There were ten editing suites. Every few steps or so, lights flickered from one, but no noise emanated from their soundproof interiors. I quickly walked past them, slowing at the end, stopping outside number eight.

Through the small rectangular window, I could see the backs of C.J. and an editor, a guy with long black hair. Their shoulders were hunched over a desk filled with grids and consoles. Every so often, they looked up at monitors at eye level and rolled tape.

As I stood outside, I could see Jane’s face gracing the monitors. Different shots showed different sides of her-Jane’s competent anchor personality, her kind smile during a tough interview, her sad eyes when covering a verdict, her mouth laughing and wide, the shot obviously taken when she had flubbed a line.

I took a step closer to the editing bay, careful not to let my shadow fall over the room. I could see C.J.’s face now, lit by the flickering images of Jane. C.J.’s eyes were wide, almost as if she were in shock.

The door of the editing bay opened, nearly knocking into me, startling me. “Oh, hey,” I heard a voice say. It was the editor with black hair. He must have gotten up while I was watching C.J.

C.J. turned to look. Her brows furrowed a bit when she saw me.

The editor looked at me, then over his shoulder at C.J., as if for a clue on what to do.

“I’m here to ask C.J. about a story we’re working on,” I said.

“Yeah, about Jackson Prince,” C.J. said. She nodded at the editor. “It’s okay.”

The editor threw a curious glance at me, then left.

“C’mon,” C.J. said, standing, “let’s go talk in my office.”

“No!” I said fast. I had to keep her away from her office. Just for a few minutes. At least until Vaughn could get there and Maggie could convince him to search the place. C.J. might not have won her own Emmy but she might have Jane’s.

I stepped into the dark of the bay, right in front of her. C.J. paused, looked at me. Did she wonder for a second if something was off? I remembered her talking to me yesterday; I heard her say to go ahead with the Jackson Prince piece for Jane, Do it for her legacy.

The air in the editing bay smelled stale, closed-up, overly personal-the smells of different people in a room together for hours.

Despite the open door, darkness hung like a veil, making the lights on the console shimmer eerily. On the monitors an image was frozen-Jane watching a news conference, her legs crossed, her face pensive.

I looked at C.J. and searched her face for an answer to my question-Did you kill her?

She said nothing, but she stared right back. Then she pulled me inside and pushed the door closed.

79

“W hat’s going on, Izzy?” she said quietly.

“Um, nothing. Why would you ask?”

“Because you just barged into my editing suite and said you needed to talk to me about a story.” Her words sounded like the usual surly C.J., but again, she was calm. Overly calm.

“The story. Right. Well, the story is going well,” I said, trying not to let my imagination go wild. I gave her a quick retelling of the doctors Mayburn had spoken to, the ones we hoped to get interviews with.

When I stopped talking, she stood there gazing at me. The electricity from the editing equipment hummed. The atmosphere in the room felt constricted, as if the fresh air was slowly being cut off.

“So, I guess I wanted to ask you,” I said, stalling for time, “about anonymous interviews with some of the doctors. You know, where their faces can’t be seen. Is that okay?”

She stepped back and sat in her chair, then nudged the editor’s chair with her foot. It bumped me in the knee. “Sit,” she said.

I hesitated, staring at the chair. The room was lit only by the square of light from the hallway and the lights on the console. Was Vaughn here by now? Had I given him enough time to see if there was anything in those boxes in C.J.’s office? There was that one in particular, filled with broadcast awards and plaques. But Vaughn might not even be here yet. It was only minutes since I’d left Maggie and Faith in the hallway.

I pulled the chair back, sat in it. But now, my back was to the door, the chair blocking it, and it became even more apparent to me that it was just C.J. and me. Alone in a mostly dark room.

I tried to lighten the mood. “How’s the tribute going?” I nodded at a frozen image on the monitors-in the frame, Jane’s body language and face were relaxed. There was no artifice, no camera-ready poise. Instead, in her thoughtful gaze, you could see the person behind that beautiful face, a person who was fascinated by life, who had her own demons, her own questions.

“The network wanted to do five or ten minutes, can you believe that?” C.J. said. “Like Jane wasn’t worth an hour or two.” She shook her head slowly, staring at Jane on the monitor.

“With everything that’s been going on,” I said, “I keep forgetting to check in with how you’re doing. I mean, you and Jane were tight.”

She turned her gaze to me. “We were.”

“You were best friends professionally.”

“Yeah.” Her voice was rough for a second. She cleared her throat.

We sat in the silence of the editing bay for a few seconds. “You were more than that, weren’t you?” I asked. I paused. Then I decided to go for it. “You and Jane were lovers.”

C.J. took off her glasses. For a moment, in the square of light, I saw her eyes-smaller than they seemed when she had glasses on, but more clear, more intense. She moved her head away, so that the light of the door fell only on her shoulder. I couldn’t see her eyes any longer.

She reached forward onto the console and clicked a button. The monitors went blank. Jane disappeared. I heard the sound of C.J. touching another button, and the colored lights of the console went dark, too, dying out with a fading hiss.

80

D etective Vaughn strode into the headquarters of Trial TV, trailed by his officers. Two more squad cars on their way.

He shook his head at the thought of Trial TV. It would be better for him, and all of law enforcement, if people weren’t so goddamned interested in the police and the law. He blamed the detective shows. Not that he’d ever seen one. He got enough of that shit at work.

The truth was, he loved his work. And he was good at it. His instincts were almost never wrong. He’d known in this case a woman was involved. So many things pointed to it, especially the DNA evidence from the bed, and then there was Isabel McNeil with her obvious crush on Jane, and all things Jane.

In order to figure out if his instincts were right, the law gave a certain amount of latitude to detectives like him. He could, for example, lie his face off to a witness during interrogation and hey, if that witness was being processed at one station and then suddenly taken somewhere else for booking and shuttled to a whole other place for holding, that was fine. And hey, if that witness’s attorney and family members couldn’t find them for a while, that was fine, too. The law, he figured, treated him well and let him pretty much do what he wanted. What he didn’t like right now was that he was being told what to do. By his own suspect.

He stopped a guy with long hair turning the corner, a coffee mug in his hand.

“Excuse me,” Vaughn said. He didn’t need to show his badge. The officers behind him gave him more than enough credibility. “Do you know where Isabel McNeil is?”

“Yeah,” the guy said, his eyes a little jittery. And it wasn’t from the coffee. You could tell he was excited by the presence of the police. He was in the news business, after all. He probably loved to get the scoop on everything, whether for work or not.

“She here now?” Vaughn asked.