the anchor desk. I could see Jane there yesterday, beaming her self-assured smile into the camera, looking pleased and proud and full of life, a new professional life with Trial TV.

“Yeah,” I said, but I think there was a waver in my voice. I couldn’t stop the warring images of the Jane of yesterday, bursting and alive, and the Jane of last night, the life bled away from her. The two visions battered themselves back and forth in my mind, as if competing for my last memory of her, the way I would remember her.

“Don’t fall apart now, Izzy.” C.J. grabbed my shoulder and leaned nearer to me. Her brown eyes were bottomless, and yet they seemed all knowing. It seemed as if she could see inside me. “We’re all falling apart inside, but we’re going to hold it together for Jane, okay?”

I nodded, trying desperately to stick with the image of Jane behind the news desk. But my mind kept snagging on that scarf. The scarf that had choked the life from her.

“Izzy.” C.J.’s voice was like a snap. “Are you listening to me?”

I blinked furiously. “Yes. Yes, I’m listening. Tell me what you need.”

Her hand on my shoulder tightened. “Ari and I have talked and we want you to do something for us. For Jane.”

“Okay.”

“We’re not going to be able to find a replacement anchor right away,” C.J. said. “Everyone in town who might work is under contract. And you know how hard it is to break those contracts.” She looked pointedly at me.

I laughed a little. I used to write the contracts for many of the newscasters in town, and I always included solid non-compete clauses and astronomical buyouts, which made it all but impossible for a broadcaster to move quickly from one station to another.

C.J. smiled a little, too. “Thanks to lawyers like you, it’s going to take a while before we can get someone on the morning desk. We could have the afternoon people step in, but we don’t think it will look good to have newscasters working around the clock, especially since we expect to get even more people tuning in once they’ve heard Jane is gone, which is why we need you to step up your game.”

I threw my hair back and nodded. I was glad that I’d managed to do my makeup and put on the stylish black suit that I’d bought for Forester’s funeral. “Of course.” I looked around for Ted, my cameraman from the day prior. How long ago that seemed. “Just tell me where you want me to go.”

C.J. paused. Was she worried that I would fall apart?

“I’m fine,” I said. “I did okay yesterday at the courthouse.”

“I saw it. You did more than okay. Which is why Ari and I want you there.”

“Back at the courthouse?”

“No. There.”

I noticed then that C.J. was pointing. At the anchor desk.

30

“L et’s go over it again,” C.J. said. “What’s the key to working the prompter?”

“Focus behind it. Look past the words into the iris of the camera, so it doesn’t look like you’re reading.”

“What camera do you look at?”

“The one with the red light. When a new light goes on, I glance down at the script before looking up at the new camera.”

“Right. What about the talk-backs today?”

“Try to keep the guests on point. Remember that Senator Hinton will go on forever. Listen for the producer to tell me when to cut him off.”

“Great. Opening line?”

“Good morning and welcome to Trial TV. I’m Isabel McNeil.”

I had tried to tell C.J. that I wasn’t an anchor; I was barely a reporter. But C.J. was relentless. I’d finally caved when she told me that Trial TV wasn’t going on the air without me. Did I want to let Jane down?

I didn’t. And now here I was fifteen minutes before my first broadcast. And with that realization, it started-a blush that crept up my body, a heat that overtook me.

C.J. pulled back and scrutinized me. “Are you perspiring?”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?”

“Son of a motherless goat,” I said, my working replacement phrase for son of a bitch.

“What does that mean?”

“I have this little problem. It hasn’t happened in a long time.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Um, flop sweating?”

The muscles in her jaw went rigid. “Flop sweating? What does that even mean?”

I told her about how occasionally, when I got acutely nervous, usually at the beginning of a trial or some other public speaking, I experienced extreme perspiration. This little problem of mine was unbelievably embarrassing, as if someone had dropped burning embers into my gut and then thrown gasoline on them. And then a truck full of lumber. The waterworks in my body would pour, and my face would get as red as the fire inside me.